April 2 continued

Before we left for the trip to the pearl and jade market, I stopped by to drop off a disposable camera that I had sent to the orphanage at the one hour photo place. When I picked it up again, I had some great pictures of Susanna from the last few weeks that she was in the orphanage. Cindy in Spokane, if you are reading this, I think I have one of her with Fu Bi. I'll mail it to you when I get home. We left the hotel at 2:30 to walk across the bridge, leaving Shamian Island and going into the city. To get to the pearl and jade markets, we had to f irst walk through another market. The first part of it was an herb market. It was kind of a giant flee market. They had all manner of dried herbs for cooking and medicinal purposes. They had snakes that were dried, all coiled up, and also snakes that were stretched out and dried. There were pans full of live scorpions. Wendy said that they use them for medicinal purposes and also eat them deep fried. I asked her if she ate them and she shook her head and said oh, no, no. Then we had to cross another street. I think I mentioned before maybe that crossing the street in China is a bit like playing the computer game frogger. You have to pick your place to go and just move slowly but surely. Either that or wait until there is a traffic backup. The other thing you can do is wait until you find a chinese person and cross when they do. I don't envy Wendy's job of getting us all through these little tiny alleys and busy streets, all the while counting heads to make sure she hasn't lost someone who stopped to take a picture of something. Then we went down the section of market where they sell pets. And yes, they were pets. We asked Wendy. They sold gerbils in the little wheels, dogs and cats, pet beds and kitty litter. They had tubs of tropical fish and fish tanks for sale. We saw people out walking there pets and getting supplies. After we left this section, we got to a more commercial market, where everyone had actual stores instead of just setting their stuff out in the street. At one point, someone had to use the restroom, so Wendy took them into a store. While they were gone, we just hung out outside the store. After a few minutes, people started coming up to those of us who had brought babies with them. Eventually we started attracting more of a crowd and by the time Wendy got back we were hemmed in on all side with tons of people staring at us. Wendy said something to them and then said they are curious as to why you have chinese babies. She told us if this happens to tell them show-ya which means adoption in chinese. Finally we moved on to the jade market. We went into a building with lots of vendors and made our way through narrow aisles, stopping to bargain here and there. It was a little tiresome because she had kind of asked up before we went in what we wanted and we told her, but I figured that she would find one who had a good price and bargain for a bunch. Instead she went to different vendors and bargained for one piece at a time. Finally she did take us to a store that had jade pendants that we could just pick out one we liked and tell her how many we wanted, then she would inspect them all and pick out the best ones and then when they were all done, she bargained for the price. Next we walked to the pearl market. The first place we stopped it sounded like the lady was arguing with her and we thought they were refusing to sell us stuff, but she later explained that they said they didn't have the right things to sell us and the lady walked us over to another shop that had more items. There we looked through the pearls and picked out what we wanted. Some of the stuff was already made into necklaces and bracelets, but the really good pearls we picked out, they had to restring and double knot them and put a clasp on, so they said they would bring them to the hotel when they were done. After that we were all exhausted and were supposed to be going out to supper at 6:00. It was already 6 then, so she put us in cabs and sent us back to the hotel. Riding in traffic in China is very, very interesting. I don't know why there aren't more accidents here. So far we've only seen one. Back at the hotel, we decided to not go to the Thai restaurant for supper with everyone else. Susanna has really been having a hard time and I just thought she needed some time to herself. So we stayed in and had an early night. We stopped by a store to pick up our laundry and it came all pressed, ironed and packed in plastic. Are we spoiled or what? Later that night, Susanna seemed to turn a corner. She was getting back to the happy little girl we'd seen that first day. She even had a second bottle that night and we went out and walked around the Island a bit later in the evening.