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Wednesday, August 29, 2012

July 24


This day we decided to take it easy. We slept in until 9:30am ...

While in China, sleep was the main issue for Lyric. Sleep takes trust and being able to relax, two things that she did NOT have an abundance of. It's hard to chill out when you have to be on guard every moment that those closest to you, don't leave you.  We'd developed a routine, I'd sing to her, put her to bed with a bottle and then take a shower with the door open so she could see me. (I am sure that there were more perfect ways to do this but I swear, by this point, I was so exhausted that this just had to be enough.) Usually, by the time I'd get done, she was either completely asleep or calmed down. Sometime in the middle of the night, while in some sorta sleep deficient coma, I'd drag her into the bed with us.  It seemed like all night long, she'd fidget and whine, if I could wake up and get it to her soon enough, her bottle (she used it like a pacifier) would calm her down.  If that didn't work then she'd need me to pat and kiss her face and talk to her (sometimes she'd pat my face and that would calm her down- K-Man told me that once, after we'd come home, he'd walked into our bedroom to find us asleep, my hand on the side of her face, her hand on my hand.)   She always woke up "hard"- she'd cry and cling to me, she'd usually refuse to get out of my lap - and we'd sit together for a LONG time. K-Man made the heart-breaking point that it was very possible that, in her dreams, she was back with her foster family, that she was happy, and then she'd wake up to reality and find us.  Ai yi yi!

 But, at some point, usually after her bath, 
she'd perk up and then we'd say, “Lyric has arrived.” 

After that, she was all sorts of cheerful and happy and very talkative. 



She LOVED her red sandals with the fabric ties….I thought her feet were too big for them 
but she loved them.  She whined to get dressed that morning and wanted those shoes ON.

...and then decided to head to the museum just down the block from the hotel.  It seems that while digging into the earth, to build the China Hotel, (where we stayed) they'd found artifacts 2000 yrs old and we were really excited to go see them. The artifacts were, in fact, from the tomb of a King who'd lived during the Han Dynasty .  Typhoon Vicente (on this side of the world it would have been known as a "hurricane,") which was wrecking havoc in Hong Kong, was making our lives a bit inconvenient, as well. Well, more wet than inconvenient. :)



This was the building from street level.




But you actually had to go to the rooftop to start the tour.


And, then go down into the tomb.


Here's the surface view, the tomb is underneath this ceiling.

Here's the artist drawing of how the tomb and its contents were laid out.


It was very interesting to me, that it reminded me so much of an Egyptian tomb. The dead King was wrapped in a Jade covering (pics later on) and everything he could possible need in the afterlife had been left or sacrificed with him. (See above "artist drawing," the human shapes are the concubines, court officials, guards, etc who were sacrificed to accompany the King into the next life.) It was ironic, to me, that they kept using pyramid shapes in the exhibit. Here, we are about to go into the next building to see the contents of the tomb. Arbitrary A-Girl Note: Flip flops get very slippery when they are wet.





This was the burial covering of the king.  It was made of small Jade discs all sewn together.  He was also laid on several much larger Jade discs and more were found in strategic places around his body and inside the tomb.  The whole thing was just very, very fascinating.









While we were there, a lady stood back, watched Lyric for a bit, and then smiled and said, 可爱 or cute  in Chinese. I said 谢谢 or  thank you  back to her.  I'd understood what she said and answered easily without thinking about it.  That was a “wow” moment.















They found the remains of at least one horse and horse-drawn vehicle in the tomb,
these are the remains of the head stall and bridle used on the horse.
Of course, I found that very intriguing.

These pictures do not do justice to the whole exhibit but, as you know, pictures of stuff in exhibits get old fast, so we shall move on. To lunch.

Lunch consisted of whatever we could find at the hotel -  the Prime Steak House on the fourth floor. I was just too tired to venture out.


I hate to think of how many noodles we left on/in that couch.

Dessert, yum. I could NOT get Lyric to try ice cream,
she'd eat the cone but the ice cream was just too cold.
(We no longer have this problem. :) )

She was sorta into straws, as well.

K-Man asked me, while we were at lunch, just how I'd describe our China trip so far. I'd stared at him, feeling a little speechless, where to start?
“Just…wow! Really...wow.”
 “I agree,” he'd said.
(I wonder, how many times have I typed the word "wow" in this blog? Redundant, I am sure, but no other word quite captures it. :) )

We watched the Chinese music video station that afternoon as Lyric loved the Tv and music.  The dancing and the music reminded me of Michael Jackson and the boy bands of the 80s –in fact, we saw a video where the faces were painted black and white, very KISS-esque.




That evening we and the California Family braved the rain of Typhoon Vicente to find a 
restaurant to eat dinner. Going to eat in the community always felt so much more authentic than eating in the hotel restaurants.

K-Man ate sushi. 

In China. 

He survived.  :)


Lyric, however, threw up every bit of the weird drink she’d been drinking and the noodles that she’d eaten moments before. There was nothing I could do but watch it happen as I was pinned into a corner, couldn't get up, and didn't really want to announce it to the whole restaurant. K-Man went and got "help," our help took one look at the mess, disappeared, and came back with LOTS of napkins. It was the most paper products I'd seen on our whole trip. hahaha (They didn't seem to believe in paper products. We almost always had to hunt down more napkins, paper towels etc with our meals.) We took off Lyric's dress and continued with our meal.


It was "uji" hahaha and we laughed because the only thing that we could read,
in English, on the back of the bottle was the word, "cancer."'  And, hmmmmmmm.

California Dude kept us laughing, also, by telling us about his run-in with prostitutes the night before, on his way to McDonald's.

“You want to have fun with girls, red wine, and cocaine?” 

I was so glad that they were so laid back and easy going...or maybe we'd all just left "crazy" so far behind by that point that nothing phased us anymore. It was a toss up. ;p

We went to sleep that night knowing, Tomorrow we go to the American Consulate to do the Visa swearing in.  Next, we wait for Lyric's American Visa and then, we GO HOME! 



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