This morning we trekked back to the medical building to have Liz’s TB test read.  She passed (huge victory!) and we waited for only an hour (additional victory).  Liz absolutely loved sitting in her own bus seat in the very back of the bus where the seats sit up a little higher and she could look out the window.  Which she did.  The whole ride.  It was awesome to see her delight.

Elvin then carted us to the pedestrian walking mall to do a little shopping.  We have already planned a shopping excursion with a personal shopper for Wednesday morning, so we weren’t as interested in what Elvin wanted to show us. But Tom used the opportunity to pick up the DVD of his favorite Chinese singer, Wang Fei.

Elvin then took Liz and me back to the hotel.  We left Tom and Seth with Joe to continue shopping.  The boys all wanted to get soccer jerseys, and that wasn’t on Elvin’s list of places to go.  So the girls went back to the hotel (does anyone else have an 80s rap song running through their head right now “back to the HO-tel, to the HO-tel, back to the HO-tel . . . ).  Anyway, we had yet a third victory on the way back.  Liz fell asleep on the bus.  I realize many of you readers (do we have more than two readers?) might be shrugging your shoulders and wondering why the celebration.  We will forgive you for not understanding, since you weren’t with us at the airport when Liz managed to not sleep for ten zillion hours straight.  We are glad to know even the Energizer Bunny has its limits, and are feeling somewhat optimistic that a 13 hour return plane trip to the states may involve at least some small amount of sleep.  Especially since not only did Liz fall asleep on the bus, she stayed asleep in my arms while I carried her out of the bus, picked up and paid for some laundry, paid some extra visa fees, and rode the elevator up to our room, which requires a key card to operate.  See?  That’s really great sleeping, all while on the move.  So now we know she CAN do it, it’s just whether she will . . .

Liz continued sleeping for nearly 2 hours, while I enjoyed some rare-as-of-late and profoundly nice quiet time. We didn’t have a chance to eat lunch because of the whole Liz sleeping thing, and it’s not like I could leave her alone in the room. So I ate an apple and an cold chicken sandwich leftover from McDonalds the day before that I found in the mini fridge. Liz woke from her nap thoroughly unhappy that not all known family members were present.  Lucky for me, after about 20 minutes of completely icing Mom out in favor of Xi Yang Yang, she begrudgingly decided to like me again and determined I was okay to play with.  Bubbles apparently have some sort of magical power and can be played with for hours on end.  And it sure was fun to hear her absolute squeals of delight when Tom and Seth and Joe came back with their haul.

To add to the fun (enter sarcasm here), Tom and Seth came back a bit wet and the proud owners of a luxury umbrella purchased out of necessity when it unexpectedly began to pour rain.  Apparently the air didn’t already hold enough moisture.  They were total troopers, undeterred from their mission of finding knock-off jerseys.  Seth had a blast showing off his goods, which ended up including not only jerseys, but shoes and headphones.  Then Tom, being the man that he is, went out and got dinner and brought it back to the hotel so us more delicate flowers didn’t have to brave the rain.  We were especially grateful for this because at this point Liz had eaten about all the dry cereal and apples she could handle, and was literally crying out in Chinese “I am hungry.”  Lemme tell you, few things make you feel like more of a loser as a parent than having your child who has lived with hunger her whole life cry out that she is hungry within the first few weeks she is in your care.  Nice one.  And the parent of the year award goes to . . . .um, not me.  Luckily she really liked dinner.

Tom repeated his chivalry later in the evening with Seth and came back with chocolate ice cream for Liz and I.  Few things prove affection more strongly than the delivery of chocolate ice cream.  Liz seems to have forgiven us for leaving her famished.

We stayed up too late watching The Voice and some old Harrison Ford movie while doing more laundry.  It wouldn’t have mattered that we were up late, but Monday night was another long night for Liz.  Again she was up three times sobbing during the night.  Once she was crying out “jie jie, jie jie” which means “big sister.”  Unfortunately, we know she wasn’t crying out for Kate or Claire, and can only presume she was referring to her  best friend who was left behind at the orphanage.  We have a few pictures of them together, and the orphanage workers didn’t hesitate for one minute when we asked them whether she had anyone to whom she was particularly close.  Our sweet, sweet girl.