We're Learning!

Today's activities started with our US Consulate appointment where we did a quick oath-taking ceremony and submitted some paperwork to apply for Amanda's US visa. Jack then showed us around the newest area of Guangzhou, which has really exploded just in the last 10 years.

It's fascinating to see how well the economy is doing here, as evidenced by so much growth in this area. And construction is continuing - lots of buildings are still going up, and they're also putting in a Mall of the World under this area you see here. We wished we could have strolled around more, but it was cold today (about 45 degrees this morning, which is about as cold as it gets here!)

I think we're learning as much from Amanda as she is from us. We've figured out some basic Chinese baby talk from her ;) like if you add "la" to the end of someone or something, it means "where is" to her. So if she says to me "BahBah la?", it means "where's Daddy?" - it's really come in handy! And we've discovered if we ask the same to her (i.e. "go-go la?" for "where's the doggie?" or "chi chuhr la?" for "where's the car?"), it's a surefire way to get her to point for us, which is also a fantastic distraction or redirection! We're learning new tricks like this every day. And she's learning too. This evening we had a breakthrough in her using her words. We've done a lot of walking around this city, either carrying her or holding her hand. One of our biggest struggles have been when she squirms and whines in our arms to get down, or when we're holding her hand she just sits down (doesn't matter where - she just sits whenever she's decided she's done walking). After several stand-offs like this today,

by the end of tonight we finally got her saying "down please" and "up please"! What a relief - I think everyone was about done with all of the charades! 

Amanda is soooo very smart, so she's been picking up things really quickly. Today her favorite new English word to say was "Hello!" - really loudly and over and over again. ;) As we were walking toward our elevators to go up to our room tonight, with a huge smile she brightly shouted "Hello!" to a woman walking by us. The woman returned the smile with an equally cheerful "Hello!" back - and we all completely died laughing because her timing couldn't have been more perfect! So, after lots of learning for all of us, we definitely ended the day on a great note! One more day here and we're headed home - and we will all be thrown into an entirely new learning curve!