Shopping, Dining and a massage...

While Mike is napping, I might as well recount the events of this morning and early afternoon. First we wandered around Shamian Island, just to check things out. It was POURING rain! A nice, warm rain, too, and the temperature was very comfortable. There are so many little shops all over that obviously cater to tourists, and even more so to adoptive parents. We got a little desperate to get away from the rain, so we entered one of these little shops. What a different world! This store was acutally like a Mini-Mall with several little stores in one, but we didn't realize that until the first Sales person literally jumped in front of me when I tried to move out of her area. She showed me everything I could possibly want or need (or not), and she was so sweet about it. These people take customer Service to a whole new level, that's for sure. They asked what we were doing here, and where our baby was from, and we showed them pictures of our kids at home. Can you imagine showing your family pictures to the cashier at Wal Mart? Yeah, right.... they almost did a backflip when they saw a picture of our house. They said that in Guangzhou one square meter (a little over 9 square feet) costs 8000 RMB, that is over $1000! So we visited with all these ladies and men at all the little stores, had a good excuse for not buying anything since we have to travel some more, and had a good time. There was definitely no anonymous browsing through their selection. But again, we were treated like royalty, and they made us feel like we were their new best friends. And they did have some cute things. They had all kinds of little girls dresses, and believe it or not, they had Gymboree, Oshkosh and Gap labels in them! I asked them if they were real, and they said that they were.... except that I have an incredibly hard time believing that. Anyhow, I will have to do some girly shopping when we get back here.
After our little shopping spree and after saying goodbye to our new friends Shawn and Betty, May and Lucy, we tried to find a place to eat. We did not want to eat anything that had been alive 5 minutes earlier, so some places were out of the question right away. We found a very nice little restaurant where the menu was in english as well, even though no one spoke it. Lots of pointing, smiling and nodding. Guess it worked, and lunch was DELICIOUS. We had some kind of vegetable dumplings with lots of mushrooms, some hot and spicy pork and veggie dish with little tortilla looking flat thingies (yumm) and the best fried rice I have ever had! We managed to get through the meal with our chopsticks, and Mike even tried some Chinese beer.
I had heard that massages were out of this world here, so that was the next thing I wanted to do. We saw a place advertised at the hotel, so we headed downstairs. Mike skipped the massage and went back to the room, while I felt like I was trapped in a damp dungeon. It was a little freaky. Instead of the 2 hour massage I asked for one hour only, and wheewww, I'm glad I did. The price had obviously just jumped up the minute we walked in (gotta learn yet when to barter!), and a very nice young gal did my massage. What an experience! Man, she kneaded muscles I didn't remember I had, and it was painful at times. I guess that's what you would consider deep tissue massage *ouch*. The thing that really got my attention though was when she climbed on the massage table, and hanging from metal bars at the ceiling, started to massage my back and legs with her feet. I felt like I was getting CPR through my spine, and I was silently wondering which rib would crack first. Well, nothing bad happened, but I think I will wait to get another massage until I'm back home.
I really need to wake Mike up, otherwise he won't sleep tonight, and then we'll probably head back outside, where it has quit raining now.
Wow, this is such an interesting place to experience. We love it. Shamian Island is a good place to get acclimated to the Chinese Culture, and I'm looking forward to head to Hunan, where I'm expecting things to be more authentic yet.
So, signing off for today!

This is a picture of a bronze statue in front of the post office.

******Deutsche Uebersetzung: www.chinagirlswitzerland.blogspot.com "Erster Nachmittag" ******