Medical Exam and Not Much Else

It’s Saturday, Dec. 8 in beautiful Guangzhou (and I mean that seriously.)  The city is quite attractive in all of the areas we have been through and the greenery and flowers are really nice here this time of year.  Breakfast was packed today with dozens of new faces in the adoptive family corner of the Cascade Café where the breakfast buffet occurs.  We saw the Dunkels who we have been emailing back and forth with and some more of our Beijing mates.

On tap for today was Juliana’s visit to the International Health Clinic where they read her TB test and essentially gave her a basic physical.  One noteworthy finding; it looks like we will be taking her to get glasses when we arrive stateside.  That may explain her difficulties in school a bit.  Hailie and Steve did not make this trip which turned out to be maybe the wisest choice we have made this entire trip; it was standing room only and pretty much chaos.  Hailie was fairly bouncy just hanging around the hotel with Dad, so the maelstrom that was the clinic today would have been a pure and potentially explosive sensory overload for her.

Hailie and Dad checked out the local Trust Mart today.  Of course it involved a walk on our favorite pedestrian overpass with new beggars there today.  The Trust Mart grocery in the basement area is exactly what you would picture when you think of buying food here as opposed to the upscale places we have been so far.  The meat counter was self service as in unwrapped hunks of meat being picked through by the customers, and the seafood section had a dozen or so tanks of live fish one of which also had some turtles waiting to be taken home to be consumed.

On the walk back home we made contributions to the two beggars who lay in our path.  The first, an older woman in a wheel chair did not intimidate H so she was able to place the money in her bowl and hear the grateful “Shyeh Shyeh” with her own ears.  She couldn’t handle making a contribution to the incredibly polite man who was missing a leg and spoke excellent English, so Dad handled that one for her.

We had our Consulate Appointment paperwork meeting this afternoon which was handled by Steve while Kathy took the girls off to the playroom on the other side of the hotel.  Then it was off to dinner

Pre-Dinner Girls Club Group Hug

with 3 other WACAP families to the restaurant we went to Monday night.  Our other WACAP guide Elsie took us and took care of ordering another great meal.  Juliana ate like a horse again, especially the vegetables and noodles.  She did take a helping of beef and a piece of barbecued pork; we don’t know how we are going to break it to her that these choices are not available at the Pasakarnis residence.

Ah well, Miss H was proudly able to make that adjustment and hopefully Juliana will too.