A long, hot day

I'm glad we only have a couple more days until we get home. This morning, we had to wait around in the room while Doris and Pat went to the consulate office to get some documents for Olivia registered. We had lunch at the Thai restaurant again, and then we took Olivia to see the doctor. Unfortunately, she has another sore on her forehead, and we'll have to come back tomorrow for him to lance that one. Olivia hates having her antibiotics and salve, but, as I've said before, it's just one of those things.

I had a discussion today with Doris about what we do for a living; I think she needed to know for one of their appointments. She understood about Physical Therapy with Christine, but she wasn't clear on what being a Financial Advisor meant. I told her that I help people with their retirement and investment planning, and she still wasn't too sure about what I did. I told her about my company, since they have an office in Beijing, where she lives, and we still weren't together. So I learned about how retirement works over here in China. It's very similar to the Social Security system in the United States, except she said that most people reach the age where they can draw pensions, and they go work a second career or they go and help take care of their grandchildren. For example, her grandfather was a musician in the Beijing opera, and he lives in a large apartment building in Beijing where current and retired opera employees live. I asked her if they invest or save for their retirement, and as near as I can tell, I don't think they do. So, I think we understood each other after all that, so she could tell what I do. Again, the more I talk to people here, the more I see we're the quite different, yet the same.

After the doctor visit, we loaded up on the bus for some excursions, and our first stop was to the jade factory. That was a very interesting place, and we bought a jade bracelet for Christine to one day pass down to Olivia. After the jade factory, we went to the Guangzhou zoo. When we got inside, we made a pit stop to a restroom, which may have been a mistake. It was an open air sort of field house, with no roof. Even the ladies restroom was basically a trough along the walls of a room with flowing water running through the trough. The smell was horrible, it reminded me of one of those bathrooms at a baseball field on a hot summer day, one that hasn't been cleaned in weeks. Yuck!
As you can see from the pictures, Olivia was worn out at the zoo. This was the first time she fell asleep in her stroller, and she rarely leans back in the stroller. She preferred resting her head on the bar, and sleeping leaning forward. Tired baby!

It was feeding time at the zoo, so we didn't get to see a whole lot of animals. There were some tigers in cages that were sleeping, and some giraffes and rhinos. There were two remarkable things in this zoo, other than the bathrooms. First was a display of nutrias - you know the big rat-like critters that are abundand along the Gulf Coast area. Second was a group of small deer.

We left the zoo and headed for home, after stopping at a tea store. We were told that this tea store had a "magic tea pot" that we were all curious to see. The "magic tea pot" turned out to be basically a live infomercial for an expensive teapot. We got to sample some varieties of tea, but they all tasted the same to me. The pitch here was to try to get you to buy some tea, which, again, was quite expensive. As we were leaving the tea store, we noticed that there were several BMWs and Jaguars parked in the parking lot. Hmmmmm. We suspect that fearless leader Doris gets a commission from any sales at the jade factory. Just kidding, Doris!

Tonight, we went to a barbecue on the water at the hotel. It was actually quite nice, but Olivia got sick, and Christine still isn't feeling too good.

Hopefully a good night's sleep will help, but it will be good to wake up tomorrow knowing that we'll be home soon.

Michael, Christine and Olivia