Monday -- The Grasslands!

Monday, October 11, 2009

Today we drove 2 hours to tour the grasslands. They are green in the summer, but had already turned yellow. I am including pictures of the homes. The rectangular concrete homes were homes we passed on the way. The round homes are homes that Mongolians live in. I have one picture of the inside of one home. We rode horses to tour a family home. The lady met us and invited us inside. She served us warm milk tea, cheese (that tasted like candy), and fried bread sticks. She lives in the round home. She had a single bed, two card tables with some stools, and some shelving. She did not have running water or electricity. She had pots to boil. She did have a car. We asked for a restroom and she pointed to outside in the grass areas. Oh well!

Hamilton loved the horse ride. Thomas told him on the way that we were going to ride horses or “maw” in mandarin. So when we got there he was very anxious and began crying when the price negotiation took too long. He had to ride with a guide. They did not trust us to hold him. He giggled and laughed. We decided that he loves transportation as much as balls. He thought the car ride was quite fun also. He giggles and gets excited at the simplest of things, such as mountains on the way today. He loved looking at the tall mountains and kept pointing and telling us to look, in mandarin of course.

Right now Hamilton is behind me unpacking Beth’s suitcase. He is “washing” her clothes and hanging them on the windows to dry. Most of the apartments in the cities have clothes hung up in the windows to dry. So I guess he is copying his foster mom’s method. Boy is he going to be in for a treat when he sees his first washer and dryer!

He has been much better behaved today. I think the language barrier may be a large part of the problem. He wanted to take his socks off in the car and was fussing with me (it was really cold). Thomas looked back and explained in mandarin that it was too cold to take off socks. He told Thomas, “I will take them off later when I get home”. How nice it will be when we can talk to each other. It was so simple and ended the struggle.

It is 5:00 here and we are headed to dinner shortly. We opted not to eat lunch in the grasslands. They had some interesting food on the menu, such as internals and lots of lamb. It was also expensive.

Tomorrow, Thomas picks up all of Hamilton’s paper work, which I believe completes the China side of the adoption. Wednesday we get his passport and fly to Ghanzhou!

I miss home tremendously,