Contact shopping....

For those who know me, I love to shop so when we met up with some of our group members at breakfast this morning, we tagged along with them to this 6 story shopping centre. It was small kiosk after kiosk of items like clothing, shoes, handbags, wallets, scarves....you name it, they had it. What was funny was that they would be selling a "Polo" shirt that had the Burberry plaid on it....go figure. It definitely put Tijuana to absolute shame as far as bartering goes. For example, I saw Burberry scarf and asked how much. They take out the calculator so that you can see the number for your very own eyes. The calculator said 1850RMB. I walked away and said no thanks, I'll come back later. Well, she grabbed my arm and held on for dear life until I bought that thing. I ended up getting it for 50RMB, which is equivalent to $7US. And the whole day went pretty much the same way. The most aggressive sales people I have ever met. They will even yell at you as you're walking away....like 100ft away and chase after you. I see I haven't lost my touch for bartering though that's for sure. Gary sure got a kick out of all of it as well.....he even got fondled by some of those girls!! Oh ya, and people stare at him like he's got a monkey on his head.....it's quite funny. He's starting to get a complex!

So we just got back finished dinner at a revolving restaurant on the top of our hotel. When we first started to walk to our table, I started to feel a little queasy and when I sat down, I realized it was because the turning of the floor wasn't very smooth, rather quite jagged. Nonetheless, our seafood buffet dinner was fabulous. It was our last official dinner before we become parents!!

Before dinner, our travel group met with our guide Mary so that she could go over the itinerary for the next couple of days. We fly out of Beijing at 10:40am and we receive the babies at 5:00pm (that would be Saturday, July 1st at 7:00am...CANADA DAY!!!!). We were originally going to travel to the Civil Affairs office to get the babies but now the babies are being brought directly to our hotel. They will be coming by bus from the orphanage and we are told that the bus ride is about 3.5 hours long. Poor babies are not going to realize what hit them. After they are safely in our arms, more paperwork needs to be completed. We head back to Beijing on July7.

So far, it feels like Gary and I have just been on vacation and the real reason for this trip hasn't quite hit me yet. I do get butterflies every now and then but the magnitude of it all just hasn't quite sunk in. We spent a good 2 hours rummaging through our bags yet again as we only need to take what we need for the 5 days we're in Nanchang, the rest of our belongings get locked up.

Sorry no pictures tonight....I've packed my card reader! The next time I post will be as Jenna's mommy. I. CAN'T. WAIT!!