Well, this was the big one. Our mediocre night of sleep ill prepared us for what was ahead of us. Our lack of sleep was a combination of warm hotel room and anxiety.

Our day began with trip to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. Christian and I browsed through the buffet line…once. We then passed on all of the offerings, bid our adieu to Monica, and found some granola bars in the hotel room to get us through to lunch.

 

We met David in the lobby and headed to the Bank of China with our wad of US dollars ready to convert it to Chinese yuan. While this was a bit nerve-racking carrying large amounts of cash for those few blocks and then carrying it all back to the hotel, it was made easier knowing that our next trip was a bus ride to a familiar location, Wal Mart.

 

 

We still had about 6 blocks to walk after we got off the bus, and as luck would have it, a Pizza Hut got in the way. The only thing I recognized was the pizza. We ordered a half cheese/half beef pizza and two cokes without ice. What we got was two cokes without ice and a pizza that was half cheese and half something I didn’t recognize. My wife later identified it as some type of spicy beef teriyaki. I ate the cheese pizza with Christian. Lesson learned. Beef in China doesn’t equal beef in the USA. We at least had something familiar in our stomachs and were now headed to Wal Mart.

 

And when I call Wal Mart familiar, I mean that we recognized the logo. Not much else, though. They did have odd carts with slotted wheels. The slotted wheels made sense when we realized that the Wal Mart was two stories, and the escalator was more of an inclined moving sidewalk that the slots of the cart tires fit into to keep them from rolling down the incline. It is a pretty ingenious design. Christian and I scoped out the important things: batteries for the quadcopter remote, six packs of Coke, Oreos, Hershey candy bars, chocolate pudding, and some Honey Bunches of Oats. Monica got other things like a stroller, hair straightener, and probably some less important things than Christian and I bought. This time, we caught a private ride back to the hotel because we had more important things to do…like get a new daughter. That’s a whole post in itself.