Continued from part one

While I was trying to cash traveler's checks at the Bank of China, we ran into Wendy, another adoptive Mom with a large family like ours. She is here adopting her 8th child and we had previously run into her 9 days ago when we had both arrived at the Victory Hotel but didn't yet have our newest children. She has her six year old bio son with her and is adopting a five year old boy. Her new son is from the Guangdong Province so she has spent her entire time here in Guangzhou. I thought we had "Little Emperor" syndrome with Caleb until I met her son. He is a doll, but a handful! Since he is fluent in Cantonese he orders people around and she said as soon as they arrive at a restaurant he will say something to a waitress and a Coke is immediately brought to the table for him.

We met up with her this afternoon on the playground and were able to have a refreshing chat while the kids played. So many of the other adoptive parents here are adopting baby girls, so it was nice to chat with another mother who was bringing home not only an older child, but a boy as well.

As the kids played, a group of Chinese parents arrived with their children who couldn't have been more than 5 or 6 years old. Their children started stretching and doing exercises and were being led by one of the children in the group. It was darling to see a tiny 6 year old child leading the rest and telling them what to do and having them all obey. Perhaps I need to move to this island so my own children can watch and learn what it means to obey the first time!

After they exercised, these children started jogging around a track on the playground that was probably about 1/4 to 1/5 the size of a full size track. We thought they would circle the track a few times and then play on the playground. To our amazement, however, they instead just kept on running and running....and running. They ran more than 20 laps before they stopped. Wendy's son and my kids decided it would be fun to run with them, and would sprint about half of the distance every time the children would circle around. Apparently this was not approved of by some of the parents and one of the mothers turned to Ben and Caleb as they ran in front the group and moved toward them and very harshly yelled "Go away!" to them in English.

Wendy told me that I was going to cause an international incident because the "Mama Bear" in me came out and I told the woman "Why don't you go away yourself? My children are not hurting anyone." I didn't really say it loud enough for her to hear it all and I doubt she understood much other than the "go away" part, but I felt embarrassed and ashamed of myself after I said it.

At the same time I had to chuckle because here she was yelling to one deaf child who had dead batteries in his cochlear implant so he couldn't even hear a jet airplane, and another boy who only spoke Mandarin.

Continued...