Changsha Day 3

Hello everyone!  Happy Birthday to my daughter Kylee who is 17 today ( in China anyway)!  Today is day 3 and little Faith has done so well.  She slept through the night both nights and is following very closely to the schedule we were given.  We are having very cold temperatures for Changsha so our guide decided instead of an outdoor university tour we were going to do an indoor tour.  We went to a museum where they house the oldest archeological discovery in Hunan.  Tombs were unearthed in the seventies and excavated.  Three bodies were found with hundreds of artifacts.  These bodies were a husband a wife and their son. They were very prominent and wealthy.  It is very similar to a Egyptian tomb.   They date back to 186 years before Christ.  SOOOO interesting.  Little Faith fell asleep in the car on the way… so she missed most of it.  We took several pictures I will hopefully get to upload tonight. 

 

Faith had a few meltdowns today…nothing major.  She threw every single thing at lunch at the waitresses and onto the floor.  She also started crying and threw herself on the ground when I told  her she could not have a tea packet.  Luckily she was very easy to pick up and comfort.  Even funnier is after some time had passed she got a stool and went back to the tea and got it herself…then took it to Jeff to open.  She is smart!   Also…we can tell she is getting frustrated with the lack of communication.  Our guide says she speaks very good mandarin for her age and when our guide arrives they have entire conversations. 

 

I had my own sort of meltdown today… huge guilt that I cannot speak her language.  She deserves so much.  I felt very inadequate today when the guide was talking to her and she had so much to say.  She doesn’t even try to communicate with us in speech because she understands we cannot reply.   Faith also sings to herself at night…we asked our guide about it, and together they sang the most darling nursery rhyme.  Faith calmed down immediately when she was able to communicate and enjoy that song with someone who understood.  She so badly wants us to speak her words and know what she wants.  I can see the frustration in her facial expressions. 

 

On a positive note, she knows we are trying and will just laugh out loud at our horrible Chinese words and attempts to sing.  We were able to find and download the nursery rhyme she loves in Chinese and have played it today to her from the computer.   We are still getting lots of loves and we tell her I love you often.  I can’t wait for the moments when she will know what we mean when we say these words.

 

She was also very sick when we received her three days ago.  She has been suffering from tonsillitis for over a year, and she had a terrible cough and green runny nose.  She would speak in a whisper,  we believe because it was so painful to talk.  We started her on antibiotics the first day, and she is so different.  She is happy and loud and singing.  The coughs are fewer and the nose is not running any longer.  It is nice to see her healthy.  She is also eating better… she likes hard boiled eggs and noodles like top ramen.    She also loves rice cakes.

 

Every day we are getting to know our daughter better and are so happy to be  parents to such a beautiful little person.  She is still just darling…even with the meltdowns.

 

One last note…more for my own journaling…I have been suffering with a nasty head cold.  I am hoping it doesn’t turn into something worse…and today Jeff seems to be having the symptoms.  What a bummer we are sick right now.  It makes this just a little bit harder…I must have sneezed 50 times on the tour today, and my nose is cherry red.

 

Also Faith fell asleep at 5 pm today and it’s now 7:30 pm and she is still sleeping.  We are going to have a late night.  She walked about 100 big steps today in the hotel it must have worn her out early.

 

Dawn