Please quit speaking Chinese

We met up with our new guide, Bob, who we had last time we were here. He's a hoot. He speaks English very fast and laughs at himself a lot (his pronunciations). On the way to our new hotel from the airport, we told him we had learned some Chinese from our old guide in order to communicate the basics to our kids. So Tamera, my traveling companion adopter, said she had learned just that day that when we had been telling our sons "shu bien" (when we wanted them to pee), that we were actually telling them to eat pee. We were slightly off....it was more like "shwa bien". Bob and the bus driver laughed hard, then said "well how do you tell them to poop?" She told him "da bien". He laughed and laughed and laughed and finally sputtered,
"You are telling him to sh- . Well Tamera and I both have gentler language
standards than the average American, so we all laughed till we cried on the bus ride to the hotel. We had been walking around Fuzhou, asking our sons if they had to take a sh-- for 6 days. OH my goodness! So we said, "Bob, teach us how to say these
things." and his response was "No, the children learn English faster than you
learn Chinese." Then he laughed some more.

Which brings me to my hilarious airport episode of trying to corral our son and cracking up the locals. Wyatt thinks its hysterical to run away from us and watch us chase him. Can I tell you he will be a track star?! Daddy chased him through the Lakeside Hotel (5 star hotel) restaurant yesterday morning...through the dining room, 2 laps around the buffet table, through a group of monks, through the dining room and lobby and caught him by the backpack at the front door. We've tried timeouts and very serious "no" voices to no avail. We had a long wait in the airport yesterday and Wyatt took off from me. I didn't run because he will run faster if you run. So I walked very quickly and sternly said "Haohai, no, booshing, cowali (come here)" except that I was saying "cowali" wrong so I was actually speaking jibberish. He ran down one set of chairs and got on the other side of the chair aisle from me. So now we were playing "keep away". The locals were laughing at this big blond American, butchering their language, chasing a merry eyed, laughing little urchin. Ugh!

He did well on the plane. The other family's child screamed during taxiing and take off. We teased them that we didn't know them (we were the only two caucasian families on the flight sitting next to each other.) He settled down and fell asleep. They have had a very hard time of it yesterday. Bryan's mother was killed in a tragic accident while jogging so they are in shock but are coping by God's grace. They can't leave any earlier than planned, however, because they need to finish their adoption process. Then yesterday, their little adopted boy hurt his affected leg (he has a limb difference) while playing on the bed and it may possibly be broken. They went to the hospital with him last night and I haven't seen them yet this morning to know how it turned out. Please keep lifting them up in prayer! We couldn't have asked for nicer traveling companions.

I will go do a lot of consulate paperwork now at 10:00 and then we will go have Wyatt's medical exam and first round of vaccinations. He has to be temperature free when we get on the plane Wed. or we will be kept here for several days. Pray us all well!