This morning our guide picked Brian and Heidi up and they visited a local park as part of a city tour. Olivia asked to spend the morning with me for some one on one time so we headed out in search of the MIXC mall that we knew wasn't too far away from our hotel, but when you can't speak or read the language getting to new places can be quite an adventure! I knew this particular mall was somewhere across the street and figured it couldn't be that hard to find a mall. By the time we left our hotel it was misting outside so we hurried across the bridge that takes us to the other side of the street (walking acorss a busy street in China is taking your life into your own hands). We start going one direction and notice a lot of construction going on so after a while we turn back the other way and keep walking. We end up stopping at a large building that has a booth out front with a security guy sitting in it so I go up to the booth and ask him if he speaks English. Nope. He sends me to this lady that is parking her motor scooter and she speaks a little English, but tries to tell me how to get to Walmart instead of the mall we are looking for. Olivia and I walk a little further and finally get to a very busy street that we would have to cross if we want to keep looking in that direction. We finally just decide to walk back to our hotel and ask at the front desk for better directions. At this point, I am really wishing my smartphone would work in China! Needless to say we did not find the MIXC mall on our outing, but we did end up strolling through the mall that connects to our hotel and checked out each floor in detail. We came across a store we had walked by the other day but had not paid too much attention to at first, but today we realized it was a store that will wash your baby for you for 199 RMB (that is about $31). This is a store in the mall that literally had bathtubs in the front window with a changing station directily behind it. We watched a baby that had just been washed get dried off, swaddled and then dressed by the workers while the parents stood nearby.
After checking all the floors out in the mall, we took a break and had a blizzard at the DQ there. Some of the flavors we could choose from included green tea, jelly and coconut. Olivia chose a strawberry banana blizzard and I tried the durian chocolate one. The only regular blizzard that we recognized was an oreo one.
We were planning on getting lunch out today when Brian and Heidi made it back to the hotel, but Heidi was just about asleep by then so we just made peanut butter sandwiches and ate in the room. Heidi cired a little again before falling completely asleep this afternoon, but it wasn't as long or as hard as her cries were yesterday.
While Brian and Heidi were out on their city tour today, Brian found the MIXC mall. If ew had only crossed that busy street Olivia and I had originally seen, we would have been there! We ended up heading there this evening to get dinner because we kept hearing about this really neat restaurant there that had bird cages all over the place. We ended up finding the restaurant and it was really good! None of the employees spoke English though so it was a bit of a challenge to order our food. The waiter handed us this large menu--think almost Cheesecake Factory menu with pages upon pages-- and then he stood there the entire time until we were ready to order. Brian was about to start sweating there across the table trying to decipher everything on the menu with the waiter waiting for us to order, but Brian did a good job. We had some type of scrambled egg dish with peppers and onions, spicy green beans, beefy rice and these huge honey lemon teas that were delicious. The teas were more like a juice and came in these big glass bottles. The whole meal was less than $20 and when Brian tried to leave a tip the poor waiter chased us down the mall to return the extra money. :)
The last thing we did tonight was go back to the mall that connects to our hotel to spend a little time on the kids floor. We went into a store called Snow World and both girls played for about an hour. They drove bumper cars, played in a jungle gym, ball pit, swung around on a medicine ball type carousel and even played in a room with real snow falling from the ceiling! Heidi fussed when we made them leave--they both had a lot of fun.
Tomorrow morning we meet our guide at 10:00. It will be our last full day in Nanning before we head to our final province.
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