Day 9: Shopping Day

We met our guide this morning at 9:00 in the lobby of our hotel and headed out with two other families with our same adoption agency to visit the Chen Clan Academy (also known as the Cantonese Folk Art Museum).  They have a lot of intricate wood carvings there, screen paintings, pottery, and silk work.  We spent about an hour there walking around and visiting a few of the shops. Olivia bought a necklace for herself that actually has a piece of rice that has been carved into a shape.

Once w left the Chen Clan Academy, we headed to the pearl and jade market--it turned out to be the exact same market we visitied 6 years ago when we were here with Olivia!  We bought Heidi a pearl necklace and bracelet that we will save for her for her wedding day.  The store we bought the pearls in was the same store we bought Olivia's pearls from and just like back then, if you spent so much money you got a free pair of pearl earrings too.  At this particular pearl makret, you get to hand pick your strand of pearls and they will string the necklace and bracelet for you right there.  We were also able to pick out each pearl we wanted for the earrings and they put them together for us as a set. 

Then we went upstairs to the jade market (again we went tot he same store that we bought Olivia's jade from) and purchased a jade necklace for Heidi that she will get  as a high school graduation gift. Because the shop owners were giving our guide a discount this day, we went ahead and bought a jade bracelet for me and Olivia as well.  It turns out that November 11th was "black Friday" here in China so they still had some pretty good sales going on.

Heidi was shopped out by the time we finisehd at the market so we headed back to our hotel so she could nap.

Before we traveled to China, we connected with a group of other adoptive families on Facebook--a group that would be traveling during the same dates.  We decided to all meet up at Lucy's tonight for dinner.  Lucy's is a western style restauarnt on Shamian Island (when we adopted Olivia we stayed at a hotel on Shamian Island the whole two weeks) that we really love. We had to take a taxi there from our hotel, and we left a little early so we could visit a few shops before meeting everyone for dinner.  At dinner, Olivia had a quesadilla, fruit salad and a banan split for dessert. We ordered Heidia a fruit salad and peanut butter and jelly sandwich--she loved the sandwich!  She shared a scoop of chooclate ice cream with me for dessert.  Brian had spaghetti stir fry and an espresso ice cream for dessert. 

It was really neat to visit some of the shops on Shamian Island as some are still there from when we stayed there previously.  We even recognized a couple of the shop owners.  We bought a traditional Chinese dress for both Olivia and Heidi, silk shoes for Heidi, shoes for Olivia and a Chinese silk tunic for me.  We bought several other small gift type items there tonight too--some as souvenirs for others when we return and some are for the girls.  When we adopted Olivia, we made a point to buy her enough small gift items from China to be able to give her one on each birthday.  For instance, this year Olivia received a wooden puzzle of China with each piece representing a province.  Because we did this for Oliva, we are doing the same for Heidi this time around.  We also plan on purchasing several traditional Chinese dresses for both girls to wear for the next several years for Chinese New Year--it is always more special to wear their Chinese outfits when you actually bought them in China rather than ordering them online. :)

We didn't get too many of the birthday gifts marked off our list this evening so we plan on returning to Shamian Island again tomorrow if the weather is nice.  Olivia has already requested to eat at Lucy's if we make another trip out there on our own.