12/19/2001

The hotel is very nice. There are 8 different restaurants. We had hard time to choose among the Italian, Japanese, Western, Chinese food and sports bars (kids are allowed). It was 8:30 pm and we were not too comfortable to go out to eat. We finally settled in the Mongolian Gher - a strange look Mongolian Hut with only 5 tables in the middle of the 5-star hotel. The food was strange but the price was a 5-star!!we did enjoy the service and entertainment. The host and hostess dressed in traditional Mongolian customs and sang Mongolian songs.

I could not sleep well the next morning and felt sick. I left the hotel room early to wait Berthold and the kids in the lobby in hoping the fresh air would make me feel better. Instead, I ran into a group parents who just adopted their Chinese daughters and were on their way home. Two of them adopted their daughter from Anhui and stayed at the same hotel we will stay in Hefei, Holiday Inn. It was so nice to hear their experiences and see these beautiful babies and happy parents. By the time Berthold and kids came to join me, I was already felt 100% better. We wished them safe journey home and hope we will have our daughter soon.

We made up what we missed with the food by going out to eat. We walked about three blocks away from the hotel and ate at a small family restaurant. We were the only ones there, I think because 10:00 am was just a wrong time to eat in China. We had so called "hot pot". We cooked our food ourselves in a soup broth over a propane flame through a big opening in the middle of the table. We had vegetable, mushrooms, dumplings, lamb and noodles. We dump these ingredients into the soup and choose what we like to eat. We had great time. Toby ate most of the colorful mini dumplings. Joshua enjoyed his noodles and they both tried lamb for the first time and liked it. We all agreed that this was the best meal we ever had and there were no stars on the price tag either. We paid only $12 for the entire family!!