So what day is it anyway? (recap of Halloween morning)

**Strange how somewhere I feel like I've lost a day! The lack of a normal schedule combined with the initial loss of a day at the beginning of the trip (due to the time zone differences), "mommy brain" that has now been doubled, and sheer exhaustion from chasing a VERY fast toddler boy (I'm loving every squirmy ounce of Caleb, but boys should come with a gradual "ramp up period...") has had me asking all day long what day it is. Now that I finally have in my mind that it is Sunday, I've been trying to figure out what to do about being so behind. With my detail oriented brain, I want to go back and fill in the gaps without skipping (except for the visit to Caleb's SWI ~ I have to decide how much we will keep private for him to share when he wants).

Back to Friday morning...

After a long week, we got up somewhat late Friday morning and pretty much closed down the breakfast buffet in our hotel. From breakfast we ventured back out to pick up our laundry.

Our hotel panorama view restaurant from several streets back.

We found the alley village without a problem and while we got a few looks for being Westerners, we felt welcome in their mini city. The man at the laundry shop recognized us immediately (not like we stood out from his regular customers or anything and he quickly got our clothes off of hangers and began to meticulously fold our jeans and shirts.
There was some equipment for exercising that Kylie thought looked like a playground, so Grant and I let Kylie and Caleb play while Ian waited for our clothes.

After a few minutes of my toddlers trying to figure out what to do, this older gentleman started pointing things out. He tried to speak Mandarin to us, but when that failed he showed by example what we should do on each piece of equipment. At first I was afraid we were in his way, but his huge smile showed that everything was "a-okay" with him.

Kylie and Caleb show different techniques and different concentration levels on the glider. I think I want one of these to replace my elliptical machine ~ no increased resistance options...

Together now...

Once we finally had all the laundry in a bag, we stayed for a while to let Kylie and Caleb burn off a little energy. We drew quite a crowd of onlookers as folks tried to figure us out. Finally two women approached us and first tried to talk to Kylie. We explained to them that she spoke English and while I'm sure they couldn't translate what we said, our foreign tongue helped them understand that Kylie did not speak Mandarin. After a while we could tell that they were asking how old the kids were and while they easily believed us that Caleb was two, they were quite certain that Kylie was four. I really think that they wanted to ask more questions, but there was the language barrier...

The alley had it's own health care center (pictured), police station, shoe cobbler, laundry service, barber, restaurant, and flower shop (plus many more shops that we couldn't identify)

On the walk back we captured a few images digitally...

Wuhan is divided into three main regions. Our hotel was in the Hankou part of the city.

A vegetable cart selling fresh local vegetables.

Oh how I wished that I wasn't scared of "street food" ~ these dumplings looked delicious!

And then on the way back we walked through the lower area of the RT Mart. Ian had a pocket full of 1 yuan coins that he wanted to get rid of and we were in no hurry to get back to the room. Kylie decided that she didn't want to ride the helicopters again, so we decided to let them learn how to play Whack a Mole. That was a hoot as they both totally got into smacking things on the head with a padded hammer!

Kylie pounding the blue mouse.

Caleb needed a little help from Daddy to actually hit the moles, but he didn't care. He was squealing and laughing the entire time and had a blast despite his low score!

When we played two rounds of "Whack a various animal" each, we headed back to the hotel to finish packing for our evening flight. Kylie decided that she was cool and wanted to stop to put on her sweater. Note Caleb's stance ~ he's starting to pay more and more attention to where his daddy is! **Also noteworthy in this photo is the random staring man in the background. He is just a tiny sample of what we've experienced this week...

Well, I had decided that today would be a day to catch up on blogging. However I'm falling asleep in my chair so I'm turning in for tonight. Tomorrow someone has to be in the room from 9:30 until 11:30, to await the "all clear" from the USCIS, so maybe I'll get some more done then...