Yi goes shopping at Walmart

Today was a busy day, with 4 different offices to visit (civil affairs office to finalize the adoption, notary office to sign more papers, passport photo office, and passport application office).  Sounds simple, but took 6.5 hours and generally involves lots of bus rides and then waiting and child wrangling (x 3!!!) in a small enclosed space.  Ugh.  Glad that's over!

We hit a nearby Walmart after the day of errands to stock up on snacks, as the Food Vacuum had made a large dent in our supplies.  We wheeled by the toy aisle with no reaction from Yi - I had feared that might cause an issue, but she didn't bat an eye.  Now the food storage aisle ... that was a different story!  As we passed by the Tupperware aisle, she got quite animated and insisted that we go there.  She selected a small orange tupperware that cost ~30 cents and was so happy with it, chattering away about putting food in it.  She took it to dinner and brought home the leftover rice in it.  The rice lasted about 20 minutes -- we walked the half block back to the hotel and as soon as we were in our room, she proceeded to finish it off.

Today we discovered that Yi's best friend from the orphanage is also being adopted this week by a Colorado family!  When we arrived at the civil affairs office this morning, Yi made a beeline for this girl and immediately shared her snow cracker with her.  I was taken aback - not that Yi was sharing, but just her direct approach to this girl - she literally put the cracker into this kid's mouth.  Her friend is much younger (~18 months old) and she told the friend's adoptive mom that the girl can call her jie jie (older sister).   Yi definitely embodies the good and bad parts of the older sister role.  When her friend was fussing, Yi was very attentive and tried to cheer her up (even sharing the coveted USB drive!!!!).  On the flip side, when her friend had something she wanted, Yi had no qualms with using her size and dexterity to simply grab it out of her friend's hand.  We exchanged contact info and will try to get the girls together.

Tomorrow (Wednesday), we have nothing on our schedule ... mostly we are now just waiting for her passport to be processed.  Looking forward to visiting the large park near the hotel.