3/19/11 - Day 10: Medical Exam and Room Confusion

It was very entertaining when April and Bennett woke up this morning in the new room.

Mommy, what happened to our beds? A - Mommy put them together last night.

Mommy, where is the bathroom? Why did it move?

We eventually made it downstairs to the buffet. The younger members of the family took turns or formed groups to meltdown and whine for most of the meal. We fouled up on entering the restaurant when we failed to trace the source of Carter's screaming to bypassing the bread roll selection without taking one on the way to the table. It went downhill from there.

After breakfast we headed off to the Medical Exam. Once again, it was very different from our experience in 2009 with April. Much fewer families, less noise, and less confusion. We were in and out of there in 30 minutes. Prior to the medical, Carter pulled his usual lack of head shot cooperation for the visa photo, but this photographer bested the one in Nanjing by at least 10 minutes in getting a usable shot.

The doctors did not test his vision so we did not have a repeat of April's smile and wave experience, "isn't she cute", and having the assistants move her hand to point the right way so she could passs the exam.

One doctor did comment on how strong he was when he tried to open Carter's fist. He gave up and appeared to skip looking at the other hand.

We got an excellent lunch of noodles, rice, eggplant and ribs from a Chinese restaurant down the street from our hotel to go with the help of our guide and had a picnic in our room.

Lisa completed the paperwork with our guide and the other family. We used our expansive suite for the paperwork process. It really is huge and the rooms are awesome. According to the room listing on one site it is only 1/3 larger then our first room, but it appears to be twice as large and has a stellar MBA, a second BA, a large office, and a dressing room / closet area. The MBA has a large walk in shower and a huge soaking tub. Lisa could not find the entrance to the shower at first.

After the paperwork we headed off to find the Trustmark, a local grocery store. 100 yards away as the crow flies but 1 mile by the circuitous route required to get under the multi lane road that has pedestrian barriers in the middle to cut down on the frogger fatalities. Then we took a long time to find our way through the maze of the store only to end up in a long line for a single register, where the scanner failed on 90% of the items and the bar code had to be typed in by hand for most items.

Lisa told Mark there was no way we could carry that much beer/soda/water/food back to the hotel so he did the logical thing. He booted Carter from the stroller and managed to hang bags off every handle.

Tomorrow we head to the Safari Park.