Wallace's Wonderful Adventure: Scared to Death

Ok, every parents worst nightmare is losing a child in public. Well, that nightmare became true today for us. I felt so sick I thought I was going to barf, literally. More on that later.

We sat around until 10:00. The air conditioning men came back again to finish fixing the air. The ladies and Cameron left at 10:10 with Mr. Xue and headed to Tianjin. Our first stop was Garbage Mountain. It is a pretty neat place. We worked our way to the top through a dirt path. Parts of it were pretty steep. Once at the top we took some pictures and then headed back down. We were going to go where the boats were. The ladies went down steps and Cameron said he was going to go down a path. We started down. We didn't see where he went. About half way we started looking for him. The stomach started feeling sick. I got to the bottom and mom went back to the top to look for him. For the next 5 minutes it was pure panic...yelling his name and searching. Chinese people were staring, others were pointing where they saw the white boy. Finally Aunt Sharon said "there he is". Cameron was coming up a hill crying. He was scared, we were all scared. I think we all learned a valuable lesson today...stay close together when on trails because it is easy to get turned around. It took a good half hour to get everyone feeling ok again.

Entering Garbage Mountain.

This is some good climbing.

Taking a little break.

Made it to the top.

View of Tianjin. Little smoggy/foggy.

Once we were all ok again we headed towards the boats. Cameron walked arm and arm with me and kept saying he was sorry he was lost. It was just as much my fault, I told him it was ok. I just wasn't expecting him to get turned around. I tried my best to tell him it was ok and all is well but inside I was still feeling sick. We waited in line for the boats and luckily some nice Chinese people helped us get tickets. We paid for what we thought was a paddle boat but when we got out on the dock we had a motorized boat. We went around the whole lake. Cameron was driving and he did pretty well. A couple times he decided we needed to do a donut so around in a circle we went. He thought he was cool. Back to the dock to park it. We were on the boat for 40 minutes. Back to the hut to get our deposit back. Mom put down 100 and they gave her 60 back. 40 rmb ($6.34) for 4 people and a 40 minute boat ride. It was pretty fun.

Captain Wallace. Man, I hate my hair.

These are the co-pilots.

Mr. Xue was parked by the water. I called him so we could wave at him.
He was confused but then realized we were behind him in the water.
He opened the door and waved.

One cool captain.

Back on the path headed to Aaron's Kitchen. It was still closed but it was suppose to be open for ice cream. Oh well. We decided to go to Hank's Place for lunch. Mr. Xue did a great job finding it. We had a good lunch and then got back in the van to go to Culture Street...again. We bought some more stuff and then headed to DQ. We had some yummy ice cream and then we were back in the van.

Who would want to carry a little one like this? Ick!

Cheers.

Cameron liked this hat on Culture Street.

Nice rat tail.

He bought this paper hat instead.

Super Sisters getting some gifts. This man coughed up some junk
and spit. Aunt Sharon almost lost it.

Headed towards TEDA. Made a quick stop at the grocery store and then went home. Cameron went out to play and the ladies walked to the ATM. We sat in the kitchen, chatted, had a few beers (Aunt Sharon likes Tsing Tao),and watched Todd cook. After dinner we played Rock Band. The ladies took turns singing Beatles songs.