China trip Date : 22.08.06 - day 5
Day Five :: Woken up by Sunny reminding us that we had to go for Acupuncture at 9.30 a.m. Once again Sacha had approx 10 needles inserted into various pressure points. She cried a little bit today. I don’t think she was in any real pain and she just moaned a bit – just a little discomfort. We have an en-suite wetroom room in our room at the hospital which makes it very convenient for having quick showers. It is quite hot over here in the middle of August. It’s not so great for washing Sacha’s hair though as she cannot stand up on her own so I had to seat her on the floor, get in the shower with her and try to stop shampoo from going in her eyes – all at the same time. Very hard work so I don’t think I’m going to make hair-washing a big priority for her!
10 a.m Another Nerve Growth FactorIV for Sacha who happily watches her new Teletubbies DVD. We have already seen this at least five times but she loves it! Spent the rest of the day responding to emails and sending Neil (Sacha’s dad) and Chloe ( my 15 year old daughter back home with my mother) pictures we have taken so far.
Later that day we get invited to dinner at Liuwei’s (pronounced Looway) house. She is a good friend of Sunny’s who lives here in Shenyang. She says she would be so delighted for us to come so how can we refuse. Not that we’d want to miss the experience of having authentic Chinese cuisine cooked for us. I asked Liuwei if she was going to do the cooking and she told us that she has a housekeeper who cooks for her. I was a bit concerned about taking Sacha and asked if she had a lift (she lives 10 floors up) and would it be ok for Sacha to come. “Of course, of course” she said. I could see she was really pleased that we’d said yes.
Liuwei lives in a huge apartment complex where all the buildings look the same. They are very modern apartments with all modcons. We were treated to Chinese tea before dinner which consisted of prawns in a tomato sauce, chicken and turtle soup (!), curried beans with beef, fish in soy sauce, broccoli and bean sprouts. The food was AMAZING! Also there were Liuwei’s boyfriend, Lin Ke Er (pronounced Lin ker) and his friend Zhang Ding. Sunny was our interpreter and the conversation flowed. There was much raising of glasses and drinking of beer! What a great set of people to spend the evening with. They were all very caring towards Sacha and they mopped up her drool – not even caring if it got on their hands or clothes – and played with her all evening.
Before we left, Graham invited everyone to come and watch the opening games of the UK football Premiership at the Hot Pub the next night and we left it open ended. By the way ‘Ganshow’ means ‘down in one’
So many people have offered time and energy to support Sacha we have made a 'big' thank you page. Do tell us if we have missed you off the list!