Daddy had sprained his ankle the week before, and wasn't up to walking a whole day at Window of the World, but he assured us that if we took bus 101 and got off three stops after our new apartment, that we would find it. He also told us the name that we would be looking for in Chinese, but I should have guessed that we would run into trouble when my rendition of the name sounded to Daddy like the word for "hemorrhoids". When we got off the bus, I admitted right away that I hadn't heard the whole name I was looking for, but we were three stops past the apartment already, so I took a chance, reasoning that if we we got off too soon, we couldn't be far. We started walking toward the west, asking people for directions, but finding a great paucity of anyone speaking a word of English. Steve thought about getting on the bus again, but I worried that if I couldn't find the stop the first time, there was no reason to think that I'd figure it out a second time. Steve remained stubbornly patient and cheerful through the journey in the hot sun and humidity, and though we didn't arrive at our destination for a full hour and a half, we did find a McDonald's along the way where we treated ourselves to 25 cent ice cream cones and a mango shake.
When we finally reached Window of the World, it became evident that Daddy could have saved us a lot of grief if he had skipped the Chinese lesson and just told us to get off the bus when we saw the giant Eiffel Tower.
