Update for Thursday Night

Hi all,

I don't know about you all, but Lisa and I were just saying how quickly this trip was moving. It's hard to believe that it's already been a week. But, oh what a week. I will say that this exercise of posting some of our activities and goings-on has been good for me as a way to recall many of the details myself and I think this will strengthen the memories of this trip. On the other hand, Lisa's been very good about writing entries into our Travel Journal in longhand form, so we'll have that as a record for Kyle as well. (I'll likely print this Weblog out or save it in some sort of electronic format so we'll have this for him, as well.

Local time here in Nanchang is Thursday evening @ 8:22PM.

We've just finished our dinner here in the hotel restaurant. It's the best bet around for Western style food. Lisa has been sick most of the day and is resting now in the room. (It's something that has also been affecting some others in our travel group. Lisa (from Oklahoma City), Heather (from Spokane, WA) and Mark (from around Atlanta, GA) were all down with similar symptoms, some worse than others. Kyle is down for the night as well. Dinner was fine, Kyle was good and had his usual good appetite. The dish of the day for him was prunes - lets just say they worked. (If you're keeping score or following along with the home version, Pupu #2 has been accomplished). I'm in the hotel business center again, unfortunately without the camera, I forgot to bring it along. Hopefully I'll be able to finish this before being given the bum's rush out at closing time.

It was a slower day than normal. This morning we went to THE Nanchang Tourist / Local Cultural spot. It's called the Teng Wang Pavilion.
Here are a couple of links (I can't test them because of the communications / earthquake problem, So I hope they work:
http://www.china-travel-tour-guide.com/attractions/prince-teng-pavilion.shtml
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/jiangxi/nanchang/tengwang.htm

We had about 2 hours to tour the main pavilion. We had planned on seeing a dance performance but we could not since the stage was under repair (maybe next time ;-)). We rode the elevator to the top floor and walked down an visited each floor. Each floor had different exhibits and gift shops, and the higher floors had all-around outdoor access so you could get a nice view of the city, the river, and the large suspension bridge. The smog/pollution is exceptionally bad here and many of the views were just, how you say, not good. It's like looking through a set of binoculars that have not been cleaned or wearing a pair of glasses after coming back in to a warn house from the cold.

Anyway the pavilion was a nice trip, we got a lot of nice pictures and some video. I rang a huge Good luck bell. It cost me 10 Yuan so I better be really lucky! Kyle slept most of the time we walked around - the boy can sleep through anything. Afterward, we relaxed around the hotel, and Kyle and I checked out the lobby areas while Lisa got a nap in.

He's getting a little better with Lisa and actually let her touch him this afternoon. I know it tough so we work on it every day. We've also been giving Kyle mini workouts to build up his muscles - he doesn't seem to mind. Mostly crunches, squats and sit ups. We'll work on push-ups when his neck is stronger. But I would not be surprised at all if he goes right to walking and skips crawling.

We got our second load of laundry back from the local laundry.. we even got a bonus - 2 shirts that were not ours!!! Luckily I caught the delivery girl before she left our floor on the way out! If we got someone else's shirts, I hope someone ales didn't get something of ours? Oh well, that the risk of using local laundry (not the hotel's). I suppose we're lucky, Rob and Shelly (Ames, Iowa) dropped off their laundry at a different place and when it came back it had all been dry cleaned!! Shelly said it took them about 20 minutes to get all of the safety pins (used to track the clothes, I suppose) out of all of their clothes!

So that's been our day. Tomorrow we do more paperwork and need to go to the Civil Affairs Office to pick up the babies' passports. This should be interesting, since this is where the Gotchas happened. I'll be curious to see their reactions.

Our travel group is filled with great people always willing to try to do whatever they can to help others. Several asked if they could do anything to help with Kyle since Lisa was not feeling well. I'm sure we'll be keeping in touch with many of these families. Kyle will be memorable for them since he's the only boy in this group. (In a couple of days we'll be meeting up with another couple who have adopted twin 2-year-old boys. We met them in Beijing and they went to their province separately. That should be a lot of fun.

That's about it for now...please feel free to post comments since we're out of e-mail contact. There is no telling when it will be restored.

We enjoy reading all of your comments as well - so please keep them coming.

Have a good night/day,
C