1 minute 8 seconds

"The Smile"

Oh happy day!

Happy dance time! We are on our last full day here in Nanchang. Tomorrow we get Naomi's passport and fly out of this joint. Despite Peter's attempts to talk us out of going to Pizza Hut tonight we are headed there for dinner. Mike vowed not to eat at the buffet for dinner tonight. He choked down more fried rice and chicken yesterday. I opted to order off the ala carte menu and got a cheeseburger and fries. Not sure what meat the burger was made out of but it was better than the other choices. Ignorance is bliss when it comes to the ingredients of the food in these parts. At breakfast we talked with some other adoption families and found that we were not alone in our stir craziness. Oddly that was reassuring for some reason. Naomi didn't sleep well last night. We put her in our bed after her head got caught in between the rails of her crib or should I say death bed. I don't know if it is the lack of sleep or the fear of going into the crib again but she hasn't been napping well today and is giving us a good dose of stubborn. Which equates into one cranky baby. It started raining yesterday and has rained all day and actually brought some cooler weather with it. I think Naomi is ready to blow this popsicle stand too.

We're not in Kanas anymore, or even any place relatively close!

Yes, it's another stinking pagoda...temple, whatever. At least this one had some nice garden areas for photo opportunities but basically it was just as boring as the one we went to yesterday. We have two more days here. The American channels (hbo & cinemax) were blown out with a wind storm, it's 100 + outside, I am sick of the Chinese version of "western food" and I forgot my ruby slippers to click and get the heck out of here!

Dinner Anyone?

Here's our movie star!

Free Day #1

O.K. already. I'm IT Challenged so this video stuff is a little out of my league. Today was a "free day", which translates into "no appointments today". Unfortunately it is so hot here that if you don't get your sightseeing done in the morning you're out of luck. I love Peter, our interpeter, but he's not much help when it comes to suggestions on what to do. Today we went to a 1000 year old temple. Which probably would have been pretty cool except that everything was written in Chinese so we just wandered around looking at stuff and sweating. Not my idea of fun. To get to the park we went down a tree shaded "walking" street that had many retired people sitting around tables doing whatever retired Chinese people do. We felt like we were a one float parade. Every face turned our way as we approached. Too bad Naomi doesn't know how to wave yet.
We had a pivotal breakthrough today with the potty. She did the deed! How strange to have a 11 month old using the potty. We were making a big to-do about it and she looked at us like "what's the fuss, I've been doing this for 6 months".
Tomorrow is another "free day". We will be hitting the "city center" as Peter says. That's downtown for all you round eyes. There's a McDonalds, Pizza Hut & KFC there. I'm looking forward to eating something besides fried rice. Today's specialty at the buffet was braised chicken unguis, that's fancy chicken feet for you round eyes. Yesterday was fried duck unguis. And no, I am not kidding! Still haven't seen any monkey brain jello.