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July 21 (pre-Amy)
July 21, 22
July 23
July 23, 24, 25
July 26
July 26, 27
July 28, 29, 30
July 31
August 1
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Hello -
It's 2:40 pm China time on Tuesday, which means it's about 1:40
am Tuesday morning in the midwest.
Ask me a week ago if I would get excited about a poopy diaper and
I would have laughed. Oh, how our lives have changed...
Amy had her first bath today - Mark said she was starting to smell
like she'd been at the gym too long. Because we can't let go of
her, baths seem to be out of the question. It became a two-person
job - Mark held her in the bath and I cleaned her off. She finally
smelled like the baby she is.
After breakfast was the first poop with us. This was another turning
point for us - since she is/was potty-trained, the diapers were
freaky to her. Mark and I were overjoyed that we'd crossed that
hurdle and I'm sure that Amy was happy, too, especially since we're
not making her eat any more baby prunes.
We went to the Nanning Park this afternoon. It was about a 20-minute
bus ride out of the main city and through the part being built.
The city is quite dense, and there is a lot of construction of both
homes and office buildings to the outside of the city to make it
less dense. We even drove on a dirt road, which was bumpy, but not
as bumpy as Sunday's ride from the airport to the hotel (another
Dramamine moment).
 The park has a Buddhist temple in it, with lots of statues and
incense burners. I think that our group was the oddity, though.
We attracted lots of attention (Nanning apparently doesn't get a
lot of Westerners and isn't really geared up for tourists). Our
guide XiXi printed up cards for us that said in Chinese characters
that we're Americans adopting the babies and that we love China
and it's culture. Mark
and I showed the cards to people in the park and I think it helped
them understand what all these people were doing with Chinese babies.
 
The park vendors had ice cream, beer and pickled everything - pineapples,
ginger, pears, beans, water chesnuts... Not typical American park
food, but very typical for Nanning.
Amy napped most of the park trip and I carried her. She's still
freaking out with the carrier, so it's a good thing she's only about
16 pounds. Amy loves her rattle we bought yesterday and has been
clutching it the last two days. She can pass it from hand to hand
and she also has a great pincer grip on another toy.
Amy loves touching textures - shirts, the bus seat, tablecloths.
Another constant companion is the pacifier. We love that thing...
We're eating dinner with our travel group tonight and otherwise
just resting and repacking our stuff.
Tomorrow we're bussing it to Guilin, a tourist location in this
province. We're leaving around 10 am and it's a five-hour bus ride.
We're not stopping for food along the way (none of it is very good,
apparently) and I've got my Dramamine handy. The bus has some pretty
lousy shock absorbers... Until next time...
Beth, Mark & Amy |
