We are officially at the half way point of our trip!! It’s a little bitter sweet…..we are enjoying our time here being able to bond with Alicia and seeing the area that she was born, but we are also missing home and Marcus terribly!! The weather here has been much warmer than we expected. We should have packed more short sleeve shirts and some sandals. Apparently the weather between Beijing and Nanchang is compared to going from Iowa to Florida. That would have been much more helpful knowing prior to traveling. Being from Minnesota and traveling to Florida in March…..you know that we would have packed shorts, t-shirts and sandals. It is down right tropical here!!
This morning we traveled by bus to the Tengwang Pavilion as a group. It’s really beautiful there. Great view of the river and of the city. The haze was quite bad, so not a clear view, but still nice. Also a fabulous place to shop. There were a number of shops in the pavilion that had some wonderful porcelain pieces….now trying to figure out a way to get them all from here to Guangzhou on Saturday. I did buy a few things, but not enough to fill the extra suitcase that we brought with. I’ll be trying to find a way to reorganize things before we leave.
Alicia has been such a great baby so far!! She seriously doesn’t get worked up about anything. Totally laid back. She loves to go in the Baby Bjorn. She just hangs out in there and takes in all the things going on around her. We ended up ordering room service last night for supper. Alicia had quite a tummy ache and was quite fussy, so we decided to just hang out. I’m glad that we have one airline flight to Guangzhou before we hit the air with a baby for the 20 hours flight home. Many have suggested trying Benedryl on the shorter flight first to make sure that she doesn’t get wired instead of sleepy. Although I’m not so sure that we are going to need to use anything. She really likes her sleep…….my kind of kid!! She totally has her daddy wrapped around her little finger already. In fact, I think that most of the babies have bonded better with the daddy’s than the mommy’s so far. Alicia likes us both, but may be a little more partial to Dad….not sure though if that’s because he’s the one to jump first to her rescue. She doesn’t have any skin issues at all and no lice. She does have one large Mongolian spot on her back side above her butt. A Mongolian spot looks like a bruise, but doesn’t give her any pain. Just looks sore!
Our guide, Shirley, is going to the notary this afternoon to get our paperwork for tomorrow. We will all head to the Police station in the morning to get our babies passports to return to the US. We will then return to the hotel and have a 2-3 hour meeting where we will complete more paperwork. YIKES! Luckily, only one parent has to go to that and apparently I have been officially nominated by Paul to do that. Oh well, I’m sure that most of the other moms will be there too, as some of the dads can’t even leave the room without the baby crying.
Our hotel room is absolutely stifling and we finally had them come and unlock the windows so that we could open them. We had to sign a liability waiver before they would do it. I suppose then they won’t be held responsible if I tried to stuff Paul out the window. We are only on the 9th floor, so he wouldn’t be hurt that bad….but I suppose it’s more of a liability for those people on the 26th floor. We walked down the street and found a restaurant that actually had the word “Restaurant” in English on the front. We were wrong in thinking that we could find someone that would be able to help us order something. They had a picture menu and after some trial and error with items that were unavailable we wound up with something to eat and two beers!!
Marcus - It was great talking to you last night. Have fun at Zama and Papa's house and be a good boy!! I am very proud of you for doing such a great job while we are gone. We love you and miss you very much!! 7 days left...right?
Have a great day!
Paula
I do smile every now and then!
Huge Agate in our hotel
Tengwang Pavilion
Us again.....but not feeling like a complete family without Marcus!
