Tuesday & Wednesday in Nanchang

Well yesterday, we spent all of our time and attention on Audrey and not blogging, so we'll get two days in here. It's currently about 4:30pm here and Audrey is napping. There may be an addendum to this post if anything exciting happens the rest of the day.

Yesterday we spent the morning taking care of official business. We first had to interview at the civil affairs office, where we had to tell of our plans for raising Audrey and pay our orphanage donation. We were given our Chinese Adoption Certificate. From there we went to a police station to have her picture taken for her passport and then to a notary's office to have the certificate notarized. After that we went to Wal-Mart where we got 3 ping-pong paddles that looked good, but the info was in Chinese, so I'll have to have Brett Hyder look them over and let me know what we got, but they were really cheap and look as good as the more expensive ones we bought in the states. We also got some drinks and snacks - Spicy Seafood Pringles and BBQ Steak Pringles. They had others that were even further out there, but we decided to be somewhat safe.

After we got back to the hotel Audrey took a nap and Alex and I went looking for a place to play with our new paddles. A bell-boy escorted us about 5 blocks to a middle-school and tried to convince the security guard to let us play. He did not, but was very nice. I can't believe how much the people here go out of there way to help us. It was very interesting watching all of the students who passed by point and stare at us. We had been told this would happen, but hadn't really seen it yet. Apparently in this part of the country a westerner is a rare sighting.

The rest of the day was just hanging out at the hotel.

Today we got up and gave Audrey her first real bath - before it was just sponge baths. She did fine and will probably get used to it fairly quickly, but she wasn't nuts about the whole thing.

We headed out with our other adoption families to see the Teng Wang Pavillion. This was built originally in 653 ad, but has been destroyed 28 times. So this is the 29th construction, completed in 1989.




After the sightseeing, we stopped to eat at a local McDonald's and opted to stay in that area and look around. There were hundreds of shops and lots more stares. We got Audrey a baby toothbrush and a really cool hat (look for pictures of her wearing it later). Sorry Ted, I still haven't found a yeti for you yet, but I will continue the search.

We shopped as long as Audrey could handle it and then we headed back to the hotel in a taxi, which was a joy all to itself. It could be easy to be scared in a car that weighs less than I do with no seat belts and no evidence whatsoever of traffic laws, but these folks really know what they are doing. It's absolute chaos, but all of the drivers, cylcists, and pedestrians just kind of flow. We've seen 6 cars packed side-by-side on a 4-lane road, moving along at a decent speed with cars, scooters, and bikes cutting people off and everyone just reacts accordingly. I really enjoy watching it and it terrifies Julie.

We got back here, and Audrey ate some pears, veggie chips and a bottle and she's down for a nap. Maybe more later.