Tuesday

We got to start the day eating breakfast with Terri and Scott from Baylor and their new little girl, Margo. She is precious and was a joy to them right away (they actually got her on Monday just after we met them the first time.)

We tried to get coffee with Bob and Ella, but it turns out that coffee isn't available until afternoon/evening so that trip was a bust. We were looking for some things to do today since it is our last day in Nanchang. Bob's brother told him about the communist museum and XiXi was nice enough to say she would take us since she is a card carrying member and hadn't been to the museum before (she said her friends think she has water on the brain for being one, which she just laughs about.) Thank goodness she jumped on board because it was all in Chinese and the pictures weren't very descriptive. We did find a little more information about the important battle of Shanggao (and Larry, I mean little).

We then went with Bob and Liza to Pizza Hut (I think I'll go back to Chinese food) and then we had a great walk to the August 1 park we had visited on Saturday. We had to wander there and got a bit lost so of course we ended up on some really cool streets. I just enjoyed the sites and didn't bother taking pictures though.

I love this park. We saw some new areas with pretty bridges and trees. There were retired people there playing Chinese chess and cards. Some companies here retire people at 45 so many retired people get out to stay busy.

Liza and I had our eyes on this guy who painted names so we got those done for all our kids and got a big kick out of watching his creativity. Jason and Bob had the girls and hung out talking and smiling with the locals.

We had to go get their passports so we had an incredibly wild ride in a taxi back to the hotel. We ended up in a total log jam -- no car/bus/bike/motorbike wants to give way to another one unless they are less than 1.5 cm from getting hit. At one point, there were 5 buses crammed into an intersection and no one could move like those picture puzzle games or the new one Rushhour. For the first time ever here, I saw a car back up out of the way and finally one bus could turn and we slowly worked our way out of it. Then the driver decided it was a good idea to drive down the middle of oncoming traffic and that was a riot, too. The driving really adds to the adventure of China and I'll love it until I actually get hurt.

Lyvi's orphanage didn't turn in a picture for her passport so she had one taken last Wednesday on adoption day. Some of the other families got to see a new picture of there babies though -- so cute. I keep wanting to take a picture of these documents, but XiXi rightfully doesn't trust us with them so I'll have to share them later.

Last dinner and we went back to our favorite resturant as a group!