Day 6, Nanning, Guangxi Province

Quick note: Sorry to take so long posting the photos (it's 6am on Friday and the photos are finally coming across after 2 hours of trying last night). The Internet access here is iffy, even though it's broadband. Must be the must be the amount of traffic.

Today was great in serveral ways. First, Emily finally began to take a bottle without a fight. What a relief! Her antibiotics and cold meds are working, and she was much happier today. We are positive she's on the mend.

So, we toured Qing Xian Mountain outside the city of Nanning with the other families and their daughters. The girls are becoming even more relaxed, giggling and holding tight to their mothers and some fathers. Emily is bonding equally to Kevin and I, which is wonderful. He mainly feeds her and guess who gets diaper duty??!! I really don't mind. We get to snuggle during changes, and Emily now tilts her head forward for kisses. She likes to stare into our eyes, pull a fistful of my hair, and scratch Kevin's beard with her fingers. Kevin weighed Emily today and she weighs only 16 pounds at 13 months old!! An average year old American baby weighs 20 pounds, so she's pretty small in comparison. Our Chinese guides love Kevin because of his big Irish face and ready smile, so they nicknamed him "Buddha", and Emily is "Buddha Baby". It's hilarious, because when the group is together, they always see Buddha running off somewhere with Buddha Baby, tossing her in the air as he goes. That's the last I see of them for a while! He is absolutely crazy about his little girl!

Anyway, back to our outing. First stop was Qingxiushan Scenic Area with lovely gardens and a huge, bamboo covered bridge that spanned more than 600 feet. No nails were used in the construction of the bridge. Instead, pieces of bamboo were used as pins to hold the floor in place. The bridge seemed to give with our feet. It was amazing.



Here's us at an ancient rock wall that stands over 25 feet high.

Our guide Michael with Emily. The guides just love her, she's so tiny.

Next stop was a lovely Buddhist temple on Qing Xiu Mountain. Here we were the source of much interest since not many Caucasian faces are seen here. People stopped us constantly to ask about us, or smile at our babies and read our laminated cards. A young girl of about 10 years was very excited to practice her English on us and her proud family swarmed around us. Her family asked to take a photo but their camera jammed! So we took one with ours and will email it to her. She was even more excited to exchange email addresses with Americans. Then we had Emily blessed by a Chinese monk, for good fortune.

Emily gets blessed

Buddist Goddess Shiva

Last stop, Longxiang Buddhist pagoda on Qing Xian Mountain. The pagoda was beautiful--at least 100' high, with half a dozen sets of stone steps leading up to it. It was too hot and humid for Emily and I to scale beyond the steps, so we stayed in the shade near lots of spiders of different shapes and sizes (yes, they rivaled the Florida spiders in size and thickness-EEWW!!) while Kevin scaled the pagoda. At the top of the pagoda was a cool breeze and view of Nanning. Here's a restaurant viewed from the top. There's a stream in front of the restaurant that is absolutely loaded with Koi that were swarming all over each other to get to the food visitors tossed in.

Pagoda Restaurant

Finally, the heat drove us back to the hotel, where we crashed for a while then took Emily to the pool where she swam with Daddy. Here they are afterwards, in a quiet moment.

Daddy with Emily

Tomorrow is our last day in Nanning! I'll miss the breakfast buffet with pork congee (rice gruel) and lychee fruit. This morning the wait staff taught us how to say "Chi zao can", which means "breakfast", and how to count to 10 in Mandarin. They love our little girls, and sneak over to play with them every couple of minutes. We're usually waited on by as many as 3 people. It's lovely.