Orphange and shopping day

Eli continues to sleep through the night. This trip is really becoming very relaxing as Kim and I have had our best stretch of nights of sleep in five years. It's amazing how the body and mind feel so much better.

Thursday morning found us traveling to the biggest and possibly the best orphanage in the province. It is located right downtown Nanchang and has a nice large campus with many buildings. It even holds a public school within the gates as well. It really reminded me of St.Coletta's in Jefferson back in its' prime 20 years ago. This place houses orphans of all ages and those with many mental disabilities. Many people volunteer their time to help out here. All things considered it is run well from what we can see. It is by no means a resort, but a place where the orphans get attention and their needs met. Our adoption agencey, Holt, even has helped start setting up classes to teach skills to the older orphans with special needs so they can function in society if they want to leave. This site even has group homes where six residents can live with two foster parents.

After the orphanage we went to the porcelain shops. This province and city is where porcelain was invented. They are very proud of it and is considered the porcelain capital of the world. Kim and I are not into porcelain, but those who are found some very nice pieces at reasonable prices.

Eli napped for three hours this afternoon! So we decided to nap for a couple hours ourselves...yes life is quite rough right now! We then went down to the pedestrian mall a few blocks down and proceeded to take a nice walk and have just about everyone stare at us in some capacity. We grabbed two ice cream cones at McDonald's (about 33 cents each) and finally on our way back saw a biker get shmucked by a car. Considering the zillion of bikes, mopeds, buses, taxis, and cars on the road, I was thinking we would have seen this way sooner! The guy on the bike was ok, and got back up since the car wasn't driving all that fast. When crossing the street I do feel like the frog in the video game frogger.

Just got back from an authentic Chinese massage. Kim had it done yesterday and told me to go tonight. Let's put it this way...American massage and Chinese massage do not compare. America we like to relax and have a nice smooth rub down. Here they believe that the art of massage is in the pressure points. And do they ever push on the pressure points! I have never been stretched, twisted, and pummeled like this before. It is not relaxing. There were moments I thought they were going to carry me out of the room in pieces. The crazy thing is my body does feel much better than when I walked in. And that was only the 90 minute "foot massage"...I wonder what they do to you in the full body massage. Oh yeah...like I mentioned last night the bill came to $10 and that was with the tip.

Friday we have one more morning excursion and then we board a plane to Guangzhou...our final destination. As of tomorrow all our adoption paperwork for China will be completed and Guangzhou is where we await the anal retentive U.S. side of things. The plane trip to this city which is located on the Tropic of Cancer is just over an hour and from what we've been told the White Swan Hotel is located on an island that use to be run by the British and French during the colonial time period. It is apparently absolutely beautiful, quaint, and quiet. Our guide said we won't feel like we are in China anymore. We'll update you more on that tomorrow. Oh yeah, go Brewers!