Day 2 With Fiona

We've had another great day with Fiona. Sue ventured out with Fiona and Echo this morning and did some shopping. It is great to have Echo on this trip. She translates for us and keeps us out of harm's way. She is the Chinese ISS worker that is assigned to us and spends her time either helping us out or navigating the way through the maze of paperwork and government bureaus here in China.

Nanning is a much more traditional Chinese city than Beijing. The hotel staff does speak some English, but it is rough at best. Outside of the hotel, English speaking people are few and far between. For example, we ordered prawns for dinner tonight and got fried rice with pork (we think). We're not sure quite how that happened; and this was in the hotel with the English speaking staff. It is always an adventure to call the front desk and ask them a question. Their motto is "when confused, have another person talk to them." Sometimes it takes 4 or 5 staff members to piece together what we're asking. If we really have a problem, we can always count on Echo to come to the rescue. You can only imagine how many staff members it took for us to get a 110 volt electrical transformer with a three prong adapter for our laptop (this was in done before Echo had arrived).

There are a number of families staying in the hotel who are adopting. We were the first to check into the hotel. We seemed to have come a day earlier than the rest. The other families all showed up Sunday and we met them down in the hotel restaurant on Monday morning before we all went to the Civil Affairs Office for the adoption ceremonies. We decided that the hotel restaurant staff must wonder what in the world is going on when all of a sudden all of these American families are in the hotel one day and then the next day they come back with Chinese kids in tow. It is nice in the mornings to catch up with the other families and talk to them. Fortunately, the hotel is pretty kid friendly and they cater to adoptive families. They even have a section in the gift shop that carries all sorts of supplies such as formula, bottles, clothes, etc. That store carries pretty much everything we need and is unbelievably cheap.

The big event for today was a trip to the Nanning zoo. It was a gorgeous zoo with very few people. Fiona had her first experience with a stroller and being out and about with her new family. She went right along with it and had a great time. Everything is so new to her. She tends to like to take things and keep them with her. By the time we were done at the zoo, she had 3 water bottles, a camera bag, 4 toys, and 2 maps all nicely tucked around her in the stroller.

The zoo also had a lake that had an attraction that we'd never seen before. You could basically rent a clear rubber bubble and go inside and maneuver it across the lake. Patrick, Quinn, and Regan gave this a try and had a blast. You could also rent these motorized inner tubes with seats and drive all over the lake. It was a nice afternoon at the zoo.

Tomorrow we are planning on going to some caves out in the country. We are looking forward to seeing the countryside around here. It seems to be mountainous with a tropical jungle like climate. We also saw a lot of rice fields in the flat lands when we flew in. We will have Echo leading the way.

To wrap up this post, here are a few items from the local restaurant menu that are rather intriguing. I don't think we'll be adventurous enough to give these a try.

• stewed shark's fin with chicken and sea cucumber
• cabbage with salted pig fore shank
• boiled fish lips with leaf mustard
• deep fried spring pigeon

I do have to admit that we had some seafood fried rice with squid and other various unidentified sea creatures that was quite tasty.