Getting ready to leave Nanning!

Well, tomorrow am (or I should say this am- I cant sleep) we leave for Guangzhou- At least Noah and I do, Alan gets to head home to the kids.

     Noah continues to do great! We see more of his personality every day and more typical two-year old behaviors. He now understands the word "no" and "sit down" (he tends to want to run around in the bathtub) He talks a lot but we have no idea what he is saying. When the man came to take our laundry, the guide said Noah wanted to know why the man was taking our things! He uses specific sounds/gestures pretty consistently and his intonation is very consistent when he asks questions.

He continues to nap and sleep very well though when he wakes up he is very stiff/anxiou and wraps his arms around my neck tightly- I think he gets disoriented when he wakes up. After naps tends to be the worst and every day a bit more. Today it took about an hour until he would relax after nap, he cried a bit and we are thinking this is the grieving we are seeing. He has completey given up the congee now..wont touch it! We foundout today why, he was eating it for 4-5 small meals a day! No wonder he dosent want it! He does eat great and is doing very well managing a spoon now.

Yesterday we were supposed to go visit Noah's finding spot- however we found out after our guide spent a great deal of time speaking to people that this trip would have been an 8 hour round trip ride...we did not feel this was a good idea to have Noah in the car for 4 hours, turn around and then drive back so we were not able to go. not sure how well we would have found it as it took her and several people quite some time to even find out where it was. I am disapointed we did not get to see this but at the same  time we have gotten to see a great deal of nanning and spent some quality time getting to know Noah and right now I think that is most important.

we went back to the museum to do some shopping for  handicrafts that are specific to Guangxi though i am thinking we should have gotten more, and then bargained for them more. Oh well, hind sight.On the way back we walked and got to see more of Nanning.  The food here is ridiculously cheap, though today we went to pizza hut (needed a change from noodles) and although it tasted just like our pizza hut back home (which we really dont care for anyway) it was about twice as much for a SMALL pizza and two cokes as it is for a HUGE table full of food at the chinese restaurante. For instance last night we got 12 dumplings (yum) a huge plate of rice (I think Noah ate most of it) a plate of steamed veggies and alan got a huge plate of chicken with peppers, two cokes and some tea for less than our tiny little pizza!

I am excited to go to Guangzhou but at the same time wish I could just go home and see the kids. I miss them so much and know that this must be very hard for them! We are so thankful for our family for helping with them I know it cant be easy but we could not have both been here without them. It will be good for Alan to get home and have some nice quality time with the kids before I get back with Noah. Even so, if I was told I could fly home tomorrow I would, but I cant. I am looking forward to meeting up with Dina in Guangzhou though seeing the sights, doing some shopping and meeting up with some other adoptive families! 

     I'd like to mention the responses of the locals here...the first day we went to people's park just alan and I we got some occaional looks, we barely noticed, but with Noah...well lets just say that I am suprised more people werent running into trees. People on scooters would turn all the way aroudn and stare, people would just stop what they were doing and stare/watch us walk by! It was very strange, I know it's a cultural thing but I think Noah draws alot of attention. Our guide told us that many people have never seena child with a cleft lip and dont understand. Even so you feel very protective of your child when people look at you/him that way. We did have an intersting experience at the museum though two different couples, both older started taking photos of us. One even video tape, and not just for a few seconds, as we walked through part of the museum we had two video cameras on us, it was really funny! what made this different though is that both couples were smiling and very nice about it. One man asked us if we spoke mandarin and his wife was very nice- unfortunately the mandarin for beginners I listend to in the car for so many weeks was complety forgotten so I did a lousy job responding!

     This trip has been very interesting to say the least, we are ready to be home, but at the same time know that we would like to come back when Noah is older for a trip where we can spend more time exploring the province. Nanning is really beautiful but there is so much in other parts of the province that we would love to see.

for some reason I cant get the photos to download so I'll try again later!