Another day, more great experiences

It is Thursday evening here in Nanjing. Hard to believe that our time here is winding down. We leave the hotel tomorrow at 4pm for a trip to the airport. We have a 7pm flight to Guangzhou, arriving at 9pm. It will be a late night, as we probably won't get to the hotel until 10:30 or so. Millie has been going to bed around 6:30pm for the last few nights, so we'll see how this works tomorrow night.

Tomorrow morning at 10am, Marna and I are going to take a taxi along with Sondra to the place where Millie was found. Someday, she'll be asking many questions, and we want to have as many answers as possible.

We went sightseeing today to two spots in Nanjing, the ancient Nanjing City Wall (we called it the Not-So-Great-Wall), and the Nanjing Museum of Art. After we left the museum, we ate lunch together as a group. Our adoption agency guide, Sondra, has been a joy to be with. She took us to a restaurant and ordered all the food for us. We sat at round tables with a "lazy susan" in the middle of each table. The servers would place the dishes on the lazy susan, and then you would turn it to get to the food you wanted. We had a wonderful assortment of foods: roast duck (for which Nanjing is famous), roast pork, fried beef, chicken, bok choy, pickled radishes, corn w/glutenous rice (this rice is not slender, it looks like a round white ball, like a small marble), watermelon, dates, cucumber, rice soup, and several others things I can't remember at the moment. I tried everything on the table...and I used chopsticks the whole time. Madeleine is a whiz with chopsticks, I manage reasonably well, and Marna at some point asks for a fork or spoon.

After our sightseeing, we came back to the hotel. Madeleine and I stayed in the room with Millie, and Marna and my Mom went out to shop at the shopping area right by the hotel. Marna picked out a few gifts that we will give to Millie over the years. We wanted to have some things to give her that are actually from her hometown. We'll buy more in Guangzhou, but we definitely wanted to get some things here in Nanjing.

Wednesday night, we had an interesting eating experience. We were all tired of eating American food at KFC, Burger King, and McDonald's, so we decided to get adventurous. There is a restaurant right across the street from the hotel. I'd tell you the name, but I have no idea as it's all in Chinese characters. Another adopting family came with us as well. We were seated in a private room with one round table. The server handed me the menu and I did not see one English word anywhere. Well, I high-tailed it back to our hotel room where we had a sheet of paper that had typical foods listed in English with their Chinese characters right next to it. So, without knowing anything on the menu, I ordered chicken, beef, vegetables, and rice by pointing to the word on our paper.
They brought out the dishes, and aside from the beef being really spicy, we had a pretty decent meal. Then came the bill. The price for seven of us to eat: 95 yuan, roughly $14 total. Not bad for a night out on the town.

Well, it's 9pm here now and I'm pretty tired. Millie has been asleep here in the room since 6:30pm. She has been sleeping about 12 hours a night, so she is taking after her sister, as Maddy was a great sleeper in her early childhood.

Thanks again for all your prayers and comments. Please pray that we'll have safety in our travels tomorrow to Guangzhou. I'm signing off for now, not sure if Marna will post tonight or not. Depending on how late it is when we get to our hotel tomorrow night, we probably won't post until sometime on Saturday.

--Dan