Okay, I will start this post off by explaining that I began our visit to Nanning with a typical Heather clutzy injury. We got to our hotel this morning at around 3 am. Exhausted but with the need to check out what appeared to be a really cool bathroom (It actually is. It has a seperate shower stall with wooden slat floor and a rain style shower head. Clean and cool). Anyways, I go to step in to the bathroom and end up kicking the tile step (You can see it in one of the photos below). Well, a lot of jumping and a couple of hours of sleep later and I woke up to a really nice bruise. Check it out! Just like Heather.
Okay, now for Nanning. There has been a lot of construction since we were here 6 years ago. We are staying at the second of the two hotels we used on Katrine’s adoption trip – The Youngjiang. It is clean and has air conditioning. It also has a nice pool that we spent a few hours in this afternoon in an effort to cool off from the heat and humidity. Katrine even made friends with a little girl. She pretended to be a motor and towed the girl around on a floaty making boat sounds. They also shared Katrine’s water wings. I don’t think that the girl had ever seen a pair before. She was really thrilled to be able to swim around without a floaty.
This morning after breakfast, we headed out to the Nanning People’s Park near the Mingyuan hotel (just as dingy as we remembered). The taxi dropped us off at a different gate than we used last time and we discovered that the park is a heck of a lot larger than we had originally thought. Katrine got to try out Chinese play equipment which made her happy and burned off some energy. While in the park we reached White Dragon Lake which is home to large carp. We got Katrine a bag of fish food and proceeded to feed the fish a handful at a time. It was pretty cool to watch the fish bump and forcibly push each other out of the way in an effort to get those food pellets.
Tomorrow morning we are up bright and early to head towards Yongning Social Welfare Institute. Katrine is pretty excited about returning and so are we. Our guide seems really nice and we are hoping that she will advocate for us to see Katrine’s file and get her some answers.
Oh, one more thing: 3 more days until Elspeth!!!!!!!!!