tl;dr: Great bonding with Mom and Elspeth, and the Great Wall is busy on weekends in the summer (suprise)
Some of the photos are from our last day in Nanchang. In the morning we visited Bayi Park which was named after the August 1st (Ba is 8th month & Yi is 1st) rebellion which is an important day in chinese communist history that you can google if you are really interested. After the park we went to the Youmin temple. Also really cool. There are photos of both as well as some photos from our first day in Beijing that we posted about yesterday.
Today we visited the Great Wall. I was really excited because I am breathing well enough that I was actually able to climb with Glenn and Katrine, while carrying Elspeth, up to the third checkpoint in about 20 minutes without dying!!!! Much better than last time around. Katrine was enthralled by the views and was really proud of having gotten up as far as we did. Elspeth also liked the views and tried the same manoeuvre as at the Teng Wang Pavilion where she leaned right over and tried to lean right over the edge and see what was down below. Good thing mommy is strong.
If you’ve noticed more mention of mom in connection with Elspeth in this post than you would be correct. Today was a banner day for bonding all around. She fed each of us gluteny cheerios in turn (she better realize how much I must love her to have willingly eaten gluten for her). Blew kisses at us. She also let me carry her more frequently and actually seemed to enjoy it!!! I think that my favourite bonding moment was when she was playing open and close with the empty ashtray on the bus. Every so often she would get her fingers caught or pinched and after the first time one of us kissed it better she would rub it and then present it to us for a kiss. Pretty quick.
Tomorrow morning is our immigration medical and then if all goes well, Katrine and I are heading to do so ice skating while the other two bond over naps. Don’t know if there will be much, if any update tomorrow. However, the next day we are supposed to head to the Forbidden City so check back on Tuesday for sure.