T-minus two hours and counting

So we are in our room in Nanning just waiting for 3:15 to roll around so we can go meet our guide, Lily, who will take us to the Civil Affairs office to meet Grace. In an effort to divert our attention we are going to update the blog. Otherwise we might drive ourselves and each other crazy with our nerves. Actually, I am more calm right now than I have been in the last 2 days. On the flight from Beijing I had to do some serious deep breathing to keep my composure, but now that it's about to happen, I'm just excited to meet her and get her back to the hotel and start getting to know her.

So, to recap - on Sunday we started with a trip to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. It was quite an event. Even though there were a fair amount of other foreigners there, we were quite the spectacle. TiananmenSquare can hold half a million people at one time. The line of Chinese tourists to view Mao Tse Tung's tomb was around and around and around and out of sight. And every last one of them gave us a once over. They're not shy about staring. I'm not sure if it's because I'm a tall woman or have somewhat lighter hair, but they all just stopped in their tracks and looked me up and down. More than one person took a picture, and one lady tapped me on the shoulder and asked to be photographed with me. Now, our guide, Iko, said right away that she thought I looked like the tennis player, Lindsey Davenport, which I've heard before, and some of her friends who we met later agreed with her. Maybe they thought I was famous!
Anyway, we walked across the square, which took a while, and then entered the Forbidden City. First we had to photograph the big portrait of Chairman Mao along with everyone else. At one point as Iko was giving her spiel about Chairman Mao (all positive of course) a middle-aged Chinese man walked up to our group, stood and listened, and then walked away when she was done. Later she said she was just being checked up on.
The Forbidden City was one impressive structure around a massive courtyard after another. We learned all about the history of the Emperors and Empresses. The Forbidden City itself has 9,999 rooms, because heaven apparently has ten thousand rooms and one wouldn't want to compete with that. And you need that many rooms when you marry your wife, spend three days with her and then never see her again because you are too busy fathering hundreds of children with all of your concubines so that a worthy heir can be chosen from one of them. The most impressive/depressing part was that right smack dab in the middle in a tiny little room was a Starbucks Coffee Shop! and the funniest part was that when I tried to take video of the inside, which looked just like a Starbucks anywhere else, the guy behind the counter jumped out and said, "not in here, not in here!" Go figure.
From the Forbidden City we said goodbye to Laura who was heading to the Yangtse River for a cruise down tha portion that will soon disappear behind the massive Three Gorges Dam project. Then Iko accompanied us to the airport for said flight to Beijing with said borderline panic attack and we were picked up at the airport by our new guide: Lily! Lily learned a good portion of her English from watching "Friends" on the internet and more than once has referred to one of the characters or the plotline as if it were reality. Example:

Lily: How do you pronounce your last name, it looks very difficult?

Me: It's Hojnacki. I know, even Americans have a hard time with it. Lucky me for marrying into it.

Lily: Well at least it's not as bad as Monica - I mean she had to go and marry someone named Bing!

Otherwise she is very nice and has agreed to try to help us get in touch with the foster family and go visit the orphanage. The weather remains very, very humid. Just walking outside for a few minutes leads to dripping with sweat, but the hotel is nicely air conditioned. Nanning is much more lush and green than Beijing. The city itself is not as massive and industrial even though over two million people live here. There are many more bicycles and mopeds and buses here. Lily told us that Nanning was known for being the Chinese capital of the motorcycle since so many people rode them here, so the government had the bright idea to ban all new motorcycle permits to encourage the automobile industry. (sigh) Beijing was just one big traffic jam, but here there is a dizzying mix all other form of transportation, just not many cars yet. You take your life into your own hands at each intersection as there appear to be no traffic lights even at the crossing of two four lane roads. Somehow everyone just goes, pedestrians and bikers included. Left turns, changing lanes; nothing phases them and curiously nobody gets hit. Dave and I have decided however that the two of us will cause an accident before we leave because on our first foray out this morning through packed streets for an hour we saw exactly one other non-asian; a white man on a bike, and some of the moped drivers almost swerved onto the sidewalk to get a look at us. We wonder how it will be when we go out tomorrow with Grace. I guess we will find out soon because it's time to go!!!!

Wish us luck. We will try to post as soon as we can.

Much Love,
Susan