1 more day

Took a little "blogger break" yesterday. Sorry if we left anyone hanging. Had a rough time putting our little congee munchkin to bed last night (at left is how miss manners likes to finish off her bowl of congee). She took a late nap which made it harder for her to go to sleep at the usual time. But once she did her usual scream for 5-10 minutes then she was ready. Then she treated us to another scream session at 3:30am because she wanted to go to my bed instead of Marnie's bed. When Marnie presented her with the options of her crib or Marnie's bed, then she was okay to with Marnie's bed. (fyi: we have another room with two single beds, if we had a king bed I think this would be a non-issue) It continues to be hard on Marnie when Neela continues to prefer her "ba ba". She does just fine with Marnie when I am not around, so a big piece of this just seems to be her stubbornness. We both feel things will be better when we are home since we'll have a little more space to manage these kinds of things.

Yesterday we finished up our shopping for various souvenirs and gifts. In the afternoon, we took a small bus and did a bit of touring. The first stop was at a Buddhist temple, where we made wishes, lit incense sticks, and received a blessing from a Buddhist monk. I clicked my heels three times and wished I was home, but apparently that was too tall an order for the Buddha. The various statues were very large (notice the little stacks of orange soda in front) and very beautiful.

The next stop was at an old school which was converted to a museum. The buildings were impressive with large dark wood framing and tall doors and ceilings, and in the middle of everything was a peaceful stone and small tree courtyard. The museum featured various artwork such as embroidery, carved ivory, and palm leave fans. The ivory carving was amazing, but is outlawed now of course. The last stop was at a store featuring high quality jade. They gave us a brief lesson on how to tell good jade from bad jade, and then followed that with a lesson on how to transfer money from our pocket to their pocket. Marnie got a nice little jade necklace which we intend to call "Merry Xmas".

We ended our day with another meal at Lucy's and a drawn out bedtime thanks to our not so tired little friend. After she was asleep, we enjoyed a little more of our $5 wine and the Discovery channel feature on the building of the Airbus A380.

Today we will pack up our things (again) so we can move to a more expensive hotel right next to the airport. On the way, we will stop by the US consulate to pick up her visa and take some sort of oath. I imagine it will read something like "we promise to raise her with the highest of capitalistic values and shop at Target regularly".

Tonight we have the daunting task of trying to get our money's worth out of the $200/night hotel by the airport, which we will be at for less than 12 hours. This will be especially challenging given we will miss breakfast, which rules out filling our backpack at the buffet. How they can even have a $200/night hotel in a country where you can get 7 ice cream bars for a dollar is beyond me. The other hotel we stayed at on our way to Nanchang was only $30 a night. I'm not only expecting them to tuck me in, but to also put my jammies on and brush my teeth...