TGIF

The blogster here. Staying up late tonite, so I think I'll sleep in tomorrow. I wonder if Jing Jing will be down with that. Here is a pic from the hallway at the hotel. Turns out one of her favorite things is a fire extinguisher placed conveniently on the floor to facilitate easy access for our little friends. I don't know about you, but it seems to me we may have a trouble maker on our hands... :)

The boys are out on the farm with Grandma and Grandpa now. Video chatted with them out there this morning, which I guess was Thursday nite Minnesota time. The webcams have been great for touching base everyday with the guys. They get to know Neela a little bit before we finally make it home. She doesn't interact too much with video of her older brothers, but we hold the webcam on her as she roams around and tears apart the room during the call. Andrew wants us to do a webcam of us giving her a bath, which I guess would then be a bathcam.

This morning Marnie took Neela to the pavilion park by herself as part of our "mommy bonding with Neela" program. The program was off to a roaring start until Neela fell asleep in the stroller and slept through half of the kick-off event. We met for lunch at a nice local restaurant where half of what I tried to order was either too big, too spicy, or wasn't available today. We were there early and so we had about 6-8 people waiting on the three of us. They helped keep Neela entertained before the food arrived by walking her around the restaurant. Our food came and Neela sat on my lap eating bananas, noodles, and ham. Her favorite thing is to take the end of a long noodle in her mouth and slurp the whole thing up. Cost of today's lunch: $12. Trail of food from Neela's mouth to the floor: Priceless

We took a brief nap in the early afternoon and then took Neela back to the orphanage to have her boil checked out. It is looking better, but they felt trying to drain it a little would help it improve faster. After seeing the syringe they would use in a sealed sterilized pack, we gave them the go ahead. The room there was not particularly clean, but their procedures were good. The doctor washed her hands and put on clean gloves. Everything they used came out of autoclave containers. They cleaned the skin with iodine before draining. Marnie and I held her during the whole procedure. The only disappointment was that not much fluid was extracted with the syringe. They said something about it not having softened up enough yet. Not sure what that means, but we are feeling okay with it since it is looking better and we will be home soon to have our doctor take a look at it. We will continue with the warm compress regimen.

We ended the day with a nice stroll down the walking mall and a $3 dinner at one of the thrifty restaurants on the mall. Tomorrow we are going out to see a small ancient village near Nanchang. Will be nice to get outside of the city again.