One day away

Jeremiah: Tomorrow we are going to leave China. First we are going to fly to Hong Kong. Next we are going to get on a different plane and then fly to Los Angeles. When we are in Los Agneles we are going to stay for a while and see uncle Stan. After Los Angeles we are going to fly to Charlotte, and then to Jacksonville. It's going to be a loooong flight. I really want to get home and show Ellie to all my friends. I also want to show her to grandpa. I am looking forward to seeing my house again. But I'm still going to miss China. I think that my favorite part of all of the trip was...getting Ellie!

Chen Family Academy

Phil: After the Buddhis temple we went to the Chen family academy, a beautiful well preserved house (the ancestral temple of the Chen clan) that has been made into a folk arts museum. It is an ornately carved building, and was the only museum we have gone to (the Three Gorges Museum in Chongqing doesn't count, as we arrived there just as it was closing and were just shepherded to the gift shop). The "folk arts" displayed at the museum are far more sophisticated than what is usually suggested by this phrase in the west. The museum showcased the great traditional arts of carving, painting. fan-making and ceramics of Guangzhou. Many of the pieces were incredibly elaborate, including an enormous ship carved out of ivory, with hundreds of tiny figures and windows that opened. Many of the pieces were made within the last three decades, and inevitably, many of them were for sale. We only had a limited amount of time to see it. Ironically, Ellie was perfectly happy to wander around, carried by me in her Baby Bjorn. But the boys have a limited patience for museums; when they started playing hackeysack in the courtyard we knew it was time to go.

Sleeping Bunny

And here is what is in the crib in the Tatami room photo...

Tatami Room

This is the Japanese Tatami room that we upgraded to. It has two rooms, a sitting room and a bedroom. The bedroom has one step up to the tatami area, with a futon on the floor. We are so much happier when we don't have to climb over the bed to get to the door!

Hackey-Sack

Jeremiah:
Jeremiah:
Hackey-sacks are not like the hackey-sacks in America. They look a lot like birdies (from badminton). They have feathers on them, but other than that, you use them in the same way. I got two for 15 Yuan, which is about $2.00. It is hard to play. How you play is you take it and drop it and then kick it in the air. Then someone else kicks it to someone else, and they kick it to someone else. And they just keep on going until one of them drops it. They also do all these tricks like in the video. For instance, one time the hackey sack flew over a man’s head and he kicked it with the heel of his foot.

Three Wishes

Alex: There were also these roofs held up with bamboo, and people put lit incense sticks on them. Our guide said that the people made wishes and the smoke carried the wishes to god. There was also this black pot with a hole the size of a fist and you were supposed to make a wish and throw a coin through the hole. If you made a wish and threw t he coin through the hole you got your wish. If it went through the other side that meant you got another wish. I got three wishes. One was for me living a long and happy life, then another for me to live a long and happy life. It took two tries to get each coin in. Later on, near the end, I took a coin and ran back and made a wish that I wanted my baby sister to be a strong healthy person and live a long and healthy life. That coin went in on the first try.

Baby blessing

Alex: Today we went to a Buddhist temple for our tour. We went into the temple and to a room where there was a monk tapping a hollow gourd. We all went over and knelt down and he started praying and doing strange rituals in front of three giant buddhas. He was blessing the adoptive babies our group had. I noticed that there were cans of pepsi and coke along with food in front of the statues.