People's Park

We are amazed at how Lucy has been absorbed into our family so quickly. It feels as though we've always been together! She's smiling and cooing and laughing regularly. We went back to diapers and formula smoothly - like riding a bike. Jaden is a quick study at being a big brother. He's learned how to make Lu smile and is quick to help when we need him. He's fed Lu and held her, but he's made it clear that he doesn't do diapers!

Every day there is a tour we can take with the group to some place in Nanchang. Sissi & Evelyn want us to know as much of the girl's culture as we can while we are here. On the bus Sissi will tell us stories as we drive - stories of the history, the people, that traditions here in Jiangxi. We soak them up. I pray we retain as much as we can so that we can repeat it all to Lu one day. I have tried to post after each tour, but I am behind by 3! Sometimes we return home and are so tired we just collapse, but some days our VPN isn't working. In China the government blocks certain websites. The blocks are random - a site may be blocked one day and not the next. We've noticed that a lot of the social networking blocks are consistently blocked like Blogger, Facebook and MSN. We got a VPN to get around this, but it is constantly crashing. Today my VPN keeps shutting off almost immediately after I connect. It's very annoying! So I am very behind in blogging...

On Saturday we went to People's Park. It is not at all like any park in the US! In China people don't have yards, so everyone goes to the park to exercise.   The Chinese have many forms of exercise like doing Tai Chi, or martial arts, walking backwards, playing badmitten - we even heard people yelling as a form of exercise! There is equipment for both kids and adults to use for exercise. There are beautiful paths that follow rivers and sometimes they are built around lakes. We saw an area with little tables where older people were playing cards or majong. There were so many people! What a wonderful way to connect with others by spending a day in the park.

Lu ready for a day in the park!

Flowers at the beginning of the park.



This little pavilion was where groups of older people were gathered at tables playing cards.

A group of card players.



This was a children's play area within the park. Look how many people there are on a Saturday!

A woman doing tai chi for exercise in the park.

A woman doing sword dancing as a form of exercise.

Jaden arm wrestling with a statue. It was a draw.

Lucy is a thumb sucker, but is always careful to turn her fingers out of the way so she can see what is going on!

Our happy girl!

This man was "writing" with water on the stones of the park. He was writing poetry and when he saw us he wrote "Welcome to China".



These women were chatting away with little Lu and giving us the thumbs up sign!

 

Jaden is so sweet with Lucy! He's gotten quite good at carrying her and caring for her!

Lucy's passport arrived tonight! That means our time in Nanchang is done and we leave for Guangzhou in the morning. It's our last night in Lucy's home province, bittersweet for sure. We have come to love the people and appreciate the culture here and can't wait to share bits and pieces of it all with Lucy as she grows!