Day 5 - Chongqing

Today was a very relaxed day for us. After breakfast, our guide took us to People's Hall. This is an outdoor park-type area, and is quite beautiful. There were many people doing Tai Chi in the yard. Many people bring their kids just to run around and play. There was quite a large military presence in the park, which was interesting. The buildings and landscapes were absolutely beautiful, and very clean.

After the park, we took a long, bumpy drive to what is known as the oldest part of Chongqing. Basically, we walked down a few long alleys while people stared at us. We took it all in, but it was a true culture shock to many of us. The shops are unlike anything we've ever seen before, and, of course, the people there were very curious about us. Hannah and the other girls like to suck their thumbs/fingers. Apparently, this is a big no-no here. We got yelled at by a few older Chinese women who actually started pulling the girls' hands out of their mouths. This was tough to get used to, but fortunately, our guide watched over us and took real good care of us.

After that, our final stop for the day was a park where our guide grew up. His grandfather ran the park, and it is located in the highest spot in all of Chongqing. It was quite nice. We were able to go into the 'Three Gorges Project' museum. Chongqing is located at the intersection where the Yangtze and Jai Ling Rivers meet. In 1992, the National People's Congress passed a resolution to build the Three Gorges Project, currently known as the largest construction project in the world. Basically, they're building a huge dam to supply more power to the surrounding communities. It's a pretty remarkable project. When the dam is complete in 2009 (after 17 years of construction), many communities and cities will have been demolished, and hundreds of thousands of people will have been removed from their homes, and forced to find new places to live. There's a large mural in this museum that depicts the project. The artist, Mr. Liu Zuozhong, documented many journeys throughout the area, and developed a long map/book with many wonderful details. We actually got to meet him at the museum, and had him sign a book for Hannah. He signed it all in Chinese characters, including her Chinese name, and wrote 'Memories of your hometown.' It was pretty neat.

As we were leaving the museum, we ran into hundreds of school children, all dressed in the same warm up suits. They were all in a vocational/sports school preparing for the 2008 Olympics. Their warm ups all had the 'Beijing 2008' Olympic logo on them. These kids were remarkable!! They ran up to all of us, posed for our pictures, shook hands, and were all really anxious to practice their English on us --'Hello, how are you?' and 'Where are you from' and 'What is your name' -- as we were leaving, they started parading to their buses, and marched past us. Every one of them smiled and waved to us and said 'Good bye!' It was really fun, and I'm sure we'll be seeing many of them on TV in a few years!! Bill, one of the new dads in our group (with the red backpack in the photo) tried to teach the kids how to give 'high-fives.' They were all having a good time, as you can see.

After lunch, we were on our own. Hannah took a great nap, so Darese and I just relaxed for a while, and caught up on some emails and news. Our guide went to the notary's office this afternoon to pick up our paperwork, and dropped it off tonight for our review. We got Hannah's official birth certificate, our adoption certificate, and her official abandonment certificate. We'll need all of these when we go to Guanzhou Friday to complete the process. Our guide was really nervous with the paperwork, as they can make or break a family's trip, so he wanted to make sure everything was perfect...we're really lucky to have him, as he is great to work with, and very good with all of us.

Tomorrow and Friday are free days for us, and we fly to Guanzhou Friday afternoon. We'll take it easy tomorrow, maybe go swimming or walk around outside. The weather is really steamy and foggy, but not as bad as we thought it would be. There were some shops we saw tonight that we might take a look at tomorrow. We definitely want to buy some things for Hannah from her home area. We went to lunch at Pizza Hut tonight. After walking around the old alley today, and seeing 'things-on-a-stick', none of us really wanted to venture too far away, so we decided to play it safe.

We've been able to video conference with my mom and Alex a few times since we've been here. The first time was perfect, but the past few times have been pretty choppy, breaking up quite a bit. It was great to see Alex, though. Today he was showing us his new library book. He and Hannah got to meet each other, too, which was really nice. We know he's doing fine, but we really do miss him, and we know he misses us, too.

Well, that's all for now. Hope everyone is doing well, and we continue to miss you!!

Joe, Darese, & Hannah



Here's a nice picture of Daphne, holding Eva, and her 7 year old Olivia, who has been a wonderful big sister helping mom.