Feeding gold fish at the park

 Part 6 of our travels with Isaac. March 28, 2014.

After the museum we went to The People's Park and fed the giant goldfish.

I also included pictures of our drive to and from our outing. China is full of contradictions. High tech fancy buildings right near the old style little street shops, it is a mixture of an evolving city.

Greatly amused because Tikvah accidentally dropped her entire bun into the water instead of just little pieces. This is french bread (that the Little Princesses LOVED when we were here) so Ethan - talking for the fish - said "Hey, come over here. They've opened a French restaurant!"

 
The French restaurant floated quite awhile until the fish figured out it was actually eatable.

The scooters are everywhere. I saw what appeared to be hundreds of them parked on the sidewalks all over town. They all bunch up like that at the stop lights
 

Guangxi Museum of Nationalities - March 28, 2014

This is part 5 of our travels to get Isaac in March of 2014.

We spent today getting acquainted with Isaac's province, specifically the various ethnic minorities and rural peoples. Whereas the Little Princesses were from a very large factory city with lots of migrant workers, Isaac is from a rural area - think of our parallel of Native Americans and different tribes. We visited the Guangxi Museum of Nationalities http://www.gxmb.com/eng/ and learned a lot about the area. The "huts" you see models of are what they still live in in these rural areas. Also think rice terraces on the mountainsides...

Looking at a huge map of Guangxi Province.

The Guilin area which is where "An Orphan's Wish" was located. This is where Isaac received the medical care that he wasn't able to receive in his orphanage, and the place that advocated for him to get a family. They were directly responsible for US finding his file, and also for him receiving such an excellent foster care placement once they closed last summer.

This lady was making "love balls". Apparently on a particular day each year the guys are on one side of the river and the girls on the other. They sing to each other - perhaps questions about how many family members the other has, etc. If a girl is interested in a particular fellow she throws the love ball across the water to him. If he returns the interest he catches the ball.

 
 I loved learning about Guangxi Province and if you go to Nanning, this museum is worth your time!

Climbing the mountain to the Buddhist temple

Part 4 of our March 2014 adoption trip, catch up post.  This is put together from emails and Facebook posts from that time.

We climbed waaaaay up the mountain (it was paved) to a Buddhist temple. Like it or not, this is part of the history of the land where some of my children were born, so we wanted to see it.  Isaac and I ended up staying out of the courtyard and temple because so many people were burning incense and it was really smoky. Yup, my kid - bothered greatly by smoke.

Mega smoky!  Incense sticks about two feet long could be purchased, and people were carrying a whole handful of them into the temple yard to give thanks to Buddha.

I didn't go into this area because of the smoke, but Ethan took a picture for me. The guide was trying to give us history on the area and said something about "guards who looked after Buddha." The big gold statue must be one of those guards.

 

We had REALLY used up all of our energy going round and round to get up to this place.  THEN we discovered there were carts, like open air buses, one could ride.  We got on, Ethan held the wheelchair off the back of the thing, and down we went.  I wish we had figured that out for the ride UP!