A Day in the Park

Today, while mounds of paperwork are being processed on our behalf, we
had pretty much the whole day free so we went to the People's Park in
Nanning, just a few blocks from our hotel. It is an amazing park in
the middle of downtown with two lakes, tons of people playing music,
dancing, doing tai chi, and flipping their fancy fans, as well as
miles of terraced walkways leading to many new and interesting places,
some of which Jacob, who has been to this park before, directed us
toward, and some he had preferred to avoid; we still want to know what
is atop Monkey Mountain but that will have to remain a mystery unless
one of us ventures up alone. We fed the coy and they were as voracious
as they were gigantic. We also went for a boat ride on the water
equivalent of a golf cart (small battery powered motor, perfect for
folks who want to go slow but who don't want to peddle). Jacob drove
and we live to blog. Aye Aye Captain!
Photos attached separately...

Ride the Dragon!

The rest of the morning

After the official adoption, we returned to the Majestic and played
toys and watched some pretty cool Chinese cartoons on TV. It turns out
that Grand Dad is not to be messed with as he has amazing secret Kung
Fu powers. So watch out villains. Our coordinator Xiao Xiao took great
care of us and our paperwork! She is with us in the photo above. We
are off to lunch at the Food Mart next door. More on the results of
that venture at a later time...

'Twas a Good Night

We had a good day and a big buffet dinner and we pretty much exhausted
Jacob. We put him to bed and he was sound asleep in under 30 seconds.
We thought he was pretending to be asleep but it was for real. This
morning he had some delicious strawberry milk he picked up at the Wal-
Mart Super Store yesterday. The Wal-Mart had many types of dried fish
but appeared to be devoid of Diet Coke. :(
This morning we went to the Civil Welfare Lottery Hotel to meet
various government officials and finalize the legal adoption. It is
now complete and there is a new family member to announce: Jacob
ShuiXiang Thompson. Thank you all for your encouragement and support.
We look forward to moving on to Guangzhou this weekend to meet Joshua
and to being back home soon.

A Couple More

More Photos

We got Jacob back to the room and made some phone calls and read some books.

First Sighting

These are the first photos of us together.

Things are going really well and we are now playing cars.

More after bedtime.

Guess what this means: