the daily grind of touring China

It's 6am on Monday morning...Gotcha Day!  I can't sleep anymore, I can already tell this day is going to drag until 3:30 when we meet our babies.

So here's a little of what it's been like to travel in China so far...

The people here are overall very friendly, in Beijing, we blended in as tourists and no one took a second look at us.  Here in Nanning, we stand out, a lot.  We have not seen any other caucasians yet.  There are no black people anywhere.  The Han Chinese are the majority here but honestly I can't tell the difference between any of them, they are all unique and I'm starting to see that but there's not one thing that sets one ethnic group apart from another. 

They speak one of three languages here, Candarin, cantonese and honestly I've forgotten the third.  Most likely Katie has heard Cantonese. 

The one child policy is a little easier to understand as we move from one area to another.  Beijing was incredibly crowded with 18 billion people there...it's a HUGE city!  It is not as crowded here but with all of the apartment buildings and such here, one suspects that there are a lot of people here too.

Someone apparently forgot to tell Nanning that we're in a global recession as there is development everywhere.  Huge apartment buildings are going up everywhere you look, it's absolutely unreal.

As we left Beijing yesterday, I snapped a photo of the airport and looking at it now, one can see how bad the smog is there and they claim it is much better than it used to be.  It's just like a fog that lies over the city most of the time.  There is evidence everywhere of the country trying to conserve.  At the airport in Beijing, we saw free water stations where you could refill  your water bottle.  Or if you just wanted a little drink, there were these little paper-like envelopes that you could put a little water in and drink from directly.  We had a person on the street come up to us and ask if they could have our nearly empty water bottle, we gave it to her.  She appeared to be a beggar and we wondered if she collected things to recycle in an effort to raise some money.

Brushing your teeth in China takes a bit of thought as you don't dare run water from the tap on your toothbrush, the hotels all provide bottled water for you to brush your teeth with.  This was the same in Russia and I'm sure many other countries on this side of the world.

Going to the bathroom can be interesting.  The hotels that we are staying at are all Western, so that's no problem but when you are out and about, the bathrooms are a little less accommodating, especially for women.  Basically you have a stall that has a hole in the floor and you squat.  There's no toilet paper, so you have to take your own tissue and of course you need your own hand sanitizer.

The bed in our room in Beijing was huge and the room very modern.  Our hotel in Nanning is nearly brand new and nice but the room is fairly small with two beds that seem to be smaller than a double bed.  We have one tv channel that is in english, it's some sort of news channel and so far has been relatively interesting to watch.  The only news we've seen from the U.S. is about Michael Jackson and that drama. 

Rice...ok, I'm getting tired of rice.  We eat it at every meal.  There's a Pizza Hut at the mall next door, we'll probably be checking that out real soon.  Plus there are KFC's everywhere. 

Last night at dinner, we ordered several different dishes to share.  One of them which we thought was chicken was interesting as it still had very small bones in it, you were able to crunch some of them up and some you had to work around.  I don't think that was chicken, pigeon maybe.

We had read in one of the guidebooks that some restaurants in this province eat dog, I wish I were kidding but that's one thing we haven't seen here...stray animals of any sort.  Hmmm??

It is very tropical here.  There are palm trees and the humidity is incredible.  When we arrived at the airport, the temperature was 90, the heat indexes for the week are to be between 100-117 degrees F.  The humidity almost takes your breath away.  I'm glad for the air conditioning though we've been warned that our daughters aren't used to the A/C and could easily become sick if we keep the rooms too cool--not to mention all of the other stressors they will be dealing with.

Breakfast is finally going to start in 20 minutes.  We're starving!  We brought lots of snacks with us but are trying only to eat them when we really need them since it's still early in our trip.

(The photo I'm trying to attach is the airport in Beijing and the smog.)