Wednesday Oct 10 at approx 10:45 pm

The internet is very slow tonight, and so we've attached just one picture. Hopefully it shows up - it's a picture of Eli at Pizza Hut yesterday. (We're starting to call him both Lai Lai and Eli now - our guide only calls him Eli, and so we thought it was safe to start using both. Eventually we will transition to Zachary Eli, then just to Zachary. Maybe when he's older he will choose Eli - that's his call.)

Today we visited the Ming Tomb, as well as the Nanjing museum. The Ming Tomb is where the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty was buried 600 years ago. It is a very beautiful park with lots of statues of animals, warriors, etc., with trees all around. It was especially nice since it was a beautiful day today - high 70s, sunny and low humidity. The Nanjing museum has a ton of artifacts, but quite frankly it wasn't something that excited me all that much.

After the Ming Tom and the museum, we grabbed lunch quickly at a Chinese restaurant very near to the hotel. It was good. The kids took a long nap, and then we went down to Lake Xuanwu, which is a large lake near the hotel. We walked around there for a while, and at that point it was after 5 pm so we went to KFC for dinner. That went fine.

All in all, it was a fairly relaxing day. Tomorrow we head off to visit Eli's old orphanage. That's a 2 to 2.5 hour drive one way, but we think it will be worth it. The orphanage director tried to say that they were too busy, but our guide pushed her and she allowed us to visit tomorrow.

Since we've had Eli for almost a few days now, we're beginning to learn a lot more about him. For the most part, he probably has bonded more with me than with Sue, but that's starting to change and things are progressing with Sue nicely. Stacie tries to talk with and help Eli, but so far he has resisted that. Hopefully that will change soon. He also still cries somewhat when he goes to bed or when he wakes up. Not sure the reason, but this isn't as bad as it was a couple of days ago and I assume that this reflects Eli's dramatically changed world during the past few days.

Eli's personality is also starting to really show up - he laughs a fair amount, especially when he does something that he thinks may be a little out of bounds. He could be a handful later on if we don't set the ground rules now, which we are starting to do (of course in a loving way). I think he's going to be a great kid.

I thought it might be interesting to let you know some other things we have learned about Eli:

-He loves to eat. He loves watermelon, bananas and yogurt (the Chinese kind) for breakfast. For lunch and dinner, he likes rice (steamed or fried), dumplings, soup, chicken, pizza - and probably a bunch of other Chinese food that we haven't tried yet. He also likes a lot of water with his meals, and he likes hot milk anytime. By the way, I just learned today that Chinese adults typically like hot milk as well rather than cold milk.

-He is somewhat reserved (especially with new people), but then he warms up and likes to have fun.

-He will probably need some more work in his mouth area - perhaps some plastic surgery and other stuff. We'll also want to have his skin looked at because he has a number of marks on his legs. We thought they were bug bites but now we're not so sure. We'll have to check that out. There's some other things as well, but nothing major. It will be nice to have him get some medical attention.

-I think he's smart and is mechanically inclined. He is able to put things together, pull them apart, and in general figure stuff out. It's a good thing he has these abilities naturally, because he certainly wouldn't be learning this stuff from me!

-He's very independent and can do a lot of things for himself. Fortunately, this includes going to the bathroom (he's very reliable on that).

-Given the fact that it's been less than 72 hours, he has made very good strides towards bonding with us. It isn't perfect, but it's better than what I could have reasonably expected.

Unrelated to Eli, I have a few other random thoughts to share (some of you that have been to China will appreciate them):

-The way Chinese people drive still amazes me. They cut people off, don't pay attention to lanes, etc. Every day the driver of our minivan would probably be in 2 dozen accidents if he were driving in the US, but since everyone drives the same way it works out.

-For some odd reason some restaurants like to greet every customer with "Good morning" even when it's the afternoon or evening. Not sure I even have a guess as to why this is the case . . .

-Sometimes the English translation for Chinese advertisements or signs doesn't quite work out as well as planned. I recently read in the Wall Street Journal that China is attempting to correct these problems before the Olympics. A couple of quick examples from the Chinese supermarket that we went to a couple of days ago. First, when you enter the store, there is a huge sign which says "We welcome your coming." Also, there were signs in the store all over the place translating the Chinese name for the store as the "CE Market." But when you leave, there is a large sign which says "Thanks for shopping at RT Market." There are many other examples of this "Chinese English" that I could give. It's just kind of funny seeing the botched language.

Okay, that's it for tonight. Hopefully the internet will be faster tomorrow and we can attach more pictures.

Gord