World Travelers!

When Joe and I got married, I did not even want to go on a "real" honeymoon.  If we could not get there in the car in a couple of hours, I did not want to go!  For our honeymoon we drove about 45 minutes and stayed in an inn for a few nights, and then I was ready to go home. . . . . . . .

Guess we didn't know then what world travelers we would be!

Today we had the most exciting parts our our trip so far - probably not as exciting as tomorrow, but pretty interesting, nonetheless.

We woke up this morning and had our all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet - which just puts Joe in a wonderful mood!  No matter how much we paid for the hotel, he believes he can eat enough to actually make money.  We also got to know some other families that would be traveling to Nanjing with us.  That has definitely been a nice part of this trip so far.  Next we said good-bye to our sweet and helpful guide in Beijing named Nancy, and boarded a plane for Nanjing.  

           

This is Nancy leading us around the Fobidden City with her panda bear flag.

Nanjing is very different than Beijing.  The only other Americans we have seen here are the ones that are in our travel group.  There are many universities in this city, so there are lots of college students.  We went to a convenience store and bought some interesting snacks, such as cucumber potato chips and who knows what else!  Then we ventured down the street to the subway station, which doubles as a food court/shopping area.  We ate supper at a Chinese McDonalds, and then came back to our hotel room. 

Our guide told us this is a statue of a son of the dragon.  It reminded me of The Mountain Meets the Moon, a book Katherine and I read recently for school!

This is the underground subway station that also turns into a giant mall.

A picture of the streets in Nanjing

We had to take a picture of our hotel room before we turn it into a playroom tomorrow!

The hotel is extremely nice, but there is no air conditioning so we are a little hot.  In hopes it would cool down as the night went on, we decided to go back to the subway station and explore a little!  We somehow ended up in this never-ending maze of a very crowded shopping mall with no visible end or exits.  I have never seen anything like it!  We bought a toy police car for Drew that makes noise.  No one we talked to could speak even broken English, so we wandered around until we found our way back to the subway station.  Now the hotel room is a little cooler, the jet lag seems to have worn off, and we are ready to meet Drew Boshi tomorrow!  We were excited to receive some final pictures of him today. It looks like that boy does have some teeth!  Please say some prayers for him and for us tomorrow.   

We were really happy to see him smiling!

 I am glad he is outside!