Thursday February 8th/Kunming

Since most of you are in the throws of winter...let me start by telling you that the weather in Kunming has been in the 60's all week. I know that wasnt very nice, but my dinner last night had a chicken head in it and quite frankly I would take the zero degree weather and american food. But once again, Becky and Kari seem to love the food. The food in this part of China is very different from where we are headed tomorrow, where the food is more traditional chinese.

Today we started off by visiting Kari's orphanage, it was a very nice place, much nicer than where Lily was. It had a seperate medical building, housing and school. All of the rooms had very nice wooden cribs or beds and each one had a down quilt. It was extremely clean and they had a large staff that seemed to care very much for the children. We met one of Kari's caretakers and she let us take her picture. Just before we left, several of the women yelled out the window to Kari "Xi Weihong" they yelled her chinese name and waved out the window...Kari turned and waved back to them with a big smile on her face.

Next stop for the day was the hotel, where as you can see, Kari had a lot of fun playing with the laundry basket. While she played in the room with Becky, setting off the alarm, smearing potatoes all over the furniture and all other kinds of fun things, I went with Zhou to get lunch...brace yourself because this is the highlight of Kunming for me. We went to PIZZA HUT! I was never so happy, even on Christmas morning. After a wonderful meal, it was nap time. Once we woke up, we took Kari over to the park and to the amusement park rides...she loved it...she rode every single one of them and we felt like rock stars...evidently they dont see a lot of 40 year old americans riding kiddy rides with chinese children. We had people come and watch everywhere we went and they would take pictures...I can just here them now..."guess what I saw today at the park...and I got pictures"!

Once playtime was over it was time to go eat again... :( . We went to another Chinese place, they called it hot pot...and as I mentioned in the opening paragraph...it was not such a hit with me.

Well, it has been a wonderful day and Kari is doing so well, she gives mommy and daddy kisses. She loves to play, she is extremely rambuctious and goofy. I can't wait to see Lily and Kari together. She sings constantly and I am sure that she will be trying out as the lead singer for Nate's band as soon as she learns english.

Off to bed.

Gregg