The People's Park and More Walking

Today was a great yet physically exhausting day.  We started with breakfast at our hotel - not sure why but our room came with one free breakfast ticket, score!  Had a mix of Asian and Western breakfast, fried egg noodles, eggs and toast - one may say that I was carbo loading before a day of strenuous activity.  After breakfast we hightailed it across the street to grab some super sized coffee at Starbucks then wandered around the shopping square for a bit, picked up some items to keep in the room and for Little Miss then dropped it back off at the hotel.  It finally looked like the rain was going to hold off and we could no longer see our breath so we decided to venture over to The People's Park for the afternoon.  I have so few words to describe the beauty that we saw in this park - it is 51 hectres and I am fairly certain we walked every square inch of it.  There are walking trails, stairs, an amusement park, stairs, historical museum, exercise stations, stairs,  fishing pond, more stairs, and then there was a group of older people standing around clipping papers to clothes lines that ran around this area.  We were trying to figure out were these missing people (there were photos on some and phone numbers on most)?  But no one looked particularily upset - in fact they seemed to be having good time and exchanging info with other people around there.  Then it hit me, I remembered a special that I watched on China and the growing disparity between the number of men and women and these are basically the parents getting together to market their children out for marriage.  John was sly about it, but he did manage to take a photo as proof!  Again, astounding to see in real life things that I have only previously seen on documentaries or the news...

After walking for what felt like days, we headed back to the shopping square for a late lunch - at Pizza Hut none the less (don't judge, I was starving) then wandered across a few more streets.  The funniest part of being here are the people taking such a huge notice in us and staring and even blatently coming up to us to chat.  One girl in line at the store as we were waiting to pay tapped me on the arm and said "Hello, I would like to make friends with you both.  Where are you from?" "The States" we replied, with eyes as big as saucers she exclaims "The States!  Can I have your mobile number?" to John - it was really cute, she has been learning English in school and wanted to practice.

Made our way back to the hotel, fell asleep for a bit and now here we are.  Resting our weary bodies and preparing to become parents again.  Hopefully by this time tomorrow you will be seeing some photos of our daughter.  It is going to be a long day, not just for us and Little Miss, but the other families that are currently in China that will be meeting their little ones for the first time too - please keep all of the little ones in your thoughts as they have the hardest day of their lives ahead of them.  Here are some photos of our day, hope all of you are doing well and we can't wait to talk to you soon!

xoxo - Nancy

Entrance to The People's Park

Other side of the entrance

Top of the longest staircase I have ever seen

Random statue in a clearing at the top of the hill

Giant palm trees - it really shouldn't be this cold in a place that has this many palm trees

The Parental "Meet\Meat Market"

John at the top of the hill

Yes, we really did walk up and down all of those stairs

More of the park

Finally found our way back to the entrance

View from Pizza Hut - the shopping square

View from our hotel room