Nick visits an ancient Chinese village

AThe highlight of today was a short (maybe about 20 minutes) walk around a rural Chinese village. It's really not ancient, as about 75% of all Chinese people live like this as opposed to the city life we've seen thus far. There's no running water, living conditions are (as you'll be able to see) less than comfortable, and this is how my two sisters would have lived had they not been adopted. Instead of Ana singing Hannah Montannah like she is right now, she'd probably be dirty, cold, and hopeless. Ugh.

It was really interesting though. Everyone was really nice and they all seemed excited to have visitors. Some of the allowed us to walk through their home as well. We didn't stay long because the tour guide said its very unsanitary, and she didn't want us to get sick.

After that we went to a Porcelin (I probably spelled that wrong) shop, which is what Jiangxi province is known for. The 'rents got some very fragile dishes that they're going to force me to hold on the 12 hour flight home. Joy.

Now we're just relaxing at the hotel again. I took another three hour nap (jetlag is persistent), and we're now waiting for our room service to be delivered to us. Tomorrow fly to Guangzhou, where we'll be staying for a week before heading home. Most families in our group get to leave Wednesday, but we have to stay until Friday because of some appointment we have to do that they couldn't schedule in with the rest of the families. I'm really enjoying myself over here, but I'm also so looking forward to getting home and getting back into my normal routine. And after seeing the terrible lives people are forced to live over here, work and school won't seem so bad.

Hopefully our hotel will have wifi in the next area (it should). I probably won't post an update tomorrow though, as I'm sure I'll be too lazy/apathetic to set up the laptop just to say "We woke up today and got on a plane, and now we're in our hotel. Bye."

Isabella has really taken to myself and my dad. Her clothes that we got her in smell heavily of cologne, so we think she must have been close to her foster father. This is a complete opposite of how it was with Eliana.

Picture time:


More than a billion people live in places like this in China.


The grey house on the left is a new house that was just finished.


Isabella wants YOU to adopt


Last night whenever I sat Isabella down she would instantly start crying, and when I picked her back up she would immediately start laughing and being silly. It was awesome.

Another village shot


Rows of houses

A day in the life