A Few Other Bits of Information

While staying in Nanning, our primary focus has been to try and establish some sort of routine with the Twins. However, we have found a couple of other cool things. For one, we were looking around the gift / art store in the hotel and were interested in purchasing some jade bracelets for the girls. The lady working at the store told us we could get some nice pieces at a cheaper price through her. It sounded a little shady, but we were game. She came back to the hotel later that night and we really did get some nice pieces. We purchased two pearl and jade bracelets and two jade necklaces for the girls. The jade necklaces are of roosters since the girls were born in the year of the rooster. In addition, Jan and I both purchased two pieces. All this for less than $100 American dollars.

Oh, and I had all the intentions to post the picture below on our first update to this site. As everyone knows, it costs money to adopt. As part of the expenses to adopting in China, you have to make a donation to the orphanage in American money. Because we were adopting twins, my donation was going to be around $10K. I've never held that much money in my hands before, so I thought I had better take a picture. Hence the picture below. And on top of this, I had to carry this sum of change all the way over here.


Another thing that happened that made me feel good, was after a cab ride I took back to hotel after retrieving those McDonald's fries. The cost of my cab ride in Chinese money was about $7. This is about equal to $1 in American money. Therefore, I was thinking that cab drivers probably don't make that much and that I should tip the guy. So I gave him about three times the fare cost, which in American dollars was not that much, but the look on his face was of pure surprise and happiness. I think I made his day and mine too.