Half way point!

Tonight is our last night in Nanning! Happy to have been here, but ready to move on to Guangzhou.  So is Roman! I bet he has said this 100 times today...

Nanning, airplane, Guangzhou, airplane, Hong Kong, airplane, AMERICA! haha

We had a good day!After breakfast, we met Belinda to go to the People's Park. It's the oldest park in Nanning City, but I had no idea it had so much to offer. Roman knew exactly where we were, he said his foster mom brought him there and he wanted to feed the fish. That costs 1yuan/$0.16US so I sprung for it ;)

It's such a beautiful place.

Photo cred: Roman West

And then we hit the motherload. Carnival games!

They had a blast and it cost me about 40yuan/$6.50US. SPLENDID.

That ^^ means he's tired. Every time. 

And that is what he was doing right before we started to leave. While we were walking, he wanted to get his tolos (his fav toy) out of his bag and play it. I said no, because you spin it on the ground, we were walking to meet our driver, in a very crowded place yada yada. He tried and tried to get them out of the backpack and I ended up taking it away. We saw our first real tears and he was pushing me away. He told our guide, "But my foster family gives me whatever I want!" Yeah, kinda figured. I picked him up so he couldn't run off, but he squirmed and kicked the whole time. I asked her to tell him, "Mommy loves you but you need to listen. You can play your toy when we get to the hotel." He didn't give a rats what I said, but it opened up a really interesting parenting conversation with Belinda! I learned a lot about Chinese culture!  I started swinging him up and down and he calmed down. Then he kissed me and asked for a snack. I'll take it :)

We had lunch in the room with a little downtime before they got restless and needed to head back out. There was really only one option: swimming! Roman had been asking all day. He already told our guide all about yesterday and said, "My mommy did not buy me the swimming wings!". 

It took about 10 minutes before the little engine that could decided he was going to conquer that slide that tried to kill him the day before (reminder: it's 1.3 feet deep). 

He needed his ge-ge at first.

They transitioned from going down together, to Cale at the bottom to catch him, to solo sliding!

Again, SO PROUD OF HIM/THEM!

After the pool, we braved the crazy streets of Nanning in search of food all by ourselves.  There is a huge intersection behind our hotel and very little rhyme or reason to the flow of traffic. Best game of Frogger that I've played in a while, but we made it. We stopped into what I assume is a fast food restaurant and pointed at some pictures. The meals came with drinks, though we didn't get to choose what it was. Cale tasted his first (Roman refused...wisely).

Me: What is it?!

Cale: Green peas!

Me: Green peas?? C'mon Cale...

taste.

It's green peas.

Weird.

(China moms?!)

Our food was delicious though and we stopped at a market on our walk home and picked up a refreshing luke warm Chinese Pepsi.

I think our housekeeper likes us. He left me a sweet note, an extra bottle of water, and chocolates by the bed. Haha.

This evening, Belinda brought by our notary documents and official adoption decree. 

We stayed in the room and the boys happily played their tolos for forever.  They are wild as bucks, but listen to this laugh and you'll understand why I let them do it anyway...

Tomorrow evening, we head to Guangzhou (per Roman's itinerary)!

We check out of our hotel at 3:00 and then go pick up his passport- whoop. 

We will go straight to the airport from there, but our flight doesn't leave until eight something (it was changed, mi familia). It's only about an hour long flight, but will be late for us by the time we check into our next hotel. I will let everyone know we arrived safely! xo