Mr. Popular

Henry is a huge hit in this place. Just check out the chicks surrounding him in this shot. Today was a tad blase (sorry, I don't know how to add the accent-ay whatever to the "e" in "blase" in this blogger thing). We didnt' do much at all, really. Just had our normal massive breakfast, then ventured out into the ridiculous, soup-like humidity to take a walk around Shamian Island -- the small island here in Guangzhou where our hotel is located. However, I had to exchange money at the Bank of China right next to the hotel, and got handed number 68 by the 18 or so year old cop at the front while Melissa, Henry, Mae and Val waited outside in the soup. I looked up and they were at number 49. Half an hour later, I was counting my Yuan as I stepped out onto the sidewalk just as Val was putting up our umbrella to protect against the sky opening up. Great timing. We waited it out a little bit, then began our walk. Stopped into a few shops, talked some of the shop owners down from like $3.50 to like $3.00 for some trinkets, sweat like Bejezus, then just barely made it into Lucy's Cafe for lunch for fish and chips, grilled cheese, noodles, beer and sodas as the next wave of thunderstorms gave the area a good soaking. At Lucy's, we sat next to the nicest young couple from Colorado who talked our ears off. He recently graduated college in the U.S. and now lives a few hours away from here and teaches English. She is finishing up her college degree right now and is Korean, adopted by her parents when she was six months old. She had so many moving things to say to us. It was quite nice talking to them. They're traveling about and are actually going to be going through the city where Mae is from -- Lianjiang -- on their way to a southern China beach and then onto Vietnam. They're going to take pictures for us and email them to us along with a description of Mae's city, so that will be pretty cool to have that. Bopped around the hotel and in our room in the afternoon, then went to a Vietnamese restaurant up the street with two other couples for dinner. It was so-so. We're all looking forward to a nice bowl of Captain Crunch or the like when we get back on U.S. soil. Homesickness set in with everyone today. By the way, check out the pic of the squatter toilet I snapped today. We're all really enjoying those when we're out and about in the city. It's also kind of entertaining when you catch out of the corner of your eye a glimpse of a little kid letting loose on the side of the street (we've seen that happen no less than three times, including one taking care of Number Two with his mom holding him above the bushes on our way to dinner this evening!).

One other thing -- we got some documents today, including Mae's abandonment advertisement. It's a picture of her that was placed in the local newspaper when she was about 3 weeks old with an announcement of her abandonment. It was pretty amazing to see a picture of her that young and to think about the chain of circumstances that have since brought us together.

Okay, I'm going to bed now. Not too many pictures today, but here they are, nonetheless -- http://www.flickr.com/photos/caira/sets/757912/

R