Guangxi Minority Museum Day

Taken yesterday.  Checking out the view.  

Not particularly flattering, but here I am doing laundry in the bathtub.  It was an experiment, as we were not sure if it would dry in this humidity.  But we keep the a/c running when we're in the room, so it dries the air out a bit.  In fact, Katie had a nosebleed in the night, and I suspect it was a combination of picking and not being used to the dry air.  

This morning in the van on the way to the museum.  Our guide's apprentice is on the left.  Turns out, it's been very helpful to have an extra pair of hands around with two little ones.  In fact, he even held Luke while he was raging at the notary building yesterday, so Paul and I could sign papers without bringing all that noise into her little office.  

Katie and Luke are wearing the same sized shirts today.  Luke fills his out more than Katie does hers, but they're about the same in torso length.  She's a tiny little thing.  

At the museum, in front of a drum replica.

We saw many copper drums like this from hundreds of years ago.  They have a sun in the middle, rings that represent lightning radiating outward, and frogs around the rim.  

Our guide made a point of explaining that the frogs have big butts because the people believe big butts on women is good for many children.  Um, yeah.  Nice to know it's good for something, right?  

This was one of the stalls from an exhibit of a shopping area of Katie's hometown.  Faaaaabric!  

This cool dude was made out of rice straw.  See over his shoulder?  There's a big fish that was really neat, too.  Same technique.  And a dragon.

Famous butterfly bridge.  

We had an adventure for lunch.  We went out to a "no English" restaurant and did some pointing and gesturing.  Our guide wrote down the characters for rice noodles, so we got those, but the rest was sort of a surprise.  The thing in the black pan is chicken.  The head is over on the other side of the green garnish, with the beak sticking up.  The noodles were fabulous, and they had some tasty tidbits in with them, including something very like thinly sliced dilly beans, and also peanuts.  Katie likes peanuts!  I would dig one out (with chopsticks) and pop it in her mouth, and she would scrinch up her face in a little grin for me.  So cute.  I have yet to capture the grin on camera, but she's definitely warming up to us.  

This little guy was falling asleep in his lunch.  We're kind of mystified by his behavior.  I got some rice cereal into him this afternoon (thank you, WalMart.  I find it amusing that we shop more at WM in China than we ever would at home.) and he liked it, but he wouldn't have anything to do with the baby food pears I tried to give him a couple days ago.  He can throw impressive fits, but it's not connected to anything that we can determine.  It doesn't *appear* to be grief type fits, although I know those would be totally appropriate.  He wants the bottle, then he doesn't want the bottle, and he arches and screams and kicks.  This morning Paul missed breakfast because Luke got going just as we sat down to eat and Paul took him back to the room.  We're really wondering what we're dealing with here.  It could just be the adjustment, but my gut says something else is up.  

And this shot was taken walking back from lunch.  This is the Expo building.  10 Asian counties get together here to discuss trade.  It's pretty lit up at night, too, as we discovered this evening.  Our nap ran late (Paul's not feeling good, so I let him sleep after the babies woke up) so it was dark by the time we got to dinner, and even darker on our way back to the hotel.  

Remember how I mentioned that walking through traffic here is like the video game Frogger?  Nanchang was crazy and scary, and I just put blind faith in my guide and went when she went.  Here, it's not quite so bad.  Paul calls it Level One Frogger.  Tonight, we experienced Level Two, when we traversed back to the hotel in the dark.  

Speaking of traffic, I'm blown away at the things we've seen on scooters here.  Large loads, entire families, ladies riding side saddle, etc.  Tonight, I saw a woman driving a scooter with a baby in her lap and a baby walker collapsed as cargo.  

I mentioned to Paul that we weren't seeing any pregnant women, but since I said that, we saw a few tonight at the mall and WM, where we had to pick up some more water.  Poor Paul.  He keeps opening a bottle of water and setting it down, only to come back to it later and find that I've finished it!