Nanning Park Visit

Where do I start for today? It’s been such a full day today! We started the day with a trip to Qingxiushan Park where we had the opportunity to climb two pagodas and look out over Nanning. The first pagoda was an easy climb and the view was okay. The second pagoda, the dragon and elephant pagoda, was a tougher climb and the views were much better. A few interesting facts on the second pagoda: normally pagodas are built in Buddhist temples, there wasn’t one in sight today; it was built during the Ming Dynasty (1368 -1644) and torn down in because the Chinese were afraid invading Japanese forces would use it as a landmark while flying over China…they rebuilt it in 1986. At the bottom of the hill and pagoda was a serene lake setting with Koi fish. It was amazing how the Koi would fight each other to get to a small morsel of food. Jenna enjoyed watching the fish while eating her mid-morning meal.

After the park, Kelly took us to the Ethnic Minority Museum to learn about the Zhoung people from Guangxi. It is similar to the Miao people from Guizhou, where Julia was born. There were displays of the ethnic crafts, clothes, and other various traditional items. Among my favorite were the embroidered tapestries. Amazing handiwork! Below the minority displays were displays of large drums. Kelly told us that drums are important symbols of power in China…to me they just looked like old metal drums. Sorry. We made a few purchases in the gift shop because they sold some items that are native to this province. We purchased a “Love Ball”, these are embroidered balls with tassels hanging from them. Women would make these balls and give them to the man she loves and wants to marry. They are beautiful pieces of art.

Jenna has been doing well today. We are starting to get many smiles from her and I hope to hear laughter soon. It seems like she has chosen daddy to be her comfort and personal escort everywhere, but she will play with me and let me feed her. I will get to carry her occasionally, but she really prefers daddy when she’s tired or fussy. We think this has happened this time around because my back wouldn’t let me carry her constantly for 2 days. Oh well, I’ve gone through this before and Jenna is not nearly as exclusive as Julia was…I’ll get through it just fine. She played with me a lot at dinner and boy does she like to play hide-and-seek with a dinner napkin! There were a lot of smiles and soft giggles at dinner tonight between me and Jenna. I can’t wait to hear her belly laugh, I know it’s in there somewhere!

We’ve put a slideshow and a video clip of today’s activities. I hope you enjoy them. Tomorrow is Jenna’s birthday and we don’t know what to do yet. Tonight our guide brought a birthday cake for 3 in the group: a daddy, a travel friend, and Jenna all have a birthday this week. That was a wonderful surprise…and Jenna threw cake at me! Too bad I didn’t have a camera at dinner or you would get to see pictures of that too.

Thank you for all the wonderful comments, they have meant so much to us! We are looking forward to introducing Jenna to all of you when we return home. Blessings to you all from China.