Chicken feet anyone?

As I briefly described yesterday in the blog, we are not in Kansas anymore. English is not a second language over here and apparently it does not even make the top 10 list. But, the people of Chonqing do all they can to understand and give it their best shot. Just imagine an interchange of me asking a Chinese person for a Pepsi by pointing, nodding, bowing, squinting, bowing, asking, bowing, waving, moving, bowing, and they leave and come back with a plate of noodles. Though hard we all try to communicate, sometimes we just don't hit the mark! Take our chicken feet story for example.

For supper tonight, a group of us went below ground into a maze of city entertainment and hustle-bustle. Down in the underground streets are casino like passageways and restaurants. We popped into a restaurant that looked, well, I don't think "normal" is the word but maybe accommodating is more accurate. It was hilarious. Trying to communicate has become a joke! Imagine couples from Georgia, Colorado, Washington, and Belgium trying to order food. All we were hoping for is food that we could recognize at least a little. Well, we missed our target! I still do not know what we got or what we ate. Some was really good and some was very, very not good. The funniest, however, was the order of chicken. Abby's mom Connie and her whole table got chicken legs - literal chicken legs with toes, claws, and everything surrounded by this yellow sauce. We about died laughing! And, Connie gets a sticker in my book - she ate three bites just to say she did. I'm sure her slight shade of green will diminish soon along with the twitching. And our poor kids! They put their smiles on and took samples of everything but in the end they just went for the white rice. I can't say that I blame them!

As I write, baby Malea is sleeping soundly. She is such a good baby. Kiersten and Maddie are asleep as well and are very tired partly from their day of swimming (a whole other story of communication and cultural experience; we won't be going swimming tomorrow!).

Here are some fun random pics from our trip thus far. I hope you enjoy seeing them as much as we enjoy sharing them. This trip is stretching us and we are loving the brain expansion. So much to see. So much to learn. Tomorrow we explore the city - the old downtown. Here's hoping we get there and back safely. Should be yet another wild adventure. Here's to living, adventure, and hoping for the best!

Marc, Abby, Kiersten, Madison, and Malea