Thursday

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to fill you in on what we did today. This morning we just hung around the hotel, and went to Pizza Hut for the second time ( I have a feeling we will be eating there alot, since it is one of the only places with "normal" western food around here).

In the afternoon we went with our travel group by bus to the "Old City" of Chongqing and went to an authentic Chinese outdoor market. There were lots of good shops to buy silk, china and all sorts of other neat things from this province. We could also barter with the people so the prices were pretty good. There were also many interesting foods for sale like locus, and maggots on a stick to eat (YUM!). Along with the interesting foods there were ditches running through the market that had sewage in them so the smells were amazing!! Totally reminded me of living overseas growing up. I am glad we went and had that experience and Kiersten and Madison had their eyes opened to poverty (and how blessed they are) which is a good thing, I think.

It has been very warm here, like in the 80s and very humid. This city is known for smog, it looks foggy all the time and I guess they rarely see blue sky because of the smog so needless to say, we are kind of looking forward to going to Guangzhou which is more on the coast and hoping for a little more pleasant weather.

Malea seems a little sad today and is more clingy, I think she is just doing some grieving and trying to figure out who we are and why she is here. I know it will take her a little while to adjust to all of us. For the most part though she seems to be doing well, she loves to cuddle. We are happy that she just has a cold and is on antibiotics for that, several of the children in our group have been really sick with vomiting and other respiratory things.

Thanks for all your encouraging comments and prayers! We are excited to come home in 1 week!

Love you all! (The pics I am posting are from our market trip today)

Abby