March 20 to 22 - Hefei

Hi all ~

Well, we're settled in Shanghai now and I'm feeling more like myself now that the antibiotics are kicking in! (hee hee)

I'll backtrack a little in this post to provide more on our 2 days in Hefei. Unfortunately, because our blog site is still blocked here, I can't view the posting as I add text and pictures to it, so this may look a little messed up until Kim can fix it for me!

The picture above is of Hefei, the capital of Anhui province. This is the view from the 29th floor of the Holiday Inn where we ate most of our meals - in the revolving restaurant! Bryanna and Cassidy, and the rest of the kids loved it here. For those who stayed here in the past, here are a few restaurant shots for you...the second one shows the girls measuring how fast the restaurant is moving...

There was an American group staying at the hotel who had just adopted their beautiful little babies. Cassidy was particularly interested in this, and one morning said rather matter-of-factly, "this is a real baby restaurant, mom!"

Both Bryanna and Cassidy were born in Anhui province, in cities and towns not far from this city of 4 million people. We really enjoyed visiting here and the surrounding areas, and meeting the people from this region.

This hotel particularly holds a lot of memories for us, as this is the place where we first met Bryanna and finalized her adoption. Bryanna knows that she was very sick those first few days and she cried a lot. We have watched our video many times where I am walking her up and down a particular hallway, rocking her back and forth. So we had fun going to find that hallway again and taking an updated picture...

While we saw the first signs of Spring in Xi'an a few days ago, here in Hefei it is in full bloom! Today we visited the temple and park dedicated to Lord Bao, a famous leader from this city - though he lived 1000 years ago, he is still remembered for his upright, and honest behaviour.

This park also has a lot of memories for our family - but while we visited it briefly with Bryanna in 2000, we stayed right across the street from this park in 2003 and we walked through it daily with Cassidy in a stroller, and our other good friends. And here we are in the same spot today...

Imagine how wonderful it was to see the park in the beautiful warm weather we had today (70 degrees F or so), with trees and plants flowering around us. The bridge on this lake that we always thought looked like the "Children's Bridge", was as lovely as always and we walked around the lake toward it to take some pictures. As we reached it and photographed our kids, several groups of young school children who were out for their morning exercise, trooped merrily past us, shouting out "Hello!" and "How are you?!"

After an all too short visit, we were off to the Hefei airport to catch a flight to Shanghai...we are really impressed by how all our children always find something to entertain themselves!



The flight was only 45 minutes or so (boy, those flight attendants had to MOVE to get drinks and snacks handed out to everyone before we landed!) and then we landed in this huge, cosmopolitan city. From the little we have seen, it is very beautiful and unlike any other cities in China we have seen so far...

The highways are crazy - the raised expressway into the downtown core (at least, I think it is downtown - the place is so huge that I'm not sure) reminds me of the Gardiner in Toronto - only bigger! Here is the view from our hotel room...

We had a great dinner with the Presley family in a place called Peppe's Pizza tonight - it was a beautiful restaurant that was half asian style wood and shelves and half weird north american decor. A huge photo mural decorated one wall depicting the Canadian rockies, or perhaps Alaska, and there were snowshoes and antlers hanging from the walls. And it was a pizza place! (A good one too - everyone enjoyed the food.) Go figure.

We will have a full day of touring tomorrow and hopefully will have lots more info on Shanghai to share with you all.

Love to all at home - please get rid of the snow in time for our return!