Yellow River Day

Today was Yellow River day!  We took a bus to the Yellow River.  It is the second longest river in China.  They call it the Mother River.  The river has 3 parts and we arrived at the third part.  We took a hovercraft through the river to the second part, very cool as we traveled over land and water.  We stopped in the middle of the river where the land was built up.  It was like a sand dune at the surface of the water.  Kind of like Return of the Jedi J  We got out of the hovercraft and were able to walk around in the middle of the river!  There were people there giving horse rides.  I wanted to take Ana but wasn’t sure if I could manage to stay on the horse and hold her at the same time!  The women there loved Ana and had me put her on the horse for a picture.  Then they made me get on the horse for a picture. 

After riding in the hovercraft we walked around the mountain with carvings of the emperors, very pretty with a lot of history.  You were able to climb all the way up to the top of the mountain.  We held back this time and climbed the small pyramid.  After visiting the Yellow River, we went back to the hotel.  I received the rest of my paperwork I was waiting for.  Ana’s passport had not arrived yet so the next guide will mail it to Guanzghou.  CCAI has had so many families come to bring their babies home from Henan.  Rita was telling us that last week 12 families were here.  We have 6 in our group and next week there will be 10 families coming.  The week after has 14 in the group!  We were fortunate to have a smaller group.  The families have all been getting to know each other and it is just the right amount of people.  We are hoping to meet back up with the family that was traveling with us in Beijing when we get to Guangzhou.  Their child was from a different province.  Henan is the smallest province but it is the most populated with 100 million people.  Trust me, it has a lot of people.  You can tell this by walking up and down the street.  We took a walk to Pizza Hut for dinner and experienced the amount of people again. Pizza Hut itself was an experience, too!  We communicated through pictures and did the best we could with speaking another language.  We missed Rita!!  Ana tried pizza and loved it!  I couldn’t get the pizza out of her hands.  While waiting for our table we found a bakery outside.  Why is it that you always find the good places at the end of the trip??  We bought a small cheesecake, cookies and a little coffee cake for $7.00.  Yes, that’s $7.  Back at home the mini cheesecake alone would have been at least $10!  Walking back to the hotel was interesting.  We saw groups of people dancing right in the middle of the sidewalks.  Rita said this happens every night at 8:00.  The people do this for exercise.  Wouldn’t it be a much happier world if we all broke into dance in the middle of the street with strangers each day?!?  I danced with Ana as we were walking and she got the biggest grin on her face!  We also saw people gathered together around storefronts watching tv and a man water painting Chinese characters on the sidewalk.  So neat!  Today we fly to Guangzhou to complete our paperwork, get Ana’s physical and await her Consulate appointment.