Spelunking and shoe disasters

A brief entry today, and by a sub.  Tamara has succumbed to the energy-draining effects of her appendage and is going to try to head to bed early.  Hence this brief note from the Dad.  By the way, we are able to access blogger now, and thanks for the great comments you've been leaving.  It's nice to have a little contact with home.

 

Today we went on an unscheduled excursion.  Originally, today was supposed to be a shopping day, but since none of us are big shoppers, we asked if we could see more of the countryside.  We ended up with a Japanese-speaking guide (a boon to my folks) and went to the Yiling Caves which are just north of Nanning.
 
When we first found out that we were going to be picking Ren up in Guangxi, we had hoped to be able to visit Guilin, which is the place that has those crazy rock towers coming out of the water that you often see in images of China or Vietnam.  Unfortunately Guilin is a 4-hour train ride from Nanning, so it was not to be.

 

However, today we did get a glimpse of such towers (apparently they're made of karst limestone)on the way to the caves, which were really breathtaking.  Unfortunately we only had a chance to see them from the road, and so we didn't manage to get any good pix.

 

The caves themselves were jaw-droppingly spectacular.  They go deep into the mountain and the "path" is about 1.8km long, with 8 huge caverns along the way, connected by narrow passageways.  They are of course normally pitch dark, but lights come on as you approach each cavern, revealing crazy stalactites, stalagmites (stick-uppy-things and sticky-downy-things), columns, etc.  One of them actually looked like the starship Enterprise.

 

It was great to see a taste of the province in which Ren has grown up, but it did come at a devastating cost.  As you will have seen from earlier entries, Ren is VERY attached to the new green shoes that his foster mother put on his feet when he left her.  The first thing he does every morning is beg to get his shoes on, and he has a mighty tantrum whenever they must be removed.  Yes, he goes to sleep with them on.  Well, when we got back in the van after the cave tour, we noticed that one of them was missing.  Tamara had been carrying him and we never noticed it fall off.  We looked at one of the pictures taken of him towards the end of the tour and he only had one shoe on.  And so, that precious shoe, is somewhere in the depths of the Yiling Caves.

 

Once he discovered the loss, he took it very hard.  He still insisted on keeping his one green shoe on, but did very grudgingly accept putting on a (gasp!) brown shoe on his other foot when we went out tonight, as you will note from one of the pictures above.

 

Overall, Ren is doing well.  We've gone two days now without any real signs of his grief, and slowly we learn who he is.  He's happiest when he's out and about.  He prefers not being in the hotel room.  He likes his drinks room temperature.  He doesn't like either hot or cold drinks.  He likes his green shoes, and he likes his blue sweater.  He doesn't like to have either off, and really really doesn't like to be naked.  He likes his silly sister Kiyomi.  He doesn't like it when his silly sister sits on his new Mom.  And he definitely likes this new treat called "ice cream" which Kiyomi introduced to him tonight.

 

Today was our last day in Nanning.  We've found that Nanning is definitely much more of what one expects from China than other cities we've been in.  Lots of bikes, lots of mopeds, we don't dare cross a road without following the lead of a local.  It's a noisy place, a busy place.  It's growing like crazy, and people are not used to seeing foreigners, especially white chicks with Asian babies stuck to them.

 

Farewell to Nanning, farewell to Guangxi.  We promise to good care of Ren.  And better care of his shoes.