Some Quick Bullets

The high-rise hotel where we're staying in Nanning, in the far south of China, is encircled by other high-rises, about half of which are still under construction. Glancing across the cityscape, it appears that another half of the buildings are still rising. This is the China you read about in news magazines--one great construction project, with a bottomless appetite for natural resources and a new factory opening every hour. It's also a landscape that's strikingly modern--a more diffuse downtown Hong Kong than sterile Tiananmen Square. This observation is an explanation for why we haven't blogged for a couple days. During that time, our hotel upgraded to a new internet service--which, like all the new that's rising around us, is smarter and swifter than the last, but the changeover entailed some downtime.

So, we're back. After four days with Gigi, she's now much more accustomed to us. And we're getting better acquainted with her. In the way of some quick bullets, she:

Is brought to tears easily and frequently, whether by having to move from her mother's to her father's arms or by her carrier at the moment sitting down.

Eats wonderfully: congee (rice porridge), watermelon, biscuits, a yogurt/milk mixture popular for children here, or, during a last-night-in-Nanning party with other adoptive families in our group, pizza crust.

Looks great in the outfits Amy brought, a couple of which were Cleo's, as well as the cute shoes we've bought for her here.

Doesn't do binkies (the Chinese apparently don't believe in pacifiers), but she'll clutch a hotel key for three hours.

Has much shorter hair than Cleo had at 15 months, having been shorn several times (we're guessing), but looks great with the baby doll barrette look.

Tolerates her Dad holding her best when taking a walk down the hotel hallway--where, as the de facto commons for the nine families in our group, always has a parent and child about--or when being fed.

Seems more comfortable outside in the humidity, not the climatized environment we inhabit most of the day. This, we can conclude, from observing her peers during a tour of a local orphanage, where air conditioning is clearly the last thing on the minds of its strapped managers and nannies.