Hi there - so we need to be quick tonight. Gotcha day is tomorrow and we're working on getting organized. Plus Janie didn't get up at 5 this morning, she moved it to 4:30. We're now in Nanning in the Guangxi Province. Today was essentially a travel day. Big contrast from Beijing in terms of climate. Really nice out. We took a 3.5 hour flight today from Beijing to here. Very green here. Reminds me a bit of Portland. Very pretty area. We just returned from dinner with another family from Portland. They are adopting their second daughter. Their first is about Janie's age and they hit it off at dinner.

Back to yesterday in Beijing and some quick highlights. We spent the morning and part of the afternoon at the zoo and the aquarium. Then we moved on to the Capital Museum. After that we spent some time in the markets shopping and then finished with a dinner in a Hutong that Sean took us to. Fantastic meals again. He knows some great places to dine and they aren't going to be found in guidebooks. Really thankful that he took us under his wing for a couple of days.

The picture above probably doesn't do it justice. This little "guy" carried Janie around a courtyard at the zoo for 5 minutes. She was driving and almost took a couple kids out. There's a video that we'll try and get posted but it freezes up when I tried earlier tonight.

Nice aquarium that was connected to the zoo. Janie enjoyed some of the rides.

The highlight of the zoo was probably the panda bears. This guy was great. He essentially had a little yoga routine and we caught him in some stretching/scratching pose here.

And here he is after completing his routine.

At this zoo you can get a lot closer to the animals than other zoos. These bears were doing tricks and people were feeding them. We saw one guy pouring his Sprite over the edge into the bears mouth. Another was feeding the bears cotton candy.

As I mentioned, you can get pretty close to the animals...

Here's Sean and Janie sharing some treats and conversation.

Finally, one of the highlights...we took a cab to a different Hutong and then went back into some alleys to this family restaurant. Here's the fish hot pot that I had. Janie thought it was pretty crazy how they brought the big fish out still kicking in a net.

Finally, early this morning (Sunday) we were out in front of our hotel and this group was out performing (I'm not sure that is the right word). Janie took this one of this woman swinging her sword. I'm sure I'm doing a really poor job of describing some 1000 year old ritual but it was cool to watch. I'm tired and get a new daughter tomorrow so I'm out. The next photo will be of Audrey!