Another Day in Nanning

Some may wonder why we have to stay so long, since the adoption is final. Well, in a nutshell, it is just a lot of paperwork that we need to get done before we can go on to Guangzhou, where we will have our appointment at the American Consulate. Our guide has arranged several outings for us to help pass the time while we wait. Yesterday we went to Walmart. Today we went to an ethnic minority park. Guangxi Province is actually only about 25% Han Chinese, and 75% other minorities, mainly Zhuang. I can only speculate about Pierce's ethnic origins. The population policies do not apply to the ethnic minorities, so at first I thought Pierce would have to be Han (to whom the one-child policy applies). However, it recently occurred to me that it is possible that he was not given up because of the population policy, as is often the case with girls. Some think he doesn't really look Han. I wonder....

Gong Gong seemed to have more and more "happy" moments today. We had a play date with some other adopted children his age today, which was kind of funny. The kids were mostly sitting there watching the adults do silly things with their toys. Gong Gong finally discovered it was fun to knock over a tower of blocks. It was like he really didn't know how to play. He got really animated at dinner and had an admiring audience of pretty young waitresses to perform for. We had some precious play time after his bath and he went to bed tonight babbling happily to himself for a long time before dropping off to sleep. Those sounds were music to my ears.