Day 2 - first full day in Lanzhou 1 of 2

Day 2, our first full day in Lanzhou, was a really good one. We got up and Skyped the kids, got ready and went down and had a pretty good breakfast. We then explored the hotel a little bit and came back to the room and made a few more calls. Then we decided to do a little exploring. We didn't go too far, and made our way back to the hotel to find the other Holt couple traveling with us. We got in touch with them and we all really hit it off. We all did a little more exploring, got some lunch together, and then expanded our exploration. We walked down to the Yellow River and saw the Zhong Shan Iron Bridge, which is a tourist attraction and one of the first river crossings. We made our way across the bridge to the foot of the mountains where they have restored some of the ancient Chinese architecture and we walked around that area for a while and took a lot of pics. After we had seen enough, we started making our way back towards the hotel and stopped in a little bakery and then ventured down a couple of side streets to get a real culture shock as you see just how some of these people live. We eventually made it back to the hotel for a break and to clean up a little bit and then we all headed out again for supper. By this time, the streets were packed with street vendors selling all sorts of things. We decided on KFC, which I shared with our small group, probably stands for Kentucky Fried Cat. :-) It was a great day and we are exhausted. Our new friends are from Maryland by way of New York and are really nice people. They are adopting their first child, who is a little boy that is only 6 months younger than Claire. We laughed and told stories all afternoon and we are all so excited to get our children tomorrow. The first part of this trip is completely differenet than our trip with Jack, but is just as wonderful. It is amazing the God works things out, and thus far, the trip could not have gone any better. Well, it is late and I have stayed up much longer than I wanted to while fighting with this computer to try and get this update out. I actually fell asleep once while I was sitting here waiting on this stupid thing. The next blog should be an exciting one.

 

Chris