Today we spent signing all the paperwork with the local government in order to get a passport for Caleb.  That passport will come on Friday and will allow us to continue on our journey.  I think we started the day a little frustrated when we went down to breakfast and found a huge number of choices, but almost all of them traditional Chinese and not much there for an American to eat.  Then, most of the document signing was confusing in that there were a lot of people talking a lot of Chinese and not much explanation of what was going on.

But, in the end, I think we are OK with things.  We looked at going back to Beijing for the rest of the week, since the area we are does not offer many “American” options, but the cost was very prohibitive.  We have decided, instead, to stay where we are at and make the best of it.  We are changing hotel’s tomorrow as we went down today to look at the swimming pool and found out that it is going to be closed all week.  That would have been fine with an infant, but I have a 10 year old and a five year old and I have to keep them occupied and tired!!

On positive note on the day was that Caleb has been pretty liberal with the kisses today.  I think everyone has received at least one or two throughout the day!

I am having trouble getting the Xanga photomanager up, so I haven’t been able to post pictures.  As soon as I figure out the issue, I will put up the pictures from today.

Cameron

Update:  OK, I got the pictures up now!

Here we are at breakfast.  Let’s just say Caleb isn’t used to eating in a restaurant!  He was VERY loud, at one point standing on his chair and yelling.  He is very happy … just loud!

Here are the pictures of us signing the paperwork, again courtesy of Taylor!

Caleb decided to climb around the furniture while we signed papers.

We had to take a family picture for one of the documents.

On EVERYTHING they want you to put your fingerprint.

Brittany can handle things!

Here was another of our guides whose name was Mae.  She was great and very helpful, but I think that there was something in her dialytic that made it hard for the people here to understand her.  She didn’t seem to have any problem understanding them, though!

Caleb CAN be a little rough!

Even he had to give his finger print, on in this case a hand print.

We left to go to lunch and they asked if Chinese was OK.  I tried to be sarcastic with Mae and ask what other choice their really was, but she didn’t get my humor.  Most people don’t…  or maybe I’m just not funny.  Anyway, eagle-eye Taylor spotted a KFC and we got them to pull on in!

It wasn’t quite like home … they used almost all dark meat instead of white which changed the taste a little bit, but it was still American and it made us happy.

Plus, they had a play area for Caleb!  Yay!  Although I did kind of have to keep him from pushing all the little kids around.  He is a little bit of a bully, but not a rude one.  Just a happy one!

Tonight, Caleb pounded some Ramen noodles.  He likes his noodles and his bananas!