Today was a pretty good day.  The hotel change, some slightly more familiar surroundings, and a dinner that, while not as good as back home, sure was close for this area of the world.  We were talking today and realized that, in the city we are currently in, which is a medium sized Chinese city of eight million people, we have not seen ONE other caucasian.  Wow … that is very strange.  In fact, we have seen NO other nationality except for Chinese yet!  And, since we noticed that, I have really been looking out to see if I can find someone different and as yet I have not.

This afternoon Kelly pulled out a puzzle for Caleb and he took to it immediately!  He probably worked on that thing for an hour, taking it apart, putting it back together!  He seems to have so little focus and then you give him some opportunities to focus and he does great.  Earlier today he played by himself for probably 20 – 30 minutes.  Here he is working on the puzzles.

This afternoon Taylor and Brittany started playing “I’m gonna get you” with Caleb.  He loved it.  He would try and sneak up on Taylor and then, when she would go after him, he would come running back to safety with me.  It has been SUCH a blessing having those two girls here with us.  I don’t know what we would have done without them.  After our walk this afternoon, Brittany insisted on serving us all tea and did a wonderful job.  I could get used to this kind of treatment!!  Here are several pictures of the kids wrestling around this afternoon.

We quickly found a mall next door to the hotel with a great grocery store in the basement.  Has anything that we might want to have to get through our hungry times.  I was able to find Diet Pepsi there, which is very hard to find here as not many Chinese NEED diet pop.  Well, they don’t need regular pop either, but you know what I mean.  This society is so thin.  I honestly hate watching them eat at KFC or McDonalds just because you know what the eventual outcome will be.  We are glad to see the comfort food, but it would be better for them as a society just not to have it here.  This is the escalator down to the grocery store.  For some reason I didn’t take a picture of the actual store itself.  Next time we are down there I will do that.

We went out for pizza tonight at dinner at a Western Steakhouse.  The food was acceptable.  At least it wasn’t Chinese!

Yeah, I know … I talked about how bad the food is for these people and then I show a picture of my own kid drinking a Sprite.  Oh well … I’m a hypocrite.

We had noticed earlier in the day that when Caleb was jumping off the window ledge into our room (yes, he is much like Luke), he was saying “1 – 2 – 3.”  Obviously, he has had some sort of education already.  At dinner, he was getting a little restless, so we gave him a pencil and a piece of paper.  Next thing we looked down and he had written his English numbers, 1 – 11, just a plain as could be!  I’m not sure if you can see it on this picture:

We thought that was pretty impressive, so Brittany, being the educator of the group, decided to write the alphabet on a napkin and gave it to him.  As soon as he saw it, he started saying his ABC’s all the way through … no problem.  Brittany started handing him pieces of paper with words on it and he copied them in quite good penmanship … maybe even better than some of my older kids!  I am going to drop him off in front of a piano one of these days.  I’m sure he can play that, too!  You will be seeing us on Good Morning America int he near future!

Night time is the worst time for Caleb.  He gets tired and then starts thinking of his foster family and has some quiet emotional issues.  Kelly and I sat with him tonight and helped him work through some of them.

Poor little guy.  He ended up crying himself to sleep a little bit.  Even though he doesn’t show it during the day, I’m sure this has to be hard on him!  He is such a happy little guy, you hate to see this.

Cameron