And a few more ... ..

There is one person following our blog who will smile as soon as she sees this image: she recently adopted her little girl Faith (who was in the same orphanage as Willow); almost every day she wrote a blog post about how much she loved these tiny little oranges. Well, now we understand. They are outrageously delicious (every section is screaming and bursting with flavor and sweetness). Willow eats about 3 or 4 each day, sometimes more. They range in diameter from a quarter to a half-dollar. They are not Mandarin oranges, but some specialty of a particular province (I can't remember which one).

We were showing Willow pictures of Chloe and Gus on the laptop ... when, all of a sudden, Willow leapt at the keyboard at the same moment I was advancing the pictures. I don't know what happened, but the screen went from horizontal to VERTICAL (and the mouse subsequently moved the cursor in the opposite direction to how you wanted it to go). Paul (and JingJing) to the rescue: Paul's a computer programmer (and physics professor). Anyway, I thought this image told the story: Paul is holding his head horizontally, so he can read the screen (zoom in). Had Paul not fixed it, you wouldn't be reading this blog :)

I wanted to share an image of some items that are very special. These are "chops" that our guide (and FRIEND) Sara made for us. They are unique in that the symbols she used to depict our names are a very old style of writing (which I love and covetted for my chops). They are very unusual and we treaure them (you ususally cannot find anyone who really knows or carves this style character). Chops are used to stamp the "signature" images many painters use on their artwork. Starting from the upper left: The large square image says Chun Qi (and the chop itself has a pig, i.e., is onlyl for people born during the Year of The Pig); moving clockwise, the second image is Meryl (Mei Rou ... which has a very nice translation); the third is also Mei Rou (this one I wanted large enough to handle oil or acrylic paint); the fourth is Yang Liu (which means Willow tree). Also pictured is a container of red ink, and two of the boxes that hold these precious items. Chris' chop is also fabulous (but he's already packed it!!! Boo hoo, do we have to get ready to come home?)