Of course, chopsticks!

We had a terrific Thursday. Very easy and quiet. Emily is getting more relaxed and is showing us more of her personality every day.

We knew she could walk (we had seen pictures of her standing at the orphanage), but she was refusing to do it for us. Yesterday when she was sitting on a blanket playing with her toys, she started tossing them just out of her reach. She then began standing and walking to pick them up. I think this is a sign that she is becoming more comfortable with her environment since prior to yesterday she really just wanted to be held all of the time by one of us.

The other great discovery we made yesterday is that she will take almost any solid food as long as we feed it to her with chopsticks! We had been struggling to get her to eat from a spoon for a few days. Last night, when we were eating at a local Cantonese restaurant, Emily was sitting on Steve's lap and paying close attention to him eating with chopsticks. He decided to try to feed her with the chopsticks and he had great success. She ate just about everything he let her try. I know this probably should have been obvious to us, but somehow it hadn't occurred to us that she would not have been used to getting solid food on a spoon. We are definitely going to have to improve our chopsticks skills before we get home!

Another interesting thing about Emily is that she really loves carrying a hand towel from the bathroom with her wherever she goes. She occasionally rubs it on her face and likes to have it in arms' reach at all times. I couldn't figure out why she was crying every night after I dried her off with a towel and then took the towel away. Yesterday I let her keep a hand towel with her all day and she was very content. I wonder if the orphanage gives the babies towels to play with or keep in their cribs?

We spent much of yesterday afternoon strolling around the island and taking some pictures. There are many interesting bronze statues around the island and the vegetation is lush. It reminds me a little bit of Charleston, South Carolina with the green, mossy trees and the wrought iron fence work. There is a school near our hotel and we have seen the children come outside each day to play on the playground. They wear matching nylon sweatsuits and march in and out in two neat lines while singing a particular song.

Last night we had a fun dinner at a local Cantonese restaurant. Our guides had pre-ordered the food for us, so there was nothing too wild on the menu. We had delicious ginger beef, some steamed bread, fried rice, a couple of different chicken dishes, steamed egg custard and some delicous green beans. The last dish was a speciality of the house, roasted pigeon! It was served complete with the head and beak on the plate. Steve said it was delicious, but I decided to just take a picture instead. On our way out, we walked around the front of the restaurant where we saw tanks of various live sea food for sale: grouper, water beetles, geo ducks (look sort of like huge clams with gigantic necks), snakes, gigantic shrimp, crabs, eels and sand worms. Many customers were purchasing the live food and taking it home in big plastic bags full of water (sort of like what you might take a pet fish home in, only much bigger).

Today is another rainy day. We are going on an outing to a local folk museum this morning. Later in the week we will be visiting a botanical garden and some other local sights of interest if the weather improves.

Please visit www.picasaweb.google.com/sjmckay1 for more photos and a nice slide show with captions.