Qing Xiu mountain

Today was a fantastic day!! Maeve and Susie have made tremendous progress (more on that later!). We had our usual start to the day and then headed down to the lobby to meet our group for a tour of Qing Xiu mountain. Don't ask me to pronounce that! We received a long and thorough history of the mountain on the drive there from our guide Michael. I remember none of it now, but it is the most beautiful place. The weather was much warmer today (~65F), but rainy at the mountain. We still had a great time. The air at the mountain it thought to be the freshest in all of Nanning. There is a thought process that all fresh air in Nanning comes from this mountain. I must agree, it was great there. We walked around and enjoyed some spectacular views from the top of the mountain. We also climbed this massive pagoda. Maeve was walking all over and having a great time. She would walk with Susie a bit and then run back to me. It was great to see her interacting with mommy. After the mountain, we went to a peach tree garden and walked around some more. This country is just so beautiful. I feel like I keep saying that, but it truly is. We are so thankful to have this time to explore and experience this culture!

Our touring was done around 12:30. The mountain was a little ways from our hotel, so the drive provided us the opportunity to see more of Nanning. There are some very "built up" areas of this city with really nice apartment complexes. Then there are the parts of the city that you can tell are probably hundreds of years old. Very cool. Once back at the hotel we ate lunch at the Cantonese restaurant (Yummy!) with our new friends, Michael and Hansun, and their precious new daughter, Zoe. I had some great spicy fried tofu and Susie had chicken soup with bamboo fungus (yes, I said fungus). She loved it. Then she had some of Hansun's soup of pig's feet and vegetables. Susie is going way out on a limb here and I am staying a little more conservative. So far we have not had a bad meal, so that is great!

After lunch we headed up to the room and planned to put Maeve to bed. She was not ready for a nap (after sleeping through the last half of our touring this morning!). We ended up all sitting on the floor and playing. Maeve really started opening up to Susie. She was walking up to her and giving her kisses, hugs, playing stickers together. They also put a puzzle together. Maeve is accepting Susie's touches and smiling at her when Susie comes around. She is still not 100% on board with Susie, but amazing progress has been made. Once Maeve woke up from her nap, we decided to walk to the local Children's Park we had heard so much about. We wanted to see if Maeve would like the swings. Once we got to Nanning's People's Park and found the Children's Park section, we realized "park" is not exactly what this place is. The park is actually a gigantic amusement/carnival park. Only it was closed when we were there so it was completely desolate. We felt like Clark Griswald at Wally World. I have never seen a park quite like this, but it is free so we just walked all over. Maybe we will go back tomorrow when it is running and see if Maeve will ride anything. The rides were a little scary looking though, so not sure about that. The best thing about the park was that Maeve was letting Susie hold her. Granted this would only last a few seconds, but she didn't cry. We made a game out of passing her back and forth between us and Maeve was really enjoying it. She would reach for Susie and then reach back for me. She would barely start to whimper if I didn't get her back fast enough. I can't tell you how different this is from yesterday when Susie could hardly look at her without making her cry. Hopefully it will continue to get better.

Tomorrow we pick up Maeve's passport and then have free time most of the day. We see "drizzle" on the forecast which sums up our entire experience here in Nanning. It is too bad because it appears to be so tropical and I imagine it is even more beautiful in warm weather. Oh well, maybe it will be warmer on our next trip :)!!