The Scrunch

Day 6 in Zhengzhou and our stay here is coming to an end.  The passport application is filed and all the adoption paperwork has been finalized and notarized.  That means some leisure and bonding time.  Zhengzhou is the capital of the Henan province and we are lucky to have one of the 3 largest museums in the country just about 10 minutes away.  Its a very interesting looking pyramid shape from the outside, and inside they have thousands of years of history on display.  Most of our group took the bus ride over to learn and stretch the legs from the hotel and passport trip rides.   One of the neatest things from the museum is the oracle bone!  It is the oldest form of recorded writing found in China.  And it just happens to be from the city Lainey is from, Anyang.  The oracle bone is writing found on the backs of tortoise shells!  The process is pretty involved.  Average villagers would write or inscribe questions to deities on the shells.  Something like will we have a good crop season this year or will we have a child this year.  The bone would then be superheated so it exploded essentially and the deity would interpret the bones as they broke and write the prediction back on the bones.  Pretty wild huh!? Another interesting observation to me was the intricacy of early cooking items.  They evolved from mostly bone instruments to bronze and then to porcelain.  But especially the bronze items had repeated detail that seems could only be maid in large factory productions lines.  Just kind of mind-boggling to me.  Here are some photos of what I've been yammering about!



How would you like to rest your head each night on one of those flat topped stones above? Those are pillows!  No thanks!  We found here Cam can walk with someone holding his hands as well!  We were sitting around admiring the great sphere that lets you see to stories below when I kind of pulled him up and away his feet went! Nice surprise, we hadn't seen in the hotel yet! 

The other day we also went for a walk to a local park and came across an elementary school letting out for lunch I guess. It was a huge school about 6 stories tall with a cement courtyard and a large metal gate.  Suddenly there were scooters and parents lining the street and kids standing around with signs almost like they were protesting I thought at first.  The kids would march out in a group, sing a short song and scatter to the parents.  It seems they leave the school for lunch and come back later.  Boy did we get some stares and boy did I hold Lainey tight being afraid if I lost her in a sea of kids we might not find her! 

Today we ventured out again to Walmart and Burger King.  It can a little or precarious walking on the sidewalks here since we share the walks with scooters and bikes! We had to step behind some trees today to get out of the way of a throng of scooters honking at us and other pedestrians.  But Walmart is an adventure to see.  A fair amount of American products with dual labeling,  Some taste exactly the same, others not so much! 

 

 

And finally the scrunch!  Cameron loves to be tossed in the air, run fast down the hallways and spin in grocery carts!  He has this great little laugh and a scrunch of his nose!  We think its his way of smiling!  But his mouth comes open, eyes go shut and his nose and cheeks curl up, we call it the scrunch!  Pretty cute stuff.  Christina got a real good shot of it!  Nap time!