Our California friends, the Musgroves and XiXi, our guide - eating from the Hot Pot, basically a fire in the middle of the table with boiling chicken stock type liquid in which you add whatever you want. The most adventursome we got was eel. The table next to us had pig brain in theirs. I can hardly even type that, much less eat it. By the end of the meal, Piper had knocked most of my food onto the floor. Did I tell you she is a bit curious?

"Hyper Piper" has been living up to her nickname this morning. Rolling all over the place, cooing, babbling, and finding endless facination with her toes, which have probably been covered up for most of her life.

Scott went with our guide XiXi and some others to a wholesale baby clothes market to buy some clothing for the babies at Piper's orphanage this morning. Piper seems to be have been taken good care of. She came to us clean, without a blemish on her skin, no diaper rash, and none of the other things that I read she might have.

So far, Piper's motto seems to be "play hard, sleep hard". When she is awake, she's very awake. When she gets tired, she puts her palm to her mouth and suckles it, the other hand kind of rolls around her head and cheek and then she's out.

The food - can you say HOT? Even Scott has had tears in his eyes at times. XiXi wanted us to eat real local food, so off we went last night. Xi Xi explained that Chongqing in the summer time, which begins in April, is steaming hot - like 115 degrees hot. Some how eating very spicy food helps them not to sweat she said. Not sure about that, as our entire table lost at least 5lbs each in sweat eating at the restaurant last night. We had a ton of food, all for about $2.00 each.

In some ways it seems like we've been her forever, and in others it's hard to imagine that we will leave Chongqing in 2 days. It's definately become a home away from home, as we really enjoy the city life and being able to walk outside the hotel lobby and experience so much. There is something very enduring about the Chinese people and the way they just walk up to you like you are an instant friend. I will miss that. I really wish Hunter and Ella could experience it, hopefully we'll come back when they are all older.

I'll post more pictures later, Scott took the camera with him, and I need to download some more when he gets back.

We miss everyone. We read each of your messages over and over.