Built to Last

Our  destination for today was the site of the Army of Terra Cotta Warriors, one of the world’s most famous archaeological finds.  In 1974, peasants drilling a well uncovered an underground vault that eventually yielded thousands of terracotta soldiers and horses in battle formation.  Emperor Qin Shi Huang had them built to guard his tomb over 2000 years ago.  The life-sized soldiers are lined up in battle formation, and the really awesome thing is that no two of them are alike.  Each soldier has a distinct expression on his face.  Experts think that the emperor was either afraid of the spirits waiting for him in the afterlife and built the soldiers for protection or he expected his rule to continue in death as it had in life.

It will be a week tomorrow since we left Wisconsin and flew to China.  We have been super busy each day and have seen many different things.  We are travelling with eight families.  There are 15 adults and 15 children(13 girls and 2 boys) in our group. Most of us will be together until next Wednesday when we travel to our individual provinces where we adopted our kids.

The majority of the girls are between 11 and 14 years old and are having a great time.  They sit in the back of the bus and have their own table at restaurants. They swim in the hotel pools and just enjoy being together.  Because they all share the same story (adopted from China and now living in the US - and everything else that goes along with that), I think they immediately felt comfortable together.  Those of us who were not adopted can never understand what it’s like  to be adopted like they do.  I suspect that their new friendships will continue for a long time.

 

In case you haven’t noticed,  my wonderful daughter Amanda has been posting on our blog for me.  In each of our hotel rooms so far, we have received a letter that says the following- “Due to recent Internet Policy and Regulation by the local government, some of the overseas websites and emails are unable to login or access, for instance, Yahoo, Google, Gmail, etc.” It seems the etc. means almost everything else.  Amanda is a treasure.  And Jamie is home helping with cooking, shopping, yard work and more.  It’s kind of cool to have grown children.  But we sure do miss them.

Until tomorrow…