Wednesday morning we took a wild ride (which every ride in the city to some extent is) to the city museum of history. It is probably hard to tell from the view out of the windshield, but we are driving down the sidewalk to try to get a good parking spot! The museum is a real tourist attraction drawing people from all over the country. People stand in line for hours to get in. We somehow scored some special tickets and walked right in. Where else can you see an actual corpse of a woman who died 2100 years ago with 138 1/2 muskmelon seeds still in her stomach? You can see how impressed our daughter is with Chinese history! American children be thankful you live in a country that only has a couple hundred years worth of history. These people have to learn thousands of years worth of historical facts! Annabelle takes a family photo album with her almost everywhere she goes. Sometimes she even lets other people look at it! We were given a real treasure from the orphanage that our guide is working on translating. It is a scrapbook type album of Ming Mei's development complete with photographs from her years there. She was a student in the Little Sisters program of Half the Sky Organization. They provide this "baby book" for their students, most of whom will never find families, realizing how important it will be for them as they mature. We know it will be very special for Annabelle when she is older and full of questions about her past.
