Saturday, 3/3/07 - Man, it's early!

It's 4:35am here and we are all up and totally awake. It's that body clock thing again. Why can't everywhere be on the same time?! It would make it alot easier, you know?

Ok, I'm sitting here thinking of little details I can tell you about yesterday. I did think of one because of a good friend, Deb H. from our yahoo group. She mentioned something about always being "watched" because not many Americans go to certain provinces. Well, as modern and huge as Chengdu is, I'd have to agree with this statement. Not many Americans must come here much. One detail I failed to mention was the men who are dressed in pea green uniforms with red flaps on their shoulders! Marina, our guide said this was the actual military. Well, WONDERFUL! While Roy and Marina went to cash in some travelers checks (yes, you can exchange travelers checks in Chengdu at the bank, not the hotels), of course Roy had all of our passports (which you NEVER leave without, by the way), these green men came up to the bus and were staring at me and Rebecca. I was a little uneasy about them staring, but then again, MOST people stared, so I didn't think twice about it until our driver Mr. Wong got out and spoke with them. After that, they did another "inspection" of the vehicle we were in and left. I tell ya, after Marina explained to me who they were, DO YOU KNOW THAT COULD HAVE BEEN A "not so good" thing if they asked me for my passport?!?!? *oh man* The men in blue are police and the men in green are military! GOT IT! Won't forget it. Honest.

Oh.....another small detail was us praying in the McDonald's in Chengdu. Marina was ok with it and waited until we were done, but everyone around us were very curious why were praying. OH, and the fact that REBECCA did the praying really caught their attention. I find that fascinating! When the Lord says to preach the goodnews to all the ends of the earth, I'm pretty sure he meant China too. Communist or not. Alot of these folks just don't know about religion except Buddha. Sad.

Today, Saturday, 3/3/07, we have free until 1pm. Then we will go to the cottage we mentioned about yesterday, spend about an hour there, and then we will go to the "People's park" in Chengdu, where all the locals hang out. Marina said it was a beautiful place, you can get plenty of tea there, and check out how folks spend their time. (Whether Tai Chi, playing with the hacknsack ball thing with their feet, or chess, or whatever.) Hey, if nothing else, maybe we can get FRESH AIR (boy, did I make a funny there!) and let Rebecca run around a bit. (The fresh air thing is because 1.3 billion live in China, and 1 billion of them smoke! NO JOKE!)

Ok, until we meet again..........I'll sign off here. Be good.

Kristen