What a GREAT Day!

We started the day out by going to the 7 Banyan Buddhist Temple. What a beautiful place! Our guide Kelly walked us around and explained what all the different budda statues meant. Kelly then asked if anyone wanted their babies to blessed. We were the only ones who chose to do it. Matt, Keilani, Mak, Kelly, and I went in. We knelt down and the priest did a chant, threw some water on us, did more chanting and then it was done. It was pretty neat!

We then went to the Chen Family Temple. All the Chen families paid to have this temple done and it is very beautiful to walk around and see. We actually got some rain while we there. I think it rained on us the last time we were there too. Matt was a big celebrity there, people kept wanting to have their pictures taken with him.

We came back to the hotel and had some lunch. We are starting to go stir crazy. One small room for all four of us is beginning to drive us all a little nuts. Mak finally let Keilani finally pick him up today and she was swinging him around. Fun for them, scary for us! All I could imagine was her dropping him. Luckily that never happened and they both just laughed and laughed.

While every was napping, I heard a rumble of thunder. I looked out the window to see a large storm coming our way with lightning. I quickly ran downstairs and got the cool breeze. That was so nice because it's been so hot and so humid. I caught some pictures from our room. After the rain the humidity is insane.

After everyone woke up, we went for a walk, first stop Starbucks. While inside we saw some strange cartoon like advertisement. I took a picture of it and got busted and was told to not take pictures inside. Seemed strange but I complied. They also have liquid sugar here. Kinda weird, but good.

We met up with our friend Ike, who was our previous guide with Kei's adoption. It was so great to see him. He talked about how tall Kei is and that she is too skinny! LOL! Matt said it's because she's Chinese and he said she still needs to gain weight. He also asked if anyone had mentioned Mak's "big" ears to us and we said yes. He said he has big budda ears and that means fortunate. We had a great Chinese dinner and caught up on everything since the past six years since we last saw him. We told him about our five year reunion with the other Hengyang families in Orlando and how the other girls are doing. Keilani insisted that she sat next to him at dinner. She asked him to show her how to use chopsticks. After several attempts, Ike got her a fork =) We had our first Chinese beer at dinner, it was good.

After dinner Ike came back to our hotel and we showed him pictures of all the girls at the reunion. He was very happy to see that they're all doing well. Since Mak is from a Half the Sky orphanage, we received a journal of his progress since he was an infant. It is written in Chinese and I showed it to Ike to see if he could tell us anything. He offered to take it with him and translate it for us. This is great for two reasons, we will know what it says and we will get to see him again.