MeiLi was mourning a bit this afternoon. Mary is comforting her. It's afternoon nap time. After that we will go for Dinner. We are waiting here in Kunming for MeiLi's Chinese passport to be processed and delivered to us. That takes a few days. I have more time to write now. Karah has begun to be jealous a bit too. She is teetering between becoming the "Jie-jie" (elder sister) and

being the "bao-bei" (treasured baby of the family); sometimes she wants Mary to hold her at the same time Mary is holding MeiLi. This is all to be expected. Karah told me it is OK for me to also call MeiLi my bao-bei, but I told Karah she will always also be my bao-bei. Karah & MeiLi walk around holding hands. I'll try to get a picture of that.

After visiting the flower market, we went to a Jade market. We bought both Karah and MeiLi a nice keepsake necklace, not very expensive. The necklace has thier Chinese year of birth characters carved on jade; Karah's is the goat and MeiLi's is the rooster. After that we went to McDonald's. It was interesting. I stepped up to the counter and said "Qing ge wo liang ge da french fries" The young man taking the order understood and gave me 2 large fries for the girls. That was just a snack. We then came back to the hotel to rest up a bit.

Today, we woke up & had breakfast in the Hotel at the buffet. MeiLi has a very healthy appetite. Karah has been a very good big sister helping to feed her and teaching MeiLi how to interact with us. We have actually had a smiles but I have not been able to get a picture of her smiling yet. I have one of her talking I'll post here. We went to visit the flower market. I would have liked to spend half the day there. The local families working there were very friendly and curious. I was able to tell them that we are from the USA and where my girls are from (Chongqing and Honghe), & how old they are. MeiLi seems to fit right in. Karah knows how to tell her some things in Mandarin like hold my hand ( wo wo de shou) . MeiLi understands Karah's body language and is communicating well with us but I doubt she understands the Mandarin words. She seems to be content and interested in what we are doing.