6 February -- Kunming

Another day, another passle of paperwork. We should be done with our Chinese paperwork now. We have a lovely official document that we believe is the registration of adoption. It has a great picture of the three of us with all of our vital statistics. We also applied for Melissa's Chinese passport, and we should have that soon.

Melissa continues to fascinate and delight us. She's so easy-going and has only had one or two crying fits (funny, after we fed her she was fine). We've figured out her signs for "feed me" and "pick me up." She slept well last night, although we had to get up to get her a bottle early this morning.

And let the record show, it was Steve who changed her first poopie diaper. He should be out of intensive care soon....

Another thing we did today was a bit bittersweet. We received a copy of Melissa's "finding ad" -- an ad the Chinese authorities place in the local newspaper for 6 months identifying all abandoned babies -- and we visited the spot where she was left. It's not far from where we are staying, near a market with an old pedestrian bridge crossing a small stream. We were glad to be able to experience the sights and smells that Melissa experienced the morning of 19 May 2006.

We've found a great restaurant to hang out at, but it's in the Lonely Planet guide, so the place is full of Western backpackers. Actually, it's been nice to see some English-speakers. We also ran into a group of Americans from another adoption agency at the passport office -- we'll probably run into them again in Guangzhou.

We also survived a visit to a branch of the Carrefour supermarket (based in France). Crowded beyond words! Especially since Chinese New Year's is coming up.

Tomorrow we are visiting the Minorities Village. Yunnan Province is the home of many ethnic minorities, and this place is a tourist attraction showing off their various cultures -- it should be interesting.

Hope people got the photos we sent out -- if not, leave your e-mail in a comment and we'll try to forward -- still haven't figured out this Chinese-language browser!