The Last Full Day in Hubei

Tomorrow our wake-up call is set for 4:30 am. Luggage at the door by 5:30 am. The flight to GuangZhou is at 8 am and should only be a couple of hours. The circus is moving out of town.

Today we went to a Buddhist temple in Wuhan. It was very pretty - and very busy with people coming in to make offerings and pray. Thea and I lit incense sticks and made wishes before entering the grounds. There was also a room with 500 Arhats - women go to the right, men to the left. You pick an Arhat and start counting until you get to your age and then remember the particular number of the Arhat and go outside and buy a card that gives you insights: not quite a fortune, not quite a character analysis. The Arhats are like variations on the Buddha theme: I started counting at one that had a benevolent face, the third Arhat after that one was Thea's - and coincidentally it was a Buddha with a small child standing on its palm. There were ponds with goldfish and turtles. The monks buy turtles from the market, thus saving them from a future as someone's dinner and doing a good deed. We were standing at the wall looking down into the pond and all of a sudden there was a thunk and a splash and another one joined the flock.

After the temple we went to a Bonsai and geology museum. Lots of interesting stones: turquoise, jade, chrysanthemum stones, a few dinosaur skeletons that briefly held Thea's attention.  Afterward we were taken out to eat at another restaurant in the Hankow section of Wuhan. This area was visited by Westerners in the 1860s, the architecture in the areas of the former foreign concessions is much like Shamian Island in Guangzhou. The restaurant was good, two more ways of eating lotus root: pasted with sesame seeds fried into balls and sliced in a really nice sauce. Micah was eating anything I put in his mouth. There were meatballs covered with rice that he really got into.

I took Micah in to the bathroom for a quick standing diaper change, but after eating a huge amount of food for the skinny little person he is, his face got that look of intense concentration so we had to assemble supplies and return to the bathroom. The fold-down changing table has not made its way to China, so I had a throw-away changing pad, diaper and wipes and had to lay him on the counter. By the time I had his outfit unsnapped, the bathroom attendant and two or three other ladies were involved in the process. One was holding his head, two were tapping on him and talking to him, and I was dealing with the reason we were in the bathroom in the first place. I'm sure they were all questioning my intelligence for changing him but the child does not like sitting around with poop on his butt - compared to Thea, who could be in a stinky diaper until flies were text-messaging other flies to come have a whiff - Micah is rather prissy.

After lunch we went to a waterfront park to see the river. The park is near where the Han River flows into the Yangtze River. People were flying kites, hanging out. The weather today was wonderful: grey, dreary with rain threatening - so it was much cooler so the humidity was bearable.

Now we're back at the hotel. Micah, who slept briefly on the bus, was sung back to sleep by his father. Thea is saying she's not napping, so I told her she's in charge, watch over Daddy and Micah. After sending this off to the blog, I've got to start organizing and packing. It's hard to believe the first week is over and that by this time next week we'll be home and on our way to the beach.