Sunday, December 6, 2009
34 MILLION AND GROWING...

We do not have a lot to share today. It has been a fairly uneventful travel day. We are safely in Chongqing at the Wanyou Conifer Hotel in Room #1206. We are very glad we asked for a bigger room since we can hardly walk in this room (It’s the size of our living room) by the time the beds are in here…two tiny queens and one cot that is almost the same size…grin. Definitely not what you think of as a small suite in the U.S. All of the hotel doorways are 6 feet tall, rather a problem for our friendly giant.

We learned today that Chongqing is no longer a city of 30 million, but it is almost 34 million now…YIKES! It is the city with the biggest population in the world. It is also an industrial town. We are amazed by the amount of smoking we see everywhere.

One good thing though, the unemployment rate is only 2.6%. The city is much as you would expect from the above description… crowded, loud and dirty. One unexpected thing is that it is a hill town so you do not see any bicycles unlike the multitude of them in Beijing.

There are only 5,000 foreigners living in Chongqing so we get seriously stared at everywhere. Between Ted’s size, our mixed family and the blond hair of our co-travelers, we are seriously obvious. It must be a bit like what it is like to be famous only we don’t have security guards.

We do not have many pictures today. For some reason our camera decided to take blurry, crazy pictures for most of the afternoon. I suspect it has something to do with the 6 year old who keeps sharing it with mama and baba…Smile!

Ted wanted me to share one of his joys today. He got an exit row and had all three seats to himself on the plane. Fessick was comfortable, well as much as a giant can be in an economy airplane seat.

Amalie loves all her emails from friends. It is a joy to her to have contact with her friends at home.

Sophie has one major loose tooth. We keep thinking it will come out at any moment but so far it is holding firm despite her best wishes.

Brandy had a great laugh when the laundry person came by. Ted opened the door, the woman’s face was fairly stoic, then he showed her the mountain of laundry, her mouth dropped open in shock. Let’s see…10 days, 4 people…yeah it’s a lot.

Opal is waiting to meet us and we are waiting to meet her. We did learn some more about her today and we will see what it all means tomorrow. Meanwhile, internet research and sleep are calling our names.

Until tomorrow,
Ted, Brandy, Amalie & Sophie