Looking back: First free day in Guiyang

Busy week again but a couple quick items. A Katie story: Katie and Karen were at my office nicely visiting and eating lunch. At one point Katie took the french fry box and folded it into a triangle and pointed it around and said "boom, boom". I cannot be certain, but Katie has seen very little TV and not had a whole lot of contact with people who might show her about guns. I think she learned about toys guns in China. We did not make a huge deal out of it, except I tried to take her picture, and that was the only time she has ever done that. In other news, Kris had a speech meet today and she earned a "Superior" award for the poem that she recited. I was near the Illinois River on Thursday night (American Chemical Society banquet), and the river is definitely not in flood right now, despite the fact that the area has had its second snowiest snow total for December through February (41" compared to 26" typically). Despite that high total, the snow often melted away between snowfalls, so I had little opportunity to use my snowshoes.

Karen already has a blog entry for January 15, 2010, so I do not have much to add. As Karen mentioned we ventured to Wal-Mart again. This time we saw small barrel-like bathtubs (space must be at a premium in some areas there) and also LOTS of people just sitting around reading books in the book section of Wal-Mart. One thought I had was "No wonder China is kicking our butt - look what voracious readers they are." On the other hand, we did not see a Barnes and Noble in Guiyang, either. There was a big solar eclipse that day across much of Asia that passed close to where we were, but it was cloudy at our location.