At the Museum

Today we visited the Changsha museum where they have a special exhibit for a family they unearthed from tombs dating back 2500 years. The most impressive find in the tombs was the body of the Marquis of Dai, together with many of her treasures. The amazing thing was that when her body was unearthed it was not like an egyptian mummy, all dried up, but this woman's body was almost exactly as it had been the day she died, all of the joints moved and her eardrum was intact. All the prominent surgeons in China were called to the place and they performed an autopsy and removed all her organs. She died of a heart attack apparently, right after eating a lot of water melon - since they found 156 water melon seeds in her tummy. When you see the amazing structure that she was buried in it becomes a little easier to understand how she was so well preserved. There were 4 coffins inside each other, then a further enormous wooden structure placed inside a terraced grave with charcoal surrounding it to keep it free from moisture. I don't have too many pictures today since flash photography was not allowed in the museum and it was very dark, so any I did take are blurry.

We went to the museum with another family who adopted a 6 year old girl from the same province. They are from Colorado and it was nice to compare notes on how things are going. The bonding is progressing at pretty much the same rate. The girls enjoyed each other, though Kievah looked so much bigger than their daughter Sophia, she was almost a head taller. Our guide has often commented how tall she is for a chinese girl. The size 6x clothes that I brought for her fit perfectly, so she is right on size wise for American growth charts. That is so different than Colm, he was 3 but wore clothes that were for an 18 month old, and even they were big.

I have found something here that should DEFINITELY be introduced to the US - Green Tea Sprite - it is delicious!! When I bought it I didn't realize it was green tea flavor but it was very distinctive when I tasted it - YUM!!

We are going down for dinner now. Tomorrow we wait for Kievah's passport which is to be ready at 5:30pm. Our flight to Guangzhou is at 8pm.

More later, hope everyone has a great day.