Days 3-4 with Rachel Guanglan

The last couple days have been great fun, until about supper time, when Rachel Guanglan starts to declare it's time to go home. (We THINK that's what she's saying. We're told she has a countryside accent, strong enough that our Xi'an native guide David can only pick out a word or two per sentence.) The orientation Holt gave us again was spot on: After the initial couple hours of terror, she realized we were going to be a lot of fun, so she was all bubbles and sunshine for about 24 hours. Then, nightfall the second night, she thought, "Well, that was fun. Time to go home." She had a terrible tantrum/crying jag, then finally agreed to crawl into bed and fell promptly asleep. Yesterday we made sure she had her nap so that tiredness didn't exacerbate her grief. Last night, she started in with the same crying, but it seemed more like a normal tantrum and less like wild grief. That seemed more certain when I produced a piece of gum, pointed to it, and told her in my basic Mandarin
that she could have gum when she stopped crying. She grabbed a tissue, blew her nose, wiped her eyes, and reached for the gum. She fell asleep contentedly next to us in bed.

She's very stubborn and persistent -- bossy, even -- which with boundaries will serve her well in life. Right now, it just means she repeats the same demand over and over, regardless of whether you tell her no, later, wait, or don't even understand. We can't imagine what this must be like for her.

However, she had a great time yesterday on our tour of the Wild Goose Pagoda and city wall -- running, jumping, laughing, teasing, sharing with the other Holt family in Shaanxi Province, and demonstrating abundant curiosity. Today at the Terra Cotta Army, it was much the same. During the day, she is a bubbly, energetic preschooler who wants to be near us. But she didn't get a nap today, so we'll see how tonight goes!

We got to see her finding place today too, although the information we have is so general that we're not really certain of the exact place. It's basically a highway tunnel near a train station. There is a pedestrian/bicycle area, and we're guessing that's where she was found.