China Day 8 - Rural Countryside

Today we once again woke up to a happy girl. Thank goodness. We feel so fortunate that after a rough start, she is doing so well. We hope it continues through the trip and into the transition home! Today we visited rural China. Our guide got us a driver and we just started driving towards the country, and not even the driver knew where we'd end up. We got to see more of Changsha (a city of 5 million people) and of course more crazy traffic. It is very strange to see babies in the front seat of a car on someone's lap! There are also bicycles and mopeds everywhere, weaving in and out of cars and buses. I was glad to be on a bus - we were bigger than most other things on the road.   We drove into the countryside and saw rice fields in one of the villages. It was really  neat. We also saw a water buffalo. Homes of the villagers were on the banks of the rice fields. Many of them were 2 stories. The people in this area hope for boys so that they will have better workers and so that when parents get old, the son and his wife will live in the house and take care of them. One thing that struck me is that even on the rural roads we were on, I saw a ton of people on cell phones. Priorities I guess - much like in the US.. .