Today we made huge steps.  The saying one step forward, two steps backwards.  I thought for sure that would happen to us today.  I figure we got the step forward on Tuesday.  We today we developed a huge trust factor with Erin, we are also seeing the kiddish in her.  We started the day out early.  Monika was awake before 7, so she played games on the laptop while I worked on emails and pictures.  We had to wake up Erin at 8:30 to get ready for the day.  We ate a great breakfast again and met our guide Aggie at 9:30.  We ventured to the super walmart.  This walmart was huge.  I think it was probably 10 times bigger than our super walmart.  We mainly went there to buy Erin some items.  She didn't want us to spend money on her and required a lot of encouragement to pick out some things.  We got underwear, a backpack, 2 books, 3 movies, crocs and some peach jelly like stuff that she likes.  We tried to buy some clothes, but she looked at all of them and said they were grandma clothes.  I also found Dave some Mountain Dew, he said it didn't taste like what we drink in MN, but it was good.  Once we finished there, we drove to Hebin Park which is an amusement park, this park also is Erin's finding place.  We didn't go in as we don't know where exactly she was found and it strictly rides.  We took some pictures at the entrance.  Erin was found when she was aprrox. 18 months old.  I became teary eye and forced myself not to cry in front of the girls and especially Erin.  We didn't tell Erin why we were there.  Being that close and thinking what an 18 month old child must have felt like being so lost and not knowing where her parents were or anything.  It broke my heart.  This was so different compared to the other three, they were all babies and probably didn't have a relationship developed with their parents like she did.  Once we finish with the pictures we went to the park we were at on Tuesday.  We went in the back way in this time.  The road was so bumpy and the houses are so run down, it saddens me to see people living like this.  Just inside the entrance we came across many wild monkeys.  The driver let us off and we walked the path, admiring the monkeys.  There were baby one that were probably only a week or so.  There was a couple of people that were walking with water bottles, the monkeys jumped on them and took it from them.  We really enjoyed watching them.  We visited a temple, then took a super street car ride on the side of the mountain.  We all enjoyed it.  This park is so gorgeous, the scenics are stunning.  So many mountains/forest.  The pictures we took don't do justice.  Once we finished there, we came back to the hotel and hung out for a little bit.  The girls including Erin colored for a little while with the new color pencils we brought, each got a case of 24 pencils in it.  We went swimming next which was amazing.  I am so proud of the 4 girls, they all did great.  Erin is a brave and determine girl.  She started out with the floatie ring.   We swam together and then the younger girls and I were having races.  You could see that Erin really wanted to swim without any help, she kept putting her head under water and kicking her legs and so forth.   Dave and I decided to do something with her.  We demonstrated with Jenny.  Jenny knows how to do a back float independently, but we had her work with us.  Dave held her head and I held her torso, we did that for about a minute with Jenny.  We then told Erin it was her turn, she said no and got the fear almost cry look.  We encouraged her and she allow us to take the ring off.  I then held her and we slowly put her on her back.  She wouldn't put her head back initially, but we worked with her and she did it.  You could tell she was a little nervous about it, but she did it.  We gave her a lot of praised as Monika and Jenny did too (Katie was swimming not right next to us.).  She kept the ring off and was holding the ledge and dunking herself.  She saw me give the girls piggy back rides yesterday in the water and I couldn't get her to let me give her one.  After Dave and I did the float with her, I happen to be by her when all of sudden she planted herself on my back and held on for dear life and told me to swim.  This swimming pool is deep, one side is up to my shoulder and the other side is up to my chin.  So I have an 85 pound girl on my back and I am trying to swim with her legs getting tangled in my legs.  I thought I was going drown, but I kept swimming.  She made me do it two lengths of the pool.  She then started to swim with me holding onto her arm.  She worked hard at it and did sink a little bit.  I was trying to teach her to keep her mouth shut, but she struggled with that.  The last time, she was probably 15 feet from Dave when she asked me to let go of  her, I had gotten Dave's attention before hand to let him know to grab her if needed.  So I let her go, and sunk pretty quick and Dave caught her.  She was struggling getting out of the pool and Dave helped her and she was ok with it and thanked him.  We finished swimming came to the room and got ready to have supper with Jade's dad.  Tonight he took us to a hotel that is known for it schuezen food.  It was hot and spicy.  I ate food that I wouldn't normal eat, he was telling us what each item was.  The girls (except Erin) didn't like as much of the food.  When walking back to our hotel he brought some fruit for us.  He told us he is giving  a taste of all the different flavors of China.  What a privileged this has been meeting him and learning more about China and tasting more.  Once in our room, we watched Home Alone 3, the voices were in English, but had Chinese subtitle which I think Erin really liked.  We laughed a  lot.  Some tidbits:  Erin has thick black wavy hair.  It is very dry and needs to be cut,  she is very protective of it due to it being cut before when she didn't want it (sometime due to lice other times it seems as a form of punishment, which we are still trying to work that one out). When I wrote (Tuesday night) about the magic trick that Dave was doing, I forgot to say she is very clever and a quick thinker.  The trick that Dave was doing required him to look at the cards,  After a couple of time of getting it right, she told him he had to do it without looking at the cards.  She got him good on that one. She is asking for pierced ears.  She said she had one ear pierced before and kept her hair down because they are not allow to have ear pierced.  She got caught and the teacher punished her.  She likes to help the girls put their earrings in. She threw her garbage out of the window on the bus today, we told her "no" and show her where she was suppose to throw it.  She nodded ok to us.  She also tried to do it at the park.  It saddens me watching people do that.  There are a lot of street cleaners, but there is a lot of trash all over still.  Erin didn't really understand why we were saying she couldn't throw the trash, but she listened to us and didn't do it. She has hearing.  She can hear Katie' s laughing when she is loud, she gets startled at times with loud noises.  She does yell out when getting people's attention.  This will take a little bit of time to get use to it.  Some of the sign language she use, are signs we use with ASL but have different meanings.  Aggie was telling us today that they use a lot of the same signs for different words. Erin loves her two colorful pair of socks that she got from the Kane's family.  I brought some boring white socks which she hasn't touched, she keeps putting the other two pairs on.  She also has a favorite shirt and jean shorts that we got from the Forseen family.  She likes her fish swimming suit from the Mulvihills.  She likes the other clothes that we got, but you can tell the favorites.  She also washed our swimming suits for me today.  I caught her in the bathroom doing it and told her she didn't have to do it, she said since I did it the day before, she was going to do it today. She has been out of the orphanage and school many times on school trips.  She knows her way around the city and knows the parks well.  She also points out different things with the store fronts. She likes American movies, doesn't want to get any Chinese based movies.  We think when we get to GZ, we will by more. She has a lot of kid in her, but she is also very protective and helpful to her younger sisters.  She walks with a lot of confident.   Thank you Lord for giving us Erin.  She fits in the family so well.  Things are going amazing well, I do know that we will have our ups and downs, but so far w are doing amazing and the younger girls are working more on their sign language.  Erin still talks to my sister more then Dave and I, but she is talking more to us too and bonding with us in different ways.