I know--this definitely does NOT look like a good idea! This was Kevin's first attempt in mode of transportation for our "adventure" for the day--going to find a place that would make a cover to put on my 3-wheeler (or san lun che as the Chinese would say!). Our real estate friend who came over for lunch last week had offered to take us to a place that would customize a top for the 3-wheeler to make it more safe and to make it useable in the quickly approaching colder winter months. And we so appreciated his offer to help us once again! (The place he took us was a small hole-in-the-wall type shop that we NEVER would have been able to locate on our own.) [sidenote: We found out during our lunch with him that he and his colleagues only get off 2 days out of the whole month! It reminded Kevin and me of the minor league baseball schedule, only with no off season to look forward to.] So we met up at the office and Wang xian sheng (aka Mr. Wang) thought that it was best for Kevin to catch a lift with him on the back of his electric bike while I drove the 3-wheeler with all the kids aboard. After making it about to the driveway, Kevin decided that trying to ride a longer distance with his legs tucked up beneath his chin the way the short back seat required was not going to work!
After some more juggling, we ended up with Kevin on the back of the 3-wheeler with all of the kids (his legs are really too long to be able to drive the 3-wheeler and safely reach the brakes!) while I drove. And yes, we were once again the main tourist attraction for Tianjin. All along our drive we had cars (and even buses!) waving and calling out along side us to get our attention. I stopped counting how many camera phones were pointed our direction. So if you see our family photo end up somewhere on the internet, don't be surprised! Once we arrived at the shop we did our best to communicate what we were hoping to have the top look like (as far as the door, windows, size, etc.)--so we'll see next week what we end up with! We're hoping there weren't too many translation errors!
And I definitely got more grossed out than I've been in a while when I tasted the new experimental snack food that I grabbed at the market store for the kids today. (We regularly buy new kinds of snack foods to see which are our favorites and which we can let go of more easily!) I got a kind of cracker that the kids were chowing down on. When I asked them what it tasted like, I didn't get much response, so decided to try one for myself. It was definitely something that could only be described as incredibly fishy! NOT my first choice for a cracker flavor. I guess my kids are adapting more and more to the culture already. . .
