I'm so behind! We've had such a full last week and a half that the time has just absolutely gotten away from me! Last Friday, the family took off in a van with a hired driver to pick up Kevin's parents (G-Ma and G-Pa to the kids) from the airport in Beijing. We've been having a great time ever since then staying busy showing them all of our favorite people and places here in China. I'll try to do a quick re-cap of the last week and a half along with some of our favorite photos!
Last weekend we celebrated Easter with some of our good friends here in Tianjin. After church, we went to one of the family's houses and shared a terrific lunch, enjoyed an Easter Egg hunt for the kids, and got to visit until the kids were dead on their feet by 5pm! Tom and Sandi loved meeting our new friends, and were really encouraged to see how well taken-care of we are here by precious people who have been here a lot longer than we have! We even had weather warm enough to shed the long underwear--something for which we were all thankful!
During the week, Kevin and I kept our normal school schedule with our classes and the kids' homeschool and Home School Co-Op with only slight variation. We took off on Monday (which was a national holiday--Tomb Sweeping Day, so no class) to go to Ancient Culture Street. Tom and Sandi were able to see a ton of Chinese-ee things and purchase a bunch of souvenirs to bring back to Florida with them. They got a kick out of seeing first-hand the rock star status of our kids anytime we are out in public with all of them!
On Wednesday we had the privilege of getting to celebrate Tom's birthday. We got a cake from a local bakery (I thought it was plain white cake inside, but discovered on cutting into it that it was actually fruity! We were all just thankful that it wasn't red bean paste, a popular filling for all sorts of pasteries here in China!). Kevin took Tom to the local blind massage parlor for a birthday massage that Tom couldn't stop raving about--at least a $150 massage, he was sure (which only cost about $5)!
Thursday we all went to the Tianjin zoo--one of the kids absolute favorite places. Tom and Sandi got an up-close view of how China differs from the US in so many ways! The favorite part of it for all of us was seeing how much the kids enjoyed running around, invigorated by the warm weather and space to move about as they chose! We had our baseball friend Lief come over and join us in going out to one of our favorite restaurant's for dinner that night after Kevin and Tom went to the baseball field that afternoon.
On Friday, Kevin took his parents back to the massage parlor so his mom could get in on the fun! All three came back completely relaxed after getting foot massages. The relaxation technique worked so well on Tom and Sandi that they were even willing to watch all the kids that night for Kevin and me to have a date night! We went with some friends to a really fun Chinese restaurant and then out to get gelatto, and the kids had a great time bonding over a movie night with G-Ma and G-Pa. While we were out, Tom felt a tremor in the apartment and was certain that they had survived an earthquake (I was a little bit skeptical!). I was proven wrong, however, the next day when we found out that there had indeed been an earthquake that was a 4.0 several hours away from Tianjin. That's what I get for second-guessing my father-in-law! The funny thing is that we discovered our yang tai (which is our porch-like area off of our kitchen where we store a lot of our food) door was closed and locked--and we have no key for it! Our best guess is that the earthquake caused the locking mechanism to jiggle and engage, with the result being that we had to climb through the window by the kitchen table in order to get anything that we needed. Kevin was able this morning to go after it for awhile with some tools and eventually got the door to open. We decided that he has turned very MacGyvor-eske during our time here in China!
Saturday, we again hired a driver and loaded up his van to make the day's trek to the Great Wall of China. We hit some traffic on the way, so it took us about 4 hours to get there, but the weather was beautiful and we had a great time hiking around once we arrived and eating lunch at a SubWay. (The kind of random picture is the result of a four-hour drive with no bathrooms to speak of on the way!) We once again bargained for some more fun souvenirs and then hit the road to come home. We arrived home to find that our gas for our stovetop was not working, so we scrounged around and had left overs rather than the spaghetti meal I had planned! Gotta love being flexible (and thankful for in-laws who are as well!).
We have a friend coming over tonight to babysit for the kids for Kevin and I to go out to dinner with Tom and Sandi. We were planning on going out for Chinese, but ended up going out for Chinese with friends this afternoon after church, so we're opting for our local favorite--TGI Friday's.
Whew. I think my nap today was well-deserved!
