We had a great weekend with Sue, Jim, Drew and Ella. They came to town on Thursday before Thanksgiving to spend a few days with us and then headed off on a heritage tour Sunday with other families who have adopted children from China. For those that don't know, our niece Ella was adopted about four years ago. I don't know all the details but the children and families are somehow invited to come back to China to see where they were born. (Maybe Sue can read this when she gets back to the states and set the record straight.)
We showed them a bit of ordinary life here in Beijing......or our life anyway. Our local veggie man, a Chinese grocery, a nice Chinese restaurant; where we ordered a fish dish and a few minutes after placing our order a guy walks over to our table with a live fish in a bucket to be sure it was OK for our meal....you don't see that every day in the US. Mike took them to a shopping center/mall...these are hard to explain exactly but Mike took them there specifically for Ella to get her nails done:) I took Sue and Jim to Pan Jia Yuan so they could look for treasures to take home. It was a cold day for the Californians!! We had tea in a little cafe, very interesting looking tea....
Drew made good headway in learning how to ride a bike.....now you might think he would already know how but he sort of bypassed two wheels for one. He is a unicycler, one wheel is all he requires to get around. He needed to learn to be able to take the bike ride on the great wall later in the week with the tour.
We also took them on a tour of Olivia's school. It was even a tour for Mike as he saw parts of the school he had never seen before. I have spent much more time at WAB than Mike so I know my way around pretty well. They thought it was pretty neat especially the Koi stream in the High School. We even got to see Olivia on her lunch break sitting in her favorite chair and we met some of her friends.
It was fun to see family here on this side of the world. Come on over for a visit, we have plenty of space!
The atrium in Olivia's school. Also showing the amphitheater. The school also has two other theaters/stages in the elementary building.
Looking down from the top of the ramp to the giant red Chinese chairs. If you look closely on the left you can see some koi in the koi stream, and yes, some people have stepped right into it, I almost did one day. The chairs up at the left are where I can usually find Olivia at lunch time.....how is this for a high school cafeteria?
The weird looking tea. Very welcome on a cold morning at the market.
It is very hard to load pictures with a VPN that keeps shutting down:(
My Aunt said she was going through withdrawal as I have not been posting....I am trying:)
Love, fondly, sincerely,
zaijian,
Ramona
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