It’s been way too long since my last post, for that, I apologize. So I’m gonna write the best post that I’ve ever written! (Or at least it will be marginally ok and have most people stopping midway through!)
So last weekend we had one of our best days here in China. A family that we’ve gotten to know here (who are also Americans) had a Halloween party. What they did was get about a dozen kids together and then drove them to several different houses, each house was set up with various activities. They decorated cupcakes ate some candy and more importantly, brought some candy home for Mom and Dad. It was great to have Sydney enjoy some time with her friends here and they had a wonderful time. Heather and I were both super blessed, because living in China you worry that your kids won’t have the same fond memories that you have of your childhood. Well the truth is they won’t have the same memories as us, but that doesn’t mean they can’t make their own wonderful memories… and this past weekend was one of those. It was also a great day because as the kids were off to one of the other homes my friend (Chris) and I went out to get some Chinese food… wearing our matching Spiderman suits! It was great walking down a packed street and seeing every Chinese person with the same look on their face of “Who are these people?” and “Why don’t crazy people just stay at home?”. Crossing the streets of a city of 7.5 million people was a suicide mission (because what Spiderman movies don’t teach you is that Spiderman suits rob you of your peripheral vision), but in the end we had some good food, and made some great Halloween memories of our own (and didn’t get killed).
This past week we also renewed our VISA’s to live here for another year! I will be completely honest with all of you reading this. We have had to go to the VISA office here maybe like 5 or so times and usually one of the following happens; it rains and we can’t catch a cab, the girls are going crazy from boredom, the lines are long… and have no order to them (which for an American can cause brain failure, heart failure or both) or some other mild disaster (most of the time it is stressful and very unpleasant). Seriously sometimes the lines can drive you crazy, we get to the VISA office and it’s packed with no justice or recognition of who got there first. Anyways, this time we came away with some great memories, here are a few of them;
As we waited to catch a cab from our home our 1 ½ year old daughter stuck her hand out to hail a cab. It is one of those moments you realize that raising a family in a city looks a lot different and we were amazed/shocked by our little girl.
On the elevator up to the office, Sydney was given a stuffed bear claw key chain by a random stranger (Chinese people are so friendly that half our toys in our home were probably given to us in some similar manner). As we got off the elevator there was a police officer walking away from us at the end of the hallway opposite of us and Sydney in her deepest imitation bear voice yelled “Zai Jian” (which means “good bye”) as she waved the bear claw in the officers’ direction.
Sydney must just want to be polite to police officers because after that she kept walking around the floor with me at her side and each time we passed a police officer she would salute them and say “YES SIR” with a bit of confidence in her voice.
Well I have more to write, but will save it for the next post, check back soon! We love you all, thanks for stopping in and being part of our family and story.
Till next time,
The Petersons
P.S. Sydney starts pre-school tomorrow, so check back as I will be writing about it soon!
