our week one adventures in china

Tonight will mark the one-week anniversary of us moving to China, and since I haven’t gotten my new site of Chinese Adventures running yet, I’m giving a recap of our more or less fortunate adventure here. I am so grateful that at least our kids speak Chinese, as it is a struggle to get anything done otherwise. I battled a taxi drive from the school to the apartment on Monday, he didn’t quite know where he was going and kept asking me questions. I, with my twice-travelled experience (both on different routes) kept pointing my fingers to the directions and we kept driving in circles for ages. Thankfully this building has 40 floors, so it was pretty well visible and we made it here in the end!

Chinese snacks — Testing new snacks for kids…

By far we have managed to:

Find a rice cooker, supermarkets and a nice fruit/vegetable market nearby
Bought a whole bunch of things to try as school snacks for school, hope some of them works out
Managed to communicate with our driver with the help of the kids and our 20 words of Chinese. Hasn’t been easy though as locals read only addresses written in Chinese characters…
Visited the famous Tian’amen square and one touristic part of the Great Wall of China, where I did my first ever haggling over some silky wall charms for the kids (with the help of miss A. I should add) where we got the starting price of 130 yuan/each down to 100 for two. (100 yuan being about USD 17).
Been rental house hunting
Visited the ER twice – first with miss A. who slipped on the tiled floor, fell and hit her head on the coffee table and was bleeding behind the ear and another time with the twins when they got some rash and the school suspected hand foot and mouth disease: luckily it wasn’t that, but the doctor’s didn’t know what caused the rash.
Tried and liked a new fruit – lychee (I know they can be bought almost aywhere, but I had never bought a whole bunch of them before – they were so juicy as it’s the peak season now)
Fallen in love with the Chinese yogurts, which are rather liquid and the boxes come with straws so less mess too!

Best of all we had three happy kiddies who liked their new school, teachers, food, the school bus experience – and have even already made some new friends. When we asked today if they wanted to go back to US the answer was a definite no. And happy kids means happy parents too. So it’s been a bit crazy and eventful week, but it’s looking good, and the weekend should be even better as new exploring will definitely take place. Even the weather has been great, a couple of sunny days with very little fog – and it’s been safe to be outside everyday.