Traveling Expat Family

(Sorry this post took a little longer than usual to get out, I had a very busy couple of weeks setting up for our first Virtual Open Day on campus- now that it’s over, I can get back to posting!)

On our second trip to Shanghai over the holiday, we had an appointment to go notarize documents at the Embassy in Shanghai- just in case the notarize.com documents were rejected.  The day before we we’re going to leave though, we got the news that the documents were accepted and we could just go and enjoy the trip.

We stayed in a different part of Shanghai for this trip, closer to the embassy, but also closer to metro stops and a really neat area.  We stayed in the Jing’an Temple area, and loved it. As soon as we got off the metro, there was a relaxed fun atmosphere.

Surrounding the temple are lots of restaurants and shopping and hipster coffee joints.  We found a hipster place at the bottom of our hotel and right across the street from the temple to hang out until our room was ready.

We were all so excited about what we wanted to do first.  After tons of research, and much missing of our cat (that was rehomed to my sister-in-law and family) we were going to go hang out in a cat cafe and make some cat friends.  We hopped in a cab and they took us to the address we gave them…. that was closed down (and a while ago too). So we looked up the next cat cafe and it was within a long walking distance but doable. And off we went.  After walking to the next cat cafe, we were in a little neighborhood of apartments, most with no numbers on them, and no way to figure out which one of these was or could be a cafe. We circled an entire section of the apartment block before we had to give up.

Completely dejected, we started walking in no particular direction hoping to find a cafe of some sort to sit and rest and plan our next move.

We walked into the first one we came across and were surrounded by books, all in English. We had stumbled into an english bookstore cafe (with fantastic “after eight” mint gelato). Alex had some gelato, which mostly made up for the lack of cats.  Everyone got to look at some books and we all relaxed. After that we decided to keep walking around and actually found the cat cafe , well, one of them anyway.  It was in a small neighborhood of apartments, with different block numbers.  We knocked on the door, so excited to have finally found it….. and then don’t let kids in. No one under the age of 15.  Alex was crushed.

After that we decided to go to dinner, and we had found an Indian place on our first trip but hadn’t gotten a chance to go to it.  So back on the metro we went.  The restaurant was in a great old town area called Tianzifang.  The dinner was fantastic (Indian food is some of my favorite) and Alex even picked something that we wouldn’t have gotten other wise that was terrific.   We walked around, looked at every store and decided that when people come to visit, this will be another must do.

The next morning we got up, checked out of our hotel and headed back on the metro to get another dose of jianbing and green twisties.  Unfortunately  this time they were both closed. But we did find another bagel shop to try out instead.

After we ate, we found a Starbucks across the street to hang out at and play a few games.

And then we decided to head back to the YuYuan Garden area. I had enjoyed that so much, and we had all had a good time wandering around there and looking at things. The difference was, this time was after the main holiday days. It was so much busier and more crowded (which honestly I thought it was pretty crowded the first time we went).

We saw some kids wearing crowns, and Alex decided he needed one too. So to join in the festivities we got him a antennae crown. 

Aside from the fact that I don’t know how someone hasn’t lost an eye due to the antenae,  Alex loved his crown and he got a lot of attention for wearing it.  Especially older people stopped us to smile and coo at Alex in his crown. And he loved all the attention.

When we were there the first time, there was a guy in a grey coat who was taking pictures of the square and the people,  and while I was trying to get a picture of Mark and Alex by the lion people kept crossing in front of us and walking right into my shot. By the third time one guy had walked into it I made a face at him, and grey coat took a picture of me making that face as I took a picture of Mark and Alex. Mark and I laughed about it saying he’s going to be showing pictures to his friends of the crazy foreign lady making faces.

So this time when we went, I was surprised to see him again, same grey coat, and he recognized us too.  He took a ton of pictures of Alex and followed us around for a bit to see what else Alex would to that he could take pictures of.  I think he may have worked for the YuYuan gardens, or he’s just really enthusiastic about taking pictures of tourists.

Mark has found a new favorite treat in China (pictured above with Alex). We find them lots of places, especially touristy places.  They’re strawberries, but you can find and get other fruit as well,  glazed with a simple sugar glaze.

There were giant displays set up in the river in the middle of the area for the Spring festival, and people were all waiting to get onto the bridge to see them. We decided not to wait in the line because I was getting a little too crowded out to get jostled on a bridge. But it was impressive to see the number of people waiting to see the displays. 

We had a fantastic time in Shanghai, we will absolutely go back again for more adventures.

I’m going to add some random pictures that didn’t really fit anywhere but that I wanted to share.

 

Today is a special guest post by Mark, my loving husband, who not once in the following post mentions anything about his wife, but you know…whatever (update from loving husband: just discovered bus treads on back).

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I am writing as I lounge in one of the famous Chinese hospital IV wards I’ve jokingly heard about from other foreigners. If you’re from the US, you probably recall the salt water gargle cure-all offered by the school nurse. Well, I was led to believe that, in China, an IV at the hospital is similar in spirit.

I’ll spare you from a discourse on my aches and pains, but I have to provide some context. I left work immediately after lunch with abdominal pain. I hoped it would pass, but it didn’t. Instead it elevated to holy-shit-this-hurts intensity.

I’ll be totally honest: I was quite apprehensive to go to the emergency room. A niggling, lizard-brain centered voice based on groundless prejudice but amplified by pain warned there would be not but a shark-fin soup and bird’s nest infused concoction waiting. I stalled until I couldn’t any longer and here I am.

Now, I  am coming into this with a couple of advantages. You’ve heard of white privilege in the US. Forget that noise, give laowai (foreigner, slang)-laoshi (teacher)-with-an-insurance-card-and-cute-kid-in-tow privilege a whirl. Second, a buddy who can “zhong the wen” (our family’s slang for conversing in Chinese, zhongwen being spoken Chinese) rounded out my possy. The end result would have been the same, but these factors definitely helped to finesse the process.

Long story short: 3mm kidney stone that should pass on its own. To those who might ignorantly presume this was determined through some quackery, I have absolute confidence in the diagnosis as it is backed by a CT scan. Time to diagnosis after entering emergency room reception: under 45 minutes. The ultimate irony in all of this is that I have wanted a CT scan since learning the reconstruction methodology direct from domain pioneers during graduate school. It was even a helical scanner, squee!

Let’s bookend this thing baby (Brian, you there?). Second IV bag is almost empty. I feel great, no more pain. I’m guessing the stone has passed to the bladder (update: yes). The IV fluid infusion may even have been the trigger (my first-principles-based lay-knowledge suggests the possibility). Made friends with lots of curious little kids and a cool family sitting across from me. I was totally impressed with the courtesy and downright kindness exhibited by the security guards.

All joking aside, I am writing to say thank you yet again to China in general and the city and people of Haining in particular for being there when I needed you. The professionalism and clinical expertise demonstrated by the nurses, doctors, and everyone involved with my care met all expectations. I can rest easy tonight due both to absent pain and the knowledge that, should my family or I need you again, Haining People’s Hospital is just a quick DiDi down the road.

This was Alex’s and my first time in Shanghai, Mark has been there a couple times for travel and meetings.  I was able to figure out how to get us train tickets on my own- a seemingly small task, but it’s one less thing that we need to ask for help on.   The people in my office are so amazing and helpful but we try to limit how much we ask for help and save it for big favors (like helping me get my driver’s license).

So we hopped on the G train and headed into Shanghai.  Alex was so excited to ride the bullet train- even if he was a little disappointed that the world didn’t flash by in the window the way it does in cartoons.

The station in Shanghai is a little overwhelming at first, there are so many people and so many different ways you can go. We got lunch in the station – Alex got to have Subway for the first time in China, and Mark found a dumpling place he liked.  We knew we were looking for the metro, but there are two signs on opposite sides of the metro for two different lines of the metro, neither one was the one we wanted to be on.

Once we got to the 2 (you have to get on that or the 10) you can transfer to any other line.  Buying metro tickets is a breeze, there’s an English button, and you pick your destination.  By the end of these two trips to Shanghai, Mark and I feel like pros on the metro.

Now, I learned a lesson here that I should have learned already – get the app before you go. There is, of course,  an app for the metro in Shanghai that has a map of all the lines.  There is an app for almost anything here, and half the time there is an English version.

Our hotel was a short walk from the metro station, and in a fairly quiet section of Shanghai. As many people as there were around, it wasn’t nearly as many as I was expecting.  The best thing about the hotel was that is was attached to a fantastic sushi place. We had dinner there the first night, and Alex even tried some salmon belly (not his thing, but he tried!)

Sometimes I forget that I should take pictures for the blog, especially when food is involved.  So there are no pictures of the actual sushi- but it was great. I tried some new things and overall we had a wonderful dinner.

The next day was adventure day. Mark watches a youtube show called “Food Ranger” and one of the first shows he showed me was about a breakfast food called jian bing. our family has been talking about this for months, wanting to try it. We’ve even shown other people the show about it (Sorry Dad).  So since we were there, we decided this was the time. So we hopped on the metro, put the address into the maps (Google maps is accurate about 3/4 of the time here, I also have a map app that come on my Huawei phone that works better with addresses in Chinese) and wandered around until we found it.

Our review on Jianbing is all thumbs up.  It was delicious, everything that had been hyped up was real. It’s crunchy and eggy, and a little sweet and a touch of hot- it would replace breakfast noodles for me if I knew where to find it locally.  We all agreed that it was worth the trek to find it, and that we will be going back for more!

On the same street  we found a bakery that sold what I think are called mahua. My office mate brought in a snack from her home town to share, and we loved them. They are green twisty crackers, that I did not take any pictures of.  So when we found them at the bakery, we knew we had to get some more.  I didn’t take any pictures of this either, so you’ll have to imagine them.  We are trying to find these in Haining as well because it is a new favorite. We can find brown twisty crackers, but they are more like cookies and sweet.

We also hung out in a coffee shop for a while. Mark and I really loved the street that we were on, it was small and local but still lots of movement and bustle.  I really ended up liking all of Shanghai more than I expected.

After that we went to YuYuan Garden, I found that on several lists of things to do when you’re in Shanghai.  Again, we hopped on the metro and got there very quickly.  To get to Yuyuan, you have to walk down a street lined with stores, this stores sell all kinds of things, scarfs, toys, wigs, you name it, it can probably be found here.  It was so fun to see so many people out and about, it was busy but not unbearable.

We decided we’d go through it and see what the shopping area was like before heading to the garden.  It was amazing.  There were so many souvenir options and food options. There was a line for a dumpling restaurant that was 60 people deep.  As we worked our way through, the crowds got a little thicker and there was definitely a press.

After Alex got his treat and we pressed on to find the garden. The closer we got to the garden the denser the crowd got- there were decorations set out on the water and a bridge to walk through  to see them all. Everyone was heading to see that.  We found the garden, bought our very reasonable 30RMB tickets, and headed into what we didn’t know was the back entrance of the garden.

The pond in the background had huge koi in it, Alex enjoyed feeding them the green twisty crackers, the fish seemed to enjoy it too.

I loved the round doors, and the sunlight and shadows. It had a wonderful sense of calm, despite all the people there and the fact that it is nestled in a city of 24 million people.

 

We took the train back, and had a pizza party dinner in our hotel room while watching some survival show dubbed in Chinese.

This is the end of part one-  and really just day one (and a half ) in Shanghai.

As mentioned in the last post, our house sale hit a few road bumps that affected our travel plans.   We had given power of attorney to a family member, that the title company decided wasn’t good enough. So we had to scramble in China during the busiest holiday, where 5 million people are traveling home and businesses are closed, some times for weeks at a time.  This involved embassy appointments, that couldn’t be kept because there was no available way to travel to the embassy.  Panic that we would have to travel home for the closing, which would cost us thousands of dollars.

We were given a suggestion to try a new concept, Notarize.com, an online notary company that is authorized to notarize documents over the internet that are legal and valid in the state of Virginia and any state that will accept other states notarizations.

We decided to take our weekend trip anyway, because we could all use a break and not counting trips to visit family or business trips for Mark’s conferences that we tag along on, we haven’t had a family vacation in years.  So we picked up Alex at school on his last day before break, and took a cab to Wuzhen again. We had such a great time the first time, we wanted to see it at night, when it is the most beautiful.

I found us a cute little boutique hotel just outside the park, with the nicest owner ever. She offered to pick us up at the train station, drove us into the park, picked us up,  went above and beyond to make it a good trip.

It started off beautifully, we waited for a ferry to take us across to the fun area of the park- and while one the ferry, we got our first view of the lights.

Alex stopped at the same corn stand that we had gone to last time, and this time he also got some tea boiled eggs.  He enjoyed them more than I thought he would.

 

We walked straight in and made a beeline for the Full Moon Restaurant that we had gone to the first time.

We had the same delicious fish (that we were too excited eating to take a picture of) , green xiaolongbao that Alex ate most of, something called Shanghai soup, a duck and rice dish, and crab cake sticks.  It was a phenomenal meal.

After that huge meal, we had to walk it all off around the park. There were lots of people around, and all the lights were lit. It had such a fun atmosphere.

We even managed to find a Caffe Bene, a coffee shop we used to go to in Illinois.

It was time to start heading out of the park and back to the hotel, with plans to come back the next day and do some more exploring.

Unfortunately, the next day didn’t happen. Because we had to run around trying to find witnesses that spoke English we had to come back to the university a day early.  The plus side is that we ended up getting all the paperwork signed and turned in through notarize.com. They were a great company to do business with and we will use them again if we ever need to.

We did make it back it to Wuzhen (to collect our stuff from the hotel and check out) and had a really wonderful dinner in a local restaurant.  We walked over there and found them on the Chinese yelp Dianping.

We ordered things by pictures and by what we could translate on the phone app. Alex informed us afterwards that one thing we had ordered was Stinky Tofu, because he had learned that at school.

After dinner we walked around an old town area that was really neat to see. Lots of little stores and restaurants.

 

The next post is going to be about our trip to Shanghai, it’ll be in two parts. 🙂

Here at the University, Mark and I have the whole month of February off to celebrate Chinese New Year.  Unfortunately, Alex’s school only had two weeks off right in the middle of the month because they also got two weeks off at Christmas. So that limited our travel plans to more local adventures, which worked out just fine since we had lots of problems with our house sale back in the States that would have ruined any travel plans we had.

Before everyone went their own ways to celebrate the month off, we had another Taco night.  This was with slightly different group of people and to be honest, it was still snowing and so we had some people who couldn’t make it.   Alex lives for Taco night, it’s one of his favorite things that we do here.  We made plans for this during a dinner with friends where the planning got more and more elaborate- some of the plans worked out, some will have to wait for the next one.

One thing that everyone decided we needed, was a variety of fun mustaches.

When there was hesitation from party goers about wearing a mustache, Alex decided to up the ante….

But he wasn’t done yet.

 

Eventually others got in on the mustache action too, although it was too hard to eat with them on.

 

We had a new chinese friend who hadn’t ever tried tacos before that night, and we had a good time experiencing that with her for the first time. We also got a pinata (it ended up being the smallest pinata I’ve ever seen), which was a first for a few of the guests.  Alex was excited for days about the pinata, he couldn’t wait for people to get started with it.

And this was a tough nut to crack. It was made with cardboard instead of paper mache, we all hit it and it still wouldn’t break. By the time we got it opened, half the candy was crushed.

I made a key lime pie from scratch, my first.  no graham crackers to be had in China, so I got a cross between a shortbread cookie and a sugar cookie, and crushed it up to make the crust. It turned out better than I was hoping. We will do another Taco Night, and probably more after that… each one will get more elaborate I think. Next time the goal is margaritas, and maybe chicken or fish tacos as well.

 

If you’ve talked to me (or Mark ) in person in the last few months, I can almost guarantee you’ve heard about Scooty McBooty.

Call him what you’d like, a scooter, a moped, an e-bike, Scooty is amazing. We’ve had Scooty since the middle of October and Alex immediately named him.  There was a student here selling his e-bike to buy a bigger, faster e-bike, and a mutual friend connected us.  Originally I was so gung-ho to get the scooter “it’ll be so much fun, think of where we’ll be able to take it, blending in …” and Mark was not.  He was concerned for safety, and cost (rightly so).

We met up with the student to take Scooty for a test drive. And as the student is explaining all the buttons and workings to Mark,  I felt the anxiety start to rise and an impending sense of doom came over me… “We’re going to die on this scooter, this is a stupid idea, what was I thinking?”

As Mark put on his Bob the builder helmet and prepared to take a short test drive (on a protect sidewalk, we’re not even talking about the street here) I started nervously laughing and asking if he was sure it was safe.  He hopped right on, scooted to the end, turned around and scooted back.  ” See, no big deal, you’ll like it, give it a shot”

I, very cautiously, climbed on, and went as slow as I could without falling over. When I reached the end, instead of turning and coming back, I got off, walked it to turn it, got back on and came back in a straight line.  Mark was sold and we went home that day with a new scooter.

For a little while, we would ride the whole family on the scooter, I’d be in the back, mark in the middle and Alex would stand in the front.  That makes me way too nervous to do anymore. We talk about buying a second one at some point, but the reality is that we’ll be getting a car at some point soon and probably don’t need two scooters and a car.

It took me a little while, and some practice, but I’m now very comfortable riding Scooty around. It’s actually my favorite way to get around Haining. I feel like I blend in a little more on my scooter, and I can just hop on and run to walmart or the grocery store and get back quick.  There are special lanes for scooters on all the major roads, and a bike lane type arrangement on the roads that don’t have the dedicated lane. So it feels safe too, since you’re not usually riding with the cars.

Another perk to the scooter is that I can pile it up with packages and all the other weird crap that I bring home and don’t want to carry.  I bought a desk online and had to worry about how to get it back to the apartment, no problem, toss it on Scooty and away you go!

It’s a bit too cold right now to be super fun, but we’ve even bought a blanket to keep on the scooter to keep the wind off while you ride.  We joke about going native, but our scooter does look like everyone else’s now.

I took a ride to Walmart the other day to pick up some things for our upcoming trip and I decided to take some pictures along the way to show you my scooter ride.  This is one of my favorite streets to ride down, and while it didn’t photograph particularly well on this trip, expect to see more of this when the weather warms up.

After all the excitement of Christmas, we moved into January with a small bang. Coral and james came over, Alex stayed up until midnight for the first New Year’s ever.  I’m pretty sure we had hot-pot.

Coral and James gave Mark a hot plate designed for hot-pot for Christmas, since then we’ve been trying things out and improving on hotpot at home.  We’ve figured out what meat to buy, where to get the best mushrooms,  I even bought live shrimp and brought them home for Mark and James.  We’ve got our sauce station down, and even bought special sauce bowls just for this purpose.  So when you come to visit, we will do hot-pot.

 

New Year’s eve and day had the worst pollution we’ve seen in China yet. Normally here in Haining our numbers are between 50-120, on New Year’s it was 345. It was so smoggy that when we went to the mall, there was smog inside the halls of the mall.  Alex wore his face mask and Mark and I become motivated to find some for ourselves.   We didn’t go out much for a few days because it was still so polluted. We’re very lucky that it is a once in a long while event for our area to get so polluted.

Alex had to go back to school and I had to go back to work.  This month has been just a lot of work for all us, Alex had end of terms exams which lasted a whole week, Mark has been working on proposals and papers and research, and I have been unofficially promoted to 1/2 of the international recruiting team for our institute.   In addition to my other duties, I’m now involved in our Facebook page, virtual open day, and so very many emails.  I’ve been studying to take my driver’s license test here as well. It’s taken a while for me to get caught up to speed on everything, which is why there hasn’t been much blogging this month.

Mark’s birthday is in the middle of january, and so is mine and our anniversary,  so we went out to a new restaurant to celebrate.  While it wasn’t as good as we were hoping, it was a really beautiful atmosphere and good friends to share it with.  We have a new friend who joined us from Urbana for the semester (and maybe longer), Kent, so we dragged him out with us too.

 

Right now, we’re counting down the days, because tomorrow starts our month-long vacation. The university (and most other things as well) shuts down for the month of February for the Spring Festival (Also known as Chinese New Year).  Because Alex had two weeks off at Christmas, he only has two weeks off for the Feb. holiday.  But we’re planning on exploring more of local (ish) China, another visit to Wuzhen, visiting Shanghai for the first time, and going back to Hangzhou.

 

The title on this one is a little bit of an inside joke- everything that I have to proofread for the university’s website or presentations refers to innovations and something (like engineering) with Chinese characteristics.  It usually implies that those characteristics will improve the original, that is not always the case. So our group here has started tagging it on to everything that is close but not quite right.

We had a Christmas party here on the 23rd, and while not everyone could make it, we had a nice group of friends over. We had some Chinese friends and some expat friends, and mostly people who work at the university.  We had good food, good friends and good conversation.

I got to make Christmas cookies and made a lot of peanut butter blossoms and sugar cookies. I was so excited to share them with everyone because it’s the first time I’ve gotten to bake here.  I had a small issue getting some of the ingredients, but next time will be even better.

Alex got to introduce his friends Kitty and Kelli together, had a rousing nerf gun fight (until, like every mother has always told her children, someone-Alex- got hit in the eye with a nerf dart), and played My First Carcasonne with them.  Usually he gets stuck with just grown ups so, it was great for him to get some kid time. They also got to go outside and play a little bit of frisbee with some of the adults at the party.

I said a few posts ago that I would post pictures of our apartment when I had the house decorated for Christmas. So when everything was cleaned up for the party was a perfect time to take some pictures.

Christmas Eve was a pretty chill day, just hanging out and wrapping presents.   Christmas morning I was the first one up,  I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid I couldn’t sleep at night because I so so excited to see what I would get. Alex slept in until 7:30- I couldn’t believe it.

We always open stockings first.

And then he moves on to bigger presents.

Uncle John and Aunt Heidi sent him and Mark a matching present.

And then came the Santa presents…

All in all we had a great Christmas,  Mark got a game and a dutch oven, I got a sewing machine and a Chinese copy of Nightmare Before Christmas. So a belated Merry Christmas (Shèngdàn kuàilè) from Haining!

Just like it was at home, December has been a crazy month of trying to keep up with all the to do lists to make the holidays happen.  Alex had a Winter Concert on the last day of school, Mark had a week long conference in New Orleans, and Alex has been off school since the 15th.  It’s been a long month.

In the beginning of December we were interviewed for the local Haining paper. It was very strange because to us, we’re just another family, but here there aren’t many foreign families at all and I’m pretty sure we might be the only American family.  I don’t really know what it says, or how accurate any of our “quotes” are, but it was well received by locals, so they at least didn’t make us look like jerks. The translated version is at least fun to read  as a challenge to yourself. We’ve gotten some interesting reactions and made some new friends because of this article so it’s got its perks.  Haining Paper

 

Alex’s Winter concert at school required that he dress in a suit, so he got to have a new black suit, he was so excited about it because he says it makes him feel rich. The buttons on the suit are fake diamonds.

 

His class sang Jingle bells- they got one short song. They did well though, and it was fun getting to see his class all together.

I didn’t get much of a chance to take pictures of his school (because I had to try to get the best seat I could). But I did take some from the indoor walkway between buildings.

We were invited to the Haining Government’s foreigner’s Christmas Party at the Langham Hotel. It happens every year and there is a blend of foreigners and local government and political leaders invited.  The food was wonderful, a terrific variety of Chinese and western foods.  We met some new friends and got to enjoy a fairly fancy night out. While we were waiting in line for food, a gentleman and his friend insisted that we go ahead of them. They were talking about Alex, which is pretty normal for us here, and then they flagged a lady down to tell us that they recognized us from the newspaper article and felt like they knew us.   A little while later, the gentleman came over with the Dean of our university to translate for him, he wanted to toast with us which is a Chinese custom. We toasted and thanked him and exchanged business cards.  The next day I was talking with someone in my office, and they explained to me that the man was the head of the Chinese Communist Party here in Haining and is more powerful than the mayor.  Not a bad person to have on your side!

I decided I should showcase some of Alex’s pictures too, since he took it all very seriously.

This post is a little late as it’s been over a month since we went orange picking, but life and work and holidays have gotten the better of me.

 

Our friends Summer and Kitty (who took us to the amusement park) asked us if we would like to go into the countryside and pick oranges. Since we hadn’t gone outside the city yet, love oranges and have a great time with Summer and Kitty every time, we couldn’t pass it up.  They picked us up and it was a short drive through some really beautiful farm land.  In the beginning, there was a variety of crops, and I got to ask some of my ridiculous foreigner questions (Summer always answers them and never judges); who farms all this, is it corporations or single families?(mostly single families), What is that, I see it growing all over? (it’s rice – does not look like I expected).

There was a little farmers market set up right next to where we parked, and I was thrilled because Summer’s Dad (who had come with us) offered to help me buy some things and show me which ones were good.

 

The whole area was so beautiful and serene, I really felt like I could have stayed there all day. Because it’s more of a local thing though, our foreignness really stood out here.

Alex and Kitty were so excited, they each got their own basket and clippers and we got escorted into the grove behind someone’s house. We walked back and started picking! The owner walked back with us, and showed us which spot had the most ripe oranges.  Here the little ones are the best, more like tangerines.

 

Alex’s favorite part was all the sampling, he got to peel and eat a few oranges on the spot.  We came at almost the end of orange season, so most of the fruit was ripe and ready.

Once we were done , we sent the kids into the house to wash their hands.  As soon as they exited, they found the water pump. Just like Wuzhen, Alex was drawn to it and had to pump water, but Kitty was in on it too!  They had a blast pumping water, forget a playground, people just need to install water pumps everywhere.

On the walk back to the car, I noticed Alex’s eyebrow was very red and blotchy, and then there was another spot on his face. And I started to panic a little, thinking, what could he have eaten or touched that would give him an allergic reaction.  Then it looked like his nose was starting to bleed and I couldn’t figure out what was going on.  Summer’s parents told us that he shouldn’t eat any more oranges if his nose was bleeding because oranges make your body hot and that’s what causes nosebleeds.  Traditional Chinese medicine would suggest drinking some hot water to cool yourself down.  I went to wipe the blood away and realized that it was red ink.  He had touched a bottle with wet hands and the ink soaked in and then he touched his face all over.   It was such a silly thing in the end.

Summer’s Dad helped me buy fantastic eggs, some really lovely peppers- they are almost like serranos, and another vegetable that for the moment is escaping me (maybe it was cabbage?).  It was really nice of him to help me since I have very little experience picking fresh eggs or peppers and I’m sure I would have gotten the wrong ones.

It was a really fun day and I hope we get to do it again. The kids had a blast and I had oranges for days! We ended up giving them out at work because we had so many extras.