This is our picture of the TV tower. Eli is on Mike's shoulders.
We are professional Tai Chi people. 
For the Race, we were supposed to find something very unique for 10 yuan and get a photo with the seller. He did not want his photo, and everyone around us thought it was so funny. 
Here is our driver, Jiang, imitating our special "antique market" purchase. 
We were supposed to have a creative photo taken in front of the Nanjing Lion Statue. We found a grounds-cleaner, and he got us, but not the lion.(???)
We needed a silly photo with at least 30 bikes. Not hard to find.This last week, I’ve had computer problems, again! I wasn’t able to upload photos to my blog page. I’ll try to re-cap a bit of what went on. Last Saturday morning, there was a school activity. I had signed the family up to participate, and it sounded like a good idea, until we had to get up and be there by 8:00am that morning! Well, it was a “Race, Around Nanjing”. We were given a map, and a list of places and tasks to fulfill at these places. We were to leave at 8:00am and return no later than 1:00pm. We really had a fun time, and actually found some places that we had never been. One of the sights was the old International School. It was fun for the kids to see where it used to be. I think they were very glad that they have a nice new school. The old one wasn’t so nice. We had Nicole’s friend Maggie with us. We did really well, and although the boys started to niggle (a new word I learned from my Aussie friends) each other toward the end, it turned out great. We ended up with third place, and, lucky us, we won some gift certificates to McDonalds. We gave one to Maggie and the rest to our driver. We figured he did most of the work, anyway.
Rachel and Nicole are heading out today and tomorrow to their trip-weeks with their school classes. Rachel went to Xi’an and Nicole will leave tomorrow to Hongzhou. They are very excited, and are both taking cameras, so I’m sure I’ll have some fun pictures to put on the blog.
On Friday night, was the school Halloween party. I don’t know how we got ourselves into this, but we were in charge of a story room for the middle and high school. Yes, it is impossible to find a story that will actually scare that age-group without going an evil route. So, Mike and I used the startle-factor instead. We were in a sound-proof band room, and we covered the instruments and drums with black cloth. Mike told the “Hook” story about a young high-school couple and a killer with a hook. Well, it wasn’t really that scary, but it was dark, and I was hiding behind some instruments and we would scream as loud as we could at the end. We did this over and over for an hour and a half. Our throats were so sore at the end! Most of the kids weren’t scared, but they were good sports. The middle-school boys had to act tough and all made a point that they were NOT scared, but the best groups were the Korean girls. They were hilarious! I swear they were scaring themselves. They would scream and whimper the whole time. Mike could hardly even get them to come into the room! He had to tell them at the end, that the story wasn’t real. Anyway, Mike was a good sport, and it was much less work than a haunted house!
Eli turns 5 this week. I can’t believe he is growing up so fast! He has asked for Cheeseburgers for his birthday dinner. He also requested a transformer cake, but I talked him into a chocolate bat. Happy Birthday Eli!
