It's been a full week. Here are some of the highlights...
On Tuesday, Mike was able to sneak away from work a little early, so that we could go and see the Plum Blossom Festival. You should know that it is the INTERNATIONAL Plum Blossom Festival, though I'm not sure what that means. It was really gorgeous. I mentioned in an earlier blog entry, that I had gone with a friend and ridden in the emperor Box, which I have now learned is a Jouzi. When we got to the top of the hill, the men all ran up to us and wanted us to ride. I let the kids all have a turn, and the men wanted Michael and I to have a turn. I told them I'd already tried it, and Mike said, "No Thank you". They really wanted him to try. I think to prove their man-hood or something. Anyway, they offered us a free ride. They were so proud! They all wanted pictures next to him measuring height. And then, they asked how much Mike weighed. I told them 250, and their jaws dropped open. When we walked away, Mike said,"You forgot that they work with kilos, didn't you?" I had just told them he weighs over 500 lbs! Well, they will have a great story to tell...I wonder if it will turn into one of those Paul Bunyan Tall Tales.
We had an incident on Friday afternoon with Eli. I had a mother and her son who is Eli's age, over to play. When I went upstairs to their bedroom, I saw that they had been out on the roof through their second story window! Luckily, the mother acted cool about it. I thought I would die! When Eli was on time-out, he said, "But Mom, I had my umbrella, and I can fly with that!" Fly????? We had a huge conversation, and I said a prayer of thanks in my heart, for him not getting a chance to try that experiment!
Saturday was our church group service project. The young man in our group worked together with the city to plan our outing to a park to each "adopt" and plant a tree and have a plaque with our names on it. The city of Nanjing is doing a bunch of tree planting days to celebrate Arbor Day. To be able to do this activity, we each had to provide a passport photo for a security pass. So, I guess my back-ground check showed I was OK for tree-planting:-) The city provided a bus. We all met at 8:00 in the morning, and climbed on the bus. Twice, our bus-driver pulled over to the side of the freeway to ask cars parked in the emergency lane, directions. Finally we made it. There was a huge deal going on. There were probably 2000 people there for the festivities, with a welcoming drum squad, and TV cameras, banners, etc. Of course, we were the only group of foreigners, so the TV cameras followed us around. The most confusing thing to all of us, was that we saw trees all around. There was definitely not a shortage on trees. They had cleared trees out of an area for the park, and now we were all planting trees back in the park! One interesting thing in the park was a little kiddie ride, on a small train track. The kids were supposed to sit in a little car, and shoot at targets on concrete animals such as a giraffe, a stegasouras, and an elephant (who would then scream in pain) with electric-light machine guns. (?) Scary. The park was beautiful, and we had a lovely walk with the 30 of us who came. When it was time to plant our trees, we went to a pre-dug hole, put the tree that was laying next to it in the hole, and filled the hole with dirt. We then tied our "name-plaque", a small plasticised card with our name written on it, to the tree. The good news is that we each got a pass to the park, good for a year, so if we ever want to go the 2 hours to see how our tree is doing, well, we can!
Nicole spent Friday and Saturday in Shanghai for her Volleyball tournament. She played very well, even if her team didn't win. It sounds like she had a great time.
