Spring

I went out last Wednesday to Fudan to meet Ridley and another woman who works at Fudan for dim sum. The bottom picture shows the food arriving, the top picture shows the food when we were done eating! Absolutely amazing amounts of food for $3 a piece. Where are we going to eat in the States for that????

Well, it is spring, and we are crazy busy here as the rest of the world is at this time of year - end of school, with the addition of the end of our time in Shanghai. It is so hard for us to fathom that we will be leaving in 6 weeks.

I still have a lot of our last vacation to post, and I will get to it at some point. We leave in about an hour for a 4 day Yangtze River Cruise. We are trying to fit it all in before we leave!

It is spring here - has been for a good month - and more glorious than we could imagine. The trees have leafed out, the skies are blue, the days are warm with cool breezes and everyone is out and about. It got warm enough one day that I even saw a man cooling himself in the way we became accustomed last summer and fall - pulling his shirt up to cool his tummy. It was a great reminder of what warmth is around the corner.

We walk out the lane in the morning to the school bus and pass our lovely neighbor, who we call the plant guy, who shaves his head while watching the morning activity. Paige couldn't cross the street the other morning, at 7:15, as there was so much traffic - cars, bikes, motos, people. It took about 5 minutes! We will miss all these sites.

We get back from the cruise Monday night and Wednesday night we are hosting Ridley's boss from Fudan and about 8 others for a Mei dinner. We are trying to be very strict about what she makes! Paige is hosting a party with another friend on Saturday night with about 25 kids. We talked to the neighborhood lane committee and we have the community room for the night. It should be fun. It is a pink party! Lucky boys. My friend Timi arrives from the States the same day. It is a crazy week.

There seem to be so many things that I see every day that I want to record, but I sit down here and forget them all! Funny little things that we have come to take for granted, but which are really so China.

More, so much more, later.