Nee How from China

So we made it to China! Jonathan only lost me once on the metro (don't worry, i figured it out in the end). We stayed that night and much of the next day in Shanghai. It was a cool place, someday I'll write some of my thoughts on expectations and realities being here, right now i don't have a lot of time thought, so I'll just give you the basics, and lots of pictures.

In Shanghai we visited the Yuyuan gardens and the old city (the part that looks like what you'd expect of china). The gardens were beautiful and a fun playground for Peter. We bought a few souvenirs, I was very proud of my robe I got down to 60yuan instead of the 380 she started with. We walked around for a while here:  

Yeah, someone doesn't understand personal space

Got to see this guy for more than 4 days! He loves leaves

Chinese food, mmm...

So one time I went to Russia and bought a babyshka dress/nighty. Another day I went to China, I saw the exact same dress...

We took the train to Nanjing Saturday night, it's been pretty nice and relaxing just to be here and stay at Jonathan and robin's apartment. We went to church on Sunday in a hotel, a very nice branch, it reminded me of how much i like small branches like that, a nice feel and very good talks and lessons. We have mostly just been hanging out here and going around a little bit, helping pack up the apartment.

Going for a walk and lowing bubbles. Because apparently you can only pop bubbles sitting down.

Pretty pond near their apartment

Monday was our touring day. Jonathan took us to the Zhonghua Gate, the oldest part of the city wall. It was very cool, you could run up onto the ramparts and go through the little caves built into it.

Really cool old gate to the city, you can read the name at the top

Design of the gate system we explored

Shrine inside one of the gate caves

Beccah slowly walking up the wall

Me starting to run up

Me quickly passing Beccah up the wall

Beccah needs to exercise more

We went to the Confucius Temple area next with lots of very chinese buildings and souk-style alleys. We tried some very good food and had many pictures taken of us.

Chinese happy face :)

Boats we didn't ride. At night the dragon and boats all lit up

Delicious potato stick thing

China street. Notice all 20billion mopeds

Doing Chinese calligraphy

Later that night we met up with friends of Jonathan and Robin, a 13yr old girl, who Robin tutored in english, and her family. They bought us dinner in that area, which was good, but so, so much, Jonathan kept saying we had to choose more food to put on the table! This is where skills I learned on my mission come into play, such as eating one thing very, very slowly so it looks like I'm eating a lot; or pretending to eat the crab steamed bun, when really i just took bites of the bun. But it was very difficult, Robin, Beccah, and I were trying very hard to be polite and desperately waiting until there was an ok amount of food left and we could stop. The grandparents were brilliant, they just took Peter around the restaurant and  ran around shopping him off, they barely ate anything! But it was very sweet of them to buy us dinner and the girl, Kur, was super sweet.

                                      

The restaurant, so many different things!

The food left, there was so much more!

I did get an infection yesterday (aka crazy glue spilled on my hand), that we convinced Beccah was from the water and to just be really carefully washing her hands and brushing her teeth, but that if she got it she would probably be ok, it wasn't too infectious. Pretty sure she still believes us, at least until she reads this post. I wish i had taken a picture of that one.

Last night Jonathan had a party here with some of his work friends, that was pretty crazy. Robin and I were running around in the kitchen trying to cook up anything out of the last of the food (we did pretty good), Beccah was in there randomly singing until we kicked her out or made her do some dishes(then she left of her own accord). But it was fun and loud and they ate a lot, and they cleaned up and did the dishes, I like those kind of guests! Now we are just finishing packing up and getting ready to leave today for Beijing. I don't think I'll have access to to this site anymore while we're still in China, so next time I'll be writing from Israel!