Trey's Early Birthday Celebration

Trey's birthday is August 31st, but since we're going to be in transition again, we decided to celebrate it last night. Our whole team from Nanjing, plus several other families hiked to the KFC with a play area. I baked cupcakes at the ELIC office here in Beijing, so we celebrated with chicken, cupcakes, and a little slide. Trey had a blast! We are so fortunate to have such wonderful new friends!

Colorado Friends

What a surreal feeling when I saw Xu in the hall of our hotel here in Beijing! Bill and Xu are friends from Colorado. Bill was my (Sharolyn's) professor at CCU, and Xu grew up in China. Xu was in Beijing for a college reunion, and they made a special trip to the west side of the city to see us. We had such a wonderful night with them! It was so hard to say goodbye! Anyone else want to come visit?

Shopping at WengFuJing

Our goal for Sunday afternoon was to find Trey a toy since we could only bring a small number of his toys with us. Our mission was accomplished - packed full of interesting things along the way. We managed to squeeze into overly crowded buses and Subways (more crowded than usual because it was Sunday), enjoyed McDonald's and Dairy Queen in the same day (I doubt we would do that at home), and even witnessed live scorpions on a stick!. So much to discover here!

Bewilderment look turns into friendship

  Funny how he works.  One week ago Sharolyn and I were looking bewildered at a kids play area, in a mall,  wondering how much it would cost for Trey to play in a specific section.  A man approached us and said Hi.  Sharolyn quickly asked him if he spoke English and of course he did.  To make a long story short, we made an instant connection with he and his wife who have an 11 and 9 year old.  They live in Beijing, however are both from Nanjing where we'll be living. We went to dinner with them last night and hope to continue this friendship.  Again, amazing how he works.

Freeze Tag

We met the sweetest 8 year old girl playing freeze tag yesterday. She watched us for a bit, and then came up to introduce herself. She said hello and told us her name, but that is about all the English she knew. We invited her to play, and she caught on immediately! When Trey fell and scraped his knee, she rushed over to him, helped him up, and led him to a bench. She nurtured him while I (Sharolyn) poured water on his wound. It was a sweet moment. This experience made our entire day!

Crossing the Street

I (Sharolyn) am just fascinated by the ordered chaos on the streets. To get to the WuMart (grocery store), we have to cross a fairly busy street. I took a picture of Trey and Travis crossing a few days ago. (It's hard to see, but they were right in the middle of the street at this point.) It's amazing how the cars just know to avoid the pedestrians, and no one gets hit.

  
     Here are some pictures of the Forbidden City, walking up to Tienanmen Square, and Rock Star Trey being asked to have a picture taken with a local Chinese girl.   I guess they don't like pictures with middle aged, balding fat guys.  Go figure. 

16 Aug 2010

   We have survived our first 10 days in China.  We have only been lost twice, ordered the wrong food once, and have not managed to get hit by a taxi, car, truck, motorcycle, scooter, or bicycle on the roads (as of today).  I'm just starting to blog out so we will have more to write later, but I at least wanted to get the blog set up so we can share our experiences with all our family and friends back home.  We love and miss all of you very much.