Puppet Theatre and Friends

We did home schooling as usual this morning, and then ventured out to find the China Puppet Theatre after lunch. This was a bit more of an adventure than planned...

We decided to make our way to subway line 8 rather than line 5 as it seemed like a shorter trip. Line 8 was used for the Olympic venues. Off we went and after about 25 minutes of walking we found line 8, but it was closed! Ahhh.

We ended up having to walk there. So after an hour and a half from the time we left the house we eventually arrived. We stopped and asked directions but the guy didn't speak English, of course. Nadim was starting to act out "puppet theatre" (kind of entertaining), but a passerby stopped. He could speak English and was able to point us in the right direction.

Eventually we went to our show. It was all in Chinese, but we kind of got the gist of it and the puppets were really entertaining. They were so detailed, and they could make them look so life like!

The girls seemed to enjoy it, although Yasmin was trying to convince us to get them to switch it to English. A little difficult!

The trip home was much shorter. We stopped at the park on the way home and for the first time there was a group of kids there that were Yasmin and Roya's age. Yasmin was quite excited about it , but too shy to make friends. Within five minutes the group of kids left and Yasmin was very sad. She said she missed her friends back home. She had tears in her eyes and it nearly broke my heart. After a hug, I suggested we play tag. This seemed to cheer her up, and then there was a little boy at the park and the girls started to play follow the leader with him.

The best part was that after about 20 minutes the older kids came back! The girls were still shy but eventually we got the kids to start playing tag with us. Our first couple of attempts failed because they didn't know how to play! After we told them how the game works, things went much better. We played tag and climbed on the play structures until it got dark and it was well past supper time. The girls were so happy to have some new friends that I didn't have the heart to stop their fun. As we were all leaving, we managed to make plans to meet in the park again tomorrow.

We got home and I made tortillas from scratch, and we had burritos. The sauce was also from scratch. The girls were quite happy because this is one of their favourite meals, but we hadn't been able to find refried beans or flat bread. A lot more work than at home, but well worth it. The kids went to bed with big smiles after such a great day.

CM