China Day

Today is China's national holiday. We were told that people have a day off and the subway, or perhaps only the Tiananmen Square stop of the subway is closed.

We were ready for a day home anyway, so it was a good excuse to stay around "home" and not deal with traffic and people congestion.

We slept in a little because the kids were late going to bed last night. We got through our studies and had some lunch and headed over to the park. The first pictue is taken from our bedroom window. The green area is the park nearby and you can see the mass of buidings beyond it, that is Beijing.

We spent the early part of the afternoon having a stroll aound the park and then finding a spot in the sun to read while the kids played with their new racquets. After we tired of that we went back to the apartment to do a little research and planning for the next leg of the trip.

Before we knew it, it was time to meet our new friends in the park. In the top row you can see Wendy, Yasmin and Roya and in the bottom there was a new girl, Susan, Jim and Jen. Brian had to go to his grandmother's house today so he was absent. They played tag again, but this time we asked them to teach us their version. It was similar to freeze tag, but when "it" comes close you have to stop put your hands together and say a three word sentence. If you do, you're safe, but you're frozen until a free friend touches you. The favourite sentence seemed to be "I love you." I also thought it funny that the most common question we would hear was "Who's tag?"

So now that you know what our apartment looks like from the inside, perhaps you should see the outside.

This shot was taken from the entrance to the park. Our building is R. In the background, if you look closely you can see a bit of the Olympic Bird's Nest stadium.

We're surrounded by very large buildings, but surprisingly we are starting to bump into people that we've already met. We waved to the guy that we met at the ping pong tables as we walked along the street the other day and Nadim met someone we had chatted with at the park in the grocery store. It makes us feel a bit at home. Strange in such a large city.

CM