Stir Crazy in Shiajiazhung

Well, we've been in this provence for about a week now and I think we're all about ready for a change of pace. We are definitely grateful for the time to bond as a family, but everyone is getting a little bored of hotel life.

Today, we got out for a few hours to the Hebei Provence Museum, which was unfortunately under construction, so mostly it had photos of the stuff you'd see if you came back later. Also, nothing fails to attact a small childs attention much less than pictures of stuff. Aubrey was on excellent behaviour, as was Aaron which was great. She was a little restless and played the Mommy carry me for 2 minutes..now Daddy...now Mommy game, but otherwise did great.

Aaron thought some of the stuff was pretty cool. He had a really good question about this one:

"Why do these guys have frying pans on their heads?"

"Museum? Let's run!"

Main Entrance to the Museum, under construction but cool

The rest of the day was just spent hanging around the room. Thank God we went for a room with extra space. The kids have some room to run, which I couldn't imagine life without. Aubrey had a good day and did a lot of independent play and interaction with Aaron. In true Aubrey fashion, it's interaction on her terms, but it's great to see. She will occasionally get one of us to sit on her lap, which is always funny and a challenge since she's so tiny:

We had our best bed time yet! The kids had a few hours to just play and be goofy and Aubrey has finally come to view the bed as an exceptable place to hang out, so she spread all of her toys out and went to town.

A quick primer for this video...Mei Mei is little sister and Giu Giu is big brother.

After a while, we just all got in bed and turned out the lights. Aubrey offered up a round of goodnight kisses to everyone and after a little while of tossing and turning, she konked out.

Tomorrow is our last full day here, then on Thursday we fly out to Guongzhou. The weather there is more like Florida since it's south China, and it's a more Westernized city. That can be good (Starbucks!) and bad (pricey), but we're ready for the change. Shiajiazhung has be pretty good to us. It's huge..something like 9 million people, yet considered a small city. One of our favorite things has been the local park, which we love. On our first visit there, I felt like we had stepped into a China themed Disney park. It has kids and Tai Chi, a guy playing beautiful music on a violin and a group of people dancing and singing.

My other favorite is what I'm calling the food alley. At night, it's like a scene out of the movie Bladerunner, just cart after cart after stand of amazing foods. I'm not entirely sure what a lot of it is, nor would I eat the majority of it for obvious health reasons, but what we've sampled has been fantastic. I look forward to going over there and grabbing a few things. Plus, that's where the world's greatest Wonton Soup comes from. Now when I walk in, the young guy behind the counter smiles real big and holds up 2 fingers, as my usual is two big jugs of shrimp and pork Wontons. Check out this link if you want to see what I'm talking about:

http://www.likealocal.cn/archives/11

We'll post a final time from Shiajiazhung tomorrow, then we're off to Guongzhou