August 4th

Once again, I am falling behind on my posting to my blog and not just typing it in word....so here it is....

August 4th, 2007
How is it August already? Time is going by way too quickly and you would think that I could find time to update this everyday, but..... We are still settling here and waiting for our household goods, hopefully they said this Tuesday!! Ayi will take care of the kids and I will put the things away. It has been almost 3 months since we left our stuff, I don't remember what I packed and what I stored. So if she puts it away, I might not even know that I even have it!
We have been quite busy the last 3 weeks. We had some exciting things happen. Let's see what I can remember. We had our 1st house guests about two weeks ago and our 2nd house guests this weekend. The first ones were just supposed to have dinner with us and then go home, but ended up staying the weekend...it was a long one for them and if you know our friends in Hanzhou, they can give you the whole story. It goes something like this, emergency room visit for stitches, train tickets all sold out to go home, and then ended with a case of food poisoning. We enjoyed having them and say again, anybody is more than welcome to use us for a place to stay! We look forward to visiting them and staying at their house, once the weather cools down.

We have realized some things here in Shanghai and everyday we learn a new and better way to do something. For example, taking a taxi, which is really not that expensive. About 5 bucks gets you about anywhere you need to go. The only problem is that the girls, namely Tally, HATE taxis. Okay, it is not the taxi that the hate, or the seat belts in them (that's right, they don't have them), but how they must act while inside them. The drivers are surrounded by a big plastic shield, that would make a perfect drum for a 1 year old right? She wants to bang and is quite frustrated that we are restraining her to our laps or beside us. Then she would love to crawl on the ground, which as mentioned previously, not going to happen because of all the funk. So we take a taxi to church it takes anywhere from 25 to 45 minutes, depending on traffic, and she cries a good part of the time. So we are finding that the subway system is not only really cheap, but our kids are actually happy most of the time and a millions times safer! I think the constant changing of people gives them a different focus. We hardly take taxis altogether anymore. We are walking much more and it may only take a few minutes longer if going across town. But we are much happier as the kids are quite happy!