We have been in China for almost a week. The trip getting here was long as expected. We had about a 22 hour travel day. We were lucky to have only an hour and 45 min. layovers at the two stops. The kids did great. They were tired, but very well behaved. One of the flight attendant complimented on how well behaved they were. It is nice that they are older, and that they had movies to keep them occupied. I ended up getting a cold just before heading out. This caused my ears to hurt during each of the takeoffs and entries. By the time the plan landed the final time I could not get my ears to pop. My one ear ended up feeling like it needed to pop for 3 days. There were two different times I thought is was better and then would return to the same clogged feeling. It finally returned mostly to normal. There are many things throughout the week that are only mostly normal. I guess that is what happens when you live in a new country.
 
    Day 1- Tuesday
  Upon arrival it was so nice to be greeted at the airport by our Driver Jin Wei. He also had another driver with him to help us get our luggage back to our home. It is about an hour drive to get to our home from the airport. Once we arrived we got our 10 suitcases into the house and took a look around. It was nice that Paul had spent five weeks earlier this year in China living at the house and getting to know the driver and the area. Arriving were all super tired and I really wasn't feeling very well. Paul was kind enough to let us stay at the home while he made a quick trip to the store to pick up a few grocery items and grab some McDonald's for dinner. We then all crashed for the night.

   Day 2- Wednesday
  Paul decided with everyone feeling tired and needing some time to just relax he would go ahead and go into to work to get caught up a bit. The kids and I spent the morning getting the rest of the suitcases unpacked and things organized around the house. The house has been vacant for months, and there are lots of bugs, and really needs cleaned up, but I was not up to doing today by 3:00 pm I was exhausted. I sent Paul a text letting him know I was going to rest. I was pleased to wake up hours latter to spaghetti dinner that Paul had prepared. He was patient to go around a wake everyone up to come and eat. After dinner Paul and I had gone down into the basement to change to laundry. While done there I saw a spider almost the size of the palm of my hand. It may have been that I was super tired and not feeling well. It may also have been the fact that I really do not like bugs, but seeing the huge spider put me into a full on panic attack. I offered my flipflop to Paul to kill it. He said that needed something more sturdy. I was worried that if we both came upstairs it would be gone by the time he came back down to take care of it. I did not go back downstairs with him, but he told me that he was able to kill it, and promised me that we would spray for bugs the following day. We all went to bed early, but sleeping was a bit difficult for me due to thoughts of spiders crawling all over me.

    Day 3- Thursday
  The light comes up super early and partly due to jet lag we were up around 4:30 am. Today was the holiday of the Dragon Boat Festival. Paul asked Jin Wei what they do to celebrate. He said that they get together with their families and eat eggs and sticky rice. It was nice to have a day to be able to get some things we needed from the store. We went to Sam's club, Metro, Sunny, and a sports store for goggles. Metro and Sunny both are stores that have more American foods. It took all day, but we got home with food and cleaning supplies including bug spray. In hopes that we can make this place comfortable for everyone.

Duck egg 

Sticky Rice

   
 Day 4- Friday
   Paul got up early and went into work. The kids and I took it easy during the morning and watched a show together, and then it was time to clean. We spent the rest of the day working on getting the floors cleaned up. It is all tile or hardwood floors through out the house, and it isn't a small home. For the first part of the day I was regretting that I had chosen such a large place to live in. We split things up and the kids all helped out. By the end of the afternoon things were looking much better and starting to feel more comfortable. Paul had sprayed the night before and spent some time sweeping up the basement. I think we only killed two very small spiders through the entire day. A huge improvement over the day before. That evening we worked together to make meat loaf and bake potatoes for dinner. The oven is very different then what we are used to, but most kitchens in China don't have ovens at all, so I am grateful for what we have. Our first dinner prepared by us here was successful. By the time we got things cleaned up everyone was feeling pretty tired so we went to bed around 8:30

     Day 5- Saturday
    We woke up again around 4:30. It is surprising how much you can do in the morning when you wake up so early. We decided it would be fun to try to find a recipe that we could make pancakes with the ingredients we have. It was nice that is was a new recipe, so we didn't have anything to compare it to. Considering so many of the ingredients are different, maybe just the milk, but it will still change things. Everyone like them. We also had lots of bacon. Everyone is happier when there is bacon! I spent the morning cutting the boys hair, and then we all got ready for the day. We headed out around 10:30 to go and find a piano. I had asked Jin Wei if he knew of any good stores to find a keyboard piano. He took us to two different places and was so kind to come in and communicate with the people at the store. It would have been very difficult to get things negotiated without his help. We ended up going with a keyboard that had English. The little things that make life easier. Actually understanding what the buttons say! We put a down payment on the piano and scheduled to have it delivered to us the following day. We took the kids to Indian restaurant that Paul and I had gone to when we come back in December. Everyone liked the food. We tried some butter chicken curry, that is what I like because it isn't spicy, and another curry that Paul likes. I think Bonnie liked it too. We then attended a Rock festival. Most of the groups sang in English. There was one Chinese group. It was less entertaining for us, but the crowd as a hole enjoyed it more. It is fun to listen to music, but more entertaining when you understand the lyrics. We finished off the day trying a place that makes pizza. Bonnie fell asleep while sitting at the restaurant. All the kids crashed during the drive back.

   

Jin Wei

   Day 6- Sunday

   Like most things in China church is a little different here. We are privileged to be able to practice our own religion here. We are restricted to meeting with only foreigners. Because there are not very many LDS members in our area we are bunched into a branch that covers most of China. We meet at someones home with all the members in our area and call into the meeting. We are all asked to make sure our phones are on mute keeping the meeting more quiet and reverent. We are given eight minutes to administer the sacrament if Priesthood holders have been authorized to do so. It was neat for Connor to have the opportunity to pass the bread and water to everyone. People are assigned to prepare and give talks. For this month the focus is on Fathers. There were some technical issues during the second talk and the called dropped twice. Those are some of the challenges we will face due to how we have to meet. Our group has a lot of young kids, and one of the ladies was called into the primary presidency. For the second hour she gathered the kids and taught primary. Bonnie said it was a bit crazy. It is challenging to teach kids for an hour with the age range from 3 to 10. I was called into the Young Women's presidency as the second counselor. I attended Sunday school with Connor and Hanna. It was nice to have the three of us listening into the lesson. I don't know that church will ever feel normal, but it is better then nothing. We were excited to get home and wait for the arrival of the piano. It showed up about 30 minutes late. It looked great, but they forgot the cord to plug it in. Lukily we had scheduled with Jin Wei to come and drive us down to the beach. He was able to drop by the piano store and pick up the cord prior to coming to our home. Paul quickly plugged in the piano and gave it a try before heading out. It worked great! We took a short five minute drive down to beach. It was much cooler down by the water.The air had also cleared up and we got to enjoy blue skies. It was fun to walk around and see the different attractions that we could come back and do on the water another day. When we got back we worked together to cook up some BBQ chicken and potatoes slices like Alex makes. When it comes to cooking it isn't really my thing. It has been nice that we have made it a few days and have not starved. For that matter everyone has been pretty happy with the food. A few things are different such as milk from a box, syrup that isn't log cabin, the water even from the jug tastes different. I keep thinking that in time we will forget how things "should" taste and just get use to how things do taste.

Paul and Connor at the piano

At the beach!