Finally December!

Merry Christmas, baby!

I feel like I've been staring at my desk calendar, willing the days to go faster, and now it's finally December! Hooray! That means a week from today I will be home packing for a flight to Munich to join family in a celebration that is sure to be one of the best ever. I think that's why time is going so slowly. Last week was dreadfully slow, this week, a little less so, but still NOT FAST ENOUGH!! :)

Yay, food!

I posted last week about thanks, but I didn't talk about how we celebrated our first Thanksgiving in China. I was feeling pretty glum about the whole thing, and we didn't even really have any plans to fix dinner. Our cooking abilities are limited because of our lack of an oven. So we picked up some deli meat turkey, sliced thickly, some broccoli, potatoes and bread and headed home to make our own meal. It actually turned out pretty well. A simple meal, but we all talked about what we were thankful for and enjoyed it as a family. Easiest clean up afterwards ever for a Thanksgiving dinner. Then we settled in to watch a movie and relax together. Nothing too extravagant, but it made me feel better, and I was glad to carry on the tradition for Paul. Also, it meant we had leftover turkey to eat for a few days, just like always. :)

LCC

Luohu border crossing

Usually we will avoid shopping the weekend after Thanksgiving for obvious reasons, but since going to the store always feels like a Black Friday rush, we decided to get a jump on Christmas shopping the Saturday following Thanksgiving. We started with a quick trip to Dafen (it took 1.5 hrs to get there, and I think we only stayed 45 min). Then took the metro down to the last stop at Luohu.

He was relaxed, not us.

Luohu is a border crossing into HK, so it's were all the HKers come to shop in Shenzhen since it's cheaper than in HK. Kinda like the Canadians crossing to the US, or a Mexican-US border crossing. Right when you cross into Shenzhen, there is a huge shopping center called the LCC (Luohu Commercial Center). It's crazy. It houses five floors of booths that sell anything from clothing to toys to electronics. Pretty much everything is knockoffs, but some of them are so good you can't tell the difference! (Don't worry family, I won't scam you with a fake ;))  The madness begins right as you walk in, people start yelling at you to buy whatever they are selling. Then when you finally decide to enter a shop and purchase something, you have to embark on an epic bargaining venture. I read that they will start their bartering at 4 times the actual worth of the object, so it takes a pretty solid will to fight it down to a price you're willing to pay. We got better at it as the day progressed. We ate at a delish international restaurant, then headed back home. It was an exhausting day, but felt good to try something new. And we had finished a lot of our shopping.

Pretty awesome

Sunday we got up and decided we were going to find the elusive Shenzhen Bay. We'd seen it from the ferry, and everybody talks about this wonderful running/biking path and park along the water. It's supposed to stretch for 10k, and be super nice. With limited map help, we set out to walk there and found it was only 2.5k from our door. So we went for an easy jog along the water, stopped to play and have a snack, then Donnie wanted to go back to Luohu. We managed to flag a cab down and spent the afternoon in Luohu again! Not my first choice of Sunday activities, but we managed to finish the rest of our Chinese-bought presents.

Gotta catch up with them!

Silly guys, ;)

The rest of this week has been uneventful, except for two things. One, we won again at quiz night! So now we have a stack of prizes to use next week at the quiz. And two, Paul had his Winter Concert at school today. Our director let us leave to go watch it, which I was nervous about because Paul has been a little moody this week. I was afraid he would cry straight through it. When he went up for the 3's concert, he was spunky and funny with his friend Connor, but he lost it in the group finale. He cried the entire song. I felt bad for him and when it was over comforted him, but I knew he wouldn't last the rest of the day at school. So luckily our ayi, Amy came to pick him up and took him home for a nap. Hopefully he's in better spirits when I get home today.

Paul and Connor

Other than that, I hope this week goes by super fast and I will try to post before we leave, but if not, the next post might be from Germany! :)

Love to all.