A little taste of home

Nothing like coming all the way to China only to fall back on the warm and familiar.

Todays big trip:

Walmart.

We needed groceries. So we all went out in the heat and walked to Walmart.

Chinese Walmart.

Which is just like American Walmart - except with more Animal parts. More stinky fruits. More Tofu. More samples.

We walked over there - about a mile - but with the kids it felt like 10 miles. Jordan explained to me that once, he ran for an entire day. I asked him a few questions about the validity of his statement - and he responded - well, if you don't believe me, I'd like to see you prove it's not true. I smell a budding lawyer. Now I know how Alex Keaton's parents felt...

Jordan was upset all morning about a papercut he got from a popcorn bag and Jade was ticked cause my wife made her wear shoes instead of sandals cause its so dusty and dirty on the roads. Between the two of them, it was like a typoon blowing a set of windchimes that only make a whining sound.

I will say again without hesistation that there is nothing as hard as being a parent. I will take all the changes that the US and China has to offer before I tell my wife to just tough it out.

Last night, while I played ball - Ivy and the kids slept. They all woke up and got moving about 10 at night - where I decided to take them over to a place called THE PLACE. The Place has the largest video screen in the world. Bigger than Vegas. The kids were really excited to see it. By the time I got them all out of the house and over there - for some reason unbeknownst to me -

The screen wasn't on.

They want to try again tonight.

We ended up on a back alley tour of local places near the hotel. We found a great place to eat at 11pm and had salmon and a kind of chicken stew. Afterwards, we bought a bag of small mangoes - about 10 of them - for 2 bucks.

Its hard to figure exactly how far to take the kids on this journey into China. Part of the excitement for them is actually being around their dad for more than a week a month - and part is just being someplace new. But until they're over their jet lag - I'm not pushing them too far or they will start pushing back.

Guess we'll just take it a step at a time.

Step one - Jaccuzi.

Step Two - Walmart.

Step three - ......?