Pappa said it won't hurt us...

Wow. How the world has changed.
We even have to label the stunts in commercials as dangerous and your car is not meant to be driven that way.

It's been kinda crazy.

I've been coming back and forth to China since 1994 - before I had kids. For the last year, I've been coming back and forth on my own. Now - the wife and kids are here and I get to experience everything again for the first time.

It's been really fun.

Seeing how they see things.
Seeing what they think is gross.
Seeing how they react to things they have never seen.

For the most part - they've done me proud.

My wife is a trooper too.
She is normally a homebody and pretty introverted in new situations. Especially in a culture where she doesn't speak the language - but where everyone assumes that she does and looks to her to speak for all of us.

How strange when it's the white guy who whips out the language and drops some knowledge.

Ivy doesn't like to go out and mix it up with people in Indiana - much less the people in China. But she took the kids to a waterpark yesterday. Even though it was grimy, kind gross and full of bugs - she did it. She said it was almost empty - but they did have a live band playing Coldplay the whole time.

So that made it all worth it.

For her to go - she has to get a magazine that talks about the place she wants to go. Then she has to go over to the hotel and show them the magazine and explain she wants help writing out the address in Chinese. Then she has to go get a cab and show him what the hotel guy wrote - hoping against hope that he will take her and my kids to the right place. And then after they get there - reverse the process to get home.

Any bump in the road and she has no idea what to do. But she did it. A regular modern day Marco Polo if you ask me... :)

The kids were exhausted when they got back last night - but we still went for a walk to have some Thai Food for dinner. We ate outside on rattan chairs - and the waiters brought out big pillows for the kids. They propped themselves up and almost fell asleep.

I sat there thinking that these memories they will have for the rest of their lives. They are probably the only kids in their entire school who have ever been to China. How great to have an opportunity like this.

I hope they remember it.