Lion Dance and Brunch at the Emerald

The Emerald held a Lion Dance and Chinese Lantern Festival Brunch at the end of February.

Dress Up

Allison and Rebecca playing dressup with Allison's friend, Ingrid, from Norway.

Buying a Bed

Eric writes: in a scene very reminiscent to me of the Monty Python sketch ("you have to remember that Mr. Fusebox tends to exaggerate everything by a factor of 10... so when he tells you that the bed is 60 feet long, it is, in actuality, 2 feet long...."), we took a tip from Stella at the office and dipped into the world of local language furniture retail.

Yue Xin Furniture Square proved to be the mattress jackpot for us -- the Pacific Design Center of Shanghai, a 5-story building full of every conceivable type of furniture (a small Ikea clone on floor one, contemporary furniture on 2, classic furniture on 3, and designer furniture -- read Versace -- on 4) and a whole row of bed companies down one aisle.

The hitch: no English. I mean, not limited English, but zilch English. We had to negotiate everything in our entry-level Chinese (and using our dictionary) and gesticulating. Nonetheless, we somehow managed to blunder our way through establishing the right mattress size and model, along with a boxspring (chuang xia) and a matching lavender headboard.

We called Stella on her day off to verify with the King Koil showroom guy that we had the same understanding as to what we had agreed to buy at what price -- above is a shot of Mr. Koil in process with Stella. Amazingly, everything was in order - -so yay! we have a real bed arriving on the 10th of March!!!

Henry Flies His Kite

Kites are very traditional in China (and were apparently invented here). We bought one and Henry was able to fly it. Here you can see it above the apartments next to the school.
Then it got caught in a tree! Not a problem. Eric pointed it out to one of the guards who called his colleague who came with a big pole and got it right out!

Allison Contemplates Ditching Her Training Wheels

Now that she is riding her bike a lot, Allison is getting ready to get rid of her training wheels. We went out one weekend in late February for a practice without them.

Big Sister was there for moral support.

Henry and Allison win ESLR Awards for Knowledge at the SCIS Assembly

Awards are given to 1 to 3 kids per class every two week period, on different themes. Allison and Henry both got ESLR Awards for Knowledge.

Shanghai World Expo Mascot Unveiled

For those of you who need a reason other than our being here to come to Shanghai, the World Expo will take place here in 2010! The mascot was unveiled last month. Here is Haibao who is on display in Xintiandi. This was the view from my yoga studio.