A Long, Lazy Labor Day Holiday

Thursday, May 1, was International Labor Day, which resulted for us having a three day holiday. The Chinese observe holiday "days off" by including "days on". We had Thursday, Friday and Saturday off, but Sunday was a make up day for Friday. This semester, I don't have Friday classes, so my schedule wasn't affected. However, the kids did have school Sunday to make up for the missed Friday.

We're starting our tenth month in China and are finally catching on that holidays equal crowds. Thus, we had a laid back weekend. We did go downtown on Thursday and there were some dancing and musical acts performing (we did miss an earlier parade). In spite of being taller than 98% of the population, we couldn't see a thing! We also didn't venture out much because, along with the crowds in general, we weren't in the mood to fight the bus crowds and deal with figuring how to navigate a route. The kids had a school fieldtrip to a planetarium on Wednesday, so they were content on not hoofing it somewhere new. But here's a couple things we did do:

Ice cream at Salvador's makes these kids giddy, while...:


the big kids enjoyed the (almost gone) chips, salsa and beer number 3:


Story time! Many of the Western restaurants have dozens of books available for use left by long gone travelers. I know I have been whining about the lack of reading material in English, but there really is plenty to read, although none I have seen is to my literature liking. And I just can't read anything, for the sake of reading something.


Saturday, G. played soccer with a group of Brazilians at a complex way out by Dian Chi lake:


Enjoying their own version of Skins (E.) and Shirts (C.):