Here are a few picture from the last week or so. To the right is a picture of the girls enjoying their suckers. There is a small shop across the street from us, and they are always happy to see us because they know that we will buy suckers every time we are in the vicinity. At 5 mao (about 6 cents), they are not a bad deal to keep the kids happy.

Here is a lunch that we had the other week at a Muslim noodles restaurant. Jane and Dan had noodles (la mien), pictured in the top left. I had fried noodles (chow mien) with onion. Evelyn and Etain had joudzas (dumplings) and qing cai (chin-tsai = vegetables; like collard greens). Hot tea finished off the meal. Here are Dan and Jane enjoying their meals. Jane has jidan (egg) on her noodles. Jidan la mien (noodles with egg) is probably my favorite meal in China.

When we were on our way to lunch (at the small restaurant that we eat at about twice per week), I snapped this picture from across the street. It is a restaurant preparing for the dinner rush. All of the staff line up every day to prepare for work. They go over their duties for the day. Sometimes you will see the group of them doing exercises or dances or songs. It is pretty interesting, and just about every bigger restaurant, salon or store does it.

We had a three-day weekend these past few days. On Thursday I went out bowling with some of the other teachers while Jane got to bed early. My bowling is not as good as it use to be, but I can pretty much average a 150 game now. On Friday Jane and I had a movie date night, in which we watched downloaded movies on our computer. On Saturday we had a few people over to our place for a Chinese version of a pot luck dinner. We had bamboo shoots, fruit, spicy peanuts and a dish that seemed similar to a beef stew back home. Here are Evelyn and I playing a losing hand of Uno. Below is the group playing Uno. Evelyn and I are on the right, with Jenny to our left. To Jenny's left is Martin, who is a math teacher from Australia. He has been living and teaching in China for many years, and he dates Sara, the Chinese woman to his left. Dan played next to Sara, teaching her how to play (He may have taught her too well; the Chinese are ruthless when it comes to games and competitions. After learning, she kept playing cards that skipped or penalized Dan).

On Sunday we all woke up and wanted to get out of the house. It was a bit damp and cold, however, so we did not want to go very far. After Etain woke up from her morning nap, we headed a few blocks down the street to a Japanese restaurant for an all you can eat lunch. It was a good deal, as the kids really enjoy sushi. Here is Evelyn enjoying some shrimp rolls.

Here is Etain enjoying the strap of her high chair. (Side note: Etain has spoken her first distinctive words within the past week, other than mama or baba. She now says 'mao' and 'gou' (pronounced GO), which are cat and dog in Chinese.)

Evelyn and I eating the last of the Japanese food that we stuffed ourselves with. Everyone went home and took a good nap after this meal.

Jane and the older two eating their dishes. On the far right is grilled eggplant, which was eaten by everyone but me.

Here are the kids with the wait staff. Our family ate in our own private room, separated from the main room by the Japanese-style paper doors that you can see in the background.

On Friday Evelyn got to have a special day with her mom, while Dan was at school and Etain was at home with me. The two of them went out shopping for clothes and for some kids products. Here is Evelyn eating some chicken nuggets at McDonalds. (This is a food that she could not eat when we left the U.S., because of the breading on the nuggets. She tolerates them well now.)

Here are the kids playing on the playground across the street from us near Dan's school. Dan is on the right, Etain is standing under the bars. On the bars are some kids from France and Israel. With the nice weather coming back, this playground and the large grassy area behind it have been a popular place for people to hang out in the afternoons after school.

Here are Jane and I at a local pub on March 17th, St. Patrick's Day. Jane arranged a special night out on that day for me. About 50 or so of our friends came out that night, though only about 5 or so knew anything about St. Patrick. This picture was probably taken after a few pints of relatively cheap Chinese beer.

Here are Dan and Jane standing outside our apartment. Though it was cold, the trees have started to bloom in the past day or so.

Here we are back at the pub on St. Patrick's Day. I am on the right, next to Fitz, a math and English teacher from Trinidad (now living in Canada). To his right is Alex, who is the husband of a teacher from France. He works in the steel business.

Well, I have to run off to class. More has happened since adding these pictures, so I will get up another post very shortly with plenty of new pictures. Zaitian = goodbye.