Snow!

Cece and I are awake early, peering out the window. It’s still dark outside but somehow we both must have known… it SNOWED last night. Hard to tell from 17 stories up how much. Probably just an inch or so… We’re waiting for daylight to go outside in it.

Tuesday was a total sightseeing day. We braved the subway (modern, efficient, very crowded; so crowded that it makes me nervous with the girls) and headed to the Dongcheng district and the famous Drum Tower. Friends we traveled with in ’05 will remember this tower in the hutong (back alley) district, and climbing the high, steep steps to a drum performance at the top. Then off to the Houhai Lake for a bit of ice walking. Ice skating is an option, as is scootching oneself across the ice in a bizarre sort of “ice chair” but plenty of people appear to enjoy the fun of walking across the frozen lake, and this is is a totally cool thing to do when you are 8 and 7 years old.

Yesterday was our official visit to BISS where we hope the girls will be going to school. Very impressive! An amazing school exploding with creativity, arts and extracurricular activities. The website does it no justice as in person it’s really quite extraordinary. It is a true international school (and an IB school) serving only those with foreign passports (it is not licensed to serve Chinese passport holders). That said, it appears that well more than half of the students are Chinese (either born abroad or with one non-Chinese parent, thus dual passports). We still have a few rather important particulars to work out yet, including tuition and transportation. Nothing is easy. Turns out their marvelous school buses don’t pass through the area where we live…

Each day we settle in a bit more… getting over the jet lag (Art seems to have never had any), hauling more house supplies home from the super store (why oh why didn’t we bring more basic supplies from home; why didn’t the martha stewart in me think to ask!?!) and (yesterday) dealing with homesick little girls (alligator tears and hiccups)… But all is well. Onward.