We’ve had several “normal” days in a row here with no sightseeing, meetings, or major attempts to figure out/find/fix anything.  Just day-to-day living… all good… in a familiar way.  One of our girls even had a meltdown on Saturday.  So.  You know, back to normal.

Friday was a “no school” day, and Cece and Elle and I were up and out bright and early for our first China play date.  We were picked up by Elle’s classmate Celine, and Celine’s mom “Sheh-may” (I have no idea how to spell this so let’s just go with the phonetic).  Shehmay is a former Benneton model, turned graphic designer, turned “well healed” stay-at-home mom.  She and her husband are both Chinese but their two daughters were born in New Zealand… thus, they have New Zealand passports and so can attend BISS International School.

We drove just 10 minutes from campus to a new-ish mall, half of which is devoted to children.  There are three floors of things for kids to do, and things for parents to buy for their kids: ice skating rink, mcdonald’s, fancy cupcake bakeries, ice cream stores, stores with high end clothes with french labels, really (really) expensive kids shoes, bungie jumping, soap making, professional picture taking, fairytale furniture stores, a theater with kids movies, etc.  We started with ice skating at a gorgeous, nearly empty rink.  Celine is almost seven and has been skating for several years; Cece and Elle have ice skated just enough times to make it around the rink and have fun.  And they did.

After skating for an hour and a half we were joined by Kaitlin and her mom Alice, and went upstairs to a place called BabyBoss.  The word “baby” in its title is one of those unfortunate translations.  I think what they meant to call it was more like “MiniBoss” as the place is for the 5 to 12-ish crowd, not for babies.  And… oi vey, what a place.   A huge indoor amusement park but instead of rides, the kids “go to work” at anything from making pizza to putting out fires to hosting game shows… to astronauts, wind energy plant engineers, supreme court judges, recycling plant managers, radio show hosts, doctors, dentists. archeologists, fashion models… you name it.  When they first check in they are given a wallet and photo ID and then go off and start making money.  Parents are not allowed inside any of these places… where kids disappear for 30 to 40 minutes at a time (though everyone wears electronic lo-jack bracelets so you can know at any time exactly where your kid is).  As they earn money, they can spend it however they want (the girls had their nails done and their hair french braided, got chocolate covered strawberries, etc)…

Way more information than you need… but interesting to me as the girls have NOT stopped talking about this place, will not stop playing with their BabyBoss wallets, and CANNOT wait to go back.  I wonder if I could sell the concept in Redlands where there often seems to be a shortage of nearby places to go on rainy days (or “too hot” days) and “no school” days…

Alice, incidentally is a gorgeous, funny Chinese woman also married to a Chinese man.  Alice is a former accountant turned stay-at-home mom.  Her son and daughter were both born in Vancouver, thus they have Canadian passports and so can attend BISS (are you seeing the theme here?)…

Anyway.  Two really delightful women to hang out with for the day.  They both struggle with similar things American moms face: careers, diets, sibbling rivalry and kids fighting, trying to not give in to too many french fries or too much pizza (or too many video games or too much TV), insisting on at least one musical instrument…etc.  One difference is that they are hyper vigilant about their kids mastering a second language: namely English.  Neither of these women, however, is a tiger mom…

On Saturday snow returned to Beijing, and so after skyping with our moms, Art and I dragged the girls to the metro and joined a mob of Saturday shoppers at IKEA (what were we thinking?), then had dinner upstairs with Cherie and Jack and their boys.  Jack is Chinese and his aunt (from Xi’an) lives with them and prepares all of their meals.  To-die-for food, people… with lots of shredding happening in that kitchen.  Among other things, she prepared a shredded carrot dish (cold and with radishes) and a shredded potato dish (hot) that were both amazing…  all followed by an old fashioned home baked swedish apple pie (while the kids watched Despicable Me).

See.  Normal life.

Today we broke from Chinese food and let the kids have KFC for lunch, followed by Oreo cookie blizzards at the DQ.  Cece was feeling especially homesick today… missing everyone and everything at home…

In other news… we’ve not been near, nor heard much about the possible protests in Beijing… though the internet continues to act mysteriously, and many sites are not accessible without the VPN.   Also, connection is squeezed tonight, so photo posting is not possible…