James & AiLing's Journal » China

Buying toys

AiLing — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 00:47:40 +0000

Sophie sitting on a wooden stool at a mall in Kunming, refusing to budge…

Sophie has a fascination for kid sized chairs/stools, any type, plastic ones, wooden ones, bamboo ones….

When we were in Matamata, we went to Warehouse(similar to K-Mart) to find a doll for her (coz mummy me forgot to pack in her doll!) and we ended up going home with a S$6 bright pink plastic chair from China that she chose and played constantly throughout the past few months and had friends over fighting over it……

… while the dolly we chose got left under the bed next to a stack of other toys.

Lesson learnt – buy what she likes, not what I like. Sooooooo hard…..

Chopsticks

AiLing — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 03:06:32 +0000

This trip has been a great Chinese immersion trip for Sophie.

Other than learning a bit of conversational mandarin, Sophie has taken a liking to using the chopsticks. She’s able to get some food into her mouth while having lotsa fun with it!

China’s gone green

AiLing — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 02:48:43 +0000

It’s amazing how China picks up some things so fast…. all the shopping places charge for their paper bags (ya… no more plastic bags!) and also no sign of styrofoam boxes, all paper now.

We need to learn.

Btw, that’s my fav foldable shopping bag that I bought from HV for $12. It’s ex but it looks great and it’s been one of my fav travelling tools so far. Aus and NZ also charge for shopping bags now.

Dinner with Friends

AiLing — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 01:40:31 +0000

Pa (James’ dad) has many friends in China so we’ve been having meals after meals. Yesterday night we had two dinners! One of which was a wonderful home cooked meal. It was typical Chinese style entertaining – check out the number of dishes! 10!

This is the home of the son of an old family friend of my father in law. Now we have three generations of friendship. Sophie had so much fun playing with the two kids that she cried when we had to leave. I’m really glad that relationships are very important to her.

I feel a bit sad that in China, since the late 70s, each couple is only allowed to have one child. Must be so tough for some and yet most have gotten used to that and enjoy having only one precious child. On Sunday, I could see the fathers happily carrying their kids and holding hands with them, no matter girl or boy, and enjoying the time they had together. Very precious.