America

4:30am, Detroit, MI.  Sitting in a semi-questionable hotel wide awake waiting for the day to begin.  After being up 32 hours interrupted by short spurts of exhausted face collapses on an airplane tray table, I finally crashed last night only to wake up after 2.5 hours wide awake, the joys of jet lag and trying to switch time zones by 13 hours. The kids are all up playing babies while their father tries desperately to get some more sleep.
December 29th, one of those days that gives you a ridiculous story that you would rather have not experienced.  It all started when we were getting ready to go.  The driver was supposed to pick us up at 11:30am, we walked down to the gate with part of our stuff and he wasn't there.  It was a miserable day, cold, raining, and super windy so this was all pretty awesome.  Finally the security guy was able to communicate with us that our driver was down in the parking garage.  These parking garages are huge, they are under the whole complex with crazy hallways and mazes complete with bunker like rooms and storage areas.  So in order to find the driver we needed to walk back to our building and try going through the different hallways below our apartment building.  We tried 3 before we finally found the van.  The van was there, the driver was not.  It was at this point that Kyle realized that he had no minutes left on his phone so he had no way of calling anyone.  Great.  The kids and I and part of our luggage stayed with the van while Kyle left to get everything else.  After about 10 minutes he returned with the rest of our stuff but still no driver.  So he left to go search for him and of course while he was gone Mr. Jong (driver) showed up, excitedly jabbering Chinese about 1000 miles a minute.  About 10 minutes later Kyle shows up with a heater that one of the translators wanted, in the process of bringing it down he had shattered his phone so now it was officially not usable. 
Phase 2, drive to the airport, because we are about 4 hours early Kyle tries to get the driver to take us somewhere to lunch, not happening, worried about the weather, so now 3 kids are complaining about how hungry they are.  Good stuff.  Get to the airport, check in fine.  First thing to go smoothly so far.  Next we have to go through customs before the security check.  The girls and I are good, they check Kyle's passport.  Find out he has over stayed his visa by 17 days.  "Sir, please come with us", never good.  We follow the customs guys to another counter.  Kyle should have double checked his visa, but in his defense, his company had gotten all our visa's at the same time and had told us they were 90 day visas and had preplanned our exits from the country based on this timeline.  Kyle actually had a 60 day visa.  So, they told us that we owed them 3500 RMB, this is about 600 USD.  We had about 180 USD with us.  We had no phone, no way to contact anyone and no money.  Tried using the ATM's with our credit cards but that didn't work.  Finally we told them we have no money, we have no way of getting any money.  What do we do?  Met with blank stares.  Basically we better get the money.  Kyle came up with the idea of buy 500 USD worth of merchandise from a airport store (not a big deal there, they sell a lot of really expensive stuff duty free in the Shanghai airport) and returning it for the cash.  They were like ok, lets try.  Then Kyle asked them if the currency exchange took credit cards.  No idea.  Decided to try it.  They did.  YAY!  had the cash.  Went back to the customs desk and they told the girls and I to stay there then they took Kyle away.  After about 10 minutes of sitting there with 2 kids who had to go to the bathroom and one baby who wanted to go wonder off by herself I started to panic a little thinking that they could take Kyle away, I would have no idea where he went, communication isn't exactly easy and I am in a foreign country with no contacts and no way of getting help from anyone.  You can imagine my relief when after about 10 more minutes he reappeared and we were good to go. Ok.  Next step.  Security.  Fine.  Feed the kids.  Fine.  We have about 10 minutes until we board.  It is snowing.  WHAT?  Yep, snowing in Shanghai.  Plane is supposed to depart at 5:20, we are still sitting there waiting to board at 5:20 with no updates from the desk.  Finally they tell us that they will board at 5:30.  Get on the plane.  We are already late and we have a 1.5 hour layover in Detroit and we have to go through customs.  This could be interesting.  An hour passes.  Nothing.  People are getting restless.  Finally they tell us that they are in the process of deicing the plane and then we will go.  Another hour passes.  The Shanghai security that checked us again as we were boarding decided that no one could bring water on board.  Any other liquid was fine but water was a no.  I had just purchased 3 bottles.  Awesome.  So we have been sitting on a plane for 2 hours with no drink or food and the girls are starting to freak out.  Another hour passes, now they have deiced 2 times and they are doing it again.  it is 31 degrees out and snowing lightly.  No accumulation.  What the heck?  Finally after another 30 minutes they turn on all the lights and tell us that we can get off the plane.  They will keep working on it but in the mean time we can get off and sit in the airport.  About 200 of us get off, we are all standing in the Jetway waiting to go back into the airport.  After about 10 minutes they figure out that the security in Shanghai wont let us back in, we are in limbo between a locked door and the airplane that is going nowhere.  We all head back to the airplane.  On our way back in they told us that it is good now, we can go.  Sweet.  Now after sitting on an airplane for 4 hours we get to sit for another 13.  But at least they can give us some water now.  I've always heard about these stories, now I got to experience it with 3 kids 4 and under.  Fun.  After 17 hours on a plane we finally arrived in Detroit.
American soil.  So amazing.  So happy to be home for a while. 

Bon Appetit

By popular demand I'm adding some pictures of things we normally eat over here.  

 This is what the girls eat for breakfast, either this or peanut butter toast.  This is some kind of flat bread, it has a sweet/spicy glaze on the top.

 Randomly on Saturday's the grocery store will have donuts, these are really good.  They are definitely deep fat fried, not very sweet like American donuts.  They also sometimes have what looks like donut holes, they are very dry and thick, but they are still pretty good.

The girls usually eat peanut butter and jelly or 'ham' sandwiches for lunch.  I found some fake ham slices that make a decent sandwich, not sure what it actually is but the girls like it.

 This is a dumpling soup that Kenz likes.  She has eaten this almost every night for 8 weeks.  I think that she is ready for something new :)

 This is just like fried rice only it is with noodles.  We actually think this tastes a little bit better than the rice version.  There is small bits of chicken, cabbage and onions mixed in with the noodles.  You have to watch out for bones because they don't separate the bones from the meat so if you get anything with meat then it will definitely have bones in there somewhere.

 This is just a bowl of noodles with some different spices on top.  Actually really good.  Madi and I eat this or a bowl of rice every night.  Kyle usually either eats this or dumplings.

 These are deep fat fried dumplings with fish in the middle.  The girls think that they are kinda like chips.  They like them a lot.  Supper for all of us usually costs around $4.  There are several different kinds of noodles you can get, usually Kaylie either eats noodles or rice with me.  Sometimes we get a chicken leg.  That the normal Chinese food in most of the little restaurants here.  The bigger places have more to offer and of course there are lots of different kinds of cooked vegetables and roots that they eat.  There are also places called Dumpling House's that have like a buffet style of food.  There is one that just opened next to the restaurant we usually go to but we haven't tried it yet.

 Madi is getting good eating from chopsticks.  She can suck in all those noodles like a pro :)  Kenz is trying to learn how to use them and is getting better all the time.

 This is a Chinese spoon, they use these to eat soup and eat noodles.  Kaylie uses it to eat everything.  The girls have only broken about 5 of these since we got here.

 This is dragon fruit.  Kyle likes it a lot.  I think it is ok, the girls don't like it at all.  It has more of a bland flavor.

 The streets always have trucks of tangerines, banana's sugar cane, and oranges

The Watermelon is good, about 1/2 the size of a normal seeded watermelon in America.  Not sure what the other fruit is called, but it is like a huge grapefruit and that is pretty much what it tastes like.

 This is the meat section at the store, everyone just reaches in and grabs what they want.  And yes, those are chicken feet.

 duck heads

Cooked chicken feet

Huge bins of rice.  You can either buy it in those big sacks behind the bin or you can buy smaller amounts and have it weighed.

We usually eat pizza on the weekends.  We have eaten KFC and McDonalds too, but I would say that the Chinese KFC and McDonalds is actually way worse than the US version, if that is possible :)

 And 11 weeks later our boxes finally came!  We were all SO excited!

 The girls have been playing and painting and drawing ever since.

Shanghai: Day 3

This is getting kinda drawn out, but I'm going to finish it anyway.  On our 3rd day in Shanghai we went and visited Nanjing Road.  Nanjing Road is the world's longest shopping district.  It is a little over 3.5 miles long with over 1,000,000 visitors daily.  It was a little intense, but still interesting to see.  We managed to walk the entire length without losing any children or money so I counted that as a success.  And bonus we got to eat at Subway!  It was amazing!  Forgot how much I love bread! 

 The Chinese love their Apple products.  Lots of knockoffs here, but the stores containing the real thing are usually packed.

 This necklace is about $100,000 USD, not a cheap place to shop

 

The crowds were pretty impressive.  Several of the buildings here contained indoor malls.

 Kenz has decided that she likes to drink out of a tea cup, she even has started drinking the tea here on occasion.  Although it has to be the right kind.  Most of the Chinese people drink theirs with the leaves in it, Kenz hasn't quite grasped how to do that yet.  I guess you use your teeth as a filter?

1st time the girls have been in a bathtub since Georgia.  They were pretty happy about it.  I think that if they had their choice they would have just spent the entire weekend sitting in the tub.

Shanghai Day 2

On our second day in Shanghai we decided to take the girls to the Shanghai Aquarium.  Kenz loved every second of it.  Kaylie was pretty indifferent after the first fish and Madi just barely knew what was going on :)  Kyle did manage to scare all the girls to death with the sharks though...

 It was a pretty cool place, lots and lots of tunnels

 New horse from the gift shop

 Kyle convinced Kaylie that this was a pretty cool toy...  she is still not sure

 Normal China picture pose, parents always want our kids to take pictures with their kids and they really like it when the kids will hold hands

 The Jellyfish tanks were Kenzie's favorite

Kyle got the girls so nervous before going through the shark tunnels that they wouldn't even come in.  Finally he picked up Kaylie and carried her through, he said that she was shaking the whole time.  Fathers.

 After the Aquarium we went to a mall that had a kids toy store with Lego's.  I think that the girls could have stayed there all night

 Despite not celebrating Christmas in China there are lots of decorations in Shanghai, they had a huge Christmas tree outside the mall.

 Supper at a semi-American restaurant, the girls had mac and cheese.  They were SO happy!

 Kyle had a burger and fries.  First burger I've seen in 3 months

ICE CREAM!

Shanghai Day 1

Last Friday we had to go to Shanghai, Kyle had to go to customs to fill out some paperwork to try to get our shipment that we sent from the US.  They are holding our stuff and threatening to confiscate it due to whatever issues they have regarding our paperwork/belongings.  Anyway, pretty sure it is going to come down to money and who we need to pay off but we will see. 

We left early on Friday so that Kyle could go with the company Logistics guy and the translator to the airport to fill out all the paperwork.  We decided to stay in Shanghai for the weekend to see the sights.  After Kyle got back to the hotel we went out to see downtown Shanghai.  Shanghai has a population of about 20,000,000 people about 500,000 expats live there.  It is actually a really cool city, we had a great time seeing the sights.  There were Europeans and American's all over the place so we didn't have our usual fan clubs following us around which was actually really nice.  The girls still had to take pictures with several people but it wasn't as overwhelming as it is in Huzhou.  Also nice was all the English, most of the restaurants had English on their menu's which makes ordering a lot less risky :)

 Shanghai World Financial Center, this is currently the tallest building in the world, but right behind it they are building a new building that is supposed to be even taller

 This is the Oriental Pearl Tower

 This is our driver and Madi, she sat in the front a lot.  It will be weird going back to the states where they use not only seatbelts but carseats!

 Pretty excited about life right now...

 Peace.  They all give you the peace sign when they take their pictures... They do it in Korea too, not sure what that is all about

 The city goes on and on, it is pretty incredible to see and really hard to capture just how big it is on camera

 We took a ferry across the river.  The girls loved it!

 This is our new friend, he is from Switzerland

 Kaylie is hiding behind me, a bunch of people wanted pictures with them on the boat so she was kinda over it

 This is called The Bund.  This famous waterfront walkway has been Shanghai's center since the mid 1800's.  There are tons of cool colonial structures along this side and a view of downtown Shanghai across the river

This says it all :)

 Kyle and I wonder how many places around the world we can capture pictures of these two running.

 We stayed until it got dark to see the lights.  Totally worth it.

This is the Russian Consulate.

After we got done seeing the sights we went to a shopping mall, which was amazing, and ate dinner at California Pizza.  The girls were in heaven.  We got two large pizza's and the 3 of them ate 1 and a half of the pizza's.  It was crazy!