Lazy Sunday

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After an amazing "beach day" with a few thousand of our new close personal Chinese friends we took it easy on Sunday.  Cynthia and the boys slept in while Dad worked on a slide presentation.  Our board of directors for Pentair are visiting next month and I am busy pulling together the info for the business review.  About noon I took a break and headed to the gym with Cynthia and Regan while Mason took Landon to the market at the subway to look for some markers he needed for school.  On Saturday I received a call from one of the fathers I met during school orientation and he invited our family to meet for dinner.  We made plans to meet in JinQiao at the Blue Frog restaurant at 7pm.  Mason decided to venture out on his own and meet up with us later.  He took the subway to JinQiao and did some exploring.  Meantime we took the subway later to a different part of JinQiao and ended up playing our own real life version of "The Amazing Race" in order to meet up at the restaurant.  Mason got rejected by 3 taxi drivers either because they couldn't understand where he wanted to go or they didn't like the short fare ride - not really sure which.  Then Cynthia remembered a "survival tip" we got from our relocation counselor - Jelly four!  Apparently, the Chinglish for the department store named Carrefour is Jelly Four.  All the taxi drivers know it and will take you there.  We called Mason on his cell, gave him the secret survival word and "voila" we met up at Jelly Four. 

The family we met for dinner are the Lannen's - Eric & Jill.  They have three kids Jake (12), Nate (8), and Kate (6).  They arrived one day after we did and are also living in temporary housing.  Eric is the HR Director for IBM responsible for what they identify as their "Growth Countries".  Eric talked with Mason and told him about an internship program that IBM has and that they should stay in touch.  Mason was very glad that he came to dinner.  We spent about two hours eating and talking and had a really nice time.  The restaurant bought us dessert (I think out of sympathy) and it was a miracle that no one lost a finger or hand the way they attacked the ice cream covered chocolate brownie.  It was literally gone in 30 seconds.  We ended up ordering a second one so they could actually taste it but again it too did not last any longer than the first.  We took a taxi home to avoid the metro ride and made it back in 30 minutes.  It was nice to come "home" and settle into a good night's sleep.