Shyeah Shyeah

Means thank you in Chinese. As in thanks for the encouragement and prayers for Aimee. She has had a much better week this week!

The boat shipment arrives tomorrow, not a minute too soon. Aimee ran out of deodorant last week. Mine is still going though I alternate armpits each day. We scraped the inside of the cap clean on Saturday morning. We are excited to get the remainder of our stuff.

We visited a ginormous mall for the second time on Saturday. It's called the Super Brand Mall and appropriately so. It has lots of everything from food, kid's stuff (arcade/carousels/games/etc) to hundreds of stores. They also have a large Toys 'R' Us that helped us complete Elijah's Bday shopping. He turns 2 on Groundhog Day (that's February 2).

All but Aimee got haircuts this week. We each paid 20 RMB (roughly $3.00) and got better than what we paid for. Elijah's looks great. Anna just got a slight trim. I knew I was in trouble when I had to impersonate my own clippers and "buzz" the side of my head. It turned out OK but not as good as home. I may try somewhere else next time. Or perhaps I'll just go with the old "Michael Bolton" look for our return to the USA.

The pictures are:

1. Our Saturday visit to a small "wildlife exhibit" included seeing lots of insects, some snakes, turtles, fish and some stuffed wild animals like tigers. It was more insect museum than anything else. It was fun but not worth going back for.

However, there is a wild animal park in Shanghai where you drive around amongst tigers and other safari-type animals. The website says they throw chickens out for the tigers during the tours. Elijah and Anna would LOVE that.....until they had to go to sleep.

2. The insect museum had an indoor pond with fish and stepping stones that you could leap upon. It was a little different considering the water was 12 or so inches deep. Anna did a little leaping with Dad's close supervision. We saw one chinese girl fall in. And the blowdryer they had stationed in the corner for such an occasion decided not to work. It also had a rickety bridge for traversing which is where this pic is taken.

3. It's the year of the Pig in China so pigs are EVERYWHERE! I'm hoping it means a good year for eating lots of bacon.

4. View from 8th floor of the mall looking down on the 5th floor. There was also an indoor ice rink on this floor. Anna and I ventured up to the top via the elevators while Mom and Elijah shopped around.

5. Ryan and Elijah on the stepping stones.

Out.