Weekend

I have been slacking on this past weekend's activies here, so now I'm catching up. It's been a somewhat relaxed weekend, by our usual standards, but we still did quite a bit.

Saturday we went to a children's playworld, much like Jeepers in the States. There were rides, a Merry-Go-Around, a circular bumblebee ride, and a car/train-type ride; lots of arcade games, some money sucking games (the ones you know you'd never win, but can't help but to try it because the prize is so tempting? Yeah, you know what I'm talking about!) and... fishing.

Yes, fishing. There was this big shallow box with tons of goldfish, where the kids get to try and scoop up goldfish for 4 yuan per session. For as long as I can see though, there really wasn't a time limit. Anyway, none of the kids were much good at fishing up anything of course, cuz the little ones are too little and the big kids aren't interested in it. Jared fished up 4, with my help, and we got to keep 2 of them to take home. yay. (note the enthusiasm in my tone.) We have since put the 2 goldfish into my parents' big fishtank full of BIG tropical fish, and are praying everyday that the kids don't remember to check for the goldfish, since we are expecting anyday now that they'd be eaten by the big ones. Doh!



Anyway, back to the rides. Jared's favorite, hands down, had to be the car ride game. They, yes, Alex too, went on the rides 4 times! If Jared had his way, he'd stay on it and NEVER get off. We had to half drag him out of the ride. His other favorite? Going around and stopping at all the arcade games that required a steering wheel and pretend to drive. Over and over and over again!

Alex, in the meantime, had ran into a classmate of his, and went off happily to play with him in the climbing/play area. It's got the usual climbing structures, a ballpit and all. He had so much fun, he was a little sweaty monkey by the time he was done.

We went to Papa John's for dinner. The boys were very happy with this dinner choice. And it was surprisingly close to the Papa Johns in the States, unlike Pizza Hut here. But probably because it's pretty new here, and give it a few years, it too would have squid pizza.




After dinner, we drove to the Bund to see lights. It was spectacular! All these old structures that line the river were lit up, and there were lights on all the trees, along the riverbank, and of course the brand new highrises were a sight with lights right across the river. (My pictures do not do it justice unfortunately.) Come to think of it, almost all the highrises in Shanghai are lit up, one way or another, in Shanghai. The city is very pretty at night.

Sunday, we went to the Shanghai Kids Museum. It was not busy and very nicely laid out. There's a section for undersea exploration (where there's a model of a sub that kids can get into); space exploration (space shuttles, rockets, satellites and more can be seen here); occupation exploration, like doctors, firefighters, etc, and practical life stuff like a pretend grocery store and more; digital interaction, though mostly just drawing on pc type of things; music discovery. Then there's a section for reading quietly, and a mini library. It's somewhat interactive, and definately gets an A for effort. But, the displays are sparce and does not have enough in depth information. The kids seem to enjoy it though, so that's all that counts.

So, another week down and two and half more weeks til Eric and Ricky get here. Woot!