Jinmao Crown Hotel Wenzhou

... meals, did our laundry and navigated us through the hospital maze. My mom and I got $2 “hair washes” which included 50 minutes of scalp, neck, shoulder and arms/hands massage as well as a quick blowdry. Paul got a haircut, which included everything in the “hair wash” and a cut and blowdry for $5. We ended up really liking my grandparents’ hometown for our short visit, and it felt like home to us too.

China has had the one child policy in force since 1980. So people have not seen families with more than one child in almost 30 years. Now that all those only children are old enough to procreate, the latest policy is, that if both husband and wife are only children, they're allowed to have 2 children, to represent each side of the family. There have been so many comments, stares, surprised ...

... interesting to see where normal people live and how they live. Here’s a few things that we noticed. Everyone in all the houses owns at least a few chickens. Our uncle owns hundreds! When we were there, we were also treated to 17 course meals and tons of fruit. Finally, when we went to my grandpa’s grave, they set off real fireworks and tons of firecrackers!

One night we brought a bunch of fireworks that we ...

... the view out the front door of the remodeled section of the house. Back then, this huge paved road was their garden and they had a view over the river.

My mom has such nice memories of this place. It is really neat to be here, to meet relatives we wouldn't otherwise get to meet, and hearing family stories. It is a real highlight of the trip for me.

... of it. Many people from Qingtian have been moving overseas, starting businesses, and mailing money back to their families, so we’ve found this "small city" to be relatively cosmopolitan! There are many overseas Qingtian people living mostly in Europe. We’ve heard people speaking fluent Spanish, French and German here. Actually very few go to America, so we haven’t heard any English!

On Sept. 4 China has "Teacher's Day" where students bring in cards and stuff to their teachers. My big question is why we have to work on Teacher's Day but meh, it's cute. There was a little party after work for the English teachers and they gave the four of us at our school some presents and cards and we played games.

I got lucky and I get to stay in my own classroom, which is nice, considering my schedule is really ...

... that looked like it was from Happy Feet. Two steps later I realized it was missing an arm, so I ran back and took the first thing that wasn`t broken and was relatively clean which happened to be a monkey (w0ot!)

There was a many following us around the park and trying to get his kid to say `hello` to us. The kid was not amused.

... park with a rollercoaster and ferris wheel.

We crammed in a lot of sights today and I even managed to win Natalie a small stuffed monkey by knocking down some tin cans with a tennis ball at a carnival game.

So far it is the best we've seen that Wenzhou has to offer.

... black outside and there are a lot of tall apartment buildings being constructed. So all I saw in the dark were tall dark half-finished apartment buildings – it looked so much like we were driving through a futuristic post-apocalyptic city, like in Dark Angel.

The building we were going to be living in looked incredibly scary in the dark. There were security gates and bars everywhere – it looked ...

... a beautiful pagoda. By now the sun had almost left my world and night had surrounded me.

Photos were pretty much out of the question which was a pity as I found one of the little Churches beside the mountain.

Across the road was an awesome looking building that was built in the shape of a huge archway. Very impressive! I could hear some music coming ...