It is Golden Week in China. Jim and the girls have a week off for National Holiday. We have made it a “stay-cation”. We are enjoy a week at home. Emersyn just returned from her interim trip and was ready for a little rest.
We enjoyed movie night with popcorn most nights. At our complex, Yanlord, you can get a foot massages and they will come to your home. Many of our Yanlord friends do this often so we thought we would “give it a go”. All four of us were comfortable on the sofa/chairs watching a movie getting a foot massages – it was very relaxing!
We started the week with a little rain. We spend one day playing games all afternoon.
Emersyn also spent hours reading. She finished a book and started another she finished before the week was over. She enjoyed all the free time to dive into her books.
Roxi is loving our “stay-cation” as she has the girls home to play with her.
Mid-week of Wednesday was the perfect time to change it up with friends. We met the Bishop family for lunch at the WFC at our favorite dumpling restaurant, Din Tai Fung. The Bishop girls, Avery and Riley, came back for a double sleep over. The girls played outside all afternoon enjoying the gardens.
On Thursday, we took the girls to the Shanghai Wild Animal Park. Mr. Nie and his family took Eleri a couple years ago. We promised she could go back…it just took a bit of time to uphold that promise. Mr. Nie wanted us to leave at 7:30am to beat the crowds (reminds me of Grandpa). Since we had four girls to get ready, we left at 7:50am – not bad! We met Faith and Dan at the Park.
The tickets to enter the park were reasonable at 130rmb ($20) for adults and 65rmb ($10) per child. It was the “nickel & dime” of everything else in the Park. Eleri wanted to ride the camel – 20rmb ($3) for the ride around the parking lot!
We rented the bikes to ride around the park. Bike rental was 50rmb ($8) per hour, per bike. Or 100rmb per hour for a 4-person double bike. The older girls wanted their own bike. No problem, we rented three bikes as the younger girls could “fit in”.
Eleri and Riley rode in the “child” seat on the handle bars with Dan and Faith. Riley didn’t fit in the seat as well as Eleri.
Later, Eleri moved to the center seat of our bike.
The park had nice display of animals for a zoo. After seeing most of the animals in the wild in South Africa, zoos no longer thrill the Lyon Family. The girls had the most fun feeding the goats and pigs. At 10rmb ($1.50) a basket, we contributed to the upkeep of the animals today.
After riding around the park, we returned the bikes with the last “must do” on the list – feeding the birds. Eleri fed the birds with Mr. Nie. She wasn’t afraid this time to feed the birds.
One last photo of the gang of girls.
We left the Park around 1:30pm. Mr. Nie was right about “beating the crowds”. The Park was starting to get crowded and we were ready to go. We drove to the Kerry Center for a long, late lunch. After lunch, the girls ran off to swim since the Bishops are members at the Kerry Center. It was a fun day with friends.
The last few days of our stay-cation was spent “hanging” out at Yanlord. The girls played with the Sophie and Sean during the day. We watched movies with popcorn in the evenings. It was a very nice “stay-cation” in Shanghai.