Getting Cooler

While Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong were basking in 35degC, Beijing's temperature plunged into the low teens yesterday. For the first time since we arrived, I had to don a t-shirt under a long sleeve knitted shirt. Felt like winter in Melbourne.

Kristine's teacher called after lunch saying Kristine was not feeling well, having fever etc. As I was having a lunch appoitment with Uncle Frank flying in from HKG, Grace collected Kristine. When I saw Kristine at home at 230pm, she was not at all feeling unwell. So I asked her if she wanted to walk with me to an open market, I was looking for bed lamps, and Kristine wanted to look for kids playstuff. It was a good 20mins brisk walk. Kristine was hopping and skipping, a sign she was happy to be away from school. She did start to feel tired and soft again on way home from the open market, however, she managed to stay the distance, and even went with me to collect Kimberley from kinder. After kinder, we bought a baked sweet potato from a street vendor outside the kinder gate. Y5 per kg. Both Kristine and Kimberley love eating that.

Kimberley's routine after leaving her kinder is to point to an adjacent jiaozi restaurant we went with Auntie Vivien last week 'I am hungry, let's eat inside'. She has her dinner in kinder at 430pm. She just wanted to go into that restaurant to replay the games she played with Kristine and Scarlet last week.

Dinner was ordered home last night. 4 dishes from a restuarant close by, a restaurant that prints on their menu "No added MSG". Y12 for each dish. 2 we liked and will re-order, but the other two we will never see again. At a rate of once a week, it will take us a long long time to sieve through the menus of all restaurants closeby. Eating out or ordering home is so convenient here but the worry is what the chefs add into the dishes. Chefs here are generally very heavy handed with MSG and salt, and oil.