Things are looking better!

The view outside my kitchen window

After getting into the apartment life began to settle down a bit. We started by going to the grocery store. The first store we went to was called the Metro, this is where I now purchase most of my groceries. It is sort of like a Walmart with Asian food. Like American grocery stores there is a small area of import foods for the foreigners!

Next we took the subway (on a Saturday!) to IKEA...again! This time we bought our bedding, and other things needed for playing house. We took a taxi home. Did I mention that its hotter than the devils buttcrack here? Well it is and when you go to IKEA and buy four bags of stuff and then attempt to catch a taxi, with two kids, in a city of fourteen million people you soon learn...not to EVER do that again!!!!
The next day I bought huge grocery bag on wheels for future shopping trips. If it doesn't fit in that thing, we don't get it!!!

The kids and I discovered a wet market right behind our compound. It is a street full of fresh fruit, flowers, vegetables, and meat, (we don't buy the meat, something about a pig hanging in the street getting carved and packaged...freaky). This is where we buy our fruit and veggies. We had a funny thing happen with a chicken that we bought from the grocery store. It was half a chicken still on the bone. I brought it home and took it out of the package. On the underside there was a chicken foot, no big deal. As I cleaned it more, more part started to come from the underside, one of which was a chicken head!!! I no longer buy whole chickens and from that day on Ramsey has refused to eat chicken of any kind!

Overall, life is good here! We have two pools in our compound that we go to everyday. I have made friends from everywhere but the United States. Madilynn has two Australian girlfriends that are her age. Ramsey plays with all of the boys at the pool, NONE of them speak english but for some reason this does not seem to affect him, he loves it! Life is simple. We no longer have the cost of owning a car, we walk, take the subway or taxi. I have a driver come on Fridays to take me to the store. We eat healthier, more fresh fruit, and veggies. The bread that we eat is baked fresh every morning and is sold in mini loaves. We play games and watch lots of movies. We have only six t.v channels and none of them show cartoons. We watch a lot of the Discovery channel and National Geographic.  We are being nicer to our Earth...no more gas, plastic shopping bags, and a lot less garbage! It feels so good. The hardest part of all of this has been the language barrier. We have somehow managed on the few words we know but lessons are in our future!

Ramsey with his carrots from the wet market

Our living room

View of the pool from our apartment

The city view to the East

Pearl River Park across the street from our apartment

City view from our apartment to the south west

one of my FAVORITE things to watch, tai chi in the park
 across the street every morning

the view from Ramseys room,
it's a construction site for a school.
The workers live on site in these metal buildings.

the canal from the river runs next to our building.
This lady patrols the canal daily, picking up garbage.

Happy!

The view from our apartment to the North

STINKER!

View to the west

The road outside our house

Sorry for those who have a weak stomach,
this is the chicken!!!

Canton Tower, the view out our kitchen window.
It is the tallest tv tower in the world!!!

Fathers Day! We almost forgot, they don't celebrate it like we do in the states.
We later found out that in Australia and Finland
it is celebrated on different days.
 Mothers Day is on the same day all over the world!!!