An Open Letter To My Chinese Coworkers

Posted by He Said
After a four day weekend, I knew I would kindly (but repeatedly) be asked what I did over the weekend.  So I penned a letter with pictures to share my adventures. 
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Wednesday English practice reading (with pictures).http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qingming_Festival
I hope everyone had a nice Qingming day.

On Saturday I finally shaved my head and beard.  The cheap razor I bought was a poor substitute for the razor I left at home.  I used four blades to shave my head.

Saturday my family went to an Easter event that we found on a website.  The website said the event would take place at Landgent Plaza from 2pm to 4pm.  We arrived at 11:30am so that we would have plenty of time to find it.  We saw a sign across the street where the Easter egg hunt would take place and so we explored the Mall just outside the Subway entry that we came out of.

Landgent Towers

We saw lots of fun but too expensive stores and found another UME theatre.  We got coffee for Susanne and I then headed across the street to the plaza only to find that the signs I had seen earlier were gone.  It turns out the website had the wrong time (it was 10am to 12pm) and we missed it.
We were very disappointed by this, so we went home.
On Saturday night we colored eggs for the Sunday egg hunt.                      

On Sunday we hid the eggs (twice :) and the kids got to hunt for them.  They enjoyed this very much.  Then we went to the mall across from Carrefour.  There is a large toy store there and we bought a couple very cheap toys (on sale) for the children.
On Monday we went to Tiananmen Square. We did not try to visit Mao’s tomb, but were amazed by the number of people waiting in line to see him.
This was a CRAZY day.  I do not mind the crowds, but I do get tired of the large groups who follow us around because of our children.  I joke with Susanne that we should:
1) Make T-Shirts that have this picture

or
2) Make T-Shirts that have


This is me taking a picture of…..
 
Susanne AND EVERYONE ELSE looking and taking our picture. :)

After Tiananmen Square we went to Sanlitun Village and had a very American meal (cheeseburgers and French Fries) at the Union Bar & Grill.  We also found a DVD store with ALL the movies we want for 10 yuan (and then they gave us discount for quantity so they were much less).  Susanne bought two “Gucci” bags for 40 yuan and we had icecream.  We also went into the Apple Computer store but it was VERY busy. It was a very full and fun day.
 
Yesterday we were on our way to Forbidden City.  We started later than we wanted and so we stopped at Xidan to get lunch and money.  My ATM card would not work.  We spend too much time looking for an ATM that would let us get money with another ATM card and by the time we did, the day was too short for a trip to Forbidden City.  So we found a shopping area across from Joy City mall and found MANY great bargains.  Like Silk Market, but not for foreigners and so the prices were GREAT.  The products were fakes (copies) and many of the English translations on the T-Shirts were very poor.  We enjoyed this VERY much.
 
Overall it was a GREAT weekend.
I hope you all had a great weekend as well!
Greg