Island, pizza, and ice cream! Day 10

I am writing this post the afternoon of Day 11 so hopefully I will make a pretty good account of the day.  T and Brandon are playing since she took a nap in the late morning.  I am not sure how long I will have to write.

Yesterday morning after breakfast we took a bus with the other families in our group to a market where our guide said we would not need any money as we are just window shopping.  We didn't quite know what she meant.  We went to a pet market which was little shop after little shop of fish, bunnies, mice, turtles, kittens, puppies etc.  It was interesting to see so many shops all together.  Next we went to a market with herbs, spices, and unique part of thing that all have a purpose.  There were many fish stomachs (which are apparently really good with chicken, but we will just have to take our guide's word for it.

Brandon's breakfast at the Garden.  The salad with thousand island is his favorite!

After breakfast I hiked a Mt. to this waterfall... actually it was our view from breakfast and the rock wall is man made. :)

Ready for her first service and needing to kiss the super cute baby in the mirror.

The street leading to the unique market.

Pet fish anyone?

We thought these were stuffed animals until they started to move.

Hmmm... yum?

Fish tummies.

No thanks!

Next we went to (hur(h on the Island.  It still is a part of GZ but on the other side of a small river.  It was a wonderful experience.  We have a lot more to show and tell, but maybe in person is better.  I can tell you that I had tears quite a bit of the time and pinched myself here and there.  T did great in the service.  She had a huge stinky diaper in the middle of the singing, but she was great for the sermon.

Cool building.

Greeting good friend J after the service!

Our family after the service.

Next we did a super short stop at one store on the Island, Jenny's.  We got squeaky shoes, the Good Book in Ch*nese, a verse plaque, a doll from her province, a necklace.  It was a neat little shop.

We ate a very cheap lunch in the room and then battled with T to get her to nap.  Finally at 3:15 she decided that she was tired. She slept until after 5:00.  It is funny because at home I would be crazy to let her sleep that late, but here it seems we break all the rules all the time.  We are always going some where at nap time and she takes cat naps instead of full naps.  Oh well... this is a very short season.

.50 and so tasty!

We made up a fun game that T loved!

Sweet baby!

At 5:30 we met another family from our agency for dinner.  This is the family who lives near us in real life.  We went to Tomatoes, a pizza place.  It was fun to have encouraging conversation about a variety of topics. 

Dinner with friends.

I think that most thought the pizza tasted pretty good, but they all left hungry so a quest for ice cream began.  First we walked one direction to an Italian place that did indeed have fancy desserts and some might have had ice cream.  They also had a TV screen with semi-p*rn on the screen so we opted for another venue.

We had heard there was a Haagen Dazs near our hotel so we decided to find it.  Realizing that we didn't know where it was we headed back to the hotel for directions.  We then had to go underground to the subway level to cross the street and then back up the other side.  We found it and realized that Haagen Dazs and Baskin Robbins are NOT the same thing.  We were standing there to order when we were directed to a table.  Soon menus and glass glasses with lemon water came to the table.  The menus showed that one small scoop of ice cream sold for 6 USD.  Since Brandon's lunch was only .50 we decided to splurge.  It was a fun experience and a couple of the eaters said it was the best ice cream they ever had.

Ready to dig in to expensive ice cream!

After paying the bill they came with a "gift" for our family (2 families).  They brought us 3 little containers of ice cream and dry ice.  Even with the ice this is not very practical for a hotel room.  We figured that this brought the over all cost of the ice cream down quite a bit.  Since there was no way to keep it cool long term we just stayed and continued to eat.  Brandon got the great idea to put an ice cube in a cup and pour some water on it.  It started to smoke.  This caused the teenage guys in the other family to begin dropping the ice into full glasses of water.  Our table was smoking like crazy.  We were all laughing so hard.  What a special night of memories.  On the way home the boys decided to dump the rest of the ice into a puddle along the way and watch it smoke.  It sort of felt like we were on an outing with the youth group and gave us a taste of our future with teens.

Smoking drinks!

We almost rolled on the ground laughing as we read these AFTER we had broken almost every single rule!

Our hotel at night (both towers are part of the hotel)

We didn't get back to the room until late.  We crashed which is why this post is not getting up until right now.