Easter Weekend

Dying eggs - and taste testing.

We had a very full and fun Easter weekend.  On Saturday we went to the Ningbo Youngor Zoo with LiLi’s teacher’s family.  The expat playgroup Vicki formed a couple months ago organized the trip, but there were limited transportation options directly from site, so we opted to take the train and to invite the Pan family with us.  At 7:30AM a taxi picked up our family and LinCai (LiLi’s teacher), JunWu (LinCai’s husband), and XuanNi (LinCai’s 4 year old daughter) and took us to the Sanmen train station (30 min. away).  We took a 35 minute train ride to Ningbo and then another taxi from the Ningbo train station to the zoo (another 35 minutes).

LiLi and XuanNi

LiLi and ShuShu (JunWu)

When we pulled into the zoo parking lot, LinCai started calling to someone, and we quickly realized that her mother and brother’s girlfriend had met us there.  We’ve met them on a couple previous occasions so it was nice to already know them instead of awkwardly trying to figure out who was joining us for the day!  We asked where LinCai’s younger brother was and were told he was driving, which we thought meant parking the car…  but it was a couple of hours until he actually met us.

I called the group who was driving from site (three families – eleven people total) and they were still 45 minutes out from meeting us, so we started our way through the zoo and figured we would meet up eventually.  Somehow our paths never intersected though.  We were already traveling as a group of eight though (two kids and six adults – seven once LinCai’s brother arrived), so it was probably for the best that the group didn’t double in size.

Petting a camel

Mark and XuanNi

The zoo was nice, but still very Chinese.  Despite signs saying not to feed the animals, the animals are fed very frequently and look like sad, begging dogs.  However, the “perk” of this is that you can to interact with many animals more closely than you would in the States, where animals are kept more wild.  For instance, we got to pet a camel, watch monkeys reach out for popcorn, see the bears begging for food on their hind legs, etc.  The highlight of the day was being able to buy a live chicken for Y30 ($5) and throw it to the white tigers.  LiLi also liked the couple of shows we went to see – the parrot show and the sea lion show.  We had a very casual, leisurely pace the entire day.

Group photo (L-R): Mark,
Vicki, LiLi, LinCai's brother
and his girlfriend, LinCai's
mother holding XuanNi,
LinCai, and JunWu.

Our day at the zoo was a nice benchmark in our progress in Chinese language acquisition since there was no stress the whole day, we never had to use our electronic translator, and no one in the Pan family spoke any English.

Enjoying a chocolate bunny
on Easter morning

Family photo - with our
neighbor Terry in the background

Easter Sunday we had our neighbor Terry, who lives directly below us, come up for a big breakfast.  We made pancakes, eggs, bacon, and potatoes.  At just before 11AM we headed over to the Easter egg hunt and picnic that the spouses club organized for the expat kids on site.  One of Mark’s coworkers brought back the plastic eggs after a trip to the U.S. a month ago.  While the commercialized aspects of Christmas have taken root in China, there is virtually no existence of Easter paraphernalia – religious or commercialized.  Once LiLi knew her task – pick up the eggs – she was totally into it. 

Greg & LiLi - Easter egg
hunting is serious business

She also weighted her bag
with a bunch of rocks!

Expat kids at the cookout

Following the egg hunt we all walked over to the American Restaurant just outside the site (next to LiLi’s teacher’s house), where we rented their grill and tables and did our own Easter cookout.  There were about 30 people at the cookout.  It was a nice holiday spent with close friends.