Shanghai Days: Family Visits

When we decided to come to Shanghai we also found out that by pure coincidence, my cousins, Charlene and Guedy and their family also were packing up and moving to China!! This being a unique situation there was no way we could pass up a couple "family visits". Since they settled in Wuhan - a city nearly 1000km inland from us in Shanghai, the kids and I took the opportunity to take the 6 hour train ride to go for trip over the American Thanksgiving holiday. It was such a lovely trip and having familiar faces greet us at the train station was such a treat!!

The kiddos L-R: Brianna, Lachlan, Autumn, Mikayla, Jaida

Yes, we made them pose for us a lot ;)

Our kids got to know each other, and even though their girls, Brianna, Mikayla, and Jaida are a little older than Autumn and Lachlan, in no time they got over their shyness and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. We got a taste of life in Wuhan which is a very different atmosphere than Shanghai. For one thing, they have a large network of friends connected with their school and church, it felt good to socialize with other families again. We took in some sights such as the Hubei (provincial) Museum and famous East Lake. But the highlight by far was just being together those few days.

My beautiful cousin and me :)

Taking the easy way to see the sights of East Lake.

East Lake

Helping set up their Christmas tree.

Shortly after Christmas, we got word from Charlene and Guedy that they were going to make a spontaneous trip into Shanghai for a few days over the New Year to visit us!! It was very exciting to host family, even though our place was not big enough to house them. We went on a few outings around town together, but once again mostly enjoyed just hanging out. Charlene and I shared some childhood memories and wanted to introduce our children to some of our heritage by means of Dutch Blitz and whipping up a batch of portzelky - a traditional Mennonite New Year's cookie (YUM!!) to complete our New Year's Party. Once again the children had tons of fun together and Joe and Guedy had a blast playing and singing the blues. It did my heart so good to be surrounded with family and we consider it to be the best part of the year so far.