Cheer Come

Trips to Carrefour can still make me smile.  With Chinese New Year coming up the store is decorated with the same enthusiasm you would find in during Christmas in the US.  With the decorations come special sales and big displays, this is where I found Cheer Come.  It's a pepper sauce which is common here, but the name made me smile, so I guess it did bring me cheer.  It was later in the week at Ole, a Western grocery store where I came across Oxtail soup and gift boxes of meat.  Don't know what to get that impossible guy, how about a box of meat?  Another treat of the pleasant kind was Cracker Jack, which I came across the Pines grocery store, yeah, that's three stores I went to last week in my quest for groceries.  I miss my Shop Rite!



We had a busy weekend, dinner out with friends on Friday at a favorite of ours Lost Heaven.  Saturday we meet up with friends and fellow expats for lunch a new restaurant, Peter's Tex-mex, to say an informal goodbye to Christine who moves back stateside at the end of the month.  The food was great, but the small side of queso she got was comically small!  No need to worry about oversized portions here in China!  I spent the rest of Saturday afternoon making dinner for Eric and his wife, Faye.  Lasagna, sauce, meatballs, garlic bread and salad.  Dinner turned out great and Eric was so happy with the dinner he had four helpings!

Sunday was cold and rainy so we took the kids to the Science and Technology Museum.  They had a blast running around checking out the animals on display before moving on to the spider exhibit, which thankfully did not have any live spiders.  There was a special marine life exhibit that had dissected animals, which was a bit morbid, but the kids didn't seem to be bothered by it.  We passed by Charlie's favorite, a group of three dinosaurs before calling it quits.  We had a quick lunch at Johnny Moo's, and 50's themed dinner, both kids had a cheeseburger, fries, and milkshake, the perfect American meal!

Sunday night we had Christine over for dinner and so she and Lucas could watch some football.  Unfortunately, the internet wasn't coroporating and we ended up watching Skyfall instead.  It's strange watching a movie that in the US would be considered illegal to own, whereas in China it is the norm.  I will point out that I would never buy illegal DVDs in the US and only do here because I honestly don't even know where to buy the legal ones!