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Cici is coming this morning to "negotiate her salary" for the past three days. Jeff from Map Magazine took care of all the dirty work. He called her and explained the situation. What a relief.

Zack lost a tooth last night! One of his front teeth has been hanging on for weeks. The adult tooth has already surfaced, but that baby tooth just wouldn't let go. It was flapping around in there, just tempting a passer-by to yank it out. Zack wouldn't let anyone try and pull it. Finally, it came out last night when he was eating peanut butter toast. Do you remember how cool it is to loose your front teeth? Suddenly you have a huge gap in your mouth, and you can hardly keep your tongue from exploring it several times an hour. And, of course, you can put various random objects in there and pretend they are teeth (my favorite was a peice of corn.) We had to figure up what the exchange rate was for the tooth fairy. At home he gets $2, which here would be about 16 rmb. We gave him 10 rmb because we didn't have any 5's. He woke up very, very early and was thrilled to see that 10 under his pillow :) It's nice to feel so generous, lol. Now he's asleep again! Crazy kid. .

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Cici has come and gone. I'm so glad that is resolved.

We're taking the boys on a "field trip" today. Fun stuff.

Lake Mochou

sleeping man
Originally uploaded by vulcangirl.

We had a WONDERFUL field trip today to Lake Mochou. This lake is named after a woman whose singing voice was so beautiful that when she sang, it was impossible to feel sorrowful. The lake is an oasis of beauty and nature in the middle of a bustling city. We strolled around the grounds exploring the many different sights surrounding the lake. We also rented a motor boat and took it out on the lake. The boys all had turns steering and loved that. They also got to take go-cart rides, which was a little scary for me. There was no track, they simply drove around this bricked in area. I was surprised that they could steer so well. We ended our trip by walking over a bridge that claimed to erase all sorrow. Once a person crosses over the bridge, she will never feel sorrow again, only happiness for the rest of her life. Later throughout the day, Zack kept saying to me "I think that bridge really worked. I feel so happy."

I've uploaded several pictures to our flickr account, which you can access by clicking on the above pic. You may be wondering exactly what's going on in that picture above. This man was taking a nap in the pavillion. Petey walked up to him and looked at him for a moment, and then poked him in the forehead. I said "Petey!" right as it occured to him that this was a real person. He thought it was a statue. Lucky for us, he slept right through the poke. It really freaked Petey out that he had poked some random guy. I couldn't stop giggling about it.