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Yesterday I told Nanny Zou in Chinese "Mariannette and I will look at Nanjing today." I was trying to say "Will go to Nanjing" but I got my verbs confused. We all had a hearty chuckle about that as I pretended to intently gaze off into the distance at Nanjing. Zou brought her ( nephew Jerry )

to play with the boys today. They loved it, and he had a whole day to practice his English (which already boarders on excellent anyway). I'm thinking this may be something I can exploit. What if I advertise on some sort of community board that children can spend a day with my kids in order to practice their English? This will give my kids someone to play with and give the chinese kids a chance to use their english.

Oh! I had something quite odd happen that I forgot to write about. One of the language teachers for the program, Teacher Dong, approached me with the strangest question earlier this week. She said "How would you like a Chinese baby to come live with you?" Um, what? I had to ask her several questions to finally understand exactly what she was asking. Turns out she has a friend with a seven year old boy. Her friend is interested in having her son live with us for a month so that he can perfect his english skillz. She stood there, waiting for an answer right that moment, as if it was a decision I could make on a spur of the moment. I told her I'd have to talk about it with Chris, but I already knew the answer was NO! Even in the states I wouldn't let a random stranger live with me for a month and I'm certainly not going to do it in China. Now if there were some extenuating circumstances, such as a sick mom, involved, then I'd certainly be glad to help. But she just wants him to learn english. I already have 3 boys! I realize, most Chinese can't comprehend how much work three children are because they only have one and they also have two sets of grandparents to help with that one. I have three, and no grandparents here in China. I'm not willing to take on a fourth. Also, chances are very likely that this seven year old boy is a bit spoiled as most kids are here. I'm not interested in trying to discipline him. It was such a strange thing to be asked, such an odd situation to be put in. I'm going to tell Teacher Dong that we'd be glad to have him over for a day, but that's it.

New Years is on Sunday and the holiday has officially started. We gave Mr. Du some money to get us some fireworks and he came back with a gigantic firework. No kidding, it stands about as tall as Connor. It's a box with about 24 large rockets in it. We were going to set it off last night but it started raining. Still, from our living room window we could see two other fireworks displays going off in the distance. We've booked a hotel room in Nanjing for New Year's Eve, so we can be in town for the action. We also gave Zou her New Year's bonus yesterday. It was hard to decide how much to give her. We didn't want to seem cheap, but we couldn't afford to give her a full months salary as a bonus (as is the usual tradition). Sailing suggested that we give her 188 rmb, as 8 is a lucky number. That didn't seem like enough (only about $25). We decided to give her 800 rmb (just over $100). We still used the lucky number 8 and it was a little more than half her monthly salary. We really want her to know how much we appreciate all she does for us. Also, she and her hubby are in the process of buying a new home so I know they can use the extra money. I had to tell Mariannette because I knew she would want to know. She'd asked me several times how much we were giving Zou. Since our nannies are best friends, we try to do things equally between them. Of course, there is the off chance that Mariannette will try to one up me and give more...but I have to trust her that she won't :)