CHINA NATIONAL DAY . . .

Thursday was China National Day.  Sixty years of Communism being celebrated.  Here, the whole country basically shuts down for a week.  The kids are out of school Thursday, Friday, Monday and Tuesday.  Ryan's had to work from home because the office is shut down and won't open up again until Wednesday.  Even then, he'll have to take a cab to get into work, because their driver doesn't come back to work until Friday.  

We wanted to go somewhere while the kids were on Holiday, but we decided against it.  We figured Xian and Beijing would be psychotically crowded, especially since it's the 60th anniversary.  We were going to go to Hong Kong, we'd figured out our flights and our hotel, but then we checked the weather and it was supposed to rain all weekend.  We didn't want to spend that kind of money to be stuck in the hotel room all weekend, so we just decided to stay here.  Thursday it rained ALL DAY, so we basically just stayed in and watched movies all day.  Friday was gorgeous, so we took the kids to the small amusement park they have here.  It was PACKED!  We are SO glad we didn't go somewhere like Beijing or Xian, or even Hong Kong, because it would have been crazy.  Even at the amusement park the crowds were wild.  Every ride had a line of like 30 minutes or more; even the kiddie rides for Sarah.  You know it's a rough day when the kids are ready to leave!  We only stayed about 3 hours.  It was just too much.  

I've told you before about the number of people that are here.  But it's one of those things that if you don't see it for yourself, you just don't get  it.  There's people everywhere.  And there's ALWAYS people everywhere.  You can't go anywhere without there being a lot of people.  Did I mention there's A LOT of people here?!