Home in Shekou!

We made it to Shekou, China!  We have been here a week and a half now and are starting to feel settled here in our new home.  We have made several trips to Wal Mart here and a big, expensive trip to IKEA.  We needed to buy everything for the kitchen plus new slipcovers for the couch (it was a dirty, ugly, red courderoy!), pillows and bedding......  Anyway, it was a big haul!  But now we feel like we have made it a bit more homey.  Need to work on eventually finding some things to hang on the very bare walls to make it feel a little less sterile.

Mike and I have have started Orientation at school and the boys have had that time to play with the other teachers' children.  We have all started making friends.  Everyone at school has been so friendly and helpful.  There are several families who live right in our neighborhood, which is going to be great for the boys.

We have an Ayi (a domestic helper in the home).  She works part time for us.  It is very common here for families to hire a local Chinese to help with laundry, cleaning, cooking, and childcare.  She is going to pick up the boys after school  since we need to stay later for our contractual hours.

We have enjoyed trying the local cuisine.  It is fabulous!!  We are also very close to restaurants you will recognize in these pictures:  Pizza Hut, KFC, McDonald's, Subway, etc...  Shekou is very modern and really a beautiful area of Shenzhen.  Lots of flowers and plants, parks, nice sidewalks, just very green amongst the big buildings.

Here are a few pictures of our home, the view of Hong Kong from our balcony, and some sites in our area.  There is also a picture of Thomas with his birthday cake.  He had the opportunity to be the first in the family to have a birthday in China.  We found this tiny cake for him.  It was very light, like eating air!  I'll add more pictures as we get out and explore!