Locked out of my blog

*** Note these posts have been added at a later date, as I was unable to do so inside China.

We're in China now. As you may have heard China has locked out Google. This means I am locked out of my blog. That's disappointing as I really enjoy blogging. So I've decided to temporarily replace my blogging with some semi-old fashioned emails. You're one of the privileged ones on the short list. :) Melody was a little bemused until she tried to log in to Facebook and found that was locked down too. "We really are in China," Melody responded.



Abigail has been a lot of fun to watch since we arrived. On the plane we taught her how to say hello in Chinese, "Ni hao ma." In the car from the airport she must have repeated it a hundred times, and went on to explain that she wants to learn "all the Chinese, Tuvan and Evenki as well as Russian." Abigail has had fun practising her Russian with us too. It appears that she is pretty excited about going back to Russia and that she is ready to dive in head first. It appears that two Linguist parents end up with a linguist daughter. Not bad I must say. It has been cute to hear her say, "look, a Chinese shop" followed by "look a Chinese tv and a Chinese telephone" moments after arriving at the airport. Her fascination with an exotic part of the world is so much fun to watch and participate in.



We haven't done much since we arrived apart from a little explore to find some dinner. We found an indoor market, and noticed a sign that said "pizza buffet". We followed the signs up some dingy stairs to find a very pleasant and clean buffet upstairs. We have learned from life in Russia that you should never write off dingy stairs. That buffet turned out to be half the cost of what we would have paid at the hotel, so will likely go there again over the next few days.



PJ has not thrown up once on either of our flights. But he got Melody again today with a doozy in the indoor market. I had to quickly buy some tissues to clean Melody up. We then had fun communicating with the staff that we had made a mess on their floor and looking up how to say sorry in Chinese. They appreciated the sentiment even if our accents were atrocious.
We have noticed that some of the sights and smells remind us of Russia. We're getting closer now.

I hope to blog in this fashion again over the next few days, after which I will transfer it to blogger once we get to Russia.