The Stewarts have arrived!!

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Wow... it's finally sinking in. We live in China now! Such a surreal concept! We arrived on June 15th. Everyone did great on the 13.5 hour flight. Kaelen took exceptionally well to business class by immediately reclining her seat, getting her movie screen out and ordering an orange juice! Such a diva, even in China! LB stole the hearts of all of the flight attendants so he got away with everything... I think they even let him fly the airplane! He was (surprisingly) very well behaved and slept or watched Toy Story most of the flight.

It was pretty rough getting everyone to sleep on Shanghai time, but I think we may be getting the hang of it finally! The apartment is nice but something to get used to. Feels oddly like college living again but that could be of course because we only have 1 plate, 1 bowl, a few plastic bowls for the kids and a mismatch flatware set! The movers are due to come for another week or two! Oh well, guess we have to eat out! We are in walking distance from the gym, several shops, grocery stores, restaurants, Kaelen's school and of course... Starbucks, which by the way has caramel macchiatos!! My first purchase in China!

We have ventured out a bit each day even though it's been quite rainy! On Saturday, we met families of 2 of the guys on Bryan's team (both US ISPs). Kaelen hit it off with one of the daughters and her friend immediately and had so much fun. LB also has some potential playdates too! We met at this great mall that has several buildings to it and an open air portion. Each building is organized by shopping need. So we were in the kids building. They have a fabulous play area, a craft area, games, rides. It was awesome! Everyone passed out after our venture out and we had our first full night sleep!

Yesterday, we tackled the grocery store. Can I just say that there are 19 million people in China and they all shopped yesterday at the same store!!!! It was completely overwhelming and we still didn't walk away with anything to make for dinner or lunches!!!! I am going back today to attempt it again and see if I can come out with one complete meal! Thankfully, we brought a few staples with us, but you can only eat mac and cheese and oatmeal so many days in a row!! Wish me luck! I will not let the store win!!! LOL

The rain finally stopped long enough to talk a walk through the rest of the Green City area. We saw a great compound with villas across from us that has a nice walking path and another playground for us to hit. We even walked by Kaelen's school, which she said was "huge". It's several buildings and she is used to only 1 with only 1 class per grade so it took some explaining on who and how many kids go to school there. It's wonderful that it's within walking distance to give LB and I something to do in the afternoons too!

I still haven't ventured out with the driver by myself. He doesn't speak any english so it's been entertaining watching Bryan try to tell him where to go or when to pick us up. Need a little confidence boost to try that one, but I will get it soon enough! We all have an english to chinese translator app on our IPhones in which we type words or phrases and hand it to a local to help. It works well but it's still funny to do!!

While this is the craziest adventure we have ever been on, it's definitely going to be great! We survived the first few days which I thought would be the hardest, so let the adventure begin!!!

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