Things here are different in many ways

Last night we had dinner with some French friends of ours. They are departing Beijing on Sunday so we took them and their two young boys to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants. It is a Brazilian place that is really great.

The boys are 1 1/2 and 3 1/2 years old and the 1 1/2 year old was looking to play so the waitresses were making eyes at him and trying to entertain him a little. After a few minutes, one of them held something out for him, shook it to make a rattling sound and handed it to him. On closer inspection, we saw it was a box of wooden matches! Nice toy! Our friend quickly took it away from her son.

The weather here is quite warm. It has been in the upper 80s and upper 90s with very high humidity. Luckily, we have air conditioning in our house. We have one control upstairs and one downstairs. Plus, we have two traveling controllers. I am one, the other is Xing Ayi. I keep the temperature at about 74 or so degrees downstairs and a bit cooler upstairs, where we sleep. Since Zeke sleeps during the day, I am constantly moving the temperature setting up and down so it is cooler when he sleeps. It seems, though, that I keep it too cool. At least, that's the message I am getting from the fact that every time I leave the house and come back, our ayi has either turned the temperature up to 80, turned off the thermostat or both! EVERY TIME! I realize it's a lifestyle issue. They don't have air conditioning, so it must feel too cold for her and she must think I'm a terrible mother, freezing my children. I try to be respectful of her feelings but when it gets too hot, I do turn it down. Otherwise, I wait until she leaves for the day and then I turn it down. It's more amusing than annoying, luckily, so I just keep my mouth shut.

I just put Zeke to bed and when I went into his room the thermometer I keep in there read 79.