Fireworks, umbrellas and snow

Well today we started our apartment search.  Both apartments that we looked at were on the sixth floor.  In China the regulation are that elevators are only needed when an apartment buildings has seven floors or more.  So most apartments around here have six floors.  Climbing up and down each day with William, perhaps some bags and everything would be.. interesting.  It's a long ways up with a baby!  We'll see what happens, we've only started the search and there are more to look at.

Today it's the Lantern Festival, which basically means that fireworks are going off ALL DAY.  I think they started at about 6:00am and it's almost 9:00pm and they're still going strong.  I've hard booms and crackles all day... it gets a bit tiring.

After dinner we walked to see the second apartment.  It was snowing hard, fireworks were falling even harder and we were walking down the streets with umbrellas taking it all in.  It appears that when it snows, the Chinese pull out their umbrellas!  I don't know why us Minnesotan's haven't adopted this practice!  The wet slow doesn't have to cling to your shoulders and soak your hair.  It was quite a sight.  We were walking under a sky lit up with fireworks, avoiding walking too close to rockets being set off on the sidewalks, whilst using our umbrellas to shield us from the snow!  It was all very funny.

William almost has a Chinese name.  We've been presented with two options.  I don't think I can properly say either of them, so I'll have to work on that!

William progressed onto bananas, which he didn't seem to like.  I also gave him some apple bits in a mesh thing that he could suck on; he liked that.  Weaning has been a lot of fun!  I love seeing the looks on William's face as he tastes new foods and seeing his reactions.

Tomorrow we do our medicals and continue to search for apartments.