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free coffee

Yesterday Phil, Lilian and I went out for lunch. Lilian slept the entire time but Phil and I really enjoyed our Portuguese restaurant experience. It has got to be the tackiest restaurant I have ever seen and seeing that it's often easier to judge a book by it's cover than not, I expected the food to be pretty terrible. On the contrary, it was very good.

At the end of our meal the waiter brought us two cups of coffee, which we had not ordered. When we told him this he said, "It's our 8th birthday and this is our gift to you." How nice, we thought. Then I realized it was Nescafe which is a very popular instant coffee here that has the sugar and creamer already added. It's amazing how nice instant coffee looks in a little white coffee cup sitting on a saucer. As they say, it's the thought that counts.

Today Madeleine will have her first Chinese language lesson. Her teacher is my former teacher and our friend. She's our age and very good with kids. QiaoQiao (M's best friend) will also join the class. Another little gal, Mariah, will join the class when she returns from Thailand. The class will meet every Tuesday and Thursday from 11-12am here at our house. I'm excited that it's starting and also very curious to see how it actually goes. Madeleine can't wait.

It's getting cooler here in smog city. Which helps the smog to feel like fog rather than smog but day after day of "fog" starts feeling super depressing so then it's just chilly smog. But I do like the coolness.

Next week is our National Holiday. We have the whole week off. Yali will have 3 days off and we're planning to spend some fun time with the Tompkins. I'm looking forward to a week off without travel involved. I realized the other day that for the last 5 months we have been either away from home or hosting guest constantly, except for 1 week between getting home from Chengdu and the Steiners arriving.

What a good summer.

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