Sino Mall is where we spend a huge chunk of our time her in Weifang. China has some AMAZING malls, and this place is seriously HUGE. Your first three floors are shopping, the 4th floor is food and games for kids, the basement is a grocery store, and thats just the indoor portion! There's a hotel smack dab in the middle along with a little amusement park and a long row of street vendors outside where you can get anything from candied apples to little puppies. One reason why i enjoy the mall so much, is because it feels like a little piece of home. You can go to KFC, H&M or Sephora, and all malls smell the same, so when you walk in, it's familiar. We've spent the last 2 days there with friends.
We went there for dinner last nigh and had Korean food. We ordered like a big bowl of ramen with all different veggies and proteins. They bring it out in a pan and theres a hot plate on your table that it cooks on. It was super yummy! The kids loved the noodles, and I tried shrimp...and liked it. I've never liked seafood but decided to give it another try, and it was so good! Not fishy at all! Although I didn't love that it came with its head and little eyeballs still attached, I think I'd eat shrimp again. Ellie has been particularly fond of clams. I think she just likes the fact that the meat comes presented in sea shells, but it's been fun to watch her try and enjoy new foods.
Today we made our way to Sino Mall again (It's about a 15 min ride on our E-bike). And met with some kids and their Dads for a little play date. The people here have been so generous and bought our family tickets to all the rides at the amusement park there. The kids LOVED doing all the rides and LOVED being with other children even more. There's such a good lesson to be learned when you watch these children focus on what they have in common. I think as adults, we tend to focus on what makes us different than other people, and not always in the best way. These kids don't even speak the same language, but that didn't matter. They focused on what they had in common and did their best to communicate. It was so cute to see the three little girls walk around hand in hand all day. Today wasn't just about the kids though. The guys bought tickets for Drew and I to do a couple of the big kid rides while they watched Ellie and Grant.
After using up all our tickets we walked about a half a mile down the road to an old Chinese street that still had it's original architecture. We ate lunch in one of the old buildings and admired the stained glass windows and crown molding on the ceiling. I'm always in such awe of the preservation of these buildings and this history behind them. We had a traditional noodle bowl that is from our city. It had thick noodles and broth with tiny minced carrots and cilantro and green onion. On top the put sliced pork meatballs and a big scoop of some kind of garlic paste that you mix in. It was so good, but they ordered me such a big bowl I could hardly put a dent in it.
After lunch we went back home to take a nap, which we've found to be a common thing here. They eat lunch earlier and then shut everything down for naps. We learned this the other day when we went out for lunch at 2 pm and every place was closed and we could see workers in sleeping in the booths! It was frustrating then, when we were starving, but its definitely something I could get used to!
