Ni Hao!

That means "hello" in Chinese! This month Gabe, his friend Isaac, and I have been learning about China. We learned a few words and phrases, colored maps, tried green tea (in little Saki cups that Rob's friend Joel gave us - hey, they look like tea cups and the kids won't know), made a panda face, watched a video and read many books during our time together once a week. I personally really loved Chopsticks, a story about a mouse that lives in a floating restaurant in Hong Kong who helps a carved dragon come to life. Once a month the mouse, Chopsticks, and the dragon fly through the night on grand adventures.

Today we had a special lunch to end the month before we move on to learning about another country (Italy in February). Our feast begins.Sweet and sour pork, spring rolls, shrimp purses, pot stickers, wasabi thingies (OK, the lady never told me what they were called, just that they had wasabi in them and that was good enough for me, especially since my sinuses need to be cleared out), chow mien, fried rice, and sesame chicken. Yum!

I found the place mats and plates on clearance at Fred Myers. They looked close enough to Asian for me and only cost about $3 for both.

Mastering the chopsticks.

Isaac was pretty darn good at using chopsticks.

After lunch we colored fun pages about China, made Chinese lanterns (which I failed to get a picture of but they had dragons on them and are really cute) and made Chinese Almond Cookies. Yum!

And by yum I mean that I could have eaten the whole batch! Those boys sure can bake!