Ice Skating

Saturday we were planning on meeting with Penny and riding the bumper cars at People's Square. She was still worn out from playing Wii. Later on that morning, Penny called to tell us that she felt alright enough to go climbing instead. We arranged to meet at the climbing wall. When Eric and I got there, we saw sections of the wall lying outside the stadium. Sure enough, when we arrived at the gate, the guard informed us that the climbing gym was closed. There is an ice skating rink nearby and we decided to do that instead.

50 RMB (6.25 USD) per person got us admission (2 hours on the ice), skate rental, and a pair of gloves. This was Penny's first time ice skating. Here Penny and I are skating together. I'm holding her up as she learns how to skate. We skated together for about half an hour and then I let Penny go. She was very determined and concentrated hard as she skated nonstop for the remaining hour and a half we had. Penny had forgotten socks and she had a couple of hot spots on her feet when we were finished. I'm going to put together a 'Penny 911' kit that contains socks, bandages, wet wipes, and ointment.

We went to IKEA and bought a wardrobe to store the rest of our clothes. Our apartment doesn't have much closet space (especially compared to the house we moved from). Delivery from IKEA is 30 RMB (3.75 USD) and assembly is about 40 RMB (5 USD). Not bad at all. I am reminded of the time when I bought our dining table set from Pier 1 about 4-5 years ago. We lived close enough to Pier 1 that we could easily walk there under 10 minutes. They wanted $50 for delivery. I just brought the table and chairs home in my car. May 1 is a holiday here in China -- Labor Day. Which means that things are a bit messed up. Delivery was late. I propped the door open to allow the delivery men to bring everything inside. This was a sign to the cat that it was prison break time. The door at the end of the hall was also propped open and Mugs was making a beeline for it. I caught him before he could go far and he promptly made for the door. But it was the wrong door. Fortunately, that door was firmly closed and I managed to catch the cat and stuff him in the office.

Tomorrow someone is coming to assemble the wardrobe. The primary reason we are having our IKEA furniture assembled (aside from the fact that it's just $5) is that the doors require a drill in order for the handles to be attached. And we don't have a drill.

We've done amazingly well for having had the bulk of our stuff delivered on Friday. We down to about 5 boxes. 2 have Eric's clothes, 1 has coats, and the remaining 2 have bedding. The new wardrobe should resolve most, if not all, of this.