Summer Greetings from Guangzhou
Summer temperatures will continue in in Guangzhou, but in many ways Summer is now over. Summer courses have ended, Autumn semester is coming, our yearly trip to Finland is soon coming to an end. The day after tomorrow we will fly back to Guangzhou after spending 15 days in Finland.
In this post lets take a look at our June and July happenings.
June started with moms getaway to hot springs. We left the kids with their dads and drove to Conghua for one night stay at a hot spring resort. Excellent start of the Summer season!
The Science Center (广东科学中心) on Higher Educational Mega Center had an excellent, though small, dinosaur exhibition. We learned a lot about dinosaurs and got to dig out some bones from the sand too!
In the middle of June I got the honor of being the bilingual host for the International Day of Canadian International School. To be honest I was a bit nervous in the beginning, but in the end we had so much fun and quite exciting moments at the lucky draw! Only after calling three times the winne of the grand prize emerged from the crowd!
We also bought a splash pool and enjoyed mini barbeque next to our mini pool. The well water was so nice and resfreshing, meaning super cold! But just what we needed in the humid Guangzhou Summer.
Me and me husband both being entrepreneuers, we don’t have that much time together, especially for breakfast! But right before the family day started at the kindergarten we could steal half an hour just to chat and enjoy our smoothies.
During the last week of June another mom from the kindergarten our daughter goes to proposed us that we visit the fire station open day together. Our kids were maybe a bit small to understand most of it, but posing with and inside of the fire truck was surely an exciting experience. Very cool to know that Guangzhou organizes these open days for kids too.
Even after living in Guangzhou for 9 years, I had never visited the Crown Plaza helipad! And what an amazing view it was from the top! I really wish I had visited here when I arrived to the city in 2010 so I could compare the huge difference from then and now.
Another first was to try carting at the 6 Elements Shopping Mall in Panyu. This is a shopping mall dedicated for kid fun and on the second floor they have a small carting ring. Can’t say I was the fastest, but it was a lot of fun.
On the last day of June I took a small private group to visit the Xiaozhou Art Village (小洲村) located in Haizhu District. Some say it has become too commercialized, but it’s still an interesting day trip destination not far from the city center. Get lost in the small alleys and take a rest at one of many small coffee houses.
Beginning of July my company Expat Chinese organized a Women’s Professional Networking Dinner with Global Friendship organization. Priya Sharma shared in her speech how to combine work and life, at the tables many deep conversations were held among women from all over the world.
When I first came up with this idea, I wanted to connect professional women from different backgrounds to discuss life and work. Afterwards we got many requests to do it again and I can’t wait for the next one!
The highlight of July was definitely a big family trip to Huizhou Double Moon Bay! Me and Sissi from Banana Tour have been hosting many excellent trips together, this time we took our families and other families to the beach. Two nights and three days of swimming, sand castles, sea food and barbeque on the beach.
I truly recommend the Huizhou Double Moon Bay for a long weekend holidays from Guangzhou. Just be prepared for bad traffic jams if you are going during holidays.
In China they do everything big! That applies to the kindergarten graduation show as well. Each group from the kindergarten prepared a dance show with cute outfits to perform on a big stage to the parents and grandparents in the audience.
I bet I would have been super scared if I had to do that at age 4, but our daughter seems to love performing and dancing.
In the end it was time to take a ferry to Hong Kong and fly to Finland. We hadn’t been in Hong Kong since 2015 and it was great to be back for one night, even with the chance of protests and a typhoon. Luckily we didn’t see either and we got safely to Finland on time.
But our holiday in Finland, that’s for another post!
If you haven’t checked it out yet, my Chinese Language Center, Expat Chinese, has opened their own websites! Welcome to check: expatchinese.com
