Our family greetings – Spring 2019

May has arrived with weather that is hard to predict here in Guangzhou. Before jumping right into Summer, lets look how our family’s Spring has been here in Kanton.

Chinese New Year we spent with my husband’s family and visited some relatives as well. New Year is always time to relax and have time as a family, which is sometimes hard to do during work weeks.

After CNY we treated our selves for a mini getaway at a hot spring hotel. We chose the place according to a recommendation and even it wasn’t exactly how we imagined, we had a nice relaxing weekend.

At my company Expat Chinese we have organized a lot of day trips with Banana Tour and many of these my daughter and sometimes husband too have been able to participate. Exploring new places together!

This Spring we have been eating out a lot! When life is hectic it’s often hard to find time to cook, often I find my self cooking only once or twice a week!

Anna has been participating in many of our workshops as well, for example trying Calligraphy and using the traditional brush. I’m so happy to give the chance to her to experience new things and arts, but also to let her see what I do for work.

The Rose Cottage horse stables are a place we can be seen often too. Not only for pony riding, but they also have other animals to pet and a delicious restaurant. This is one of our favorite places on the island we live in.

Our daughter Anna has been enjoying her kindergarten and I think we made a good choice to enroll her there last September. She is especially eager to attend all the English lessons there!

Right now her languages from strongest to weakest are Mandarin, Finnish, Cantonese and English.

This Spring she has suddenly started to speak more Finnish with me, without me changing anything in a way I speak to hear. This just seems to be a good time for her to learn languages.

English we don’t speak at home, but she loves the classes at kindergarten. At home she often asks me what different items are called in English.

Here Anna is participating in our pottery workshop, she had a great time even she was the only child there.

In April my husband’s second gym opened and we were excited to see the new gym ready! They even have a real Finnish sauna there that me and Anna have used several times already.

In April we also celebrated my husband’s birthday and I got to surprise him on the opening day! “Who is this cake for” he just asked without realizing it was for him.

It’s been so amazing to see him build his business this year and how quickly it has grown.

Both of us being entrepreneurs does make for a hectic life, balancing work and family is though, but we can’t imagine any other life style for us.

Anna has made new friends this Spring with kids of my friends and it’s wonderful to see how well they play together. I can see how important friends already are at age 3.

During Labor’s Day holiday we organized a big get together with friends and their family. We went to Rose Cottage stables again and besides pony riding they had new activities for the kids. After delicious lunch we showed them the village where we live. What a nice holiday it was!