Happy Tomb Sweeping Day

Today is Qingming Day (or Tomb Sweeping Day), which used to be a 3 day holiday, then it wasn't recognized as a holiday at all. And now, in an effort to help Chinese people embrace their culture more, the government decided to recognize Tomb Sweeping Day this year. But it is now only a 1 day holiday. Sydney's school and my office are closed today and since we don't have an ancestors here in China, we decided to go to Sanya instead.

Sanya is a beach resort town on Hainan Island in southern China. We took a 3 hour flight directly to Sanya last night. It ended up being a v-e-r-y long, frustrating trip --- a long flight delay, Sydney not reading the memo I gave her about sleeping the entire duration of the flight, an unfortunate incident involving vomit --- and we ended up checking in at the hotel at 11pm instead of 8pm.

Sydney started to nod off in the stroller but as soon as we reached our room, Sydney sat straight up in her stroller, screaming "Yea" over and over again. Then she jumped on her bed and rolled around on her pillows. It took another hour before everything that warranted touching was touched, every drawer begging to be opened was opened and every piece of paper unfortunately placed within her reach was torn.

She finally nodded off at midnight and I immediately called room service to send up a glass of wine. And just so that I didn't feel like an alcoholic, I also ordered a plate of fried rice. Because when you are about to put on a swimsuit, the very best thing that you can do is to carb up at midnight the night before. But seriously, it was the best fried rice I have ever had. And after spending 10 months in China, I have had a lot of fried rice.

We are staying at the Sheraton hotel here because it's not a vacation unless I can speak English all day long. The hotel room is really nice but not as nice as the Marriott that we stayed at in Phuket, but the grounds are amazing. It has everything that you would want, including a Kid's Club, which is an indoor kid's playroom, and an outdoor playground, although the swings and slide were too hot from being out in the sun to play on. Sydney is FINALLY over her aversion to sand. She was relunctant to step onto the beach, and once she was on it, it still took a little while before she was comfortable with the sensation of sand between her toes and walking on an uneven surface. We were able to take a nice long walk on the beach. She held my hand the entire time, and it has been way too long since she was willing to do that. I could have walked with her like that for hours but.... Of course, I couldn't leave well enough alone. I coaxed her into going to the edge of the beach and letting the water wash over our feet. That didn't go over well, and our adventure on the sand came to a sad ending. We did hang out on the beach a bit longer to enjoy the sunshine. Glorious, glorious sunshine. It was a beautiful day to be on the beach --- sunny, temp in the 80s and a nice breeze sweeping through. It is hard to believe that we are still in China. It really wasn't until we got to the kiddie pool that I started seeing smiles and hearing squeals of joy. After Sydney's much too short nap, we spent the afternoon at the Kid's Club. It's a great indoor playground for kids of all ages, with toys, obstacle courses and craft projects. Sydney had a great time until she started throwing blocks around the room and wouldn't pick them up. It has been a long day and she didn't get enough sleep last night so I was expecting her to act out at some point, which is why we went to the Kid's Club. There were hotel employees there to clean everything up. We headed back to the room for a little quiet time.

We ordered room service for dinner tonight, and settled in for an early bedtime. The nightmare flight over to Sanya was definitely worth the trouble.