What to do?

on a bright, sunny, beautiful RARE day here in Beijing, with three children, no husband and no ayi...go to Chaoyang Park! This is a wonderful park which has some great amusement rides for the kids. I wouldn't say that everything is in great condition (I mean, we are in China!), but most of them are rideable. The girls had a blast in the big jumpy castle - they probably ran around for an hour or so, while I tried speaking Chinese to lots of elderly Chinese women who ohed and ahed over our "pong" (Fat) baby boy. He was sitting in the stroller and got lots of attention. One lady was very attentive and kept speaking to me over and over again, but I could not understand anything she was saying. Luckily, a Chinese woman from England who spoke both English and Chinese, was able to tell me that the woman was from Shichuan (not sure about the spelling) and had a very strong accent for that region - so it wasn't just me and my bad understanding of Chinese, it was her strong accent!

The girls had lots of fun going on rides at the park - Ashley even went on her first real roller coaster ride - it lasted about 20 seconds - but it counts in my book. We walked a ton and got to see some cherry blossom trees blooming, which are beautiful. All the kids were exhausted when we got home.

I probably shouldn't have walked so much on my leg, but being cooped up in the house surely would have driven me more insane than I already am. I saw the doc today and was informed that I stretched the ligaments in this last fall and may have even tore some of them - we'll have to wait for 3 more weeks to see how the healing process is going. It still hurts quite a bit and I don't have full range of movement on the ankle. I'm supposed to stay off of it as much as possible, keep it elevated and wrapped for another 3 weeks. Fun, fun, fun. Not so easy to do! Especially now that the weather is finally turning nice - it's sunny and bright and getting warmer.