The Grimes Family

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Our view!

The view from our living room balcony!

The view from our kitchen balcony!

Monday, January 16, 2012

Ben's first taste of food

We started Ben on cereal on January 15, 2012. He wasn't too sure about it at first but I think he really liked it!

Our highchair hasn't arrived yet so we had to feed him on the couch!

Mmmm...that was pretty good!

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Our new home!

Our new place! Here is the view when you walk in the front door.

Our kitchen

The living room

The dining room

Master bath

Master bedroom

The girls room

and Ben's room! We like our new apartment it is actually pretty roomy and has a lot of storage space. Although I know a lot of that will be used up as soon as our other stuff arrives (hopefully by the end of January).

Kenzie's first day at SCIS

Kenzie started school at Shanghai Community International School (SCIS) on Monday January 9, 2012. She has to waer a uniform to school and she goes 5 days a week from 8:30-3:00. She rides a bus to school.

There are 15 kids in Kenzie's class from all over the world.

Kenzie's teacher is Mr. Ginter and the assistant teacher is Miss Yang (she teaches the kids Mandarin). The kids are learning about Chinese New Year. Kenzie was a little sad the first day of school but her teacher talked her through it, by the end of the week Kenzie was loving school again!

Our new ride!

We have a Nissan minivan here. Our drivers name is Ma. He is very nice but doesn't speak english at all.

Kenzie & Hannah love the van!

Good bye Michigan!

We left Michigan on Janurary 3, 2012. Our flight was supposed to leave at 3:35pm but we had a few delays after we boarded the plane first they had an issue with the computer...they fixed that and noticed we didn't have a thermal suit, since we were flying over the north pole they needed this suit in case they had to make an emergency landing so the person that had to go outside didn't get frostbite. They finally got the suits then the machine they use to push the plane back couldn't since it was a little icey so they had to wait to get a bigger tractor to push us back. But after a 2 hour delay we were finally in the air! The kids did really well on the flight Hannah and Ben slept most of the time and Kenzie kept busy with her leap pad and watching movies, she also slept for a little while. Gary slept a little and I did too! We got lots of compliments from the other passagengers and flight attendents for how well the kids did on the flight!

sleeping or pretending to!

We had some snacks!

played games

acted a little silly

Ready to get off the plane!
After we got off the plane the nice flight attendants helped us get to immegration, but collecting the bags seemed to prove quite difficult, we had 3 carts full of bags and only 2 of us to push them, we could not find anyone to help us, so Gary pushed 2 and I pushed 1 and Kenzie pulled 2 suitcases. Luckily Gary's boss Manish was waiting for us right outside of customs with his driver and ours so we had help as soon as we got out. We were glad once we were out of the airport. We then headed to a hotel to stay for the night, we arrived in Shanghai at 10:00pm January 4, 2012. The hotel was really nice but we were all wide awake at 4:00am since we had not adjusted to the time change. So we got ready and had breakfast in the hotel before we went to get our apartment. We went to get our apartment on January 5th. We were finally in our apartment at about 11:00am. We ventured out to the grocery store to get some stuff for the apartment and some food...it did not go well. It was a little confusing how they have it set up so we only ended up getting a few things that day. The next day we had an interpreter help show us around, she took us to get registered at the doctor's office, took me to get a China cellphone and a China bank account. We also went to Kenzie's school to get her uniforms and to see her classroom. We got to meet her assistant teacher.