Millie and I set off this morning to head to a park to meet up with my mom’s old friend/coworker Fei. She has two young daughters, one of whom is Millie’s age and speaks English.

We (and Judy) took a car to Ritan park and arrived a bit early. Unlike elsewhere that we’ve been, the park wasn’t set up for kids at all but was still very lively. There were people doing tai chi, walking with strollers, and dancing.

When Fei and her girls arrived, Millie and the kids immediately hit it off. They spent the whole time gathering leaves and petals and organizing them on the bench while we talked. Millie was so excited to be with another kid.

With some separation from me, older women in the park kept asking her to take pictures. This time she obliged and every time I looked up she was posing with another senior in the roses.

Fei and I talked about what it’s like to raise kids in China vs the US, what school is like, how to raise bilingual kids, etc. It was a really nice morning.

After this we came back to the hotel and I fulfilled a promise of taking Millie swimming in the hotel pool. It was pretty cold so we didn’t last long. As soon as we got in they made us both wear these ridiculous swim caps. We had a good laugh.

While we were having a girls’ day, Nick was out sightseeing. He went to Summer Palace and then Lama Temple. He reported both we interesting and pretty. I didn’t have a drop of FOMO.

After our brief swim, Millie and I went back to the room for some reading and drawing time. Then we got ready again and went to meet up with Nick at Lama temple.

We walked with him from here down past the bell tower and the drum tower to begin our Beijing food tour. We are both very much not tour people, but had a good time.

Our group consisted of a British couple and a Canadian. It felt good to chat with native English speakers who aren’t in my family. Our first stop was hot pot.

The roof of this restaurant overlooked the drum tower. Millie asked to take a picture and told us to pose in this very specific way.

The next stop was for Beijing noodles. Yao Ming has apparently been here.

We stopped for a bathroom break. We have gotten used to the squat toilets (Millie just calls them “holes”) but no doors was new!

Next we had excellent beef patty buns and salad. We also tried baijiu for the first time. Mystery liquors are generally terrible but our whole group agreed this one was delicious.

And our last stop was for spring festival pancakes and great kung pao chicken.

We were stuffed but everything was great. Millie was up late but had been patient and well behaved throughout the whole tour. She charmed everyone by taking requests to draw princesses on her drawing pad. We had just enough of the baijiu to offer her a dessert on the walk home. Out of all the cute little pastries in the bakery, she chose this Frankenstein sandwich.

We each had a piece and it tasted better than it looks. Like a soft mint chocolate Oreo. She got to bed way too late and we have an early start in the morning to pack up before our train to Xi’an.