On Friday, the last day of Thomas' Christmas break, I kept Helen out of school and we joined some friends -- Julia, who teaches at Thomas's school and her 2 girls, 5 and 10 -- in an outing to the science and technology museum. Helen was there on a field trip there the first week of school, and has been bugging us to go. It is brand new -- and we were the only ones there, just about. I was really quite impressed -- it was very hands on, as you can see in the photos -- filled with interesting experiments, and most of the signs were translated to English (not always clearly, but the effort was there, and physics was not my best subject anyway).
We were pleased to discover a playground, complete with ball pit-- and I realized they had not been on a real playground in months - only these "fitness playgrounds" designed for adults -- so I was so relaxed watching them run around with fewer worries about someone getting hurt. I have been realizing lately that the constant vigilance of keeping them safe, especially Sophia, with all the time we spend walking along the streets and through the campus -- it really gets quite tiring, mentally and physically..she is becoming quite an handful some days as her two-ness goes into full gear.
One of my favorite exhibits was the body functions, which included a nose which sneezed when you filled it with water, to everyone's great delight, and a boy who burped after drinking a giant soda. There was a staff of two dozen or more on duty at the museum with nothing to do, so they were quite into the kids.
Our last stop was the giant bubble station...a really fine day -- my standards for children's museums are pretty high, living so close to the Strong Museum in Rochester, NY, but I was very impressed with this one. It is in Haicang, an up and coming light industrial area on the mainland.
Speaking of Xiamen and industry -- some of you may know about the massive protests in Xiamen this past spring to oppose a planned chemical plant close to the city. The organizers used blogs and text messages to rally thousands of people to march to city hall to oppose the building of this plant, which is widely believed to present a serious threat to Xiamen's air quality, which is outstanding by Chinese standards. For thousands of Chinese to organize a protest, and for it to be tolerated with no arrests or violence, was quite a stunning event(try searching "Xiamen protests" -lots of interesting stuff comes up). People have told us "it could only have happened in Xiamen" Anyway, a friend told us this week that it has just been announced that the plant will be built somewhere else in Fujian province, but not in Xiamen. People had feared that it might be built here anyway after the dust settled, but apparently the government has decided to respond to the local concerns -- rather a victory for the forces of free speech and environmentalism I think.
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