Bird and Flower + Pearl Market

I thought I would do a mid-week blog since we have the week off.
On Sunday we headed to the bird and flower market. Also called Pet Street by the expats. Like so many other marketplaces here, the bird and flower market is a labyrinth of alleyways. The reason it is dubbed pet street is if you go down certain alleyways there are puppies, kittens, birds, fish, lizards, even hamsters for sale. Once I figured out which alleyways sold live merchandise (which isn't difficult - it is quite noisy) I learned to steer my children in the opposite direction.
Anyway, the weather in Suzhou has been lovely and we are wanting to be outside more and more so I wanted to buy some plants for the balcony. Abigail has been wanting to plant her "fairy garden" and James had a kit Mum and Dad gave him that has seeds to plant "pre-historic" vegetation so we were trying out our green thumbs. For those of you who have never heard of or seen a "fairy garden" it is basically a small scale garden (perfect for the balcony) where, if you look closely, you can see the evidence of fairies living amongst the plants. A "build it and they will come" sort of idea. So when you look at the garden from a fairy's perspective it starts to look like a forest of sorts. Yes, I do realize some of you are reading this and raising your eyebrows. This is what I get for raising 2 children with fantastic imaginations. Here are some scenes from the bird and flower market.

Birds for sale


Everything from bamboo to hydrangeas to cacti for sale.

Piles and piles of beautiful pots to choose from.

Abigail trying to pick out the right bonsai for her garden.
Her choices.


This isn't the greatest picture but we saw this from the taxi on our way to the market. As spring has arrived more and more flower sculptures are popping up around town. This is a rubic's cube made completely of flowers. It's really neat. There are many new ones all over our neighborhood.
This is Abigail's new fairy garden. If you look closely you can see a fairy sitting in a leaf boat having a sip of tea with a bumblebee and a little stone path that leads to a tiny bird bath. It came out really nice actually.

On Monday we headed out of town a bit to the pearl market. This was my second time since I went with some other teachers last November but Mark and the kids hadn't been. Abigail had saved up some money from her allowance and was determined to buy some jewellry. She had 50RMB (8 US$) and left with 3 bracelets, a necklace she had custom made, a sea-glass necklace and a pearl necklace. She loved every minute of it.

The exterior of the Pearl Market. It is 2 storeys. There is a central area with stalls on the main floor and then shops along the perimeter. Each space is owned by different people. The more expensive shops are on the second floor. You can bargain but you really don't need to because most prices are already really low. You can also have jewellry custom made within minutes at no extra cost. Amazing!
Two ladies making necklaces in one of the shops. The one further back is making one of Abigail's necklaces.

Strings and strings of stones, shells and pearls to choose from in every colour you could want. So you just choose what you like and tell the shop owner how long you want it and they cut it and put a clasp on it. These strings are 3 RMB each (less than 50 cents).

Mark bought a pair of both jade and onyx cuff links. He also got a black pearl earring for free. The shop owner rolled her eyes and said "I give" when she realized he only wanted one.

I really liked this bracelet so the shop owner made me a necklace to go with it. I'm not sure if you can see it in the picture but the blue and white balls have the Chinese symbol for longevity on them.

So that's all for now. We have a relaxing day planned but will hopefully get some much needed spring cleaning done. Tomorrow morning Mark and I are taking the train to Shanghai. We have one of his grade 11 girls staying with the kids for the day. Should be fun. Shanghai is always an adventure!
Have a great week!

Sports day and flea market

Hi everyone!
We are officially on May break!! Yaayy! We had Friday off school and all of next week as well. I think we will really need this in order to charge through the last 7 weeks of the school year. There will be a lot going on.
This past Monday was Sports day for the secondary school at SSIS (primary will have theirs in a couple of weeks). I'm pretty sure I've talked about this before but every student at SSIS is put into a "house" when they register. The four houses are the blue monkeys (which Mark is the head of this year), the red dragons, the yellow phoenixes, and the green tigers. They have meetings about once every 6 weeks and they compete in various challenges throughout the school year. These challenges include everything from chess and trivia to soccer and basketball. The houses get points from every challenge and at the end of the year the house with the most points gets a trophy. It is all very Harry Potter (without the sorting hat and magic of course).
So sports day is their chance to accumulate a lot of points at one time. It is mandatory for each student to participate in at least 3 events during the day. Mark's blue monkeys are second place in points right now so he was very determined to get enough points on sports day to pull ahead. James is a blue monkey as well.
So here was the scene on Monday.

Here is James doing his part for the blue monkeys. He ran the open mile as well as long jump and shotput (which he has been doing in PE).
The head of the blue monkeys with the head of the red dragons. This is Glen, a Canadian who teaches math with Mark. He used to teach at Appleby College (for all you Oakville people) and we went to Acadia (for all you maritimers).
And the final score was............
Blue house won!! They have pulled ahead in points for the year so far.

Yesterday (our first day of the break) we decided to go to a big flea market that was supposed to be an opportunity for expats to sell used items before they get ready to move. There were maybe 3 expats selling stuff. The rest were Chinese who work in factories who brought in overflow items. So we didn't stay for very long and we didn't buy anything. We did walk around a bit through some nearby gardens, it was a beautiful day.

I saw these statues by the cultural arts center. I loved it. The statues were so detailed. Right down to the fat, bald drummer's flip flops. Abigail wanted to pose with the rock band but the security guard wouldn't let her get close.
This is the cultural arts center. The whole exterior lights up at night and changes colour. I caught two young chinese ladies crossing the bridge with their umbrella.
On a completely different note. The school booked our plane tickets home this week. What we have decided to do is fly from Shanghai to Houston the day after school is over. The school had us flying into Toronto to connect to Houston so we decided to have 2 nights in Toronto before we head to Houston so we can have a little more rest and the kids can see their Oakville cousins. We will be in Houston from July 6 - July 12, which will overlap with Abigail's best friend from kindergarten visiting Houston from London so she is very excited about seeing Alessandra. Then we will fly to Halifax on the 12th and be there until August 16. The school will fly us back to Shanghai from Halifax. So we're really happy about that. We will get to see almost everyone.

I had better run, we are off to buy train tickets to Shanghai. Lots of love to everyone!