This move has been crazy and insane in so many ways. I am sure you guys know that without having to wonder what I mean. But sometimes things that happen just make you stop and think "what the heck?"

Like today I was cleaning off the top of B's dresser and gathered the small hand full of coins to put in the bowl of change we keep on top of the fridge. Two coins caught my eye and they weren't Hong Kong money. B has all sorts of currencies from work so this isn't odd at all. So I turned to go back into our room to put them with his work stuff instead. I flipped one of them over to see what country it was from. Ummmmm it was a US quarter. I absolutely did not recognize it, even after seeing George Washington. The mind boggles.

One of the easiest parts about moving here has been making friends. Which is awesome! Usually I have found that to be the hardest part of a move to a new city. Well, here everyone is relatively new. In general it seems like everybody is open to making new friends. Or at least everybody is open to a chat--that is how you learn everything about anything around here. It's mostly word of mouth.

G started school in the middle of April and there happened to be another girl in her class who was starting the very same day too. G and L have become fast friends. And D is currently at the play centre with her brother. Best part--the mom is cool too. So we usually meet somewhere for a play date at least once (or sometimes two or three times) every week. A few weeks ago we were discussing how sad we were that there's no library closer to us and we came up with the idea of swapping our own children's books. Every Monday we trade about 5 books which has worked out so well! The kids love borrowing books from each other. It has turned into kind of a big deal around my house. I'm not sure what we're going to do when we have traded all the books...

We had the good fortune of nice weather for all of these play dates until last week. Rain. So it was awkward... Do I invite them to my house? Will she invite us over to hers? It was like considering asking someone on a date but not knowing if they were interested in you like that. Well she did ask us over! And since then we've had them over on a rainy day too.

It's so funny--the next step will be getting our whole families together over a weekend for dinner at some point. How do you decide what to serve to such an international group of adults AND kids. (She is South African, he is Portuguese and they lived 10 years in the UK). Next I am going to suggest we trade recipes!