Here I am up out of bed a little past midnight after sleeping for a while.  Seeing all these comments on our little blog is gratifying.  It feels like going back to your home town and seeing old friends and meeting new people.

Ping and I went to the H-Mart Asian food market after I showered and rested for a bit after walking half the day at the zoo.  I had called Ping from the zoo to see if she was missing Cici and me.  She laughed and said that she was enjoying having the house to herself so she could clean it.  When we arrived at H-Mart there was a Korean band in native dress, beating on huge drums and drawing a crowd.  We were lucky to find a parking space.  We thought maybe they were celebrating a Korean festival of some kind.

We always buy lots of fresh vegetables and today was no exception.  I introduced Ping to broccolini a few weeks ago and now she loves it as much as I do, so she got three bunches of it.  We both wanted fish, so we got a couple of golden pompano and a couple of red fish.  Not the Texas red fish with the dots on the tail, but some much smaller red fish that I hadn't seen before.  The golden pompano have a very large bone structure with only a few small bones, so it is very easy to eat them after you steam them whole.  We ate them this evening.  So delicious.  We will see about those red fish tomorrow.

Why don't you surprise Mama and help her in the kitchen, I suggested to Cici after dinner.  She had her homework done, so it only seemed fair.  She did as I suggested and it gave Ping a new burst of energy.  You are such a good daughter, I told Cici later.  Did you thank Cici for helping you?, I asked Ping later as she sat on my lap in our home office.  No, she said, that is her job.  But don't you think that if you praise her for doing a good job that she will be encouraged to do it again?, I asked.  Ping smiled.  She got the point and will apply it as she thinks best.

Cici wanted to know why most of the animals at the zoo are from Africa.  Maybe they all moved there from other countries, the girls mused.  I think it is because all the animals in China were eaten, I teased Cici and Yu Qian.  Which led to a discussion about turtles, because as I recall the Chinese have in fact eaten all of their turtle population and are now consuming the turtle populations from other countries at an alarming rate.  So I learned the Chinese word and the Vietnamese word for turtle as the girls did a cross cultural language exchange.

It was so easy and so enjoyable to be with these three girls, I told Ping when we got home.