As soon as BBJ woke up, we bundled her into the car and headed north. It's a good thing we got such an early start! By the time we hit the border crossing, there was already quite a queue started. I had time to get out of the car, walk down the line of cars on the freeway, go into the big park at the crossing, find a bathroom while Ma watched BBJ, watch BBJ while Ma went to the bathroom, nurse BBJ, then walk back down to the line and find our car, then let BBJ race it. (BBJ would have won.) (We were walking on the grass in the park parallel to to the car on the road, in case you were worried!) It took us an hour to get from the back of the line through customs!
From there, it was a pretty quick shot to meet the first set of friends at their office and go off for a sumptuous dim sum lunch! Dim Sum, to the uninitiated, is literally "heart's delight." Small dishes of 4-6 morsels are ordered. The idea is to keep ordering until you have eaten your fill! Each dish is usually just a few dollars. Chinese meals, in general, are better enjoyed with 4-9 people. Fewer than that, and you can't finish what you order, or you can't order everything you want. We ordered fried rice noodles, vegetables, shrimp dumplings, shiu mai (little pork and shrimp dumplings) and so many other things. It was positively delicious!
As you can see, BBJ repaid their hospitality with lots of smiles and love.
From there, we went to the mall to walk around. Ma and Da went inside first while Louh Gung and I drove BBJ around for a few minutes to get her to sleep for her mid-day nap. After that, Ma let BBJ walk her around the mall for a while, scaring most people that passed by!
After that, we went to visit Da's youngest brother. Their house is a beautiful mix of bright colours, with little metal bells, granite rocks and glasses of water near most every doorway to balance out the feng shui. At the very least, their walls make great backdrops for photos!
As a note of interest, the young cousin in the pink shirt is a whiz bang musician and recently won a piano playing contest that allowed her to go on and play with the Quebec Symphony Orchestra in concert. Fabulous! She also plays the yeung kam (a traditional Chinese stringed instrument) and is learning the violin. She's started teaching lessons to bring in a little money on her parents' investment in her. The girl isn't even 15 yet! Amazing.
Finally, we met one more group of friends for a delicious Chinese Banquet style dinner. A traditional banquet starts with an appetizer of cold cuts of meat (in this case, small slices of corned beef, cold pork and julienned jelly fish). From there, you move on to soup, several fried dishes, and several larger showy dishes that are presented to us whole before being chopped up and served. We had a shrimp soup, pineapple shrimp fried rice, crispy duck skin rolled in small chinese pancakes, a mix of vegetables and pork wrapped in lettuce leaves (Chinese burritos?), steamed buns, a whole steamed grouper, BBQ pork belly (it looks like an immense slice of bacon) (tung bo yuk), fried crab with garlic, green vegetables with dried scallops. We finished off with a small bowl of sweet red bean soup with orange essence. Dinner was absolutely spectacular, and delicious! Fortunately for this group of friends, by the end of the day, BBJ was a little more friendly and willing to be nice!
(As another random aside - of all the friends we saw today, barring Louh Gung's own uncle's family, each family has one son (including Louh Gung's family). Each son has the same name!!! Let it be noted, for the record, that these men have known each other for nearly 20 years. Let it also be known, that of all these friends' sons, my husband is the oldest. Needless to say, he was the first with the name. So....copy cats, the lot of them! ;-))
We finally hit the road at 9 pm in a southern direction, headed for home. We hit customs with very little traffic. Of course, we were delayed by customs and asked to come inside and explain ourselves. (A year ago, as we traveled through China, a young punk on a motorbike drove by and snatched Ma's purse, along with all of her travel documents. When the customs official swiped Ma's replacement documents last night, the fact that they were replacement documents popped up and we were asked to go inside while they verified.) BBJ was already asleep and I was asked to bring her inside as well. Definitely not the way I pictured my evening going! I took her in, where she charmed the other unfortunate souls who had been delayed by our cunning and efficient customs officials. (I know they're doing their job, and I applaud them for that. I hope that all their cunning and efficiency protects us from terrorists. I just wish they weren't so cunning against me!) They also "seized" a few pastries that Ma and Da had bought. Some of our pastries had red beans or winter melon inside, which was fine; the problem came with the pastries that contained "thousand year eggs" - per Avian Flu warnings, we were not permitted to travel home with said pastries. Sad! They looked delicious.
We finally hit the road again, after one more small miracle - I went back to the car when Louh Gung was called back in to explain the pastries. I took that chance to nurse BBJ again so she would sleep again. I said a little prayer that I would be granted a few minutes time to finish nursing my baby and that we would have a safe and smooth remainder of our journey. Soon, Louh Gung and his family returned, but the Customs Officials did not return to rush us on our way - this was a miracle, as they had been busily rushing all of the other patrons out of their parking lot.
As requested, the remainder of our journey was incident free, if not a little later than we expected. We rolled in the door at midnight, and all slept happily ever after!
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