Day 13 - Choose Me Cafe

Today was my first day without the kids. I stayed up until 3a planning what I would do...which was my first mistake of the day. I was exhausted! After I dropped off the kids, I went to Watson's and Tomod's (drugstores have been my favorite shopping places and I've purposely waited until the kids were in school so I could go. I didn't see anything so I went home and took a nap!

The only thing I had to do today was to visit my aunt so I decided to find a restaurant in her area for lunch. The restaurant that I found was very close to a subway station but in order to get there I would have to change 3 lines and make a big loop or my other option was to take just 1 line, get off after 2 stops and walk 15 minutes in this terrible heat. So of course I decided to change 3 trains. What I didn't realize was that to change these 3 trains I would have to walk quite far to get to each going up and down several floors each time. It took me about 45 minutes to get to my final stop and right before I exited I realized that I forgot my wallet!!! So I had to go allllllllllllll the way back home to get it! You'd think I'd just give up and stay home this time right? Well I should have! But the 2nd time around I decided I would walk the 15 minutes just so I could get this picture.

The pasta was actually quite good but the Totoro dessert was not. It was some sort of black sesame cheesecake. After flipping through a magazine and reading a couple of chapters of Noah's book I went to my aunt's house. She showed me some photo albums of all my cousins and their kids then it was time for me to go pick up the kids. 

But before I left the neighborhood I decided to buy some bottled water for the kids camp this week. Why? Why? Why? I had to carry those bottles all the way back to the station and to the kids' school. I was dying! When I got there I finally remembered to take a picture of the kids.

When I picked them up I saw a bunch of kids sitting together in different groups just hanging out and eating their snacks. Then I see Zion and Noah playing with each other trying to step on a small marble that as on the floor. I was disheartened to see that they didn't make any friends. The camp I signed them up for was for ages 6 to 12 and I thought it would be good for Zion to have Noah around so he wouldn't be scared. But I didnt think of the fact that since they had each other so they wouldn't need to get to know other kids. But they both reported that they had a good time. They swam, went rollerblading and learned how to play a chinese yo-yo. Noah said that Zion didnt speak any Chinese at all. He asked Noah to translate for him. And when the teacher asked Noah where he went to school, he said in Chinese "I am in America do school" 😫 Ugh...his grammar! His pronunciation! All these years of effort. I want to cry!

As we headed home in the heat carrying all their sleeping bags, lunch utensils, swim stuff and all the bottled waters...the kids and I were exhausted. We decided to buy some Japanese curry to go for dinner and pick up some bread for breakfast tomorrow and went home.