Day 1

Day One, meaning that the countdown to Day Zero had almost concluded. We started counting down the days at Day 7; not actually the days, but the amount of times Bennett had to go to bed before Granny's arrival. Hence, Day Zero – the day Granny arrives! We gushed with excitement at having our first visitor, and seeing the look on her face when she got to experience China, not PF Changs China, but real China. We tried to keep busy to ease the anticipation, and on Day 1 Benne and I decided to spend the afternoon lounging by the pool. While we finished up our day out by the pool, I told him that we needed to hurry home to say goodbye to Ayi for the weekend. Li Xiu Lan is our Ayi(Chinese character for “Auntie”) Li Ayi would leave on her own, but it was a long weekend coming up, and I felt that it was nicest to see her off; also I wanted to make sure that I had settled up any money that I owed her. Ayi typically goes to the store and buys whatever we need for the house, detergent, TP, cleaning supplies, food for dinner, flowers, etc, and when she comes back from the store she leaves the receipt and I reimburse her. I didn't come up with the system, she did, but it seems to work well for all of us. Anyway, I didn't want her to leave for the long weekend without being reimbursed for any expenses she may have had that day, so again I said to Bennett, “come on sonny get out of the pool, we won't see her for awhile, so we have to go say goodbye to Ayi.”

He peeked up out of the blue towel he used to dry off and smiling said, “daddy, we can tell Ayi that she doesn't need to come anymore, Granny is coming next week and she will take care of everything around here, Ayi can take time off.”

I laughed out loud, “Benne, I think granny will appreciate having Ayi around too.”