When you wake up at 3:30 AM, you really have the whole day in front of you. The kids were up pretty early too, so Peter, Abby and Mike wandered off into the city to see what they could find. They found the temple, some weird German stores, a playground with non-slideable concrete slides, and of course some exercise equipment. The videos of the exercise stuff in the park will come back to haunt them later in life. From there, they walked by the temple and then headed back to the apartment. They passed through Dongmen market because the best way to be introduced to Asia is to make sure you walk through the market and see random fish, mystery meat, stomachs, fruits, vegetables, umbrellas, and steamed stuff. Everyone was up by that point, so we went for a walk down the street to the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall. It's a beautiful open space with some impressive buildings and some cool parks. The kids enjoyed feeding the fish and getting their picture taken endlessly by other visitors who evidently thought that our family was more interesting than a massive memorial to their founding father. After our stroll, we headed back to the apartment and got changed for church. Fortunately, the church was just a couple of blocks away. We went to the American Branch. The church building by the temple is pretty cool. It has a basketball court, a chapel on the 1st and 3rd floors and a variety of other offices. The talks were pretty good and Mike ran into Elder Goodwin, whose son Scott was in his MTC District and served in the Sao Paulo North mission with him. After Sacrament meeting, we headed back to the apartment to change and rest for a second before heading off to Elder and Sister Funk’s apartment where we had lunch with them, their daughter’s family, and WenHo. Madeline fell asleep and the rest of the kids were pretty tired. After that, we headed back home and Mike went to the Carrefor (grocery store) and got supplies for the rest of the week. After that, we all crashed for the night.
