Ni hao, China and Japan!

We are currently winding down our summer break here, so it is crunch time for our virtual country excursions! This week we crammed two different Asian countries into the mix, and had a blast learning about both! Ethan chose to do his report this week on China, and Alex chose to do his report over Japan.

Most of our cuisine this week was Chinese food, which also happens to be my second favorite kind of food out there. Our grocery store had plenty of options for us as well, which is nice, especially since I have picky eaters in my family who do not like vegetables or many things out of the ordinary. We enjoyed some orange chicken with white rice and pork egg rolls, broccoli beef with white rice, chicken stir fry with Asian seasonings, and teriyaki chicken stir fry with chicken egg rolls. Not much variety, I know, but I have a hard-to-please crowd of children.

For our mini-field trip this week, I was unable to find a town in Texas with a similar name to a city in either China or Japan, so we settled for going the religious route instead, which ended up being a very good choice. I did a little research and discovered that there is a Buddhist monastery only a few miles away from our house! I have noticed the top of the temple from the road before, but I have never been by to visit.

We did not go inside the temple because we were wearing tank tops and shorts (100-plus degree days here!), so I didn't think it would be appropriate. There was a nice lady who came by on a bicycle and asked us how we were doing that day and if we had any questions. My children were a little antsy to get home for lunch, so we kept our trip fairly short and just looked at the beautiful and majestic buildings on the grounds.

These little green signs were posted all over. Lots of good reminders about being kind to one another. I think this message is very fitting for circumstances happening in our world today.

The kids enjoyed seeing the beautiful buildings, but they are not as interested in architecture as I am, so they were bored pretty quickly. If I would have planned a little better, we would have dressed appropriately and taken a look inside. We did see two of the monks outside helping take care of the grounds, so that was a nice little glimpse into their lives.

Next week, the boys were able to choose what country they would like to research since it is their birthday week (they were born on the same day, three years apart). They decided to choose the United States of America. Granted, they already know quite a bit about the U.S., so I went a little different route to get them to learn a few things they maybe didn't already know about our country. Tune in next time to find out what we did...