roses, coffee, movie, popcorn

Happy Valentine's Day! We decided to treat ourselves today for the holiday. It started out with James going out to take some pictures while I worked on school stuff. We were going for our walk at 2:00 and he wasn't back so I went out to meet him. And there he was coming around the corner of the building with - you guessed it - a dozen red roses. We may have a picture to send. He didn't even do that back home! Then we decided to have a coffee out at one of the coffee shops that we had not tried on our walk. We went into the first one "Seaside Coffee" and the menu was all Chinese. It was cute with little areas with couches and private sitting areas. Charlotte, you would have liked it. We went on to the next one UBC Coffee that we heard was expensive. We went in and up the stairs and found this was a place for massages, by the hand motions being made. The young woman took us down the stairs and inside a door to another set of wooden stairs in a restuarant area with a small salad bar - looked like some of our salad bar stuff. Up the stairs we noted an area like the other coffee shop with private sitting areas with couches. We were led to one by a window. The view was of the street below. She gave us a menu with pictures and English. We ordered mocha cappacinos made with Blue Mountain Coffee and were in heaven for awhile. They were great and out of our budget now but its Valentine's Day. Before that we had stopped at the grocery store to look for popcorn and found light microwave stuff! The last time we looked for microwave popcorn we found strawberry flavored so finding regular light was a find. Then on the way home from our coffee, we stopped by the video store, really cheap videos, and got a movie for tonight. Couldn't have had a more perfect day with my James.

James here: Also on our walk today we went past a primary school which we had not noticed before. I took a couple of pictures. A little way past that we came upon grand parents with 2 small children in the wagon behind their bike. We waved and the grandmother got very excited and ran over and told her grand children to say something in English. They said hello, we said hello back, I asked to take a picture, they posed very cutely. Then I said "see you later" in Mandarin and the grandmother repeated it (probably correctly) and laughed. This is the third time that parents have wanted their children, or grandchildren to speak to us in English. They are very excited about it and very friendly. I am very anxious to learn more Mandarin. There are many conversations to be had here, just waiting until one of us learns the others language. I cannot believe how generally friendly and open these people seem.

Linda would also like me to take some pictures of the young people here and how they dress (calf high boots are really in) so I want to get good enough with Mandarin to be able to approach people for a photograph.