Wall, since we were nowhere near it in real life, and a replica of Tibet. Fun stuff! After spending the afternoon with replicas of really important things that we really didn't see, we went to a costume show. It doesn't sound like much, but holy cow! The costumes and dancing were incredible. I think it was my favorite part of the really long week. It took me back to Folk Dancing days. I was impressed with how real those Chinese costumes looked. Amazing.
morning, we got up and went to the in-law's apartment. When we got there, M1 had been to the market with her Granddad and picked out a new pet. Since they had been to the Market first thing Monday morning, she had wanted a crab. Lucky girl. We had the crab in the blue bucket for a while, but thought he needed a little more room to roam. So obviously, we put it in the shower. We left for the day after giving it a good soak, but didn't plug the shower to keep the water in. We went to Stanley Market and shopped to our heart's were content. Actually, to more than our heart's content. We got our souvenirs and returned to the apartment. Apparently, crabs need water to survive more than a couple of hours. When we got back, the crab had died. In the shower. Oops. M1 was crushed. And we weren't even gone that long. Oh well. I don't know what she had planned on doing with it. After all, if it couldn't survive in the shower for 3 hours, how did we expect to get it all the way home? Good thing my kids understand that animals die even if we don't want them to.Saturday night, M1 was lucky enough to throw up. It only happened a couple times, and she was very responsible about it on the trip home. She was very concerned about what she ate so she wouldn't vomit again. Good girl.
Sunday morning was departure time. The Father and I went to the in-law's apartment early enough to leave for the airport in plenty of time. We were ready to go, though we enjoyed the
trip. When we were getting ready to leave, saying our goodbyes to N and K, we couldn't find M2. We were hollering her name (like she couldn't hear us talking in the 800 square feet of apartment) and she didn't answer. I started to get worried because she didn't come out, and there weren't very many places to hide. I looked in the hall, started toward the elevators, looking everywhere, then heard a "We found her." She had hidden in her Granddad's dresser. She really didn't want to go home. She wanted to move in with her grandparents. It was really sad and almost made me cry.
We got to the airport about 2 hours before our flight left. We watched them getting our plane ready, we ran around, M3 pushed the other Ms in her stroller, whatever we could do to stay occupied. We hoped we'd be able to catch an 
earlier flight from SF to SLC and make our return trip 3 hours less than what it should have been. I guess we weren't supposed to get home early because when we got to SF (2 hours ahead of time--how often does that happen?) and there was fog. A lot of fog. We got standby (all 5 of us) to SLC on an earlier flight. Hooray! Or not. Another flight was delayed then cancelled so they put a bunch of those people on our standby flight. Needless to say, we didn't get on our earlier flight to SLC. We got to sit in the SF airport for 7 hours. Ridiculous. It took us 24 hours to get back home. From the time we left my inlaws apartment until we drove into our garage, 24 hours. What joy. At least we got to fall into our own beds and wash with our own towels. Talk about a beautiful ending. We made it home, no worse for the wear. It was a wonderful/exhausting/intriguing/educational/fun/frustrating/ridiculously hot trip. I'm glad we got to go. I don't know that I'd do it again. Thank you though to my inlaws for their generosity and graciousness while we were there.
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