When doing up an itinerary for my family's trip here, I was planning to bring them for some last-minute shopping at the supermarket to load up on local foodstuff to bring home. However, they'd already gone on Sunday, and as they had massive shopping trips at the wholesale places, they needed the whole morning on their last day (16 June) to do last-minute packing. When they came over in the late morning, Rosabelle had woken up already and had finished her breakfast of steamed egg yolk and 15g of cereal.
They brought over loads of things to return to me, and hung around for awhile to play with Rosabelle and bid final farewells. However, the skies were overcast when they got here, and at one point in my home, the whole sky turned pitch dark as the thunderstorm raged.
In the mean time, Simon and Marianne ate their daily servings of apple in my house and I had to threaten Marianne that she would stay on with me and not go back to Singapore if she did not finish it fast enough. Simon, being the 'loving' big brother, was thrilled that he would have more luggage space for his toys and DVDs if Marianne's things were taken out. Similarly, they have been talking about kidnapping Rosabelle back to Singapore, but when I warned him it meant Rosabelle will take up his precious luggage space, he immediately said he did not want to kidnap her anymore (whilst sweet Marianne still said she would like to bring Rosabelle back). Marianne had cried when Rosabelle came back to Beijing, and told her mum in the car the other day that 'I will cry when I reach Singapore, because I will miss Rosabelle'. Guess girls are more sentimental and sweet!
Luckily the rain lightened slightly and they quickly made their way back to the apartment for (more) last-minute packing. When they were leaving, I was carrying Rosabelle and she even said 'bye bye', which all of us heard! After muttering the inadvertent 'bye', she looked coy and even buried her face into my chest and seeming embarrassed for saying it. So cute!
She continued on to eating her lunch (she's been pooing fairly often during meal times - not a very good habit!), and fell asleep shortly after, luckily not screaming to go after them. However, she cried when I left the house to go help my family when they were leaving, mainly because she was sleepy.
Luckily I booked a personal car for them the day before (RMB120), or it would have been troublesome to head out to look for a cab with the luggage and so many children in tow when it was still raining. My sis and mum amazingly managed to squeeze all the luggage in (but of course I had two big bags of stuff to bring home, and the driver nicely dropped me at my block), and they headed to the airport to have a late lunch of Pizza Hut before boarding the plane. Due to the bad weather, their flight was delayed by an hour, but they still managed to take off as the skies cleared by the time of their 4pm flight.
Surprisingly, I did not cry bidding them farewell this time, maybe because we had such a whale of a time in the past few days, and also because unlike the other time when returning to Beijing, I wasn't uncertain of what lay ahead for us. This time round, it was a gleeful bye bye to them, and I am looking forward to seeing them again soon.
Found it apt to end off this post with the photos taken by our professional photographer friend a week ago - he nicely developed a family photo in a picture frame, and cut a professional-looking CD-rom for us. Lovely memories of a great fortnight with my loved ones!
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