Clarks: Wai Po Jia （外婆家）

One of the most popular restaurants in Hangzhou, with several locations and expanding all the time, is a place called, in English, "The Grandma's", and in Chinese, "Wai Po Jia" （外婆家）。 The Chinese name, by the way, refers specifically to the maternal grandmother, your mom's mom. There's another word for the granny on your paternal side of the family.
So anyway, this blog post has nothing to do with that restaurant.
But, it does have to do with our little Phoebe's "wai po" (i.e., Cecely's mom) who has been in town now since late February.
Gloria and Don were both supposed to come to China for Phoebe's birth, but as many of you know, Don had some last-minute health problems that kept him at home. So, Gloria made the brave voyage alone. And we're glad she did!
It's been a really great time for her and really big help for us as we've settled in to our new roles as "Mommy & Daddy". Gloria has cooked us several wonderful made-from-scratch American meals, helped to keep things clean and straigt, and often soothed Phoebe (and by extension, us too) with her time-tested (grand-)motherly love.

The weather has been nice enough days that we've been able to go outside and see pretty much all the places we'd wanted her to visit. And she's bought enough souvenirs to open her own Chinese import store when she gets home!

The few pictures I'm including show a little glimpse of what we've done.
If you haven't done so in a while, go give your grandma or your mom a hug. And if yours are gone, at least go find someone and give them that hug.