Beach time!!! (Tianjin Beach)

I want to go play on a beach and play in the sand!!!  I know the girls want to go play in the sand as well.  How about you???  Are you up for hitting the beach with us?  Some friends of ours will be joining us- as the saying goes, "the more the merrier!"

Linda, her son and her cousin will be joining us on our outing.

Ah, here's the entrance to the beach. We have to go pay at a different booth….apparently it's not a free beach to visit.

 It seems that we've picked a quiet day to come- it's windy and cool here and I'm wondering if we'll see any rain drops in our near future.  On the upside, there are very few people here to gawk at us!!!

Ava was so happy that she threw her shoe up in the air!

Our little camp…Check out all the building happening in the background. Apparently they're trying to develop this area and turn it into "expensive" beach front properties. Huh. I wonder who will buy into that!

Digging moats and castles in the sand.

The kids played around this pole- not sure what the pole is supposed to be used for. Remember it …

Playing with towels is sometimes as much fun as playing in the sand!

Linda and her cousin are hard at work writing letters in the sand.

YAY!!! Tianjin Beach!!!!

Oh my!!!

My predictions about the rain seem to have come true. Now, we're not made of sugar so we'll try to stick it out.  AAAAAAaaaaaaccccckkkk!!!  Now it's pouring!!!  Time to high tail it to the car!  

And guess what????  Remember that weird looking post in one of the previous photos?  Well, close to it Annika accidentally found a wooden board with a rusty nail in it.  And guess how she found it?????? With her bare foot!  *sigh* She stepped on the darn nail with her bare foot.  UGH!!!!  Thank goodness I carry a small first aid kit with me everywhere I go- we cleaned the wound, put antibiotic cream and a band-aid on it.  And thank goodness that we've had all our vaccinations!  Tetanus would NOT be a fun disease to deal with.  Well, I put a call into the SOS clinic in TEDA and they said they want to see her.  Guess we'll head there as soon as we pick up Mark from work- after dropping Linda and her family members off at the train station.  

Long story short- we picked up Mark and went to the SOS clinic. They re-cleaned her wounded area, applied MY antibiotic cream and placed a bandage on it.  Only to the tune of $75!!!  EGADS!  They wanted to charge around $150 US for a bandage but reduced it to $75 after they could hear the astonishment in our voices (the doctor's visit is "covered by our health plan" but apparently the bandage is a whopping extra almost $100US!!!!!!!!!!  Yeah, that might be the last time we will voluntarily go to that particular clinic!  

Let's go get some dinner.  And a beer.  I think I need a beer and time to cool off!  This has been one crazy evening!!!!!!