The Spofford family has a Chinese name. Tim is now Mr She (of course that is not the Chinese spelling but that is how it sounds) and Abi is She ab ee and I am She Bow La. Abi and I needed to have name cards printed so we needed to have a Chinese name. The sir name is first followed by the given name. Usually the children (child) have the same sir name as their father but the wife can have a different sir name. Jane suggested that we all have the same sir name to show that we are a family.

I learned how to write the Chinese character for "she" today. Wow!!! they have a lot of rules about how you create a character. First you start with the outside "lines", then every line has to be made from left to right and then from top to bottom. I am still practicing.....

A friend asked me about the currency in China. The currency is called RMB and yuan. The locals call it qui. The bills come in 100, 50, 20, 10, 5 and 1. There are many fake 100 and 50 bills floating around so you have to be careful when you get change from street vendors and taxi drivers. I was the lucky winner of a fake 50 given to me by a taxi driver. That was our introduction to fake money and now we know what to look for and we avoid paying for small items with larger bills that require a lot of change. There are also coins. The 1 qui looks like a quarter and the rest of the coins I do not use much so I don't really know a lot about those. The exchange rate is between 8 and 7.5 to one dollar.