More Snow and Noodle Tour

At 9:00 we went downstairs to meet Carrasco's so we could go to  Tianjin.  Our plan was to go ice skating.  Leo, her driver, came in and told us it was unsafe to drive to Tianjin because of the snow.  We drove in this same weather on Sunday and it was fine.  The roads were only wet.  Ileana and I discussed it but then just decided to stay home.  Maybe Leo is just a chicken to drive in snow.  We really think he just didn't want to go. But it definitely wasn't bad out.  Back up to the apartment.

All the kids went outside to play in the snow for almost 2 hours.  Cameron came in and shortly after Alfredo and Alejandro were up at our place too.  They had a NERF war.  They were having a blast.  I think Ale really likes to play with the big kids but they don't ask him to very often.

11:30 we all went to lunch at Jacky 2.  Ileana and I sat around chatting while the kids all played pool. We had a good lunch and then headed to Jusco.  Ileana needed to get a few things and I was on a mission to try and find fingernail polish.  The boys and I walked around the whole mall and couldn't find one place that sold fingernail polish.  There use to be one store but it was gone.  We went back to Jusco and they had a few but they came with horrible make up or lip stick.  Oh well, I bought one that the color was pretty good.  I gave the lipstick to Marcela so she could put it on her Barbie's if they were going on a date with Ken. 

What a cute couple.

Another cute couple.  Too funny.

Back in the van and headed to The Noodle Factory.  Luckily Leo knew right where to go.  We had to have him talk to Megan's driver.  Once we were at the factory we had to have one of the workers talk to Claudia's cab driver.  Finally everyone was ready for the tour.

The kids were killing time with these Chinese games.

The tour guide first took us into an meeting room.  We watched a 5 minute video and they gave us free bottled water that they also make.  We next got on a train.  It was a 20 second ride down to the next door.  We got off and went into the factory.  They had glass windows so we could all see what was going on.  They have 6 lines running all the time.  They never stop...not even for maintenance or cleaning.  Each line makes 100 bowls of noodles in 1 minute.  600 individual bowls of noodles in a minute, all day, everyday of the year.  That is a lot of noodles. 

The conference room.

Getting on the little train.

This man was driving but the train was going backwards.

Inside the factory.

Cameron was watching the bowls of noodles pass by.

That is a lot of noodles.

The boys were watching the robot pack boxes of noodles.

We continued looking at all the different sections in the factory and came to the part where we finally saw people.  We thought it was weird that there was actually a place in China that didn't have a bunch of workers.  The workers were at the packaging area.  It was pretty cool how they put the season packets in with the noodles and then wrapped it, packaged it, and shipped it out of the building.  Back on the train.

The kids enjoyed another train ride.

Owen, Marcela, Alejandro, Alfredo, Cameron, Hadley and Lily
riding on the train.

We ended up back out in the lobby.  There we were offered 2 samples...we could choose from chicken, beef, or seafood.  We decided on chicken and beef.  They gave everybody a little cup of each kind of noodles.  Cameron really liked them.  He liked the chicken better though.  I chose not to try them.

The whole gang on the noodle tour.

All the kids...Owen, Lily, Harper, Hadley, Alfredo, Cameron,
Marcela, and Alejandro.

These nice people served our noodles.

Cameron trying the chicken noodles.

Beef noodles and chicken noodles.

Cameron with all the companies in the group.

We thanked them and left.  The tour was much better than I was expecting.  It was actually pretty interesting.

Back home.  The boys played for awhile and then we had dinner.  We played a dreaded game of Monopoly.  I think I have mentioned before that I do not like that game.  However, tonight it wasn't too bad.  Cameron made Todd go bankrupt before me so we consider that a success.  Cameron and I played for about 20 more minutes before I went bankrupt.  Good game.

I'm pretty happy to be in second place.