Outing: Children's Science Museum!

A couple of weeks ago on a Saturday, we took the opportunity of a free morning to take the whole family out for a special activity. There is a children's science museum in our city just to the east of the city square, and we recently heard through a friend that it was pretty fun. Ok, we've only lived here five years and we're just now finding out these things! That's what happens when you can't read! We had passed that big building a thousand times but never knew what it was all about inside. So based on our friend's recommendation, we thought it was worth checking out. But as with all things in this country (or maybe just in living in a foreign culture), it's best to have your expectations low. We were fully prepared for it to be not much fun and even had a backup plan.

Our morning started with a special treat--breakfast at McDonald's! You can tell by Clara Anne's silly face how excited she is!Chloe cheerfully gave me a big smile!Ah, early mornings out with the children! Everybody is still happy! Christin was giggling in between waving her arms excitedly and bouncing them on the tray.Then we walked from McDonald's to the museum, walking through the square (and of course attracting a crowd!) on our way. On the east side of the square there are many much-larger-than-life statues of famous people from this area of the world. Here's our girls posing (somewhat reluctantly) with Confucius. In the few minutes that it took for us to get their picture, about 10 other people snapped a picture too!

Inside the museum, we were pleasantly surprised! The lowest level had many different play areas, including this area with vinyl-covered foam blocks for building. The girls played here a long time!

There was also a ball pit/climbing/jungle gym type area, along with a maze, funny mirrors, and various musical instruments to try out that worked on some scientific principle. But my girls really enjoyed the clay room, where they could work with real clay and try to fashion something. They both worked very industriously and made some interesting creations! Clara Anne made "Eve" to go with John's "Adam," since of course Adam really was made out of the dust of the ground. Here they are hard at work:

Here's Clara Anne's Eve:

The finished products. I think Chloe was responsible for those many little balls.

We made our way through other parts of the lowest floor of this building (four floors total!) and even went to see a 4-D movie, in which my kids lasted for approximately 2 minutes until they were so scared they cried and we left! I am afraid I have scarred them forever; since that day they still regularly talk about "that scary movie." We thought it was going to be about fish, like an underwater adventure, but instead it started with a plane crash onto a deserted island and various animals were following the pilot around . . . that was as much as we saw and it was enough for the girls!

Christin was a trooper and took only a brief mid-morning nap in the Ergo. The girls played for a solid three hours until we said it was time to go! By that point it was past 1:30 and we still hadn't eaten lunch or anything!The easiest option was to quickly grab a bite at McDonald's again . . . I know, I know, twice in one day is really not great but we were under a time crunch. The girls were happy to eat their hamburgers and even happier to get some chocolate ice cream (chocolate soft-serve is new to our city!) for dessert!

What a blessing to have such a fun day! With such low expectations, we were really thankful to have found a great place to take the girls back to, especially now that winter is coming and it won't be so nice to play outside. The price was reasonable and I can forsee us going back there many times in the future. We had a great time and were really glad for such a fun family day!