We now have a third child (a temporary one, before you all get too excited about the news). Yinan is an exchange student from Beijing going to our kids’ school, and she is staying with us for the school year. She is a lovely person, and my only concern about her is how she could put up with our weird family for so long.
Anyway, we decided to celebrate Marcus’s 13th birthday by—you guessed it!—a weekend at Disneyworld. Naturally, Yinan came along (as well as one of Marcus’s best friends). You can’t get a more quintessential American experience than Disneyworld.
With the help of Disney’s guide service, we managed to get to all four parks—Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Hollywood Studios, and Animal Kingdom—in two days. Even more impressively, we spent the first day entirely in Magic Kingdom and managed to hit the highlights of three remaining parks all on the second day.
There isn’t much to say about Disneyworld that I haven’t already said, either in previous blog posts or in my travel tome about it. That being said, it was really an even more amazing experience to go with someone who had never gone before. Yinan was a great sport about it—tried every ride and food experience (as you know, with us, it is also about the food).
And Tarl, our guide, was fabulously super. Without him, there would have been no possible way to hit three parks in one day (plus lunch, of course).
Happy birthday, Marcus, and welcome to the United States, Yinan!
on Space Mountain
Expedition Everest (Animal Kingdom)
with our guide, Tarl
