The Liberry

During our recent trip to the US I was lamenting the lack of libraries here, as we thoroughly enjoyed our few trips there in June. However, I am SO excited to report that we have a library (or liberry, as Austin calls it) within a block of our home! It is called Peekabook (the English name anyway) and was started by some local moms who had lived overseas and wanted their children to have a library experience here.

It is not public (and therefore not free) but you pay a very reasonable annual fee to join and then you can check out two English books and two Chinese books per visit. They also have story time every morning, craft time at 5 pm (not really a good time for us, but...) and other random activities. They really have a BIG selection of English books...everything from board books to some longer classics. I am very impressed. They also have lots of little tables, mats on the floor and a few toys, so Bennett has fun crawling around while I read some books to Austin.

Today we went for storytime...but we were the only ones there. So one of the women that works there read an English book to Austin in a rather thick accent. My hope for story time was that we would go to the Chinese one, to help Austin's language. They supposedly do one language one day and the other the next day. Unfortunately, there are almost no children under age 2.5 that are not in school all day. So I am not sure if there is much of a gathering for story time, but if it is just us I can ask them to read it in Chinese.

Anyway, I am really excited and think this will be a weekly activity, if not more frequently.

Here is Austin with 2 English books we picked today and his own library card. He is making quite a sad face in his ID picture because he did not want them taking his picture, but now he likes it and is proud to have his own card.