Parents' Trip to America - Recommended Home Activities

Contents

1. 1. Games
2. 2. Sports
3. 3. Science Popularization
4. 4. Kitchen Activities
5. 5. Shopping at Supermarkets/Malls

This content was automatically generated by gpt-4o-mini (No human review). The original post is in Chinese.

During my parents’ and younger brother’s visit to the United States, besides taking them out on weekends and holidays, we also arranged quite a few family activities for rainy days and evenings. Especially after the Christmas and New Year holidays, we had to work from Monday to Friday during the day, leaving only the evenings to spend time with family. Additionally, winter nights fall early, and it gets dark around 5 PM, making it nearly impossible to engage in outdoor activities after work. On the other hand, my parents cannot drive in the U.S., so their activities are limited to the neighborhood. Therefore, we planned some self-entertaining activities for them to alleviate boredom while we are at work. This blog focuses on sharing activities suitable for the whole family to enjoy together at home or nearby on rainy days or after dinner.

Note: We rented a two-bedroom, two-living-room Airbnb house for my parents, about 5 kilometers from our home. We are still living in our original apartment, which is crucial for maintaining distance and improving quality of life. Otherwise, staying in one apartment for over a month would affect both work and rest, and the lack of privacy and space could easily lead to feelings of suffocation.

Games

Playing games is truly the simplest way for the whole family to experience joy together. We actually find it hard to have deep conversations with my parents due to significant differences in values, cultural, and educational backgrounds. Our chats usually stay on the surface, discussing what we ate, what we did, or the weather, and we often intentionally avoid serious topics to prevent arguments. However, playing games is safe and enjoyable. After dinner, we typically play games for 1-2 hours before heading back to our own home. Here are the games we played together:

• Pictionary

  • I highly recommend this game; it’s the one that made us laugh the most. The five of us can split into two teams, with the fifth person acting as the judge. The game preparation includes cutting out slips of paper with words on them and placing them in a bag, drawing lots to decide what to draw, and using Google Slides on a computer to create a scoreboard with a timer, which we project onto the living room TV for the judge to update the scores. We just needed to buy a whiteboard, markers, and an eraser. Through this game, I discovered that my brother is actually quite good at drawing and has great observational and abstract skills, although he draws slowly. This game also sparked his desire to express himself through drawing, and in the following days, he kept drawing various things on the whiteboard (often Ultraman cards).

• Switch Console: Mario Kart, Mario Party, Super Mario, Just Dance

  • Most of our time after dinner was spent playing Switch games together in the living room. We even bought an extra pair of controllers so that up to four people could play together. My dad enjoys Mario Kart, my brother loves Mario Party (where you roll dice to move on a board), and I prefer the mini-games in Mario Party. The classic Super Mario was also played by the whole family for several days.

• Foosball

  • Our school apartment community center has a foosball table, which is also a lot of fun and very intense. Four people split into two teams. My brother cried several times when he lost.

• Memory Matching Card Game

  • This game tests memory and is often played by kids. It involves many animal cards, and players flip cards based on their memory. It can be played by two people or more. We made our own animal cards and wrote English words on them, allowing my brother to learn many animal names in English while playing. Game cards can also be purchased on Amazon.

• Gomoku and Playing Cards

  • These two games are mainly for my parents and brother to enjoy on their own.

• Codenames

  • This game can be a bit challenging for kids since they may not know how to read, so it’s mostly played by the four adults. Before each round, we teach the kids how to read. We simply searched online for a platform and set up four electronic devices, projecting one device onto the living room TV to play.

• Children’s Phone - Mobile Games

  • Initially, my dad gave my brother a spare phone to play freely. We found out he was playing WeChat mini-games like “Planet Synthesis” and “Plants vs. Zombies.” These games are fine, but they often have ads that are not suitable for children, and he was reluctant to skip them even when he could earn rewards for watching. We set WeChat to teen mode, but found that all mini-programs were disabled, which felt too simplistic and harsh. So, we got my brother a “children’s phone” using the spare phone, with Google’s built-in child mode, limiting its use to 1.5 hours a day. We set ourselves as parents to monitor phone usage. We downloaded YouTube Kids and high-quality games like Monument Valley, which do not have ads.

I later realized that I could buy some inexpensive musical instruments for my dad and brother, like a Yamaha recorder for only $9.9. I could get two so my dad could teach my brother how to play, which would also help pass the time and bring joy. At the time, I only thought of drawing and completely overlooked music. I did consider watching movies, but I couldn’t think of any that the whole family would enjoy. Later, I thought about considering some educational documentaries for kids, but the problem is that we don’t have children ourselves and usually don’t pay attention to such content, so we would have to specifically look into it.

Sports

• Cycling

  • We originally had two bicycles, and in the end, we gave one to my dad so he could ride to the supermarket, which takes about 25 minutes. He really enjoys it because he can freely buy cigarettes and alcohol at the supermarket, making it one of the few moments he feels independent in America. One time, before dinner, I went cycling with my dad near our community after work. He saw a little girl riding her bike behind her mother and was inspired, saying we could let my brother learn to ride a bike in America. So we specifically got a children’s bike, and my dad spent a whole morning teaching my brother how to ride. For the next week or two, they practiced riding around the community. Finally, before leaving, I took my dad and my brother out for a bike ride, and we rode 11.5 kilometers.

• Badminton

  • There are no badminton courts near our community, so most of the time they play without a net, often on the concrete outside their home. Several times after I finished work in the afternoon, I ran to their house and found my dad and brother playing badminton. I also played with my family on the grass in the park on weekends.

• Table Tennis

  • On rainy days, I took my parents to the community center, which has not only foosball, table tennis, and billiards but also many board games available for borrowing. We played table tennis two or three times, and it was quite fun.

• Swimming

  • The community where my parents live has its own swimming pool and a hot tub (Jacuzzi). On the first day of their stay, I took them to see the pool. In winter, the pool water is a bit cold since it’s not heated, but the hot tub is warm, making it suitable for kids to soak and play. I also took them swimming at the UCI gym pool, which is heated, so it’s not cold when swimming in the afternoon sun.

• Rock Climbing

  • I also took my dad and brother to experience the climbing wall at the school gym. The school’s climbing wall is open for free and provides climbing gear at no cost, with specific time slots for kids and staff to assist. My dad only climbed once and didn’t really enjoy it. My brother went during the children’s climbing time and climbed five walls (top rope, rainbow). He loved it and was very happy to have climbed up. Through this activity, my parents learned that indoor rock climbing (Top Rope) is a very safe sport.

• Slackline

  • I also borrowed a slackline from a friend, which is simply a rope tied between two tree trunks, and you try to stand on the rope to maintain balance and walk along it.

I had originally borrowed a camping sleeping pad from a friend and bought an extra tent, planning to take them camping. However, several weekends it rained, and a few weekends were quite cold. Plus, Airbnb accommodations were very expensive, averaging $150 per night. It felt like a waste to leave the house empty while camping, so in the end, I didn’t take them to experience camping.

Science Popularization

• Astronomical Telescope

  • We have an astronomical telescope, the kind that is set up on a tripod. One evening after dinner, I took them to see the moon, and the craters on the lunar surface were very clear. I originally planned to take them to see the Milky Way, but the light pollution near Irvine was too severe. We would have to drive over two hours to get to a darker place. It gets quite cold outside in winter evenings, and my parents and younger brother go to bed relatively early. In the last few days, it also rained, and there were many clouds, so we didn’t go.

• Microscope

  • I had previously bought a microscope and showed them how to observe things under it: hair, tissue, onion skin, sugar, salt, etc.

• ChatGPT

  • After one meal, I also demonstrated some use cases of ChatGPT to them, mainly projected on the living room TV, to give them a brief understanding of the latest technology.

Kitchen Activities

Family kitchen activities can pass the time and provide something to eat, killing two birds with one stone.

• Making dumplings (even making the dumpling wrappers ourselves)
• Making egg tarts (buying egg tart shells directly from 99 Ranch)
• Making cup cakes (requires a mixer and “cup” molds)

Shopping at Supermarkets/Malls

Another activity my family really enjoys is shopping for groceries at the supermarket, as one of the main motivations for them coming to the U.S. is to cook for us. I took them to these supermarkets and malls:

• 99 Ranch Market: Most of the time we went to 99 Ranch
• Costco: Mainly a supermarket, the shelves are quite large, which is pretty special
• REI: An outdoor equipment store, I took them there to buy some clothes, shoes, and other gear before our road trip
• IKEA: I really enjoy browsing IKEA
• Target: Went to buy a phone card for my mom
• Apple Store

This is most of the family activities we arranged. It can be said that my parents do not speak English, and their ability to arrange activities themselves is quite low. They are not very good at using search engines to find fun places nearby, and they are also not very familiar with Google Maps and Apple Maps. Basically, they do not have their own online guides or places they want to visit. My dad usually just plays on his phone at home, playing Dou Di Zhu, and my younger brother has also started playing on his phone a lot. This is a situation we are trying hard to avoid, as we went through a lot of effort and spent a lot of money to bring them to the U.S. for a trip, not to have them play on their phones and feel bored. So we put a lot of thought into arranging the activities mentioned above.

In the next blog post, I will write about the arrangements we made for their trip to the U.S., the efforts we put in, the interesting things that happened while spending time with my parents, and the difficulties and challenges we encountered.