It's Time To Say...Farewell

This blog update is a culmination of the last few weeks here in China.  Currently we have moved from our apartment, sent a lot of boxes to customs in Shanghai to be shipped to the USA, and are living in the same hotel we started in.  We have 4 more nights in Changzhou, then one night in Shanghai before we fly home on June 1.  I am having bittersweet feelings, we always knew we would return home so I am fine with that, but leaving everything we have built here in our community and friendships in China is difficult.  I have made friends here like I never had before, what a unique experience and opportunity we had here.  As I reflect back I look at the struggles we had here and all the people that helped when we reached those struggles, all the people we reached out and helped and the friends that became family.  There is so much less going on here, less drama, less hectic schedules in our lives it has been a completely different change of pace.  While I look forward to getting home to see our friends and family, and our new home, find a new job and get settled, no time in our lives will ever again be like it was here in China.

Some of the photos below are the goodbye lunch that some of the ladies put together for me.  Most of us don't work here in China and had the opportunity to spend a lot of time together, and really get to know one another.  As I looked around the table, I had a very different story with each one of them, but yet all our lives were intertwined. We took a photo with Dan, or Mr. Dong, our driver for the past 3 years, I think the kids are a little worried that Brian and I will be driving and Dan isn't coming with us, they aren't sure of our qualifications to drive :)  He was someone I saw every day, he helped me get the kids and groceries in and out of the car, he put up with listening to "Let It Go" on repeat for months and he was kind.  We also said goodbye to some friends from the company and some of Grace's little friends this week.

A fun last weekend with friends....some time at the park!

Back to my weird photos of China.....A screwdriver with light up ice cubes!  The fish that still had his teeth when it was served to us, but oddly they took the brains and such out which is supposed to be the best part!  The menu that read "drunk up" instead of "sold out" some funny signs around Changzhou and the terrible watermelon Fanta I tried.

We had a fun get together to learn some recipes!  From Mexico to Chile it was a latin dinner and Oh so GOOD!  I learned how to make Tres Leches (Quatro Leches to be exact) cake and Cochinitas (delicious pork) so I can bring the recipes home and continue to remember my friends in these countries!  Thank you friends for sharing with me in the kitchen!

These are the last few photos of the apartment, building 1 #2703, we had some fun times there, we brought our friends together there, we brought Grace home for the first time to this house, and we celebrated in this house.  We packed up 105 boxes total and the movers took everything away.  The last night we finished off the beers and ciders with our Favorite Ticos!

A few outings and get togethers with friends, from the local zoo with crazy monkeys flying at the window, to the bowling alley with friends, golf outing for Brian and some dinner all week long!

Dragon Boat festival is this coming week, which is why we had to move from our apartment "early" in order to get the boxes processed through customs and have our passport returned before everything closed for the holiday, but we are still here as Brian's contract ends June 1.  So in the store there are many packages of rice dumplings and steamed eggs.  I found it interesting that there was  Disney and Star Wars packaging this year, I am assuming a nod to the Shanghai Disneyland now being a part of Chinese life.

I did have a wonderful Mother's Day just to throw that in here as well!  The kids made me a perfect card, bought some flowers and Brian took us all out to a nice dinner!  It was a wonderful family day, even if both kids woke up early!

As we are heading out of China, our favorite Ticos and I went to Brian's company for a tour!  I have been to the company many times, usually with the kids or Brian is super busy and haven't had time to actually see the foundry.  While I have seen the one in Tempe, AZ and know what he produces, it was nice to see the China facility and have him explain the process to us.  So here are a few photos of our tour! 

And finally, this was the hosue as of today....we have a ROOF!  We have been waiting for the tiles to be places and now they are.  There are still a few more checks on the list before we get to take ownership but it is just around the corner!  We can't wait to get into the house, especially after one month of hotel living prior to when we will get the keys!!!

So as our time here is wrapping up so will the blog posts, we still have some goodbyes, and many trips to plan now that we have family to visit all over the world!

Away in the Forest....DongTai

This past weekend we did something we had been saying we would do for a while, visit the hometown of one of our Chinese friends.  As out time here is ending...21 days left, we scrambled to get a few trips in last minute.  We took a trip about 2.5 hours away by car (for those that don't recall, we don't drive here, so this meant having our driver take and pick us up from here) from the city we live in, Changzhou to DongTai.  The city is north East of our city and is much more of a natural city, there are forest trees, farming, more nature than you find in typical Chinese cities we have visited.  While here we stayed in a traditional Chinese hotel, which to be honest we usually avoid because the beds are like sleeping on plywood, and this was no exception.  Usually in a hotel there will be hard beds, a few bottles of room temperature water, a few tea bags, a electric kettle and that is it....no mini refrigerator, no cold beverages, we couldn't even get ice in the restaurant.  However, we did have a nice time, this is just to give a little perspective on how out into the forest we were!  Here are some views of the countryside from the car ride.

DongTai is a small town from everything I have experienced in China.  There were very small shops that we passed in clusters near farm style housing.  The restaurants we ate at were very small, probably family-owned restaurants.  There was no McDonald's in site, we ate Chinese food for all three days which really isn't typical of our eating habits.  This city is also close to the "sea" and therefore a lot of sea food was to be had.  Here are some of the photos of our adventures!  

There was a lot of land to bike or walk around.  A children's park was a highlight for the kids.  Everything there was made of wood and seemed so natural being right there in the middle of the forest. 

Another area, part of the hotel but cabins were off in the distance.  There were bigger ones for maybe 4 people but we were only able to see the 2 person cabin which was literally a bed and bathroom, I am not really sure where you would have even kept your bag.  Side note: It is very typical here in China when traveling to wear entire outfits two days in a row, sometimes at home you find wearing your jeans two days or a sweatshirt but whole outfits here, not something I typically experience at home.  The cabins were cool little places set in the forest where i imagine you could see the moonlight and watch the sun rise.

On Saturday of our adventure we went to a wild deer preserve, our friend told the kids it was a zoo so they were looking everywhere for zoo animals!  We saw by boat many of the deer they have there and a few birds as well, mostly it was another part of nature to explore and walk around.

The city is known for producing most of the vegetables for Shanghai and also for watermelon.  If you know our family well, then you understand this was a good thing!  We ate a lot of watermelon on this trip and even brought a few home with us!

While the trip was nice, we got into nature and had some fresh air and lots of running around with the kids, here are a few odd things along the way....at breakfast there was an automatic chopstick dispenser that sanitized the chopsticks, a whole crab that was staring at me before I pulled him apart to eat, a "squatting pot" sign on the toilets....and a wooden man in the lobby of the hotel.

Before I leave ChinaI had to make one last trip to the hair salon....this time I went lighter with my hair color, what I think happened is they bleached my hair and then painted it yellow...and I do mean Yellow if you look closely in one of the photos.  There were at times 5-6 people watching and giving their opinion on my hair that day, I was under two machines, one with steam and the other a heater with foils in my hair ......and on the way there I also saw a sign for a "themed room" open 24 hours.  I have no idea what a "theme room" is and I didn't stop to find out but it was an interesting sign I hadn't seen before :)

Last but not least this week my friend and I decided to try the Icy Dumplings that Starbucks had been advertising.  So we talked with the barista one day, found out that we had to pre-order our Icy Dumplings as they would only be available in stores for a limited time.  In addition, we had to buy a coupon for this, we received a free backpack with it, and we had to go online with our coupon code to reserve it....all in Chinese.  So I made my best attempt and was able to schedule my Icy Dumpling pick up for May 2nd.  We met at the Starbucks I pre-selected in the online survey (thankfully it was the right one), got in line and provided our coupon to receive our dumplings!  We even received a free coffee and they wanted to take our picture and ask our favorite drink!  Haha  

The dumplings flavors are as follows; cold brew coffee (a new thing here in China as you can image), yogurt blueberry, mango grapefruit, peach, and what we decided was panda or something green.  The outside of these were like a very dense gelatin, and the inside of the flavor was paste......I have to say I might have preferred one flavor over another but I prefer never to eat these again.  They came packaged nicely in a Starbucks bag and sealed, they were individually wrapped in banana leaf type greenery and then tied as a traditional dumpling would be....but I have to say, this was a taste testing and fun experience I won't repeat.  

And finally there is an update on the house, we have carpet!  The kitchen is almost done and moving day will come before we know it!  

Until next time.....

Some more exploring in China.....

Recently I took a day trip with a friend to a nearby city, Wuxi, Jiangsu Province which was about 45 minutes drive from our town.  In the middle of this city is a small area of old buildings, some of which have been renovated, others are still old and deteriorating but hold a lot of history!  This is referred to as a water town in China.  A small town near the rive and with many bridges to cross over.  Each bridge was unique in the shape, but all along the same walking path for us.  In this area there are coffee houses, small souvenir shops, restaurants and of course tea houses.  There is a lot of the red pottery tea pots in this area to buy and we even came across a purple tea set!

On the older side of the water town area was more of the buildings that still have people living in them, and among those buildings was the original fire brigade.  The symbol is still at the top of the building which is now a bookstore, and there was a plaque explaining a little but of the history.  In another building was pottery making of these characters you can see we posed with below.  They wouldn't allow me to take photos inside but they were hand painting each and everyone.  Most were much smaller than this statue out front, about 6-10 inches most of them but very nicely painted.  

As we walked among the stores, there were many with custom dress making of traditional dresses.  These are just a few we saw in the window.  Another photo below is a statue of a family outside a shop.  The others are some things we saw along out way!

At Metro you can tell that Dragon Boat Festival is coming this month as they now have rows and rows of red dumpling boxes!  You can see below some of the varieties.  The next was an outdoor shoe store we passed by this weekend in Shanghai that I found interesting....can you find a match?  The balloon man on his scooter going down the main street and hanging on to all those balloons!  While in Shanghai we saw a number of photo instructions of how to use the toilet, this is one specifically asking you not to use it upside down.

I finally made it to the fake marketing in Shanghai!  I had been to the smaller one which closed down last year but this is a huge market with everything from purses, to shoes, speakers, jewelry and souvenirs.  It was a fun experience and we didn't nearly get through it but found some good deals with help from our friend Tina aka "the purse lady."

On Friday the kids had sports day at school.  While Blake was totally into it and won two races in his class, Grace was not thrilled to be participating and had to be carried across the finish line for the final event.  I think she is more of a shopping girl than an athletic one :)  Blake was so excited, on the way home that day he asked if when we go to America he can play soccer, football, baseball and basketball!  I think we have daddy's sports lover in him!  Grace is slowly learning to ride a bike, she prefers to pedal backwards so she is getting no where fast but we will keep working on it!  The weather was nice over the weekend so some time outside was mandatory, they got to play with the soccer ball and blow bubbles in our friend's backyard while we all enjoyed a BBQ.

Summer is just around the corner.....(but winter is coming too).  Until next time!

One day in Xi'an....

This past weekend, we did something on most people's list of things to do when they visit China....we went to Xi'an.  Since we are now counting down to our move home, as bittersweet as it will be, we are finishing up the last few things around China that we wanted to see/do.  We decided to go by high speed train which took us 6 hours from Changzhou to Xi'an.  Since the visit was going to basically be one-day in the city we had the kids stay with some friends for the weekend and we went off to explore.  Yes, you heard that right, we went without the kids to do something, pretty uncommon for us.  It was like leaving something behind but it made for an easy trip and we could really use the entire day to sight-see! 

Xi'an is known as one of the most ancient cities in China, according to some facts from (http://www.chinahighlights.com/xian/) it is over 3,00 years old.  Most people visit this city to see the terracotta army, what they don't know if this is the resting ground from an Emperor who wanted to be protected in the after-life so he had the army of soldiers build and buried with him.  Nearby is a hill that is shaped like a pyramid, this is where for 38 years the Emperor created his final resting place.  He collected taxes and buried half of what he collected every year, he has artifacts, jewelry and all his concubines buried with him, according to our guide.  The guy sounds crazy, but he was powerful so all of this was his to take with him.  Farmers had found this area and started to dig for planting, that is when the army was discovered.  In the 20th century, 4 farmers found this excavation site by accident.  There is now a photo of the one living farmer near the entrance of the museum.  And now this is one of the most popular places to visit in China, although 95% of the visitors are Chinese there are a lot of foreigners too.

When we arrived to Xi'an it was very late so all we could see was the city wall lite up, there are lights around the towers on the wall and it looked really neat!  From our hotel we were walking distance across the street from the wall so this was a nice view.  The next day we woke up to actually see the city from our room and what a nice site it was!  We were staying just outside the original city wall, and from our view you could see old meets new in China.  High rise buildings, hotels, restaurants, and some historical architecture in the middle as well.  We had arranged a tour guide to make the most of our one day in Xi'an, we were staying in the city so we started with the Emperor Qin Shi Huang's Mausoleum and Museum, this is where the terracotta soldiers is located, about one-hour outside the city.  We arrived early since it is known for getting busy and the weather that day was beautiful so certainly many people would be out and about.  When we arrived our guide gave us lots of information, and we went to the pits, there are three pits that have been excavated so far, pit 1 being the largest was the first we saw.  Of all the soldiers found, only one was in tact completely, all the others were put back together after their excavation.  Each and every solider is different, from their face to their shoes, it depended on which rank they were supposed to be for their clothing and location in the pit.  Here are some of the photos we were able to take, no flash photography allowed in these areas.

The only in tact Solider found

 We went on to pits 2 and 3 which were much smaller but none the less interesting.  There are artifacts and weapons which have been preserved and on show to see as well in these two locations.  Here are some of the photos below.

After the main attraction, we were lucky to be able to go into a old farmers house.  The house is a cave dwelling, similar to something you might find from Native Americans in Arizona.  The dwelling was two rooms, very small, they had concrete beds inside, with a wooden block as a pillow.  They now have some electricity inside and have a heated pad on the bed, but previously they would fill a bucket with hot coal and place it through a door under the cement bed to keep warm in the winter.  In summer I imagine the cave helped stay cool since there is really no sunlight coming in and a hill on top.  There was a beam at the top above the beds, this is where they would hang meat to dry out.  In front of the dwelling there was a small kitchen which now they only use to make steam buns but they used to do all their cooking here, the bathrooms are outhouses, and they have a small patch of ground where they have planted vegetables.  This was a unique place to visit and I don't think most tours offer a look into the old farm life in the country side of Xi'an.  

Outside of the cave dwelling.

The next stop was lunch, our guide recommended a local noodle place.  We went here, and it was a small restaurant, very typical in China, with a few tables but they were all full.  We decided to all order the noodles, so we ordered 2 noodles each, you heard that right, only 2 noodles per person.  Then I went to the kitchen to watch them handmade the noodles, they were super long and very wide so 2 noodles was enough for each of us.  Served with some vegetables and a little seasoning it was very good.  Our guide suggested to take a bite of fresh garlic before a bite of the noodles, and there was a bowl of purple garlic on the table.

Continuing on the trip we drove an hour back to the city wall and were able to explore this site as well.  The city wall has been restored and updated, in fact I even found some bricks that had the year they were put in stamped on them, 1984 (the year I was born) was a good year for the wall.  There were towers every so often on the wall, then a drum tower and lots of lookout points.  There is a moat around the wall, and there is a drawbridge although you can't really see if from the top of the wall.  You can drive through the city wall, it is always open to get to the residential and shops inside.  On top of the more than 8 mile wall you can walk, ride bikes, take a nap, anything you want to see around the city a bit.

Just a short walk from the wall is the Muslim Quarter.  This is an unusual part of Xi'an to see some sign of religion in China.  While this really struck me as a tourist destination, certainly many Muslim families live in this area and make their living off preparing food for tourists.  We were able to walk around for a bit, lots of trinkets, things like purses and hats for sale and then the food.  There was a lot to see here, from pomegranate juice being freshly made, to a giant yellow cake, flat breads, bbq meats and fried squid on a stick.  I watched them make some sesame candy which was delicious, had a sesame flat bread and a fresh fruit bar while we were there.  It was  a nice are a to take in, while we were walking around we were approached by many college students to speak English.  Apparently, they had been assigned to go to the Muslim Quarter and try talking to foreigners to speak and practice their English, and in true Chinese fashion snap a photo with the foreigner.  Since Brian and I are native speakers they really got a kick out of talking to us and asking about America, they were very surprised when we told them we lived in China.  I had two groups stop me, but Brian was the big hit, at one point I walked on with our friends and he was in the middle of the street with 10 college kids asking him questions.....lol

Going to Xi'an was certainly something we wanted to do before our time here in China came to an end.  I am glad we were able to see so much in one day, amazing what you can do when you don't have to stop for naps, snack and diaper changes....but it was also so nice to come back (6 hours on the train) and see the kids!

Until next time......36 days until we move back to the USA.