Tailgating?

What else would this contraption be for?

Sorry for the picture quality, as you can see by the mirror invading the photograph, I took this picture from the van.  Hopefully you can make out that this smoker (or whatever it is) is actually on the back of this guys really old-looking bicycle.  I have no idea what he's cooking, but I can imagine he intends to sell it to people passing by on the street!  At least, that's my guess since there's no actual sporting event nearby.  Why not tailgate from a bike?!

Concrete

There's this strange thing about Shanghai (only one, you say?  Hahaha!) that pretty much everything is made out of concrete.  M & I have speculated on the reasons why and think maybe it's so that things don't mold.  It's probably also because it's cheap and plentiful.

Concrete definitely seems to make some construction projects go really quickly (boy can they resurface a road FAST here!), but it also seems to make everything extra noisy.  It seems like just about every building I enter has a tremendous echo, and when you start with a cacophony, that's not a fun or pleasant thing.  It also means things are poorly insulated here.  In the winter, for instance, when I'm out shopping, I really have to dress for the slopes.  In the summer, well, it's better to just not leave my house.

I was able to snap a picture of how things are built here when a good friend of mine sat on this wall and broke it.  (Ok, I wrote it that way for the drama.  It's true, that's what happened, but the construction here is so shoddy - as this particular friend would say - that it's easy to break concrete by sitting on it!)

Also, only the top damage was caused by my friend.  The photo gives us good insight into the building process here: start with brick and cover it with concrete.

Of course cover the brick with concrete!  Who would want brick showing?  Concrete is so much more lovely!  M & I have actually seen walls made of beautiful red-orange brick being covered with concrete as the finishing touch.  Down the street from this particular fiasco (above) there is a new apartment complex being built that isn't actually finished in concrete entirely.  A portion of it is fake brick veneer (probably made from concrete, if I had to guess).  Real bricks are apparently only good underneath.

As an aside, this picture was actually taken at my kids' bus stop.  Nice place to wait for the bus, eh?

Almost 2 years

If you can believe it, we've been living in Shanghai for almost 2 years now.  Wow.  It's true!  We arrived at the end of September in 2011.  It's kind of hard to believe.  A friend told me when we were moving here that the first year is really hard, the second year you've adjusted some, but it's still hard, and the third year you've finally figured out how lots of things work and then it's time to go home.  Bittersweet.

I often wonder if it will be bittersweet to leave, but then I remind myself that we don't have ESPN and I can't predict the future.  On the one hand, it's always hard to change.  On the other hand, will going home be a big change?  I'm here to tell you, I don't know.  I know China has changed me.  I won't be the same when I go back home, but isn't that always the case?  If you're gone for a while, you're just not the same when you return.  On the bright side, a lot of our good friends have contracts that are up when ours is, so many of us will be leaving at the same time.  It'll spread the sadness around.  Plus, some of our friends have already gone back and made a new home in Michigan!

Alright, enough of this sappiness.  Let's get down to business.  I've been out of touch for a few months for more than just the summer at home, although that was a major contributor.  Let me talk about that for just a bit.

This summer was FANTASTIC!  The weather was absolutely beautiful!  I loved the cool temperatures (especially at summer camp!) and enjoyed feeling like it was fall just before we left.  (Sad about the part where the cider mills weren't open yet - everyone dip a donut in some cider for me!)  We drove a lot less this summer, which was a relief, and we weren't completely exhausted when we left.  That last part was because we shortened the trip, which also made it harder to leave.  The only major downside to the summer was the horrific and brutal jet lag that we (at least the adults) had coming over to the States.  Absolutely yuck.  That and Matt wasn't feeling well at all this summer.  More on that later.

My other distraction at the end of Spring was a move across town to a new house!  We really liked our house in San Marino, but some uncool things were happening due to the clubhouse being under new ownership.  We took the opportunity to look around and found a house at The Emerald that we liked!  The Emerald is the neighborhood connected to the kids school, so we get to ride our bikes every day!  It's lots of fun, there are tons of other kids around, plenty of them are C & K's classmates, and there are adult friends nearby too!  That last part is good because our adult friends from San Marino repatriated this last summer. (See above comment about a new home in Michigan!)  Downsides are we're farther from some of the places we go regularly, like church, and we can't walk to the metro anymore.  We can take the bus to the metro, though.  Look for another post on that down the road.

Another sad part of moving is our Ayi hasn't been able to stay with us.  It's just too far for her to come on her scooter.  We tried a new schedule for the summer and our driver brought her twice a week, but the family we share her with wanted to go back to the old schedule.  We are definitely going to miss Xiao Tao.  I have a new ayi starting next week.  I'll have to let you know how that goes.

I'd love to share pictures of our new place, but I haven't actually gotten around to taking any yet.  While I managed to get most of the house unpacked in the 3 weeks before we came home for the summer, I still have one room that is eluding me.  Not that I can't find it or go in, I just can't seem to get the stuff put away.

So moving, the end of the school year, and summer put a major dent in my blogging accomplishments. Since I write this blog not only to share our experiences with you, but also to document (in a way) our experiences for ourselves, this is a pretty significant setback.  If I keep up with my average blogging rate, I'm definitely not going to be able to share everything I want to before we get home.  So I'm going to have to get busy.  Let's see what I can do about that!

ANZ Days 15 & 16: Auckland, NZ

We had to set our alarm today since we had to be out of our room at 8am, eating breakfast before 8:30, and in the theater to wait for our disembarkation announcement by 9am. Getting off the ship was fairly easy, getting our bags was a bit wild, and exiting the holding area was downright crazy! Thankfully my friend, M, was ready and waiting for us as soon as we got out! We loaded up her car and headed for her house to spend the last day or so of our vacation before we had to go back to China.

At M's the kids made instant friends with her two boys, who are a year older than C & K. The kids played while the adults chatted and it was time for lunch before we knew it! P and M suggested Mexican and didn't have to twist our arms at all!

Driving to lunch

After a yummy lunch we walked to the beach for more chatting and playing, then onto another playground (you'd think we were traveling around the world trying to set some kind of record or something!) where there was more chatting and playing. After that it was time for ice cream- yum! On the way home, we stopped at the grocery store for a field trip (and to pick up some things for dinner). It's always fun to check out the grocery store in a new place. They had dinner rolls! I was tempted to buy them and bring them back to China with me :). We did pick up some candy for Xiao Tao and Mr. Mao. Dinner was burgers and hot dogs on the grill (I'm not sure if it's the "Barbie" in NZ) and more fellowship! Saturday morning was more of the same with some more packing in the mix. The kids also enjoyed playing wii together while we were there.

It seems like we get to end lots of our trips these days visiting old friends before we come back home. I like it that way :). This whole trip has been a huge blessing and a wonderful experience! I can't deny, though, that it's going to be nice to sleep in our own beds! Thanks for following along on our adventure down under!

New Wheels

I've got some new wheels!

Ok, they're for the family.  We're all really excited!  We got our very own motorized rickshaw (aka tuktuk, aka pedicab) from some good friends (who were also our neighbors) who are repatriating this summer.

Isn't it just screaming 4th of July parade at the lake?!?  We think we may be able to bring it home at the end of our time in Shanghai, but ultimately, we'll have to wait and see.  (People who don't know about the lake think it looks like an Ice Cream Truck, by the way!)

It will mostly be used to get around the neighborhood (to school!) on rainy days, but I may get brave enough to take it outside for short distances.  I had to drive it about 10 miles to get it from our old house (where we bought it) to our new house (pictures to come).  By the way, these pictures were both taken this week.  I just picked it up last Thursday!  It's just been very cool here.  At least until yesterday when it jumped to humid and 90 - yuck!

Whether it comes home to Michigan or we just have it while we're here, I'm sure we're going to get our money's worth.  So far it's a big hit!

(P.s. For those of you wondering, this is the shirt I made back in March.)

ANZ: Cruise Critters

I've got one more post to do about our last stop on the cruise, but since the next post is after we disembark, I thought I'd take this chance to show you who we shared our room with during the cruise:

ANZ Day 14: Tauranga, NZ (1/3/2013)

Today we were supposed to take our last shore excursion, but we ended up canceling it because of the lunch issue. I talked to the people at the shore excursions desk about my issues with not being able to get lunch and they weren't able to do anything to help me, but they did offer to refund my money. I was pretty disappointed :(. We did try to make the best of the day, however, by getting a little extra sleep and then heading into town. We were actually docked in a small town right next door to Tauranga, Mount Maunganui. We strolled through the shops, dropping in here and there and checking out the incredibly high price tags! Things are not cheap in New Zealand! We hiked up a path to see if we could see a blow hole. When we got to the top, we weren't sure where to look, but it was a nice view!

Can you se M sitting on the rocks?

His view of us!

We love to hike :)

In front of "The Mount"

We did see some water smashing into the rocks and spraying up. It was fun, regardless. After the hike we promised the kids we would stop at the playground for a while.

They were happy to let off some steam. I watched K dive onto a moving merry-go-round. Maybe I'm wrong about her career as a politician and she's actually going to be a stunt woman or action movie star! We then made our way back into town and had lunch at Burger Fuel. The burgers were good and they had these cool cardboard holders so the "stuff" won't fall out of your burger! We were all fascinated with them!

"Doofer" is the name of the cardboard holder, not the burger.

L&P is a lemony New Zealand soda pop

  

Once we got back on the ship there was some nap/play/packing time. We had to have our bags in the hall by 11pm, so I had my work cut out for me.

Our laundry at the end of the cruise!

On our way to dinner we stopped at one of the shops onboard and bought some inexpensive glass figurines to remember our trip. They weren't made at the hot glass show, but that's ok! Our last dinner was nice. The kids bought presents for Joel & Nikola - a 3-in-1 laser pointer/flashlight/pen. Can you guess who picked it out? C was sure Joel would want to use it right away for writing down our orders and pointing to the chef's recommendation! We had pictures with Joel & Nikola and the kids gave Joel a kiss at his request.

Our waiter, Joel

Our assistant waiter, Nikola

Once again, I'm so glad our family doesn't have to make the heart-wrenching kind of decision that Joel's does. We skipped the show tonight and headed straight to bed. At least, that's where the kids went. I had plenty of work left to do!

Air Quality

My brother sent me this question and as I was responding I thought it would make a good blog post, so here you go!

"Hows the air?  I heard a piece on NPR with an american reporter living in shanghai who said the air is so bad they have to check an app every day to decide if they should go out or not.  And sometimes they wear masks….."

Today it's not very good.  See for yourself:

http://www.stateair.net/web/post/1/4.html

Understanding the levels:

We go out every day and we don't wear masks, but on the days that it's above 200 (purple: very unhealthy) the kids have indoor recess and we limit our outdoor time.  I don't usually let them play hard outside if it's above 100 (orange: unhealthy for sensitive groups).  For comparison purposes, here's a US air quality map:

http://www.airnow.gov/

There was an app that I used to check, but the consulate changed their website/feed and the app no longer works, so now I just visit the first website (http://www.stateair.net/web/post/1/4.html) for my info.  There are other websites with air quality info, run by local entities.  Here's a picture of the AQI from last month that illustrates how difficult it is to know what's really going on. 

The funny thing about the air quality, is that you can't tell from just looking out the window.  On days it seems bad, it might be ok.  On bright sunny "clear" days it might be really bad.  One thing is pretty consistent, though.  If it rains, it's usually good (that's why we had some yellow and green yesterday) because the rain is coming off the ocean where the air is cleaner.  When the rain clears out and it get sunny, it's usually bad (like today) because the air from inland is dirtier.

And there, my friends, is your lesson in air quality!  Enjoy your fresh air today if you have it!

ANZ Day 13: At Sea (1/2/2013)

This was another relaxing day! We woke up and watched Michigan play their bowl game. Watching college football is always exciting for us because we don't get to watch very often in China. The kids & I went to the buffet for breakfast and brought M back some C & K Service ;). They were so happy to bring M's breakfast to him! There was a big watch sale this morning and my watch hasn't been working consistently so I decided to get a new one. It was $20, so if it lasts through the summer I'll be happy :).  (NOTE: Last month I got water in it when I was washing my hands and it stopped working.  On a brighter note, I found the watch that I thought was in storage!)

When the game ended, K and I went to watch a little of the last hot glass show. We met M and C at the pool where we spent most of the rest of the day. Swimming might be C's favorite activity.

Synchronized Swimming?

One Happy Family!

The Pool

We had burgers by the pool for lunch and tried for another hockey medal (K won again and gave it to C!).  

Excellent form, but no goal!

She shoots...

She scores!

The Goalie even came out for a high five.

Look at the air on that shot!  Still no goal for this Wings fan.

We came back to the room with enough time for a short nap/rest before dinner. We needed it because the show tonight was at 8:45 instead of the usual 7pm. I have to mention that we had warm lava cake for dessert tonight. So yummy! After dinner we walked around a bit and then went to the theater to get good seats for the show - a cirque type "people circus" as M has been calling it. I have never been to an actual Cirque show, so I have nothing to compare this to, but it was amazing! We were all enthralled! M and I were especially impressed with the performers ability to work on a moving (rocking!) ship! Needless to say, after the late show we were all exhausted and ready for bed!

Sunset