Happy New Year!

Happy New Year...no, I'm not 26 days behind. Today is Chinese New Year and we stayed in Shanghai to witness some of the fun that goes along with ringing (or should I say blasting) in the New Year in China!

Last night was probably one of the funnest nights I have ever had...truly! Ever since we adopted Leah in February of 2003 I have wanted to be in China for a New Year's celebration. Leah's adoption was right after the new year started so the decorations were still up and I could see how beautiful everything was but I just wanted to experience it for myself. Well, last night was our chance!
The local cafe that we eat breakfast in every Sunday is run by an American who is also from Shanghai so the restaurant hosted a special CNY eve dinner for anyone who wanted to come, including his family. The dinner consisted of 15 courses!! OK, admittedly, we had no idea it was going to be that much food or take that long for dinner...but it's a good thing because knowing us we would have opted not to go had we known and would have missed out on a really great time! We arrived at 5:30 and everyone got to sit at their tables and make dumplings for their family. Then the food started arriving, very Chinese style, meaning that it takes forever for each course to come out but the nice thing is no one cares if the kids run around in the restaurant and play while waiting. The food was great and the restaurant did such a nice job. It was all served family style and the dishes were very similar to what a Chinese family would eat for their big New Year's Eve meal (think Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas Day dinner for us).

Between courses, their were lots of activities for the kids including sparklers, then fireworks, then a bull pinata with loads of candy in it. It was really cute because their were 25 kids there and they each got their number to line up. All the kids had gone through and "beaten" on the bull and we were down to the last little girl, #25, who had waited so patiently for her turn. She was no more than 3 years old and all of 2 feet tall - she stood up to that pinata and gave it two good whacks and all the candy came gushing out! It was too funny after all these big kids had tried, a little tike comes along and shows them how it is done! The evening was such a great time and we really enjoyed it. We finished everything up at about 9:30, bundled the girls back up and started walking home. On the way home everywhere around us we could see and hear fireworks going off.

Now, the fun really was starting! It is actually hard for me to even put into words what the next couple of hours were like! We got home around 10 with Kate asleep in the stroller and decided to do our big fireworks that we bought. Now, I just have to put things in perspective a bit. Pretty much every shopping complex around town has a big tent set up where you can buy fireworks. Now I'm not talking about black cats and roman candles, I'm talking about the stuff that the guys on the barges on the Mississippi River for the Dubuque show shoot off. We could buy a single box of 100 "ariel" cannons that have the huge explosion and beautiful lights that would be the staple of any city's fireworks show! And any random Joe (or Wang) in China can buy these and set them off at the base of their 30 story apartment building! AMAZING!!! Now remember that their are 20 million people in Shanghai that have access to these kinds of fireworks and feel a cultural obligation to blast in the New Year with explosives.

Not to be outdone, we had to shoot off fireworks, too but we opted for the box of 50 instead. The girls and I stood on our balcony while John lit the big box then ran. It was so loud and beautiful to see huge fireworks literally right above your head! We did this at about 11pm. Then went inside and got the girls to bed and waited for the big fun at midnight to start. And, oh my goodness, at midnight did the show ever begin! First of all, we live in Pudong a pretty good distance from downtown Shanghai so I can only imagine what that must have looked like but you could hear blasts and booms coming from everywhere. It truly sounded like what a city under siege must sound like.

One other thing, we live in a villa/house in a neighborhood of houses but it is not in an "expat" community, as most of our neighbors are Chinese. So the video that I am attaching here is what our neighborhood and surrounding area sounded and looked like at midnight from the 2nd story balcony on our house! There were two houses on the street one over from us where Chinese families live and their fireworks were amazing! The best I have ever seen in my life! Plus in the distance you can see all the apartments where families were blasting off fireworks. It was so loud and remarkably, all the girls slept right through it! The full fury of fireworks went on until about 12:45 and then things settled down a bit.

Here are a couple of video clips that I took on my camera so you could maybe get a sense of what it sounded and looked like here. All that noise in the background is just tons of fireworks going off all over the city.


Fireworks at the apartments a couple of blocks away:

This is probably my favorite video clip though: Fireworks that the restaurant set off. What I love most is that all of the people AND children are standing only about 15 feet from this large box of explosives! :) But as you can hear from the squeals of delight - everyone is enjoying them!


So there you have it - our family's first Chinese New Year celebration and all it entailed! We hope you have a blessed Year of the Bull!

REAL mandarin oranges

I just wanted to post some pictures to show you what real mandarin oranges look like...they actually don't come from a can! :) And, boy, are they DELICIOUS! I mean really, really yummy and super sweet. These little oranges alone are enough of a reason to make a trip to Shanghai in December or January...yes, they are that good. We buy about 50 of these little oranges for around $3 and in 2, maybe 3, days they are all gone! Then it is off to the street vendor to buy more.

I had to add this picture to give you some perspective on how small these little oranges are. They are super easy to peel and then you can pop the whole thing in your mouth. Delicious! Don't you want to come visit Shanghai!

By the way, for you folks in Iowa - it was about 50 degrees here today. This is my kind of winter - another really good reason to visit Shanghai in winter!

We have hit the jackpot!

Yes, you are seeing it right...today Fang made homemade tortillas!!!! What a beautiful thing! The only tortillas I can get in Shanghai are not very good...they come from the US and are old and yucky by the time we get them. And you know I am a tortilla connoisseur! So I found a recipe for them in Chinese and English and asked Fang if she thought she could make them. "Mei wenti," she said. No problem.

They are actually quite tasty! So just thought i would share my good fortune with y'all.

Starting the year off with a bang...

Well, I haven't blogged in a long time so you would think I would have lots of interesting stories to relate but honestly, I don't know where the last3 weeks have gone since we got home. The jet lag was a joy to get over as you can imagine. And it took a week or two to get back into the swing of China life.


We had Christmas Eve and Christmas day in South Texas and it was absolutely beautiful! The weather was warm enough that the girls swam both days. That is my kind of Christmas!!



We flew back to Chicago on the 26th then onto Shanghai on the 27th. The girls did great on the flight. Kate slept for very little of it and actually was quite the card, as usual. We were about 2 hours from Shanghai (been on the plane for 11 hours) and the pilot came over the system and was telling us a number of things and from out of no where, Kate stands up on the arms of her chair and yells so most everyone could hear her, "EVERYONE, BUCKLE YOUR SEATBELTS". Needless to say, most everyone around us thought it was quite funny! So it's good to know that she entertains countless strangers as well as us! The last 30 minutes of the flight she was "racing" up and down the aisle as Leah and Lauren slept. She's a funny girl, that one!


We got home and much to Leah and Lauren's pleasure, Santa had indeed found our house in Shanghai and left gifts. He delivered stocking gifts to Texas but left a note saying the "big" gifts would be waiting for them at home. The girls were happy to tear into a few more gifts before crashing!

We spent the next week just getting over the jetlag and trying to get unpacked. On New Year's Eve, we went to a fun dinner at a restaurant that has a huge sand pit right in the middle of it. The girls loved it and we got to celebrate the coming in of the Australian New Year since it was an Australian restaurant and they are 2 hours ahead of Shanghai time. On New Year's day we actually rung in the US New Year at 1 in the afternoon here. Honestly, I think it is the first US New Year I've seen in several years since usually I fall asleep by 11!
I think this picture is so funny even though the quality isn't great...check out John's face...but somehow he felt it safe enough to give to a 5 & 6 year old to blast off! :)

The next week was spent getting back into the regular routine of things. We started school again and John was gone to Xuzhou for most of the week. We are now gearing up for Chinese New Year here in Shanghai. CNY is actually Jan. 26th but the big parties and fireworks are on CNY Eve, the 25th. And then there are celebrations for the whole week. Leo has told us that at midnight on CNY Eve every family pops firecrackers and some families will shoot off actual fireworks. Evidently, for the whole week we will be hearing and seeing a lot of fireworks! That should be fun - but Leo warned us, by the 3rd day, all the noise is "just kind of annoying" - his words! I thought that was funny! So in fact, the Chinese people really do start their year off with a bang.

I'll definitely post pictures of any festivities that we witness. I hope you all had a blessed Christmas. And I hope your New Year is filled with all the things you love!

For those who want to see a few pictures from our Disney trip, click here...

12-2008

Happy Birthday, Kate!

I haven't posted in a while and I only have a minute today to post but I needed to post a Happy Birthday to Kate! She turned 3 on December 16 and is as spunky as ever. Case in point...at her birthday party, there were 9 of us encouraging her to blow out her candle, telling her how to blow it out, showing her, etc. and her honest response was, "blow the candle out yourself." Nice, huh! She is a girl that doesn't hold back words on what she is thinking! She gives John and I a run for our money, that is for sure! But she is definitely a blessing and so fun and full of life and spunk...there are many days when I have to repeat that blessing part to myself many times as a reminder!! :)

We are actually in the United States right now...South Texas to be exact. Long before we knew we were moving to China, John and I had reserved a vacation package at Disneyworld for in December. The girls have been dying to go so once we moved we looked at John's frequent flier miles and lo and behold we had enough miles to fly us all back to the States for free (that's what 4 years of John traveling all over the world will do for us!) So we booked our tickets to come back to the US. We were in Iowa for a few shorts days then off to Florida for a week at Disneyworld, which was great fun but exhausting to say the least! Now we are in South Texas and will be here until the day after Christmas then we fly back to Shanghai.

It has been great to be back for a while but the first part was very busy so it's nice to kind of relax for a bit here in Texas before we head back. I have all kinds of observations about things having been gone for 6 months and then seeing them now but who knows if I will ever have time to blog about them. One thing is for sure...Leah and I LOVE Target and miss it so much!! We have spent many times in there just wandering around looking at everything. It's funny what one misses! :)

Life as usual...

Well, last week was another good week. It was the end of the "term" for Leah and Lauren's dance classes so the parents got to watch the class as a sort of open house event.

Leah is in ballet and absolutely loves it. I really think she was born to be a ballerina as she is very graceful and thoughtful in her movements and very serious with her dance. I couldn't even get a smile out of her while she was "performing"! Here are a couple of Leah's pics.



Lauren is in tap this year and seems to enjoy it. Funny story - the first week she went in and tried ballet with Leah. When she came out I asked, "how was it?" Leah said, "great, wonderful, I love it." Lauren said, "Mom, that was one really long class and there wasn't much action!" So we looked at the schedule and I saw that there was a tap class. She thought this would be much more up her alley. After the trial class, she was hooked...I mean what could be better for an active 5 year old than to give her shoes that make loads of noise and ask her to see just how much noise she can actually make with them! :) So here she is strutting her tap stuff! Notice the look of concentration in the first picture!

Kate is too young for any dance class but she does go to an art class once a week that she really loves. Here she is sporting her latest creation! I know I am biased but really, how cute is she! :)

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone! We have just finished up a fun Halloween night and I thought I would post a few pictures for everyone to see. It is certainly a notable Halloween...not because we are in Shanghai but because this is the first year in 5 years that I do not have a single princess trick or treating! Amazing really!

Leah was Tigress from Kung Fu Panda. Fang actually put all the decorations on Leah's shirt. I showed her a picture of Tigress and gave her a solid red tank top and she brought back this amazing shirt for Leah to wear. Have I mentioned how blessed we are here!
Lauren was an Egyptian Princess - she made the head dress and cape herself.

And Kate was June from the Little Einsteins (admittedly Kate's costume is a little lame as we could not find a solid purple dress anywhere so we had to settle for the closest purple dress we could find in the closet. Luckily at 2 she doesn't really care that much!)

Our complex organized it's first trick or treat ever this year and it was great fun. The management office as well as the girl arranging it expected a few houses to participate. Amazingly, there were 85 houses handing out treats and over 150 kids trick or treating. I had absolutely no idea that there were so many kids in our complex. The girls had a great time running from door to door. We made friends with a little girl down the street from us and she went with us along with the other 2 Deere families here. Kate was content to sit in the stroller most of the time. It was pretty funny because I would ask her if she would like to go up to a house and she would look over at the house and then decide - sometimes yes, most times no. I'm not sure what it was about some of the houses that enticed her enough to get out of the comfy stroller to go get treats.

Speaking of treats...now trick or treating in China brings a whole new set of treats that we have never seen before! The girls had a great time going through their bags checking out all the treats. Probably the highlights were someone gave us little tiny apples, someone gave them a handful of peanuts in the shell and LOADS of hard candies. Very little chocolate!

One more of the whole crew...

From Trick or Treat

Hope you all have a great time trick or treating and that you get more treats than tricks!

Out and about

Here we are...quite a site riding around the streets of Shanghai. Leah and Lauren have gotten really great at navigating around all the bikes, scooters, cars and motorcycles. We had a fun day today and I'm so proud of how great the girls are doing.

Hangzhou - Shanghai's Garden...

Well, it is Saturday night and we just got back from another short weekend trip. This time we went to Hangzhou - a two hour drive South of Shanghai. It is a beautiful and famous city in China and the place that all the Shanghainese people go for weekend trips. Hence the name, Shanghai's Garden. In the midst of Hangzhou is West Lake which is Hangzhou's main attraction.

So Leo picked us up on Friday and we started our trip. Fortunately for us, the highway traffic was MUCH better for this trip and we were in Hangzhou in a little less than 2 hours. After getting checked into the hotel, we found a really authentic Chinese place to eat...Papa John's! After pizza, we were off to explore West Lake. It is this beautiful lake that has lots of old bridges, pagodas, walking paths, etc. all around it. We walked one of the causeways that cuts across the lake and enjoyed just being outside in the fresh air. John had Kate in a backpack on him and boy, did he get lots of stares! I mean, we get lots of stares and gawking anyway but put a Chinese baby in a cool looking backpack on the back of a big, strong American man and you have the makings of a small side show. Leo said that you would think we were Superstars the way people stop and look at us. We like to do little experiments. For example, f Leo walks ahead of us holding the hand of Lauren and Leah no one even notices them. If they come back and hold our hand and walk with us...instant show! It can be kind of funny or mildly annoying depending on what mood we are in! :)

Someone gawking so much so that he is video taping us - so John decided to return the favor and photograph him! And as I now think about it...we have really "one upped him" by putting him on the world wide web! :)

After taking in all the beauty of West Lake, it was back to the hotel to freshen up and then a quick 5 minute walk to dinner. We ordered a host of delicious things and enjoyed a great dinner. There was a night market another 5 minute walk from the hotel that we walked to. It was great. It's a regular street during the day but at night it transforms into a closed off pedestrian street filled with every kind of anything you could want. It is definitely for the locals as I'm pretty sure we were the only "foreigners" there. "Foreigners" is what we are so lovingly referred to as by Leo and most of the Chinese! It was lots of fun and even Lauren got into the spirit and bargained in Chinese (with Dad's help) to get a hair pretty that she wanted. The vendor got a kick out of Lauren telling him "tai gui le" which means too expensive!

This morning we woke up and went to a Buddhist temple in Hangzhou. The best part about the temple is that it was up on the mountains that surround West Lake and a really beautiful drive to get to it. The grounds were very beautiful as well with tons of trees and bamboo growing everywhere. In the midst of the grounds is a mountain that has tons of cave-type areas that have been carved with all kinds of pictures. The earliest carvings date back to 951 AD so it was very cool to look at them. The girls loved climbing around the rocks and caves and Kate was happy to be carried in the backpack. We didn't actually go into the Temple because there was another admission price to get into it. We had already paid $20 to get into the grounds so I didn't want to pay more just to get inside the temple...besides that, it actually makes me sad to see the people bowing, praying, etc. to this statue that really can't do anything for them. So we opted to just enjoy the grounds and then head out.

Leo hanging with the big girls on the temple grounds!

The hillsides filled with tea bushes.

Leo then took us to a typical Hangzhou Farmers lunch at an outdoor restaurant near the temple. The whole area around West Lake and Hangzhou is famous for their tea-Long Jing tea (or something like that). It's a green tea and very delicious. All along the road going from the temple to where the restaurant was the hillsides was full of tea bushes. It was really amazing. So, as you know by now, I'm squeamish when it comes to eating at random places but Leo assured me once again that this place we were going to was good so we sat down to have the specialty, Beggars Chicken, and a ton of other things, including Lauren's favorite - shrimp. The chicken came out in a big bowl simmering in yummy broth. It was really delicious but interesting at first because when I say the chicken came out - I mean the WHOLE chicken...neck, head, feet, everything!

Leah thought it was a hoot that the chicken head was just sitting right there on a plate, which is funny because Leah is the most squeamish of all the girls. Here she is giving it a drink of her apple juice.

After finishing most of the chicken they took the bones out of the broth, added rice to it and cooked it some more. The rice cooked in that broth was absolutely delicious! Lauren sat happily peeling and eating her little baby shrimps and wasn't even bothered by the fact that she had to pull the heads off first before peeling and eating. Have I mentioned what troopers we have for daughters! After a long lunch, we got back in the car and headed back home for Shanghai.

It was such a fun quick trip and neat to see one of China's famous cities. If you want to see more photos of the trip you can click on the album below.

10-2008

Our terracotta warrior

Jamie and Micah - here is the picture of John's new terracotta warrior you wanted to see. He is about 12" tall. John actually wants the life size version of it...no, I'm not kidding, so this is a slight compromise. I say slight because I'm pretty sure we will end up with the life size version before we leave China because John is very determined to bring one home. He thinks it would be good for scaring off potential suitors when the girls are older (you know, like 25!) This is the archer but there are tons of different ones. John likes this one best because he says that the warrior is actually kneeling before the King of Kings.

Lots to tell..

Well, I, of course, meant to post many times in the last week but am just now getting it done. To start with, my beloved, John, celebrated his 40th birthday last week. Can you believe it? I certainly couldn't and we had loads of fun teasing him about his gray hair and his "old age". Of course, I couldn't tease him too much since I'm not too terribly far off!For his birthday, Fang was very sweet and made a very traditional birthday lunch. She made noodle soup with very long noodles to wish him a long life and several other really yummy things. Leo explained to us that the Chinese really don't do much for birthdays each year but the "10's" are the big ones so 10, 20, 30, etc. John was showered with gifts - a Terracotta warrior statue that he had been wanting from me, a painting of the "Lauren" tower from the girls (this is actually the Oriental Pearl Tower but because Lauren loves it so much our family calls it the Lauren tower), a beautiful tea tray from Leo (we had the tea set from John's travels but didn't have the tea tray which is needed to serve tea the traditional Chinese way...which we now know:)! ) and a beautiful drawing of Chinese birds from Fang. So all in all it was a great day!
This week is a national holiday week in China - the equivalent of our 4th of July except that they take a whole week off. So on Monday, we had Leo take us to Suzhou, a beautiful city about an hour and a half from Shanghai. Well, it would be an hour and a half, if it wasn't the first day of the holiday with what seemed like all 20 million Shanghai people trying to leave the city...yeah, we didn't really take that into consideration when we planned our day! So it took us about 3 hours with all the traffic to get there but fortunately the girls were entertained with Kung Fu Panda (already on DVD here - amazing, huh! Ha!) and a variety of other movies. John was great because he didn't have to drive and I was happy to just be "going somewhere" for the day. Once we got to Suzhou, we had lunch at a dumpling restaurant that I have to say, if Leo hadn't been with us, I'm sure I would not have eaten there. But since he said it looked fine and I'm trying to be adventurous, we went in and ate. To my surprise, Kate and I had wonton soup and it was actually very good! The girls, John and Leo had noodles which they all said were good. The place was less than clean but I just tried to block it all out and when I prayed over my lunch, I literally prayed, "Lord, please keep us from getting deathly ill!" :) And too my surprise, no one got sick and everyone enjoyed their lunch...shows what I know!
From there we went to see the Leaning Tower of China. Well, I don't remember what the real name of it is but it's literally a leaning tower in the midst of a beautiful park. We hiked all around it and thoroughly enjoyed our day. Leo went with us through the park and he was so amazed at ALL the stares we get and all the comments. I'm starting not to notice it as much which is good. The ones that really crack us up though are the older people that literally stop in their tracks and stare at us the entire time we walk by even turning around to continue looking at us! I don't know if the girls notice much or not - they haven't said if they do. We do on a very rare occasion get scowling looks from some so we try to shield the girls from those as much as possible. After the park, we shopped through some little alleyway stores and had a great time. I got a very cool duvet that is filled with silk (instead of say, goose down) for our king size bed for $35! You gotta love that! Another guy later down the way, tried to sell us a "better" quality one but all we were thinking was, "hey - it fits, it's warm, it seems like it will do what we want it to do so we're good!" After driving around Suzhou to see a bit more of it, we headed home. It was a fun day and it felt great to just go somewhere different even if the traffic was terrible!
Last night, we got to see a huge fireworks display for the holiday right from the balcony off of my and John's room. Century Park (very close to where we live) was having a big celebration and it was fun to get to watch them. I will say that it is by far the best and longest fireworks show I have ever seen. It lasted for almost an hour and was amazing. John said, "I bet if it's on TV it's even more amazing!" Ha! The big girls watched for a while but then headed off to play Wii with Dad so Kate and I sat and watched the rest of it by ourselves and loved it!

I have a lot of pictures from this past week so I will upload some to this blog but for those of you who want to see more (OK, we realize it's probably only our parents and that's OK!), I'm uploading a bunch more to our Picasa album that you can view by clicking here, Our online album

or clicking on the album below:

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9-2008

Church

Well, here is a little clip of about 500 people from all over the world praising God together at the church we attended today. I'm not sure if the video clip will come through on the email- it may just be online on the blog. Also not sure of the quality but we'll see.

Have a blessed Sunday.

A city scene

Just thought I would share a photo of what I saw today because it is so typical here. I always see men sitting around playing a game, sometimes it is Ma Jiang but a lot of times it is cards. So I asked Leo today what game it is - he said "poker". Here I was thinking it was some cool Chinese game and it is just poker. But pretty funny anyway because there is always a crowd around watching.

So that is little sample of what I see in a day.

PS: OK, just a note to add - John just told me that this Poker is actually totally different than what would be played in the US. He had Leo explain it to him. So I guess Poker is just the generic term used for this type of cards.

Another PS: I love being able to take pictures and send blog entries from my phone! :)

A picture is worth...

Since that is how the saying goes and I don't have much time I am going to upload some photos for y'all to see.

Yesterday was the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival here in China. It is an official holiday here and actually kind of a big deal. Not nearly as big as Chinese New Year but still an important family holiday. Families gather together to have a feast and spend time together. We asked Leo what he did and he said his family ate dinner together and then played Mah Jong. He actually has an older sister (rare for most Chinese families) so the feast includes Leo, his mom & dad, his sister, her husband and their daughter. It sounds a bit like our Thanksgiving, actually.

Moon Cakes are a very big part of this tradition. They are little cakes that are filled with some kind of paste - usually sweet. I have had them several times before but have never really cared for them. However, Fang brought us some as a gift from a place here in Shanghai that Leo told us is famous for making them. They were delicious! There are many different fillings in the Moon Cake but the one I liked best tasted almost like a pecan pie just without the pecans!

So we took some pictures of our Moon Cakes to share with y'all!

This box of Moon Cakes is actually one that the company John works with gave us. Some of them were OK - but there were some with beef filling. I didn't even try them because lets just say, even John had a difficult time liking them and that is unusual! :)

This is a picture of our typical lunch that Fang prepares for us. This day we had yummy noodles (they are Leah's favorite and she eats more than any of us!), broccoli, mushrooms and carrots. Some days she will cook chicken to go with it. It is really so simple but so completely great!

Here are a couple of our girls enjoying their lunch in the first picture and dinner in the second picture. Notice our very cool round dinner table - it is a very traditional style Chinese table - round with a lazy susan in the middle. I love it.


OK - that is my thousand words in pictures. I'm off to bed now!