February 22

Hello from Suzhou! We are wrapping up another week and it is time to blog. I meant to post these pictures last week but was too distracted with birthday details. At the end of Chinese New Year (which is celebrated for 15 days) there is a lantern festival. Mark saw this family celebrating last Saturday when he was out celebrating his birthday with friends. The Chinese families make wishes for the new year and send these paper lanterns up into the sky.

So this week we had parent teacher conferences after school both Wednesday and Thursday. Quite a different experience now that James is in middle school. I sat down with 6 teachers. Mark worked late both nights obviously.
The morning fitness program I'm involved in went off without a hitch. It has been cold and rainy lately so the kids can come into the gym and get their bodies warm and their blood flowing when they get off the bus before class starts. They seemed to enjoy it. I brought my aerobics music in. I was originally to lead the class on Mondays and then 2 other teachers would just repeat what I taught on Wednesday and Friday but it turned into me teaching all three days and them doing crowd control. Hmmmm.
We were wrong about dance and track starting last week. It will happen this week. Abigail has started rehearsals for the primary school play. They are putting on Pinnochio and she is both a dog and a donkey. So she has a script and is practicing her lines. I knew Oliver was just the beginning for that girl!
On Friday we found out that one of our favourite restaurants, a Thai place that is within walking distance, is closing. Not for renovations, closing for good! I was so disappointed. It was a Wednesday night tradition for us. Really good Thai food. Anyway, we heard they were having a sale on Saturday morning so we walked over to see what they were selling. I bought a rice basket I had admired since the first time we ate there, a Thai sculpture and a decorative wooden tray. Mark got a couple of beer mugs and a bottle opener. So at least we have some souvenirs but it was still sad.

We headed over to the school yesterday afternoon to watch the "Football for Humanity" tournament. The grade 11s in the school organized an indoor soccer tournament and will be giving all the proceeds to Habitat for Humanity so we had to come and buy cake and cookies from the concession to help the cause :)
The teachers and the students played in the tournament and some other schools and businesses also entered teams. So I think they were quite successful. For the IB diploma, students have to put in a certain number of community and service hours so this is one way they are doing it.
Today was cold and rainy. Apparently we have a whole week of it ahead of us. Just as long as it is gone by Sunday when Claude and Lynn arrive! We headed to Time Square because we heard that there is a basement grocery store that sells western goods and is nicer and cheaper than the options close to us. Guess what I found? ...drumroll.... Harvest Crunch!!! I can't believe it! You can't find it in all of Houston but you can find it in Suzhou?!!
We had a really good lunch at pizza hut, best pizza I've had in a long time and then headed home to our nice, warm, dry apartment and stayed here for the rest of the day. I have ordered my fruit and vegetables online for the week. We'll see what shows up tomorrow...last week I received 15 potatoes! I thought I ordered 3! ..
So that's all my news for now. Can't believe we are heading into the last week of February! Will write again next weekend. Lots of love until then.

Birthdays, Apples, Valentine's and more

Happy belated Valentine's Day from the other side of the world.
We had a busy week. My fruit and vegetable guy from downstairs has a website (www.5jshop.com if you want to check it out) and has been trying to get me to order online. He delivers for free and likes for me to order online so he can select the best produce for me and keep me happy with the quality. So, I tried it for the first time and was happy to have my week's worth of fruit and vegetables delivered on Monday. I had to laugh because my I definitely did not enter the right weight when I ordered. I received the tiniest bunch of grapes (a branch of 6) and a plastic bag with about 5 weeks worth of strawberries!! They must have thought I was crazy! I'll try to do better next time. While my fruit and vegetables were being delivered the agent that helps us with issues concerning our apartment came to look at the tv in Mark's and my bedroom that has never worked. We had her look at it before Christmas because we thought we just weren't pressing the right buttons on the remote (the buttons are in Chinese). Her response at that time was "well, why do you need 2 tvs anyway?" So we left it alone. Last week we asked our agent to come and remove said broken television since it is quite big. All of a sudden there was initiative to fix it. Hmmm.
Tuesday was Mark's birthday. It was also the night all the 6th graders at SSIS received their apple laptops. Mark is on the apple vanguard team so he had to work until 8:00. It was an exhausting day and I felt really bad that Mark barely had time to breath, let alone celebrate.
Here he is blowing out his candles, right before bed.
Mark's homeroom sang him happy birthday and made him a card so that was nice. (One of the other teachers wished him a happy 52nd birthday). The school gives a bouquet of roses to all the teachers on their birthdays.
So James has his laptop. He will take it to school for the first time tomorrow. He has been on it every chance he gets. So it should be interesting to see how the laptop program goes.
So the ending to my story about our tv was the agent decided that the tv did not work and the landlord said they would deliver a new one. So on Thursday we got a brand new flatscreen tv installed in our room! It's technically no more ours than the furniture but it's nice to have while we're here (and at no expense to us).
Saturday was Valentine's Day. We headed out to walking street to get Mark's birthday present. There was no time to get it before then. Mark has wanted an ipod touch for quite some time. I obviously needed him to purchase it because I wouldn't know a fake or a good deal. So he has been bent over his new ipod touch right along with his son who is bent over his macbook!
Since I felt bad about the lack of celebration on Tuesday, we had some friends over on Saturday night. It was just a low key family-friendly night of pizza and board games. I had planned a surprise party for Mark with some guy friends at a bar near the apartment for afterward. So he was picked up by his department head (who told him he needed to talk about work) and then spent the night out with some friends. I had told the guys that if they dressed in Texan attire (in honor of Mark) I would buy them a free drink. I wasn't there but had a friend take some pictures for me.
So these are the three who "dressed western" with their drink, courtesy of moi. John is on the left, he's Australian and I'm not really thinking that counts as a cowboy hat. Maybe it's an Australian cowboy hat. Ben is in the middle, an American (Mark's department head). Apparently he thinks the wifebeater is western attire. Josh is on the right (James' homeroom teacher - another American), he at least has a proper hat and belt buckle.
These are some of the guys that showed up. There were a few more that came after this was taken. Glen is on the far left (a Canadian who used to teach in Oakville) and Simon in the back who is from the UK.
So, another busy week starts tomorrow. I am starting a morning fitness program for the primary school. James starts track and field this week and Abigail is starting dance lessons at a nearby apartment complex. Claude and Lynn will be here in two weeks so I am starting to get things organized and ready for that.
I hope everyone is doing well. We look forward to hearing from you. Thanks Mum and Trudie for the care packages, they are much appreciated.
Happy belated birthday to Mike - Mark looks forward to having joint birthday parties with you in the future :)
Lots of love,
Karen (and the Smiths)

Hong Kong Disneyland!

We saved Disney for our last day. In case you didn't see the pattern, we tried to alternate cultural/educational day trips with fun/kid day trips.
So we had read just about everywhere that Hong Kong Disney is not what it's cracked up to be and most definitely does not measure up to the park in Florida. We had low expectations going in but hey, how can you not do Disney?!
So we rode the subway from the hotel to Lantau island and transferred to the "Disney line". We walked through the gates and onto "Main Street" right as the Chinese New Year parade was passing by. Believe it or not, this was the first lion dance I had seen since coming to China.
So here are some pictures of the parade.

So basically Hong Kong Disney is smaller than the other parks and therefore, does not have as many rides. However, all my favorites were there. It's a small world, Cinderella's carousel, Mad Hatter's Tea Cups, Space Mountain. The kids even humored me by going on the Winnie the Pooh ride (I miss Winnie the Pooh). We saw the Lion King show, which was phenomenal. It's based on the broadway play. So, we had a really good time at disney and stayed right up until it closed.

We had our picture taken with the Gods of Fortune, Prosperity, Happiness, and Longevity. They were at the park in honor of Chinese New Year. That is Cinderella's carousel behind us and yes, it has happened...my son is officially taller than me.

That's all for disney. We had a great time. It was a nice way to spend our last day in Hong Kong.

I'll blog again this weekend. We are in the midst of a busy week. Lots of love to everyone, happy valentine's day xoxoxox!

Yet another blog about Hong Kong!

Did anyone notice that I did it again?! I titled the last blog Wednesday and then talked about Tuesday! Oh my gosh, I'm losing my mind.
On WEDNESDAY we took a one hour ferry to the island of Macau. The ride was very choppy! Macau is half historical ruins, churches and museums and half wannabe Vegas. I'm not sure I would recommend it to anyone who plans on visiting Hong Kong. The ferry was expensive and you have to bring your passport and go through customs. Transportation was not as accessible as Hong Kong and we were lost for the first hour we were on the island. We did eventually figure out where the Senate Square was, which was the starting point of a walking tour I wanted to do. The travel book a friend loaned us had a detailed walking tour that led us to various churches, gardens, ruins and an old fort. Here are some pictures. You can see the Portugese influence in the architecture. All the churches were catholic and you could go right in and take pictures, quite beautiful actually.

A side street off to the side of senate square.





This is a picture of the churches we went into. Really beautiful. All the churches were painted pastel colours with white trim. They were maintained remarkably well. The kids actually really liked visiting the churches. I think they were comforted by the familiarity. They understood what the statues were and the beliefs that were associated.


This was the last stop on the walking tour. The ruins of St.Paul.

We spent all day on Macau and then took the ferry home. We were exhausted.

Hong Kong continued...Wednesday

Hi Everyone,
I am trying to finish writing about our trip to Hong Kong so I can move on to what is happening this week.
Last Tuesday (February 3) we went to Ocean Park. This was recommended in a lot of my travel books as a place the kids would enjoy. It is sort of like Sea World. There are dolphins and sea lions that you can see and they perform in a show (although we didn't get to see either one). The extraordinary thing about Ocean Park is it is completely built on a mountainside! So there are maybe 2 or 3 attractions at various levels of this hill but you have to keep climbing up in order to get to the next thing. The park has built escalators to transport visitors up the hill. The view at the top was incredible! There are attractions on 2 sides of the mountain so once you arrive at the top you can take a cable car down the other side.

The picture above is the view from the restaurant where we had lunch. We mainly did some rides, saw the aquarium (none of my pictures turned out) and then had lunch. We saw they had panda bears on the other side of the park so we took the cable car down. The pandas didn't really go with the whole ocean theme but they are apparently being kept at the park temporarily after being taken from Chengdu after the earthquake. Chengdu is the area of China where they have the panda conservation park. My pictures came out fuzzy but I'll post the best one I have. The other picture is of some monkeys I ran into.

It started to get hot and a little too crowded for us so we left in the late afternoon and headed back to the hotel for a rest. In the evening we walked Nathan Road, which is a famous street in Hong Kong and quite close to our hotel and then found yet another Italian place to eat supper before heading back to the hotel and falling asleep.

I just realized (after posting) that I named my last blog Monday, February 2 then I ended up talking about Sunday. Ooops.
Ok, so on Monday we took the ferry to Hong Kong island and then took a tram up to Victoria Peak. The tram takes 10 minutes and goes up a 27 degree incline! At the top of the peak there is a tower with some shops and restaurants and you can hike various trails with lookouts of the mainland and other islands.

We ended up walking two of the trails and had lunch at Bubba Gump's which was a restaurant based on the movie Forrest Gump. It had an excellent view and the food was not bad. (very Joe's Crab Shack for those of you who are from the south)
After taking the tram back down the hill we decided to check out the Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical gardens which was within walking distance. It was of course, on a hillside and the walking was a real workout. Not too much to see, we were only there for about an hour.
So we went on to see a little of downtown which is accessible by a series of covered escalators totally 792 meters. There are interesting shops and restaurants along the side of the escalators. It was a really neat way to see the city.
We ate at an Italian place just off to the side of one of the escalators and then walked around some of the side streets.
One thing that we noticed right away in Hong Kong was we don't get stared at like we do in Suzhou and Shanghai. There are a ton of westerners, you see them everywhere. We're not used to that. Also, english is spoken just about everywhere. The official languages of Hong Kong are Cantonese and English. Not to mention a lot of western chains ( we counted 17 7-Eleven stores during our time in Hong Kong).
So that's about it for Monday. Here's one of the pictures I took of a flower market street.

I'm turning in for the night, school tomorrow. But I will right about the rest of our time in Hong Kong later this week.
Hope everyone is well.

Monday, February 2

On Sunday we flew on China Eastern from Shanghai to Hong Kong. The flight was a little late leaving but not too bad. I was surprised that we were fed lunch on a 2 hour flight, including fresh warm rolls and ice cream for dessert. You definitely wouldn't get that on a two hour flight on Air Canada!
We stayed at the YMCA in Kowloon. I was skeptical when it was recommended but the kids are at the age now where they don't want to sleep in the same bed and the Y had family suites available. It was clean and in a good location for where we wanted to go on day trips. We walked to the harbor and took some pictures of the skyline and then went for a swim at the hotel.
This picture is taken from the harbor on the mainland side of Hong Kong and looks at the skyline on Hong Kong island. As you can see, it is quite mountainous. I came here with my family when I was 10 but really didn't remember too much of it. I've never seen a city built on an incline like this. It was really neat. We had a view of the harbor from our hotel room as well.
So as you walk along the harbor there is an area called the avenue of the stars. All the major film stars from Hong Kong have their handprints on the stone. Jackie Chan was one of them and I loved this statue of Bruce Lee with the skyline in the background.
We ate at Outback Steakhouse for dinner on Sunday night. It used to be one of Mark's favorite restaurants in Sugar Land and some former clients who used to live in Hong Kong told me they used to go there when they were homesick for American food. It just so happened that there was one within walking distance from our hotel so it was meant to be.

First Week of Chinese New Year

I am going back in time for this blog. The first week of our Chinese New Year break I came down with whatever it was that Mark and the kids had the week before. It was my turn I guess. Anyway, as I laid in bed for 4 days straight the rest of the city went crazy with fireworks! We had heard that it gets quite annoying this time of year but nothing could have prepared us for the uproar directly outside our window at all times of the day and night. 7pm, midnight, 2 in the morning, 5 in the morning. It never seemed to stop. Not even pretty fireworks that sparkle with colours in the sky, the kind that sound like you are in a war zone. Ok, that's all the venting I'll do for now.
Mark and the kids took off on Monday to Tiger Hill. A garden/pagoda that we have been wanting to see. They went with some friends of ours. These pictures were taken with Abigail's new camera.

Once I was up to leaving the apartment we went back to Lion's Grove garden. We went there in October and really enjoyed it but the main reason we went back was we had heard that a really great shop is right across the street from the entrance to the garden. Well, we've looked for the shop 3 times and never been able to find it. The last time we took a taxi and the driver could not find it either! He even got out and asked someone and they didn't know. So we have some friends who had been and so we visited the garden with them and then they showed us where the shop is.. and it really was right across the street but the name was hidden. Needless to say, we felt pretty stupid! Great shop though. A lot of handmade furniture and woodwork. We'll probably think more seriously about buying some items before we return home but don't have space or need for it right now. Here are some pictures from the garden.

So we had a couple of outings, the kids played with their friends and I recovered. Last Sunday we were off to Hong Kong at 5:30 in the morning! We were quite ready to see some other parts of China, that is after all, a big part of why we are here.
I'm going to do a blog for each day in Hong Kong because we did so much. I was going to blog every evening we were there but we decided to simplify things by not taking the laptop.
So that's all for the 1st week of our break.

Some Signs in China

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