Hong Kong Holiday

We enjoyed a four-day trip to Hong Kong over Thanksgiving weekend.  It was really quite amazing to us how different Hong Kong was from the Chinese mainland.

Anyway.... we had a great time.  On Thursday, we took a 25 minute cable car ride up to the peak of a mountain with a famous monastery.  Actually, much more famous than the monastery is a the large Buddha statue at the top.

Chessie and the kids on the cable car just as we got on....


This is a view from the cable car on the way up.  You can see the cable where we came from....


Budda was huge!  Here's a photo that should show his size in relation to the shops near by....


Steps up to Buddha....


Of course we couldn't leave Hong Kong without a trip to Disneyland.  It was a fun day.  You can easily find stuff to keep you busy for a day.  It definitely feels like Disney -- but more like Disney lite after spending a week in Walt Disney World.

This is the Disney themed MTR train to the park.  Notice the Mickey shaped handle to keep your balance.  And surely you didn't think that we would forget it was Bucket weekend.  Boiler Up 32-25!....


Required photo with the castle in the background....


Chessie, Bella, and Lorren with Mickey.  Ema and I were riding Space Mountain!....



And as Bella said, "There's a really big Woody!"....


We also headed up to the Peak via an old tram that takes you straight up the slope over downtown Hong Kong.

You can see how steep the tracks are about to get through the front of the train....


This is a view from the peak....


We visited Madame Tussaud's wax museaum.  There were lots of life like figures available for photos

Clayton with the Beatles....


Bella giving up a few inches to Yao Ming....


And when we had returned home, Michael had found us all the way in the China....



> Clayton

A Golden Harbor Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is truly a North American holiday.  Typically our gratefulness is centered around the love, health, and fortune of our families.  I don't think we knew what to expect regarding celebration of Thankgiving in China.  Of course, we knew there weren't going to be large Snoopy baloons parading down the street.  Would other North Americans celebrate or just give it a slight nod?  Could we get the foods that remind us all of Thanksgiving day?  I'm happy to say that all of the questions were answered in a very positive way.

Steve and Sandra Carpenter host an annual Thanksgiving party.  This year it was on Nov 19 at their town house in Golden Harbor.  They provided plenty of turkey, and everyone else all chipped in with a dish.  Chessie made sweet potato casserole and refrigerator rolls, so we felt at home.

Between dinner and dessert we enjoyed about a 15-on-15 pick up American football game.  It felt like Thanksgiving.

Some photos are below.  I'm guessing there were probably about 75-100 people there.

This is the kitchen after the turkey was pretty much cleaned out.

Here's the look into their dining room where some of the food was kept.

This is looking down into one of their sitting rooms where some people were eating.

The kids spent all of their time on the trampoline in the back when they weren't eating.

> Clayton

Our House, Part I

Sorry if you saw this post originally a week or two ago.  The video wasn't working, so I pulled it off.  I've had some problems uploading video to the blog, but that appears to be fixed now.

This isn't going to be as exciting as the Deathly Hallows, but we thought we would do a video tour of our house in two expisodes.  Chessie and I came to Wuhan in Oct 2010 to look at homes for our stay in China.  We looked at about six different homes -- stand alone houses, town houses, and apartments.  The one we chose was a pretty easy choice.  It was the house with a floor plan that best matched what we were used to in the USA.  There was also another house that was huge and spectacular -- definitely a story for another time.

This first episode shows the downstairs.  Everything is pretty well explained in the video, so let's get to it.

> Clayton

Speaking Chinese 谈话中文

It's obviously tough sometimes getting around China without speaking the language.  It also quite amazing all of the things you can communicate to people without saying words -- a lesson we learned very quickly.

We are slowly making progress learning the language.  The most progress we made was with our Chinese teacher, Fennefer 方园.  Fennefer clearly isn't a Chinese name, but you may be surprised that it is her English name.  I think there's a story there, but it obviously wasn't that interesting because it didn't stick with me.  Fennefer was recommended to us through the company paid language training company.  She would come to our house once per week beginning in Feb.  She worked with Ema and Chessie for one hour and then worked with me for two hours.  (Bella wasn't interested.)



Lessons continued through June.  Fennefer is a student at Wuhan University.  She went home to Beijing during the summer, so we decided to just take a two month break instead of finding a new teacher.  She came back to Wuhan, and we restarted lessons in late Sep.  Unfortunately after just a couple of weeks, she said she was returning to Beijing for the rest of the semester.  It was already Oct by then, and the company paid benefit expires at the end of the year.  We decided just to let it go.  We liked Fennefer, but overall is wasn't a great experience.

The person we need to communicate with the most is Mr. Huang, our driver.  When we arrived, I quickly learned out to send text message to him in Chinese.  This was perfect because I could take my time to figure out what I needed to say, and with an English-Chinese iPhone app I could be accurate.  I mostly just needed to send a few characters that told him where we needed to go and what time.  Of course, that was all under the assumption that he needed to pick us up from our house.  After awhile I was able to communicate more complicated items.  For example, Chessie walked around the local area with the kids one day this summer.  It was so hot they decided they wanted a ride back home.  Since Mr. Huang didn't know that they had gone out, I had to communicate to him where they were and what he needed to do.  Everything worked out fine.

Mr. Huang is who I learn the most from now.  I try and talk with him as much as I can in the car.  Words I learn from him seem to stick in my mind better than they did learning with Fennefer.

> Clayton

Halloween in the Development Zone

Halloween is definitely something that is very different in Wuhan compared to Indiana.  I'm sure the reasons are mostly obvious.  Aloha Diner has a Halloween party, and there is opportunity for the kids to dress up one day at school.

Sunday evening was the party at Aloha.  The kids were excited, and it turned out to be a pretty good time.

First, the costumes.  Ema was Hermione Granger from Harry Potter....

Isabella was Rapunzel....

Lorren was Anakin Skywalker....

Many thanks to Grandma Tuttle for the costumes -- they are wonderful.  The kids love them, and everyone was very impressed at the party.

The Aloha party included food, candy corn, carmel apples, candy, and games.  A lot of the kids' friends were there, and everyone had a good time.  There were plenty of adult friends there also to talk to while the kids were having a good time.

The first photo is Sheridan wrapping Luke up like a mummy with toilet paper.  Sheridan is in the fourth grade and a good friend of Ema's.  Luke is in K-5.  The second photo is Ema playing a bowling game with others looking on including Sheridan and Bella.  The background is French Street just outside the Aloha.

Paco and Esme were at Aloha at the beginning of the party after finishing a late lunch.  I have a much better photo of them here than when we were at their home last weekend.

Chessie made arrangements with four different houses in our neighborhood for trick-r-treating Monday evening.  The kids will also be able to don their costumes at school on Tuesday.  Overall, I think they'll get the right amount of Halloween action to last another 366 days.

How real were the costumes.  Well, I didn't float away when Ema did this, but they were real enough for everyone to have a great time.



> Clayton

Mexican Fiesta

Sorry I ignored the blog for so long.  Now back to the show....

Last Saturday night was a special treat.  We were invited to a friend's house for some authentic Mexican food.  Francisco (aka Paco) works with me at Fuel Systems.  He's from Juarez, Mexico.  He and his wife, Esmerelda (aka Esme), invited us over to their new home.

Paco and Esme moved to Wuhan just over one year ago -- so they have about four months experience on us.  They lived in Hankou their first year.  (More on that later.... that sounds like another good post.)  For our purposes here, that means they lived in the downtown Wuhan area.  Paco had a 45-60 minutes commute each way to/from work.  (My commute is less than 10 minutes in contrast.)  While enjoying many aspects of Hankou, they decided it was best to move closer to Cummins.  They moved to the Development Zone in mid October.

Back to the fiesta.... they invited us and some others to their new home as a little house warming party.  The main attraction, of course, was the food.  Paco and Esme made quite a feast.  They made guacamole, salsa, and pico de gallo.  There was bread topped with beans and cheese as well as theses delicious breaded cheese balls.  The main course was fajitas.  They had beef, shrimp, and mushrooms for the fajitas.  There was also quesadillas for the kids.  The fajitas were spectacular -- both the beef and shrimp!  The beef and shrimp were even great together -- we learned that's called campechana.  You can't exactly get authentic tortillas in Wuhan.  We felt extra special because they broke into their stash of tortillas from home.  Everyone went through quite a few tortillas.

Their new home was nice too.  It's a two story apartment with an incredible amount of space.  It has three or four bedrooms downstairs and then a bunch of odd shaped rooms upstairs.  Here's a photo from the night.  This is an area next to the dining table.  We couldn't eat at the table because it was full of food.  From left to right.... Chessie's back, Sarah, Tracy, Esme, and Tony.



Tracy works at Cummins with me and Paco.  He and Sarah live next door to us.  Tony is the relocation guy that helped all three of our families find our homes here in Wuhan.  He also helped Paco and Esme move to this new home in the Development Zone.

Sorry there's not more photos.  As you can see I remembered the camera.  Right after I took this first photo, the battery died.

All of us were still talking about the food all day Sunday.  That should be your takeaway from this post.

> Clayton

It's Bella's Turn to Blog

I have lost my tooth and the tooth fairy has gave me money and gave me 15 and I have lost  six teeth and I have   Ema and Lorren and Mom and Dad and me Isabella. I love dogs and cats and boys and girls and I see people that don't do things that I see in America because they are Chinese. And I live in China. I ride my bike. I am almost off my training wheels and on two wheels like Ema. And I do roller blading on French Street sometimes and I do making Lincoln Log houses with a roof and back yard. I know that 1 x 1 is 1. And I have five people in my family. And I don't really have a favorite color. And my dad has big ears. And Ema has glasses now. I want to see Cars 2 and Harry Potter movies.  I want to read a really big book.  Ema is reading really big books like Order of the Phoenix.

Bella

She's lost two teeth in the past week.  Here's a photo of her new mouth.  (We call her Jack -- like jack-o-lantern, but she doesn't like it.)