A quick reminder:
You can click on any photo to view it larger.
:-)
05/20/2013
brilliant...
April 26, 2013-
Debbie is having a bit of backyard work done (it's actually her landlord who is doing it). Well, these guys show up with a delivery of sand and guess where they dump it? Yep. In the MIDDLE of the road!!!! Wow! Talk about being brilliant! Did they come with shovels or with a wheelbarrow to move the sand off the road???? NO!!!! The delivery guys thought that was good enough! Huh. What do you think????
A FURIOUS Debbie on the phone trying to get the stupid mess sorted out. With the two oblivious delivery men standing by. They seriously had NO CLUE what was wrong with this picture!
Now nobody can get in OR out of those houses.
Dear Chinese friends, why is that workers never come to the job with the proper tools???
05/19/2013
Future Gardeners....
April 24, 2013-
Most of the neighborhood kids have been captivated by the girls' attempt at creating a secret garden in our front yard. The kids have sowed some flower seeds in the ground and in a few pots all located at the front of our house. They've been dutifully watering the plants and trimming them. The kids have been doing this all on their own- it was their idea and it seems like they're trying to see it through.
I think we've got some future gardeners in the making!
Landen, Ava and Amelie watering all the pots and plants.
Ava helping Landen water their plants.
Shhh!!! This is a SECRET garden.
A beautiful flowering fruit tree in our front yard (which, by the way, is technically communal property):
Here's something I find amusing about life here... The photo below was taken from a walk-way in our neighborhood. Now, I could be wrong but I think that the property surrounding the walk-way is also communal property. However the Chinese homeowners are staking claims on this little bit of land and turning it into their own. Here's how own neighbor is claiming their little bit of communal property:
The Chinese neighbors planted these tightly spaced shrubs/sticks, added a fence and let their chickens run free in their new home.
Overview of Aunt Karen & Uncle Chuck's Visit
April 11-23, 2013-
We just LOVED, LOVED, LOVED having Aunt Karen and Uncle Chuck come visit us here in China! It was so much fun getting to show and share with them all the things that we love about China. Oh, and getting to show them all the quirky, weird things you only get to see in China. They only had one-and-a-half weeks here - and we packed every day to the gills with activities and sights. There just is never enough time to see and do it all!
Here are a few photos from their trip:
A quick visit to Beijing on Monday:
At Tiananmen Square facing the entrance to the Forbidden City.
A failed (!!!!) attempt to see the Forbidden City -which is just a bunch of buildings you can't really enter anyway...so not a big loss BUT STILL! How dare they close this on Monday afternoons? Okay...I'm not really upset as I'm sure they have a lot of maintenance to do but there were very many other upset tourists who missed their only opportunity to visit this attraction.
Well, what should we do now??? We had several tries communicating with our driver (he was supposed to wait for us at the exit of the Forbidden City complex in a few hours). Finally, with the help of Mark's Chinese co-workers we were able to communicate with him. He swooped in, picked us up and we tried our luck visiting one of the hutongs just a few blocks away from the Forbidden City.
Hutong:
Aunt Karen and Uncle Chuck in the hutong. This hutong had lots of interesting boutique shops and restaurants. We found an interesting Tibetan restaurant that served real ginger tea and yummy, interesting food.
Eating dumplings at DinTaiFeng on April 17 in Tianjin:
What's not to love about these dumplings??? Some of the dumplings have a more soup-like filling. I'd love to know how they make those without having them fall apart while cooking!
Continue reading "Overview of Aunt Karen & Uncle Chuck's Visit" »
05/18/2013
Holly's Hedgehog
April 15, 2013-
We've been wondering if there was any wildlife here in our little Chinese building compound.
It turns out that- YES!!!- there is wildlife!
What sort of wildlife can you find here in the suburbs of a MASSIVE Chinese city???
Hedgehogs!!!!
Holly, an American living on block, found this cutie pie hedgehog:
Holly's taxi driver told her that Chinese people don't really like hedgehogs or other small (wildlife) animals. Chinese friends, is this actually true?
Holly found this little guy in one of the bushes and called all the neighbor kids to come over and meet him. All of the kids wanted a chance to hold him and everyone got their photos taken with the little guy.
Annika's turn:
Ava gets a chance to hold the prickly fella:
After all the photos were taken Holly released him one of the bushes just outside her house...and off he went!
Holly, thanks for this opportunity to get up close and personal with a Chinese hedgehog!!!!
(PS. NOW I remember why I haven't been posting... it's such a freaking pain to rotate photos in my posts! Does anybody have any suggestions on how to deal with this without having to manually orient each and every stinking photo???? I will go through later and rotate them but I'm going to post them as-is for now.)
04/26/2013
Great Wall with Aunt Karen & Uncle Chuck + extras
April 14, 2013-
Pull up your bootstraps! Let's go for a hike on the Tianjin section of the Great Wall.
Now- if you come to China there is ONE thing you MUST visit-
THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA.
Let's break for a picnic lunch:
I hope you're hungry! We've worked up an appetite on this hike. We've got fried jiaozi (from last night's dinner), carrots, bell peppers, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, radishes, apples and hard boiled quail eggs.
Those are some REALLY steep stairs:
Whew...that was one tough hike. How on Earth am I going to finish a 7.5k run in May?
Yeah.....I don't think I'll actually be running this. Nope. I'll be WALKING this so-called run.
:-)
How about we head out to hot pot for dinner? I don't feel like cooking, do you????
Let's head to Haidilau for hot pot. I love the Noodle Guy and his little noodle "dance".
Some of our assortment of thinly sliced meat, mushrooms, spinach, lotus root, sweet potato slices and noodles:
Can you smell the spices?? woo wee!!! The spicy stock is REALLY spicy!
How about one more activity today? Do you think you've got enough stamina to tag along on a night boat ride on the Haihe River? Debbie, Croydon & the boys will be joining us.
Thanks, Debbie & Croydon, for buying our tickets! As is usually the case we're running late.
The Tianjin Eye:
04/24/2013
Aunt Karen & Uncle Chuck- ACS & Dumpling Making!
April 11, 2013-
SquEEEEEEeeee!!!! I'm *sooooo* EXCITED!!!
Aunt Karen and Uncle Chuck arrived very late last night - they're finally here!
Mark has created a fairly open itinerary for them:
Day 1: Resting up from the long journey; followed by a walk around our housing complex and a quick trip to the plant market. I was a wee bit surprised to see that several of the quirky shops in the plant market were closed. Darn it!
Dropped the girls off at school and then posed for photos in front of the school:
Stayed for the Silly Assembly at school because we learned that the Elementary Choir was going to perform:
Strolled around our quirky neighborhood (with all the empty shops):
Uncle Chuck and me walking in our housing complex
Driving to the plant and flower market...
Let's play I Spy....
I spy lots of color:
A truck overloaded with colorful plastic bottles.
Saturday, Day 2: Visit Ancient Culture Street (ACS) and then make dumplings (jiaozi) with David and Lynn in the evening.
At the start of Ancient Culture Street:
Strolling and observing...so many Chinese tourists!
Aunt Karen & Uncle Chuck:
Uncle Chuck with one of the treats we got for them to try...it's hard to explain what it is (it has an edible "plate"). You just have to try it!
Lunch...we explored a new "food market" or "food street" in the heart of the city and thought it'd make for an amusing lunch stop:
The food was....meh. Our guests got a chance to hone their chopstick eating skills!
Watching chestnuts roast in what looked like a vat of black pebbles(?):
closer view of the chestnuts:
Not only did these chestnuts SMELL good they tasted GREAT! Aunt Karen bought a bag of them for us to share. Yum!
Mark also picked up some big wheels of pur cha (some sort of green tea that Mark enjoys drinking; he drinks coffee in the morning and tea in the afternoon):
These sort of look like skinny wheels of cheese but they're really thin disks of tea (you pull some of the tea off the wheel to make a cup of tea). I wonder how this round shape came to be the way it's sold.
Just need a quick trip to the veggie market to pick up supplies for tonight's dumpling making session.
Time to head home and it's...
Dumpling Making Time!
David and Lynn arrived with an armload of dumpling making supplies- jiaozi flour, ground pork, a huge wooden cutting board, tiny dried shrimp, a soybean milk maker and the dried soybeans to make the hot drink. Plus they brought lots of tasty goodies - most of which we've never tried before. I think our favorite were the sesame crackers (they're a great hummus shovel!). We (somehow) had the rest of the supplies.
We got the ENTIRE family involved making the dumplings...which took us - what?- three hours to make?
LOL!
Not a meal to start making from scratch when you're super hungry!
We made two types of filling- one was pork with finely diced leeks mixed with some sauces (I know they added sesame oil and water that was infused with a certain type of peppercorn) - the other was a finely chopped summer squash, scrambled eggs, rehydrated wood ear mushrooms (very popular in Chinese dishes) and teeny tiny dehydrated shrimp. David & Lynn- please correct me if I got these wrong or if I forgot important additions.
Lynn got the dough started by adding warm water to a bowl of the jiaozi flour. She eyeballed the amounts using a bowl and mixed it until she got a stiff-ish dough. I can't remember the flour to water ratio. Anyway, you cover the bowl and let the dough rest for about 15 minutes. After it's rested you start kneading it....and kneading it...and kneading it some more. It should be elastic and smooth. Lynn cut the dough into several equal pieces (four? five?) and then set aside all but one of the pieces. That one piece she snapped off little pieces of dough (you know it's kneaded the right amount if the dough makes a snapping sound when quickly pulled apart). You flatten out the pieces initially with your hand and then rolling them. The rolling is a bit of artwork in itself. I think by the end we got the hang of it...you turn the piece as you're rolling it out (the goal is to make the center of the disk thicker than outside part). After that you fill them with a tiny bit of filling and close them up. They need to be sealed properly otherwise their contents end up spewing out while cooking. David boiled our jiaozi when he had enough them ready to be cooked.
Aunt Karen rolling out dumpling disks
We used small bamboo rolling pins to roll out the dumpling dough disks.
Even the girls are getting into the dumpling making action:
So, you want to eat dumplings tonight? Well, get in there and help make them!
When all the filling had been used up and we had leftover dough Lynn suggested making dessert dumplings with the leftover dough. Those were a tasty treat with a sugar filling inside.
A feast of dumplings!
Were they delicious????
Why yes- they most definitely were!!!!
(naturally the girls grabbed the dessert jiaozi first!)
Student-Led Parent Conferences & a Trip to the Galaxy Mall
April 11, 2013-
You know what's a fun way to learn what the children are doing at school?
Getting to see what they're learning from their perspective.
On Thursday morning the girls led me through what they're learning at school via IST's Student Led Parent Conferences. These conferences are completely led by the students - the teachers are present but the students present their own materials.
First was Ava's turn ... I learned that Ava loves playing on the computer. Although she doesn't enjoy writing her handwriting has improved considerably over this past year. Ava has a lot to tell and loves sharing her knowledge with her teacher and her classmates.
Annika was next... Annika LOVES to write. Her writing has become more fun and interesting to read.
An example of creative writing style:
Annika's monster: "Has a roar like a kitten's surrender."
The girls even showed me what they were doing in their Chinese class - they're still a long ways away from being fluent in Chinese but I can see they're having fun.
Since the girls clearly demonstrated that they were not only doing well in school but also enjoying school I took them to the Galaxy Mall as a treat after the conferences were finished. (the kids had the day off from school)
Annika has been begging and pleading to go shopping at Toys R Us - she's now saved up enough money to buy a long-treasured Lego Friends kit. How did she save the money? Well - do you remember her painting from the Fourth Grade Art Exhibition? I bought it from her. :-)
Woo Hoo! Annika has enough money to buy the kit she's been oogling for several months.
The Toys R Us in this Chinese mall looks an awful lot like its counterpart in the USA, doesn't it?
Looks like something you'd see back home, right??
Well, that was a successful shopping trip! No whining, no begging, no pleading...so my treat for lunch! How's pizza sound?
Sounds great to me!
> April 24- our block just had a power outage. Thankfully the power outage lasted less than thirty minutes.<
How about Pizza Bianca? It's one of the restaurants in this mall and we've heard that other expats like eating there. How about we give it a try???
Oooo!!!! Love the wood-fired ovens:
Such a bright, happy restaurant!
Mmmm....pizza & lemonade:
Pizza Bianca has excellent pizza! I think we'll have to come back and try more dishes on their menu.
Check out the bigger-than-life Native American statue in the mall:
