海埂公园

Okay, to the event. This Saturday, Jeff and I had the pleasure of going with some friends out to a park for some xiao cao. What's xiao cao? It's Chinese BBQ and oh so delicious, especially with some imported KC Masterpiece bbq sauce. We had chicken, beef, pork, eggplant, zucchini, chicken legs, and potatoes. It was all delicious and fun to make. We also had snacks like watermelon, chips, and such that didn't require BBQing. There were then some crazy moments in a pitch black bathroom trip, bus confusion, more bathroom trips, and finally a cab ride home.
Jeff and I stole the camera for a couple pictures :)

The group enjoying some watermelon.
We were so hungry, we didn't realize that it took about an hour to get to the place.
Group picture, the smoke was crazy intense, but you can't really tell...
We tried to take a nice picture but Ora wanted to ruin it... :(
I'm not sure how this started, but soon the couples had to do things with their arms intertwined.
Jeff looks so happy :D

LiJiang

So we finally decided to travel to places close to Kunming. We took Mom and Kurt to LiJiang, about a 40 minute plane ride from our home. It was absolutely beautiful. After much debating about a hotel, I was going for a place about $7/night, Kurt found one for $40/night, we settled on Kurt's, since it was only one night. What a great choice. It was a four star hotel, and it was absolutely gorgeous, with a water wheel and wishing well included. The first day we roamed around the town and did a lot of shopping. We ate lunch at a Sichuan restaurant next to our hotel while mom shopped and ate all at the same time. The food was really good and the scenery was just awesome. After shopping we headed back to the hotel to play some 500 and rest up before our dinner. One of my students at Web owns a restaurant in LiJiang, so we decided to meet up with her for dinner that night. She promised to give us a taste of LiJiang. Oh man, it was so good, we had hot pot, and the famous cakes-salty and sweet- and were stuffed to the brim. After dinner we walked around the old town taking pictures of lights and we bought a candle to send down the river for good luck. After that, we headed back to the hotel for a fire party- which Kurt thought was a firework show- and did some dancing around a BBQ with some of the locals. It was good fun. Then we headed to bed to get some good sleep. The next morning, we thought about going to snow mountain until we realized that it was 160RMB just to walk in, so we ix nayed that idea and decided to take our own hike. We hiked up a bit and took some pictures and then realized that we still didn't want to pay money to walk on a road. We headed down to KFC for a quick power snack-fries, coke, and chicken wings- and then took to the streets of the old town again. We decided to stop for some lunch at this restaurant called Le Petit Paris. 2 hours later, after many games of Big 2, 2 pizzas, 2 sandwiches, 2 salads, fried bananas, and coffee, we decided to head back to the hotel to hang around. Kurt was starting to get a little sick, so we thought we'd rest up a bit. Grabbed some dumplings and potatoes from the street, and headed to the airport. Whew, what a trip!
Pics of our awesome hotel!!
We played 500 and Big 2 outside in this little area, it was awesome!
At the Sichuan restaurant.
Streets of old town
Big square in old town with the water wheels and requests to the gods.
Jeff's artistic pics
Candle ceremony
Nightlife of the old town

We had some xiao cao for a late night snack
Getting my own water from the well
Snow mountain

Jeffwey's Bday

So for Jeff's bday this year, we got to spend it in Shanghai with his mom and her husband Kurt. So much fun!! We definitely miss the food in Shanghai :) We got up and headed to church in the morning, while mom and Kurt caught up on their jet lag. After church, we headed out to get lunch at Element Fresh when Jeff realized that he wanted a New York pizza. Because it was this the day of his birthday, I bought him his very own Hawaiian pizza. He loved it :)
After that we rested up a bit to get ready to go to the Shangri-la buffet. Oh, it's really like heaven on Earth. They have almost every type of food you can imagine there. We had a great time.
Yummy, we love the sushi there...
I painted Jeff a picture and put some of the best wedding photos on it for his bday :)

Shanghai day 2

Today we headed to the Science and Technology Museum. How awesome was it?!?! We went to this huge real like zoo, they stuffed all the animals, walked through rainforests, and saw a HUGE spider. Then mom and I headed to the fake market to shop till we dropped, literally. Jeff and Kurt hung out a little longer at the museum, they got to ride through the digestive system and they have a really great picture of them coming out of the...yeah, that part. After that we headed to Yu Yuen to check out the lights and eat the famous Shanghai dumplings. It was all really great and tons of fun. Then we headed to McDonald's for one last morsel before calling it a night. We introduced mom and Kurt to the smell of stinky tofu too, they LOVED it :)

In the heart of the African jungle.
It's a little sad that they stuffed these tiny little cubs, they were so cute and young...
I was trying to look like the boar...
PANDAS!!
It's like a scene from Lion King.
On our way up to the top of the jungle.
Amidst the beautiful lights in Yu Yuen.
The old architecture in China looks so cool when it's all lit up.
Being Chinese :)
Jeff likes lanterns...
The waterfront at Yu Yuen.
Eating dumplings at the famous dumpling restaurant.
One of the displays on the water.

Shanghai day 1

Well, the Mrs. and her husband finally arrived in Shanghai at 5pm. We were so excited to see them!! We took a bus home from the airport and dropped their luggage off at the apartment. We took them out to see the Bund, the famous waterfront that separates the two parts of Shanghai. We rode the subway out there and walked along the water. Then we headed to Aji-san for some dumplings and noodles. "This tastes just like the Chinese food in America." Yummm...then we went back to the apartment to rest up for the big day at the museum and Shanyang.

Thailand Day 3

Beep beep went the alarm, again...early morning. Dragged ourselves out of bed around 7am and headed down to our buffet breakfast. Decided that we would go to the US Embassy as soon as it opened. Got there around 8:30 am. After some mass confusion about my pages, which were free probably the highlight of the trip, I took a number and waited for my number to be called. There were about 40 people ahead of me and only two windows. I couldn't believe I had to wait through all of that, so I went to another window, the drop window. I stood by it for a bit, hoping someone would ask me if I needed help, sadly, nobody came. So finally, I just tapped on the window and asked if I could drop it off. Of course! So we left to kill time for about an hour. Around 10, we headed back into the embassy to pick up the passport. Alright! We were ready to head to the Chinese Embassy. I had all of my documents that my employer had given me, just give these to them and pick up your visa. It couldn't really be that easy, could it? So we head over to the Chinese Embassy, getting lost of course in one taxi and having to switch to another. We finally made it, took a number and started filling out the paper work and gluing my picture on it. Of course, in the visa office, it always takes forever. So we were busy filling out the papers, when I looked up and saw that they had already called our number! Flashing was 322. We were there for maybe two minutes...so we rushed up to that window with our number in hand, and said, we're sorry but we're 321. Get a new number was the automated response. Well, it really was a person, but the way she said it seemed like she was a mechanical device or something. Disgruntled, we grabbed a new number, 371- and yes, these are the real numbers because the memory is so engrained in my brain. We watched the numbers fly by, about five minutes later, we were up. There was a lot of commentary going on about how quickly they went through the numbers, I think they skipped at least 18 people. Finally, we got back up there, gave them the paperwork and waited. Hmmm...you need to have a health examination. Great, of course, it wouldn't be that easy. We politely told them that we had already done that, we had to do it for the paperwork that we just handed them. I'm sorry, you need to have a health exam. Okay, wait, we have a copy of the health exam from Kunming, will this work? I'm sorry, no copies accepted. *sigh, alright. What do we need to do? Go to a hospital and get this filled out. Even more digruntled, we left with the new health exam paper-which was the EXACT same form I had just gotten filled out in China about three weeks ago- and headed to a hospital. Well, the Bumrungrad hospital was the hospital of choice from a friend. It was huge, and clean, and so nice. We got to the registration to find out that the place closed already at 3pm. It was around 4pm at that time. *sigh, okay, sign us up for your earliest appointment, which meant ANOTHER early morning. We headed back to our room to get cleaned up, and I suddenly realized I didn't have my purse. Frantic, I threw the room upside down, but could not find it. After much agitation, we realized I had to have left it at one of the embassies. We got online so I could call my employer about the potential delay in our trip and that we might not make it back on Thursday, when I looked in my e-mail and found this message. Dear Suzanne, we have found your purse left in a taxi, please call this number to retrieve it. YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!! The luck, I was so happy. We called the number, got the address, and hopped onto the sky train to get the purse. It was being held in the taxi headquarters. When we got there, we were treated like royalty. Kind of weird, I just wanted my purse back. We got to meet the "president" of the company and the entire process of how they tracked me down. It was a process, they found my arrival entry card for the Chinese customs in my purse, found out that I was American and called the US Embassy to find me. Because I had just been there, they had my e-mail ready to give out. Then it was education time, we learned about the red shirts and the yellow shirts of Thailand. Red=democracy, yellow=Monarchy. Then it was picture time, they took pictures of the whole purse handing off and the handshakes. They said they'll use it in the paper for propaganda. Sweeeeet, as mom said, "do you guys really feel safe about that? *sigh, you need to be careful." We headed out of the place about 30 mins. later, with the purse in hand. On our way back to the hotel, we were kicking ourselves for not asking for one of the red shirts. I'm sure they would have been happy to give one to us. Anyways, on arriving to our hotel, we ate the International buffet for dinner and decided to call it a night. Total walking distance: 9-10 miles.

Thailand Day 2

Beep beep, went the alarm. Sleepy, we managed to wake ourselves up, get a few minutes of the Australian open, and headed down to breakfast. We woke up around 7:30am...or so we thought. We headed down to breakfast and on our way we saw a clock that read 6:30am...interesting, but we just figured the clock was broken or something. We ate our inclusive breakfast, pretty nice buffet-omelettes, potatoes, french toast, pancakes, juice, and fruit- and then were going to call the US embassy to see how much it would cost to get pages. Well, we realized that Thailand time is different from China time, who knew? *probably everybody but us... And realized that it was too early to go anywhere. We finally got a hold of the embassy and found out that they were closed for Martin Luther King Jr. day...great. Now we were up super early, for no reason. We decided to hit the town walking. We walked to this really great mall that our friends had told us about. The food court, AMAZING. I got to eat Auntie Anne's soft pretzels, Cold Stone, Burger King, nachos, and other great snacks. As mom said,"you ate your way through Bangkok huh?" After that, we headed back to the hotel to just hang out and do some reading, and oh yeah, watch the Australian open :) We went out to dinner and headed back to the paragon to watch "Yes, Man" Jim Carey's latest in the Laz boy theater. All the chairs are lazy boys. It was nice, the movie was so-so. Then we walked back to the hotel and went to bed to wake up early, again. Total walking distance: 5 miles
On the walking bridge to the malls!!
View from the walking bridge
Outside view of the paragon, nice palm trees eh?
The main sign.