Jinqaio Life Hub

This was a nice rainy Sunday afternoon activity to take the kids to while Mama shopped for 'teacher' clothes.  Mama has been asked to substitute teach at the kid's school from now until Christmas.  She is teaching humanities for a 7th grade class.  

Carnival slide.  Sit on your sack to ride down.

So this is on the 3rd floor of a shopping mall.  You paid 25 RMB per child (20 on weekdays) for them to run around like crazy nuts.

Caomei - not sure where the boys went.

Yanyuan posing for something.  He cut his chin running into
another child.

Deeper ball bowl that was in a bigger bowl.

There was also an indoor basketball court but I didn't try
to figure out how to get the kids into that.

After the running around I bought 100 RMB ($16) worth of
token for each of them to play games with.  It was the typical
Chuckie Cheese arcade where you play games and collect
tickets for useless, overpriced prizes at the end.

Caomei's Farm Visit

Caomei's Kindergarten class had a field to a local organic farm.  

She says, "This was a day at the farm. We fed the goats.  I forgot the rest." But since this is Baba's entry I'll make something up.

Caomei and Eli in front of some green plant.

Looks like she picked a weed.

Making a picture out of plants.

Washing hands with friend.

All the vegetables.

Goat.

Good thing that they have translation.

Feeding the goats.

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This was a monster radish.  Mama loved it.

Okay, if you made it this far then thanks...  This was not the most exciting entry.

Quiet Thanksgiving

Last year's Thanksgiving we surprised our extended family with the news that we had decided to move to Shanghai.  All of Baba's family and some uncles, aunts and cousins were visiting Melbourne, FL when we broke the news.  Hard to believe it has been a year since that day.

This year's Thanksgiving day dinner was just us since our kids were the only ones that had the days off as a holiday.  All the other local schools and all businesses worked on Thursday and Friday.  It was my first working Thanksgiving, well since I played high school football on turkey-day.

YangMei found a nice 12 lb. turkey, for 400 RMB ($60), mashed some potatoes, boiled some brussel sprouts and baked a pumkin pie.  It was a very yummy meal!

Our 12lb turkey, a little late for a photo but it was very good!

Here's our Thanksgiving day feast!

Turkey, potatoes, brussel sprouts, mushrooms,
squash and carrots.  No stuffing this year...

But we did manage to have the traditional pumpkin pie.
Do you remember those pumpkins from Halloween?

 This weekend we also witnessed some foliage for the first time in many, many years.  The first leaves our kids have seen change colors (other than green to brown) since we lived in FL.

A miniature maple tree in our front yard.  

These leaves will be gone in a few days since the compound
workers will rake them up almost daily!

YanYuan's 8th Birthday Party

Anyone who knows Yangmei knows that she loves having kid's Birthday parties.  She spends weeks designing the invitation, organizing the games and baking the cake.  Well you'll be happy to know that hasn't changed since moving here.

This party's theme was Legos!

Homemade Lego Cake

Traditional Favorite, "What's Missing?"

Yangmei told a story containing all the party participants.

YanYuan had about 12 - 15 guests and it was a mad-house.  Yelling, screaming, wrestling, absolute chaos for 2.5 hours!  But they had a great time.  They played lots of Lego, including one game that the guests had to build a Lego guy blindfolded.

Birthday boy being shot by homemade lego guns that
are designed to shoot elastic bands.  Cool invention!

Big brother - did we say he had a broken wrist?

Mama organizing a paint your ceramic lego magnet.

Finally the cake came out and everyone sang Happy Birthday, in more languages than one!

Baba brought in the cake to a party.

Satisfaction!!

Shanghai Halloween

Halloween is a 'foreign' holiday to the Chinese.  Only recently have they been made aware of this ghoulish, American holiday.  But since we live in a predominantly American area, there were plenty of trick or treaters.  About $150 in candy and 200-300 vistors we were cleaned out.  

Yang Mei's homemade gravestones.

Some festive lights we put on our trees.

Halloween festival party in Jinqaio.  A fun time for the kids
with candy and games.

Caomei's costume-of-the-day.  This was a mural at the festival.

Pumpkin carving!  

Many of the American kids in the high-rise apartments nearby will visit the neighborhoods to walk up to the friendly candy-givers.

Tienanmen Square - 2012

A trip to Beijing would not be complete without a visit to Tienanmen Square.  A very historical place due to the massacre that happened there in 1989.  You can read about it at, Wikipedi_Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989.  The conclusion to this event was don't mess with the Chinese government or you could die.  The media in China was very quiet about the event and it wasn't until recently that even the Chinese citizens learned the people died during the protest, some say as much as a few thousand.  

Caomei with her 10 RMB hat on.  The square to
the left and that's Forbidden City way in the
background.

I've now take two trips to the square.  The first was in January when it was empty and the second during the autumn holiday when it was full.  In fact, I tried to go for a run on National day and at about 15 minutes past sunrise, I could hardly walk towards the square due to the 1,000s of people walking my way.  Some kind of flag raising ceremony at sunrise.  






But in the square you can see Chairman Mau in the mosuleum, you can see the flag, we say a massive pot of flowers and you can see massive amounts of people (in October).

Here was the Square in the winter.

Those red signs are screens showing scenes from China.

Here's a similar view during the October holiday.  It was ugly!!

There was a beautiful vase
of live flowers
spilling over the sides.

Running a Race in Shanghai (JP Morgan Challenge)

This is in the starting line pointing back.  The runners went for about 500 meters or more.

There are firsts of many things each week.  This last week was our first running race in Shanghai.  Both tai tai and I hope to run more races in the future but this was quite the experience.  The best way to describe it was like running through a crowded subway or airport since you are about to miss your plane.  The race was like this because the organizers didn't place the runners in order of their expected finishing time.  This wouldn't have been so bad if all the racers were running but many were not in the race to run, they were there to walk.  So the speed demons, not me in that group, were 1,000 people back in the pack and there were 4-5 wide walkers crowding their way.

This was looking to the front.  The starting 300 meters was up over a bridge.
It was the only incline in the whole race.
It took about 0.5 km to get going and start the serious dodging.

Other than that, the race was well organized for 6,500 people.  They had music, some energetic aerobics instructors leading stretching before the gun and the race course was nicely laid out.  The distance was 3.5 miles or 5-point-something kilometers.  Only companies were allowed to register so we had about 15 runners on our JV team.  GE, GM, JP Morgan, Eaton and many others were represented quite well.

Some guys I ran with.  

This was after the race.  We were given a nice shirt, some water and gatorade.
It was a gorgeous day for the race.