China #7 -- Ron's

This is a picture of Ron's. Ron's is a store about a 10 minute walk from our friends' home. As you can see, the official name of the store isn't "Ron's". And if you guessed that someone named Ron ever owned the store, you would have guessed wrong. Ron lived in Changchun years ago and was the American who discovered this store that imported American food and gladly sells it to the Americans at a pretty hefty profit. The owner is actually an elderly Chinese man who they call "grandpa" in Chinese.

At this store you can find many of the American foods you miss from back home. And if they don't have it, they will try to special order it for you. But, as I said before, you pay an arm and a leg for anything imported. We must have looked pretty funny taking pictures in the store!

Our friends want their kids to like western food as well as eastern food so that they will eat well when they come back here to the states. So dinners at their home was usually western style food.

With Erin's allergy, packed a suitcase full of "safe" food for her. So we had a whole stash of American food ready to go. Most of what we ate was safe while we were there so we were able to leave a whole bunch of American food behind for our friends to enjoy (without having to spend a ton of money). We enjoyed giving that gift!

Meaningful Maps

Here is a website that I found to be very interesting, insightful and educating at the same time. It is describe as follows...

"We all know what the world looks like. But a new series of extraordinary maps shows our planet in a very different light. Rather than defining each country by size, these computer-generated modified maps - or cartograms - redraw the globe with each country's size proportionate to its strengths, or weaknesses, in a whole series of categories."

Categories showing at this site http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=439315&in_page_id=1811

include: alcohol consumption, HIV prevalence, housing costs, military spending, war and death, toy imports and exports, and wealth of nations.

What a great learning tool! It puts the world in perspective.

This is an illustration of the map of HIV prevalence:

China Trip #6 -- A Moment Please

Someone asked me yesterday what one of my most memorable moments was for the summer. Tianamen Square quickly came to mind for me. There were many other more exciting sights for us. After all, how exciting can a slab of concrete be? But there was something moving for me being at Tianamen Square. Knowing that this relatively small patch of ground, with Mao's huge picture over the doorway of the Forbidden City on one end and his mausoleum on the other and powerful government buildings on either side, is the place where revolutions start and end and where powers rise and fall was a pretty awesome thing. I couldn't help but wonder what changes might be brought about in the future starting at this place. I insisted that my kids pose for this picture and told them that someday they will have evidence that they were here.



This is one of the government buildings on the side of the square. The sign in the middle is the countdown clock for the 2008 Olympics. They will be starting on 8/8/08 at 8:08 since 8 is considered to be a lucky number.


On either side of this view of the "Maosaleum" are these impressive statues commemorating the communist revolution. People wait in line for hours to get in to view Mao's body but the building was closed for renovations while we were there. I'm okay with that. I doubt we would have waited in line anyways. Mao is still revered by most people as a hero to his country (never mind the fact that millions of people lost their lives as his command). I was tempted to buy a watch that had Mao's hand waving, but I just couldn't get myself to consider wearing the image of a ruthless leader on my wrist. There really wasn't anything "cute" about it when I thought about it more.












So, Tianamen Square may not have been the most exciting location, but it was powerful and meaningful and I'm very thankful to have been there.

China Trip #5 -- Fame

On one of our trips we became celebrities at lunch. We picked up KFC for lunch (which is the most popular fast food in China...there are KFCs like McDonalds here). There were so many people we took it to go and looked for a place to sit down and eat. Not far away there was a nice little park on the inside of a round-about. We all found a napkin or a bag to sit on (you don't want to sit directly on the grass) and began our lunch.

As usual, we were the subject of many people's stares as they either walked or drove by. One young man and his girlfriend were especially brave and just came and sat down with us. He proceeded to take pictures of the whole group and then wanted pictures with each of us standing with him. I insisted that if he could take my picture, I could take his picture too.

Little did he know that he was going to end up on a blog a few thousand miles away! Of course, I don't know what he did with my picture either. Hmmm...

Notice Erin's bottle of pop. We never drank the water in China. But everywhere we went were little stores or corner carts selling cold drinks. A bottle of water for 1 quay (12 cents) or Pepsi products for 3 quay. (Coke was a rare and precious find.) It was hot our whole trip and it was a rare time that you would see us not carrying something to drink with us.

China #4 -- The Hike

My friend and I took the overnight train south to a small city set in the rolling hills about 30 miles from the North Korean boarder. We just spent the day there and took the overnight train back again that night. It was great to see trees and nature again after being in the heart of the city for a while! I enjoyed a little peace and quiet away from the masses of people.

In the afternoon we took a hike up a pretty steep hill to look over the town below from the peak. I was surprised at my encounters on the hike. They included...

A group of college age students who were singing as they hiked and were thrilled to practice their English on some Americans.











A bug that was bigger than I had wished it would be.











A man and his cow making his way over the hill to I don't know where. It was long hike anywhere!











And a number of grave stones scattered randomly on the hillside many with food left there for the dead.

China #3 -- Home

In China people don't live in single family dwellings with a nice little yard with a fence around it. Instead, everyone in the city lives in these "apartment" buildings usually in a u-shape with a parking lot like this in the middle. Most of the buildings are 7 stories tall because an elevator would be required if they were any taller. So, any time you want to go outside, it is a hike down the stairs and back up.

Our friends lived on the 4th floor, so we only got half the exercise we could have gotten. They had bars over all of their windows which I never quite understood being four floors up.

There was one yard that I saw in the city we were staying in. It had an iron fence all around it with no gate that I could see. So no one was allowed to touch the grass. The little strips of green you see below are kind of weedy trees/bushes on one side of the parking lot. Beneath those trees people have planted little tiny gardens often with scraps of broken pots around them to mark their territory.

Living in buildings like this (and they go on for miles) makes me understand why the park was always so busy. it is the one place to get away and enjoy a little bit of nature.

Happy Left-Handers Day Today!

I'm not left handed but wish a very merry Left-Handers Day to all of you who are. Some interesting (or not so interesting) facts about left handed people in honor of them today...


1. 4 of the 5 original designers of the Macintosh computer were left-handed
2. 1 in 4 Apollo astronauts were left-handed - 250% more than the normal level.
3. Most left-handers draw figures facing to the right.
4. There is a high tendency in twins for one to be left-handed
5. Stuttering and dyslexia occur more often in left-handers (particularly if they are forced to change their writing hand as a child, like King of England George VI).
6. Left-handers adjust more readily to seeing underwater.
7. Left-handers excel particularly in tennis, baseball, swimming and fencing
8. Left-handers usually reach puberty 4 to 5 months after right-handers

So, how exactly do they figure out things like #6, and who really cares?

China Trip #2 -- Amusement

Behind their building and across a busy street is a pretty good sized lake with a park around it. Our first afternoon included a walk to the park. Although we didn't do it, you can rent a paddle boat or a row boat and spend your afternoon on the water. This lake provided a little bit of a cool breeze on the hot days we had in China.

What we couldn't avoid, however, were the amusement rides at the park. For 10 quay (about $1.25) you could ride one of the rides. My guess is that almost all of these rides would have been condemned in the US, so it was a little nerve wracking. Everyone except Brant and me rode the airplanes and landed safely. All of us then rode the bumper cars. They were not made for anyone over 5 feet tall so for us adults it was a rather painful experience on our knees. That was the limit of our amusement there.

There were various old arcade games all around as we walked. Erin noticed that one of them played the song "Go to Sleep" as it's theme song. Not quite what I would choose for my arcade attraction!

The challenge for this whole walk was...who was going to get to hold Erin's hand! There were three young boys who all wanted to walk with Erin, but Erin only had two hands (we didn't plan that too well). For this walk the found a way to make it work. For the rest of the time Peter was Erin's shadow EVERYWHERE she went.

We made it back to ride the rides one more time before our trip was over, but more than once we would walk in the park. Since no one has their own yards, it was a very popular and very busy place. And once again, our little troop of fair-skinned, blond-haired children simply added to the amusement of the park!

China Trip #1 -- The Flight

Okay. I've got a new camera and have been able to load our pictures from our trip to China onto our computer. So, I'll start putting some pictures up...



Our flights went wonderfully well. We left from GR and went to O'Hare. From there we went a little over 14 hours to Tokyo. A friend from church had given us a portable DVD player for the trip which was very useful (since the movies on the little screens in front of each seat weren't really worth watching. The kids slept almost none of this trip (so the parents slept very little as well). That actually worked out very well. After 3.5 hour flight to Beijing (on which Erin got sick partly from exhaustion and partly from the very smelly seafood dinner that was served) we were met by the van from the Airport Garden Hotel and arrived in our rooms a little after 9:00 pm exhausted. So we fell right to sleep and got on China time. We did need two rooms for the four of us since the beds are so small. (We also didn't let our feet touch the carpet since it had been a LONG time since it had been cleaned!)

The next morning we took the shuttle right back to the airport for our flight to Changchun. We had to make our way through the airport by pictures since we were no longer in the international wing of the airport and nothing was in English any more.

We immediately experienced something we were warned about. In China, people don't wait in lines. It is a mass of pushing and sliding into any open space available. If you leave any distance between yourself and the person in front of you in any line people will simply slide in front of you. We were bused out to our plane on the tarmac and when the bus doors opened it was mad dash to the stairs for the plane. It was all we could do to keep our children with one of us. It's hard for me to explain why the rush since all of us had assigned seats on the plane. Once on, without any verbal communication at all, a business man moved seats with me so that Stacey and the kids could sit in a row of three (which was important since Air China still serves peanuts. That made a nice safety zone for Erin).

That hour-long flight brought us to Changchun where we were met by our friends and their 4 boys. And there began the circus...four Caucasians with 6 kids (very unusual with the one child law in China). Everywhere we went we were the center of attention. It was very nice to be on the ground for the 40 minute taxi ride to their home.

My Softball Season

My softball season ended tonight. I play on Ivanrest's Monday night team and we had a horrible season. We won just one game (and that was when I was gone...coincidence?). But that's okay. Because the whole season is really preseason to tonight's game: the annual Ivanrest vs. Ivanrest game when we play the Thursday night team. This game is really all that matters.

So, I'm at shortstop with 2 outs and one on in the third. A line drive is hit to my right...I stretch out...and drop it. The next guy hits a 3-run homer.

Fast forward to the last inning. Tie game. They have a man on first and no one out. Ground ball to my left...perfect double play ball. It goes off my glove and the runner gets to third. Next guy singles...game over.

I think I'm glad the season is over...

Now if the Tigers can just start winning!

Play the Name Game

Here is a name game to bring back all of those sad junior high moments in your life. Link here to http://www.babynamer.com/ and enter your own name. Then click on the bottom left option labelled "drawbacks". There it will give you all of the cruel nicknames associated with your name that were great fodder for your "friends" in junior high or your big brothers or sisters. How many of them have you had to endure in your lifetime? I can claim "Tony Baloney", "Tony Spomoni" and "Tony the Tiger" but not many other ones. (Although I found "Cal-Tony" as in "calzone" to be rather humorous.)

I was proud to discover that one of my children's names had no drawbacks to it!