It's update time. We had a fun time celebrating Mark's birthday in Shanghai with a couple friends and Mark's brother, Matt. The celebration involved Nathan, Matt, Mark and Ray all taking turns on the restaurant's mechanical bull. Hilarious! After a western (and by western I mean cowboy western this time) dinner of steak and potatoes we went to a lounge/dessert place called Hof (house of flour!) and had a death by chocolate cake. Dangerously good. It's been wickedly hot--record high temps for Shanghai this past couple of weeks. We went to a museum to cool off on Sunday and by the [View Full Entry]

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Our second and final day in BJ, the kids and I went to the Beijing Zoo and Aquarium (fine but really hot). Matt did his own thing and went to the Forbidden City. The weather was much warmer and we spent a lot of our time ducking in and out of air conditioning. We saw a few animals but we were often the most popular exhibit. People were a bit more aggressive in Beijing as far as taking photos without asking and touching the kids. I get very protective and a little fierce when the kids say they don’t want to [View Full Entry]

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In Chinese, uncle is Shu shu if it's the father's brother. Shu shu (Uncle Matt, as he's known in the US) arrived after a very long flight that originated in California. We spent the first few days showing Matt our neighborhood, eating some classic Chinese dishes and also some classic Italian (when you have kids, and one kid has a birthday, and that kid isn't a fan of Chinese, you do Italian!). We've also wowed him with our culinary skills by whipping up some french toast, exotic fruit salad, and bacon. It's fun to see Shanghai, and China, through a visitor's [View Full Entry]

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Part 2 After the photo shoot with bits of Great Wall sightseeing, we went back to the car and headed out to the second stop, Long Qing Gorge. Matt found this scenic spot in one of his tour books. I had not heard of it, but after researching it a bit, it looked like a great choice. Lots of outdoor activities. We had our lunch at a local restaurant recommended by our driver after I told him we wanted to eat lunch. I made a rookie mistake of not asking the prices of the dishes. Our menu was in English, but [View Full Entry]

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We went back to the bamboo this weekend. I have stories to catch up on from the past couple weeks (including a visit from Uncle Matt and a trip to Beijing). However, this weekend's story is too good to be put on the shelf. Since Facebook is blocked in China, I'm unable to send updates via that medium, so I turned to my blog to feed my need to share. This story is about today, July 12, 2009. Mark turned 40 today. Happy birthday to Mark! We went to Moganshan for a quick getaway and to show Mark's brother, Matt the [View Full Entry]

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The last stop on our Phuket tour was the Marriott Resort and Spa. It's located north of the airport, and was our fanciest stop (save the best for last and all that jazz). While the brunch was by far the best buffet/brunch experience we've ever had, we all agreed that our first hotel, the Indigo Pearl, had a lot of pluses to make it the top stop of the three. The Marriott is massive and has beautiful grounds and the best beach of the three hotels. The sand was smooth and the beach was free of the washed up garbage that [View Full Entry]

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We traveled a bit south on Phuket Island and reached our second hotel, Laguna Beach Resort. It's an older hotel, but was well reviewed on Tripadvisor.com and I got also got the thumbs up from my Orbitz.com advisers (I used to work there and still tap the network for travel tips whenever possible!). As I mentioned in my previous post, we were looking forward to a hotel with more families and more kids. It's amazing how the priorities change when you travel with kids. I personally could have moved into the Indigo Pearl. It is heaven on earth. But the serenity [View Full Entry]

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Left Shanghai on Friday afternoon and of course saw teachers we knew from school at the Pudong Airport. Almost everyone we talked to in the last few weeks mentioned their escape plans. Shanghai in the summer is not too popular. Most teachers and expat families with one non-working spouse leave town. Usually the working spouse comes back to Shanghai while the rest of the family takes advantage of school break and leaves Shanghai for 5-6 weeks. Though we plan to be in Shanghai most of the summer, we did dash out of town the day after school got out. We were [View Full Entry]

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Almost all my shopping excursions in Shanghai start with some time at the computer. I hear about places, people give me addresses without cross streets or metro stops and so I usually need to figure out where the market of the day is. Today's market was the eyeglass market. I have heard stories about this place for months, and was even given the address and yet I still started off at Google to get my info straight. After recently losing my very expensive and perfectly good prescription sunglasses, this market seemed like the answer to my prayers. Cheap and fast and [View Full Entry]

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Just like back home, there is a wide range of ways families choose to celebrate the birthday of a child. Here in China, we have found that the range is a bit wider, and some of the parties we've been to have been a little beyond our ability. As it turns out, we had a fantastic and perfect party for our kids. It was representative of our entire year so far in Shanghai. We urged the kids to cooperate and have a joint birthday party. They very willingly agreed, and they invited just a few friends each. We had to keep [View Full Entry]

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