Just a few snippets from the past week. Easter Weekend Friday The weather has been great the last few days and everyone was back at work and school. Over the past many weeks, one or two of us have been sick and at home and I've been on fulltime nursing duty (when of course I was not the patient). So many trips to the doctor and so much medicine dispensed. Our personal pharmacy is pretty depleted. I pray we are done with all this illness business. Now that I can get back outside, I went on a big walk today. I [View Full Entry]

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Friday (3/27/09) Great Wall day! I had done some research and sought out advice and we agreed to go to Mutianyu -- a village with an entrance to the Great Wall--rather than a more popular but very crowded entrance. Mark had been to the other (Badaling) and said it was crowded, full of vendors all along the wall and just not as peaceful sounding as Mutianyu. Instead of buying a package tour, I just rented the car and hired a guide, and told the tour company we wanted to set our own agenda. The deal was I had a place I [View Full Entry]

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Beijing was wonderful. We had so many special experiences as a group, it's going to be hard to choose which ones to write about. But I'll try. I will have to do 2 posts to cover the 5 days we spent in Beijing. I liked Beijing. People were very nice to us, we met a lot of interesting people, and we had some fabulous weather--which always helps. Our last day it did snow a bit--just a few flakes. No big thing. It was actually fun to have that change of weather after some nice warm days all week. We had a [View Full Entry]

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Xi’an - Monday We left the apartment and hotel and arrived at the Pudong Airport early. It was nice not to be running to the gate for a change. The flight was good. We had a meal and again marveled at the difference from our domestic flights back home. The flight was about 2 and a half hours and they gave us a full meal. We didn’t have a plan for getting to the hotel other than we planned to find a taxi or van. I had read there were some shady taxis not affiliated with the airport that would offer [View Full Entry]

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I have to say that having Dad and Eileen visit us has been wonderful so far. We are having such fun showing them around and looking like we know what we're doing. So far, they seem fooled and quite impressed with our Mandarin and knowledge about all things traveling in China. The last days with Dad & Eileen in Shanghai were busy and full of fun. We were on the go almost the entire time. Saturday, Dad, Eileen and I went to the Shanghai Museum. The museum was free—one of the many Chinese museums with no entrance charge. We bought audio [View Full Entry]

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Finally the big day arrived. Our first visitors are in town. Dad and Eileen and their friend Tony all arrived from SFO on Thursday afternoon. I took the maglev super fast train to meet them and due to my super excited state, I arrived freakishly early and waited for about an hour. It was fine though. I sat and watched the arrival board while listening to NPR podcasts. And I was alone. So no kids whining about how boring waiting at the airport was. Good stuff. So they finally arrived and I was giddy with excitement. I offered them the choice [View Full Entry]

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I have been sick for a week. Really sick and really miserable and I have decided not to write a blog just about how sick and miserable I am because that will not really help me and I'm all about me. So this is a blog about what is funny about my being sick and voiceless in Shanghai. It's all I got. I have been home for a solid week. Mostly in bed. Besides being sick and miserable and coughing incessantly, I'm bored. I wake up every day hoping today is THE day I'll be better. Then I open my mouth [View Full Entry]

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Beyond the fun hotels and the swimming pool, we really did get out and see the sights quite a bit. Saturday, we set out to explore Kowloon. We walked from our hotel to a bird market we read about in the guide book. The walk took us about an hour and we spent time along the way exploring some street markets. These markets seemed to be on every spare stretch of sidewalk. Similar to Shanghai markets, there were vegetables, meats and fish for sale. We saw a lot more seafood at the HK markets and Mark got up close and personal [View Full Entry]

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Okay. Here's what happened next on our HK urban adventure. Fear not, culture lovers, the next and likely final installment about this trip will be about Hong Kong sights, sounds, people and of course FOOD. We wanted to get an early start on the day, but that didn't happen due to a late night on Thursday and a long stay at the hotel breakfast. We Slavens love a good breakfast buffet. Especially when it's part of our room rate. I used extreme restraint both days and did not partake in the dessert and chocolate fountain stations. I cannot say the same [View Full Entry]

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We spent Thursday afternoon through Sunday evening on our Hong Kong adventure. Of course it was an adventure because we didn't get there the conventional way and we came home as planned but it was a race to the gate, just barely made our flight, ending to the weekend. I can't really do this trip justice in 1 post, so I'm going to do it right and it will take a few entries. Back to the beginning. We pulled the kids out of school just a couple hours early to head to the Hongqiao Airport. This is the Midway of Shanghai [View Full Entry]

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