Christmas wrap up

The elves have been working quickly, quickly. Actually I've been really ill for the past week, so when Christmas came up on us, we rested some more. We had our usual saturday morning pancake breakfast, special with eggs AND bacon (wow). We each opened our one present.(We had other presents, but we opened the electric blanket and deodorant early out of necessity) I headed to the market for groceries (mad house) while Timon got his hair cut.

We had a few comrades over for a simple dinner; rotisserie chicken, garlic mash potatoes (土豆泥 literally "potato mud"), Jon's broccoli salad, curry made by his chef roomie, and apple pie for dessert (by the Smiths!) Jon's broccoli salad is amazing. He brings it to every potluck meal so we all look forward to it- crunchy raw broccoli, bacon, grapes, homemade mayo sauce, and sunflower seeds. We had so much we ate it for 3 days after Christmas!

Christmas isn't complete with some caroling- so Jon jumped on the guitar as we nibbled on toffee, peanut brittle, and caramels made and shipped over from his mom. Thanks Mrs. Osterman! Tastes like christmas!

Yeah, our kitchen was trashed after all the cooking. By the end of the night I hadn't even made my christmas presents yet. Happy new year!

thanks santa

Santa (shown in previous post) brought me a gift early- an electric blanket!!!! It is awesome. SO awesome.

We had our first snow this week, on wednesday.

Just one day of snow. That evening all was blanketed in white, minus the slippery roads. It didn't stick for the most part, the roads were just wet.

pre-christmas preparations

Can you hear those sleigh bells jingling, ring-ding dingaling....? We had a pre-christmas party last night to celebrate with our pals who are on their way to their motherlands. With busy weekends we opted to order in rotisserie chicken, sooo delicious. A friend made mulled wine and the Europeans shared the "st. Nicolas" stories they grew up.(Sinterklaas and Sint Nikolaas, who has an assistant named "Black Pete" The wikipedia pic is.. interesting)

Sometime after dinner Timon snuk into his Santa costume (leftover from his bachelor party-) and came out with a jolly HO HO HO and explained the 50rmb white elephant gift exchange. It was mass confusion. T and I didn't even KNOW about the gift exchange until that day (even though I was the one who sent the invites out) and so some gifts were rather nice (5o RMB gift certificate to marks and spencer) and nicer for others (size 5.5 gold shoes). Timon won the former, and I, the latter.

(Above stockings I made this week) One of the best gifts was the biggest. In a large cloth sack was a fancy moon cake gift box. (BTW moon cakes are sweet bean* pastries given during Oct. moon festival. *There are "pleasant" surprises also) This moon cake box was larger than a x-large pizza box, and when the lid was unhinged open, the interior is lined with faux silk and there's empty "spots" that the cakes usually fit into. In this gift, each "spot" was filled with some odd thing- angel bear night light, pack of displosable undies, bible trivia cards, Montreal steak seasoning, socks, and a framed image of an iris. On the outside of the moon cake box was taped a pg ripped form a magazine of a skiier. ("For christmas! You know, snow- christmas?" said the fellow who made it)

I had put in two gifts, we had one left over, which people answered bible trivia to get the last prize. (two christmas plates)

what a weekend! We ran out of forks and plates and had to recycle-wash mid party to continue the feast. woo!

xoxo

cooking mutations

Have Leftover scrambled (raw) eggs? Whip up a rice-crusted quiche. Was delicious, although the rice was chewy (I was impatiently hungry!)

Went for a very special ladies only night to M on the Bund for my friend's birthday! She is pictured in front of the dragon truck- she knows the cool spots, makes amazing food, and is one of the people who saved our lives in Sept!

Fast forward 1 week to today. Preparing for thanksgiving. We (15 of us) will be getting our turkey from the marriot, comes with potatoes and pies....so what to make?

I begin with the idea for cocktail shrimp, simmered in tangy spicy broth. Being pre-dinner and highly delusional I failed to realized how small the shrimps in my bag were. They ranged from small to teeny... so once I removed them from their zesty broth, I realized I had hardly anything to serve as an appetizer. (though delicous, I started at them for 20 minutes telling myself to "be creative" and figure what to do with them. [I just finished reading Paul Arden's "Its not how good you are, its how good you want to be" Where they talk about different interpretations of "Creative" p104, but I'll get into that later.

So after chatting with T, we though making into a spread/dip was the best way to salvage our thanksgiving contribution. Cream cheese, mayo, plus some of the broth lent to a greatgreatgreat spread!!! (We'll see what everyone thinks tomorrow)

hooray!

Ok, now rewind to Sunday. I wanted to end the post with this image, of our friend singing a solo with this church choir. Although he's trained to sing italian and french operas, we had the honor to hear him sing in Mandarin (At least one of us could understand). It was beautiful, they had a strings section (8 violins and one cello) and did about 15 songs, some with audience participation. I managed to pick up one song, because it was actually just one line sung over and over and over again. "zai Ye su li, wo men shi yi jia" It was a big room, full of people robustly singing, and really magnificent to experience the energy and enthusiasm.

Some doodling

While T's away in the States, I had a productive weekend preparing for winter, cooking, and some water coloring with carrots. (Little Lotta jansdotter inspiration!) I nearly burnt my biscotti's trying to get Glee to load while doing yoga. (Because being productive means doing lots of things at once, har har)

I also managed to call a shop and see if they sold screen printing ink, in CHINESE. This is BIG. She understood me until I said, "AWESOME!!!" They sell ink by the half kilogram- converting everything saps my brain energy.

T has been having a great time visiting people, eating donuts and other american goodies! He's now in Atlanta for a conference.

T and his boss were written up in one of China's news websites. The doll their holding is the Sina mascot. Very cool.

winter is here

its freezing!!!!!!

More expo

France


India: the biggest bamboo dome in the world. It had a 3D projection animation that we couldn't figure out. (how it worked and what it was about. All in chinese)


Morocco: Beautiful handcarved border lined each of the three stories of this pavillion. There were palm trees in the center courtyard reaching to the ceiling and fake sky. On the second level was the "Marketplace" where they had small rooms to peer into of their crafts: shoes, ceramics, spices, carving and a respective film in each showing how it was done.


"Welcome in the Nederlands!" is what the sign said. This was my favorite pavillion (and second time going!) brightly colored houses cantilevered along a elevated spiraling walkway. Each with a different exhibit and description (in english too!!)


This was the beginning wall in the Polish pavillion.

World Expo post!

After my third time at the Expo, its about time for a post of photos! from Thursday evening. I got off work and traded two daytime passes for 4 night time passes for my three design buddies who came to visit. Evening is the best time to see the expo because the crowds get tired and go home and the pavilions are lite up beautifully.

Quick rundown of the evening:
-Poland
-Morocco
-India
-Nederlands

Germany had shut down, and Japan and UAE were both packed to the rim. Saudi Arabia's line was so long it basically wrapped around India's pavillion.





Inside Poland. Lots of intricate "paper cut" style walls, backlit, and we sat and watched a very odd film. A family was cracking walnuts around their kitchen table, when suddenly a crowd comes in with flutes of champagne and everyone began to waltz to the next room.


German pavilion side view. We didn't get to go in. long line!


Melee at Nederlands stamping station. There were two rubber stamps strapped to tables and people were frantically trying to get their expo(or real) passports stamped. Including my two buddies you see in the center (White guy and fellow in glasses to the left). At one point my glasses friend yelled "CRAZY WHITE MAN COMING THROUGH!!" in which everyone stopped for 1 second before continuing in chaos. I couldn't even see them, and took this photo on my extender arm to find out!


German and Chinese working together sample bamboo house. Really cool, but we missed it.


whew! tiresome day.

more visitors

Fellow americans-living-in-China came to visit us in Shanghai, and we went to Sheshan for the afternoon to hike and explore. We visited the Basilica of Sheshan on the top of a small mountain (they building cement steps all the way to the top) and also visited a bamboo amusement park- a series of obstacle courses built on a hill between bamboo forests, plus monkeys, archery range, and giant maze. Very cool.





Design pals in shanghai!!!

weekend

Saturday mornings mean pancakes.Pancakes with blueberry topping, whipped creme, on our new closed balcony! Closed balcony, is basically putting windows around a normal balcony- keeps out bugs and our laundry from flying away.



This is our new place:



It was China national day, so we naturally celebrated the way American celebrate any other holiday: playing football!

Guys played tackle and girls played powder puff (two hand touch) We both very sore.



Meanwhilist we are still organizing and setting up home- books, papers, etc. This bamboo cabinet I spotted at a antique shop, and thought it was very cool.

We rested.

NY to Shanghai, packed up our apt and 4 hours later flew to HK to renew our visas.

Trip to america!

Central park, on my way to Cooper Hewitt Design museum


Times square- interactive billboard. I'm the one with my arm raised, next to my friend in a red shirt.


Visiting the Liberty Bell with Denise and Grace in Philadelphia

New York

walked thru central park,

went to cooper-hewitt museum,

listened to a talk by Jeff Hollander on his new book: The Responsibility Revolution: How the Next Generation of Businesses Will Win.

ate pizza and berry dessert,

happy button

I found this remote at our workshop where product samples (that I design) are made. It goes to the air conditioner... I think.

Hangzhou

We went for a 1.5 day weekend trip to Hangzhou, 1.5 hrs outside the city by train. Itt was wonderful!

BBQ!

I won't even show the photo of the george foreman burgers compared to T's bbq'd ones. They can't even compare! A friend of ours graciously gave us his old BBQ as someone gave him theirs. We bought charcoal and scrounged for newspaper(which we don't read) to start it up. T did a great job and it was wonderful! A few of our friends helped us make the shrimp/bellpepper kabobs for the grill.

it Smells like summer!

T's birthday

T turned 30 last weekend, and we had a simple dinner + dessert party with some friends. We began at BECA resturant, and then headed back to the apartment. I made a coconut banana cake with whole Blueberry and whip cream filling! It was something I had never done before but turned out wonderful- tangy juicy blueberries and sweet moist cake. The banana was hardly noticeable. I didn't want to pay $10 for food coloring at the import store, and so made letter flags to spell out T's name (which turned out a bit bigger than I imagined)



I also made little flags with T's face and birthday riddles to put in drinks, and hid all over the apt. (By the bathroom sink, in the entryway) So people got a kick out of that. SOmeone also pointed out, if you spin the flag really fast, T looks like Mr. Bean!



Below were the invites as well as beer "labels" for the 20 beer steins we ordered. We tied the "labels" on with ribbon, and guests took them home as souvenirs.



[T and I went on a wild goose chase looking for root "beer" in the city] The phone conversation went like this:
T: Hello, (grocery shop) I'm looking for root beer.
clerk: Ok, I will go look.
T: By the way, its not a beer. I has no alchohol. Its sweet like soda pop.
Clerk: Root beer?
T: A and W? Henry Weinhertz?
Clerk: Sorry, we haven't carried it since 2007. (not true!)

This conversation repeated 4 or 5 times, til we decided it best to go in person and look for ourselves.

Then there was the discussion whethere "Creamy root beer" (By Hansen's) was root beer. What do you think?

timon

blessings at the bus stop

Isn't it annyoing when you are 1 block from the bus stop, and suddenly see your bus take off? You begin to run but stop when you realize there's not way you'll catch it. And its 30 minutes until the next bus comes. And your already late for work.

As this happened to me, I went to another bus stop to try to figure out if another bus went to my office, by matching up the chinese characters on my business card to the characters on the 5 different bus lines (they list all 20+ stops). I was also struggling with the tiny font on my business card- my fault, of course.

The moment I realized this task was near-impossible, a chinese couple next to me said, "Zhe ge Chang de rd & Chang shou rd" (exactly where I wanted to go) and pointed to it on the Bus #13 list of stops. They walked away not even noticing me- an answer to a prayer that had not been said. I was amazed- totally a God watching over me moment. My bus came and I got to work!