Recent Pictures and Video

Here are a few pictures from the last week. Dan's school had an open house, so the entire family attended. There was one point when Dan performed in a concert, but most of the event consisted of walking around and playing with all of the toys at the school. Naturally, the girls were a big hit there. Here is Etain, fresh off of tucking in a baby doll for the 20th time.

Here is a picture of Evelyn playing with one of Dan's teachers. She is responsible for greeting kids at the door when they come. All kids, upon entering the school, get a spritz of mouthwash, to keep bacteria from spreading. [It is pretty funny that the school does this, because it is very 'preventative'. China, otherwise, is not preventative at all;
no places, not even hospitals, have toilet paper or hand soap. One of our most frequent actions is washing the kids hands and faces.] However, this is one of the reasons Jane and I like this school, it is very clean and organized, Enough with the tangent...

Evelyn, hanging around (in her new skirt that Jane bought from a friend's 'child boutique').

Here is Dan hanging out with his friend Kevin, who, as I think I said before, is an American citizen (from Pennsylvania; he lives here 6-8 months out of the year). They both wore their jackets and ties, though they were not required. They are the two classiest kids in the class.

Here is Jane managing the three kids during the school concert. Doesn't she look so maternal...

Here are Jane and the kids with Kevin, his mother and his little sister Lilly. Two kids is very rare, because of the one child policy. I guess they get around it because of the fact that they are American, not Chinese (the one child policy has a lot of loopholes and technicalities).

Here are Etain and Evelyn taking a bath. We bought this bathtub as soon as we moved into our new place. The girls have now grown a bit too big to continue sharing. As a result, we bought another one, so each girl has their own. The other day, we filled both of them up, and when I walked in the bathroom to wash them, they were fighting with each other because they were both trying to fit into the same tub.

Lastly, here is a video of a typical night at our place. To us, it is entertaining on many different levels. Enjoy!

A morning at the park

Here are some pictures from our recent trip to the Pagoda Park here in town. It was a very nice day on the Saturday of our three day weekend. The entire family had basically just gotten better after a stomach bug, so we were all anxious to get out of the house. The kids have been waking up extremely early (between 5:30 and 6:00 a.m.) because China does not do daylight savings time. As a result, it is bright in the mornings, and the kids get up. Because of these early wakings-up, we headed out at about 8:00 a.m. To the right is a picture taken from when we got back from the park at 1:00 p.m. Everyone went down for a nap, but Dan resisted. I told him that he could go out on the porch and color. He was nice and quiet, and when I got up I found out why. It turns out he could resist no longer, and he finally realized that he did, in fact, need a nap, no matter where.
Pagoda Park has the large pagoda here in town. Here are Dan and Evelyn posing with the pagoda in the background (you can go in the pagoda for a fee, but I do not think you can go up it. Maybe we will do this some other time).

Here is a shot of Evelyn, posing for the camera, as she is keen to do nowadays.

Here is a shot of Etain, staring down a dog that a woman was carrying in her purse.

Etain enjoyed swinging on one of the tree branches that hung pretty low to the ground. Even though she enjoyed it, she was pretty nervous about falling. We had to take many pictures to get one of her enjoying herself; in all of the other pictures she had a face showing concern about falling (I was right there out of camera view to catch her if she did).

Here are all of the kids climbing together on one of the trees that consisted solely of vines. These trees were in a nice secluded part of the park, which meant that we got to play there for a while without having a huge crowd. Taking pictures were Jane and one other guy, who had a professional camera (He took probably 100 pictures or so). We climbed these trees for about 20 minutes until a security guard came over and told us it was not allowed. Dan has really been into climbing trees lately, and he had fun while it lasted.

Another very similar shot on the tree.

As is pretty typical of mornings in the park, many people go there to do their exercises. Here is a shot of Dan watching a guy doing his tai chi in the woods.

Here are the girls taking a stroller ride through the park (the double stroller has been a life-saver in China). Evelyn is really enjoying herself, as always. This picture was probably taken at about 11:00 a.m.; Etain's face shows that she was well overdue for a nap.

Here is a shot of Etain with a sticker on her face. She knew it was there and she would not let anyone take it off. It might just be me, but there are some pictures of Etain when she looks like relatives. I think in this shot she looks like her cousin Kayla, but she also looks like her other cousin Susan sometimes, whom she looks like in the picture at the top of the blog. (I had it in this spot but I accidentally erased it. In the picture, she is showing off the 'jelly' that she received in her Easter basket. Jelly is just like it sounds, a cross between Jello and jelly/jam. It is pretty gross.)

Well, I will add more pictures later (I am sorry for having a picture of a toilet being the first thing you see for so long). As is commonly heard among all of the non-Chinese here: Cheers!

Chinese Toilet

Here is a picture of a Chinese toilet. Though many places have "Western" toilets, there are still plenty of places that have only these types of squatting toilets. This picture was taken at a restaurant near our house, and it is a unisex bathroom. Without going into much detail, you use it by facing the wall, squatting, doing your business, then flushing.

It is an experience that we try to avoid as often as possible.

Xiaman

Hello all. Thanks to Udit, my 14 year old chemistry student, my computer is now better than ever. It is exciting, it feels like I have a brand new computer now. Here are a few pictures from our recent trip to Xiamen (pronounced shia-man). This picture to the right was placed in the blog out of order, it should be at the bottom. It needs little explanation; it is Dan with blue hair. I will explain later how that came about.

Jane and I had a five day weekend last weekend, Thursday through Monday. We decided to use that vacation to go to Xiamen, which is a coastal city south of Changzhou on the Taiwanese Strait. To get there, we had to do a lot of traveling. We started out after school taking a bus to the train station. We then took a train to Shanghai (it was a bullet train which took about 1 hour). Once we got to Shanghai, we ate dinner at Burger King, and we picked up a few doughnuts at Donut King (doughnuts are rare here, at least in the version that we expect in the U.S.). We then took a bus from the train station to Shanghai's Hongqiao airport (one of two). We then boarded our plane at 10:30 p.m. The plane was the first air trip in China that we took. It was very nice, there is a definite distinction between the types of travellers that take trains and planes. It was exactly like traveling by plane back home except thay continually served refreshments througout the trip. We arrived in Xiamen at about 11:45 p.m. (a pretty short flight). We then took a cab to our hotel, and we were all in bed by about 12:30 a.m. We woke up the next morning and ate at the hotel. Jane went down to the front desk to check into changing our room. We reserved a king sized bed, but when we got there we were given two twins (making it harder to sleep with the kids). She looked into getting it changed, and the hotel then said that we would have to pay twice as much (the old bait and switch). Fed up, she (and another customer who was also given this runaround) went out looking for a new place. She found another place down the street, which was cheaper, had bigger beds, a much larger room and a huge balcony, which was great because we ate many meals out there in the sun. We ended up moving there that morning, where we stayed for the rest of the trip. It worked out well, because the new place was right on a pedestrian walkway, whereas the other was on a busy street.

After getting settled in, Jane and Etain napped while Evelyn, Dan and I did some exploring. As I said, Xiamen is a coastal city, and it was a major port centuries ago. It is a small city by Chinese standards, with only 1.5 million residents. It is right on the sea, and it is easy to take a ferry to a small island named Gulang Yu, which we did twice. We decided on Xiamen because it had beaches, which we thought would be nice for the kids (and us). After picking it, we found out that Xiamen was named China's most livable city. We agree, as we liked it very much. Here are a few pictures of what Evelyn, Dan and I discovered on our walk. We found the coastline boardwalk, which was about 6 blocks from our hotel. In these pictures, the land that you can see in the background is Gulang Yu, the small island.

Here is Dan playing around with one of the many statues that lined the streets and the parks of Xiamen. The weather really cooperated with us. Just before we left, it was forecasted that the weather would be cool and rainy 4 out of the 5 days. Instead, it was very nice for all of the days, except for our last afternoon when it rained. We were pretty fortunate as far as the weather goes (I even had to buy a few short sleeve shirts, as I would have been too hot to wear my sweatshirt, the only thing I packed, each day).

Here is a picture from our hotel's balcony. Xiamen, like everywhere else in China, is very busy building. [This is a major reason as to how China has survived the economic recession; they keep building to keep people working and keep money moving around. However, they are still building while many places that are brand new are completely vacant. It seems very possible that all of the construction that has saved China may also be its downfall soon, because there are simply too many places that are completely empty (some places are giving free rent to businesses just to get someone in their place).

Here is another picture from our balcony, taken at a different angle showing how metropolitan our area was. This is the area to the left of our building (our original hotel was just up and to the right). Following this street to the right led to a pedestrian walkway. The walkway was this street, but no cars or motorcycles were allowed on it (very nice). As a result, it was lined with little shops and restaurants. It was a very pleasant six blocks in which to walk to get to the seaside boardwalk, ferry terminal and parks.

Here is another picture of Dan hanging out on a bronze statue. I have no idea what this specific statue signifies, but they are all over the place.

Here are the kids and I on the boardwalk. This one foot railing was all that separated the boardwalk from the strait. About a foot away from the other side of the railing was a twenty foot fall into the water. If you fell in, you would probably have to swim 1/3 mile or so to get back up (more likely a boat would come help you). Because of this we always had to have a close eye on the kids. As you can see in this picture, I have firmly clutched in my hand, to make sure it didn't fall over, my cup of coffee.

Here is a picture taken when we were on the ferry heading over to Gulang Yu; Yu is the Chinese word for island and Gulang means drum wave,hence the island got its name from the sound of the waves crashing on the shore. Gulang Yu is also calle d"Piano island" because China's most celebrated musicians come from here. To get on the ferry to go to the island was free, it cost a bit to board the ferry to leave though. (Jane and I thought this was backwards. The island is very nice, and it should cost to get on, not off. With the way they have it set up now, beggars can get on the island at no cost, beg in the nice spots and use some of the money made to get back off of the island. It would seem better to keep them off of the island by charging them in the first place, but this is just one of the many things that China does that makes perfect sense to them, no sense to us.) The ferry only took about 5 minutes to make it across the strait.

Here is another picture, this time looking at Xiamen from Gulong Yu. You can see that it is not a far journey to get from one to the other. The island is actually quite small, you could easily walk around the entire thing in a half-day.
Here is a shot of Etain enjoying the second beach that she has been to in China (remember that we went to Qingdao some months back, which also had very nice beaches).

Here are Dan and Evelyn on the same beach right off of the ferry. Way in the background is a large statue of a Chinese soldier at "Sunlight Rock". We headed that way later in the day, settling on another beach that was sandier with less rocks.

The kids were pretty happy playing in the sand, which gave Jane an opportunity to relax for a bit.

Here is Dan in a cool shot standing on a huge rock formation on the beach. The one large boulder is literally teetering on top of the other two, which it has done for probably a century or two.

Here are the girls playing in the sand. On this trip, they often dressed in similar outfits, which means that we had to answer if they were twins hundreds of times each day. The Chinese word for twin is Shangbaotai (usually pronounced Sahn-bowtie). Can you tell them apart?

While exploring the island we found this dude rocking out on his guitar. Whatever song he was singing sounded a bit like a peppier version of cumbaya.

Here, I think, is a Pulitzer Prize-worthy photo of Dan and Evelyn hanging around with one of the many statues. As I said, Gulong Yu is famous for music with a few famous music schools, you can actually hear the piano coming from windows around the island. I'm guessing here, but these kids may be singing.

Evelyn with a statue of a girl playing goalkeeper.

Etain with a statue of kids fighting for the soccer ball.

After a while walking around the island, we asked where the best beach was. Someone answered us, and we headed in that direction. The beach was nice, but it was pretty crowded. (Best of anything in China usually means where the most people go, which rarely fits in line with our definition of best of...). We, however, stayed at the beach for a while because the kids liked it. The same thing happened this time that happened when we went to the beach in Qingdao: a local boy pairs up with Dan and pals around with him. This was fine at first, but it started to get old. The boy in this picture was the boy I am talking about, and it appears that he was homeless (or very poor). This is not a problem, we are glad that he had a friend in Dan to play with. However, after a while, he started getting rough with Dan (they were playing swords with some sticks, but this kid was hitting a bit too hard). We told him to stop, but he didn't listen very well. He then came up by Jane and I and tracked sand all over our clothes and food. He then woke up a sleeping Etain (which is a huge no-no). He wouldn't take the hint (or the command) to go away. Guards even came around because it was obvious that he was bothering people. Eventually we had to get up and leave. We felt bad doing this, but in another way it is not our job to entertain locals. (We also feel bad telling people that our kids do not want to have their picture taken, but sometimes it has to be done; otherwise we would literally be posing for pictures ALL DAY.)

After we left that "good" beach we found another beach a bit further up. This beach that was "not as good" was actually great. There were very few people, and there was a small outside cafe where we ordered lunch, consisting of snails, eggs and tomato, soup, and vegetables. We all ate and then Jane and I sat around and had a few beers while the kids played around. This beach would have been absolutely perfect, but it was getting late in the day and there was a pretty cool breeze running across the sea. Otherwise, we had a good time there.

Here are the kids wearing their sunglasses which we bought on our way off of the island.

Here are the kids and I in front of a Catholic Church on the island. While we were walking around in this spot, we saw about a half dozen couples dressed in tuxes and wedding dresses, taking their wedding photos (this is done before the wedding, not on the day of the wedding as in the U.S.) .

Here are Jane and the kids getting ready to head back down to the ferry to return to the mainland.

On the pedestrian walkway was a small coffee stand that sold many different types of coffees, smoothies and juices. Jane was a big fan of it. Oddly, it was only open in the afternoons. If it was opened earlier, it surely would have been a hit (at least with us, we had to get our morning coffees from Kentucky Fried Chicken). Here is Dan sitting tiredly at the coffee stand. For those readers that know him, I think Dan looks oddly like Kanye West in this photo.

Here is a shot of Dan eyeing the pedestrian walkway. Our hotel was all the way down on the left. Many people commented that his haircut looked very cool, and he was often told that he looked like "the soccer star David Beckham." There are hair salons everywhere in China, and the people that work in them, and who hang out in front of them, really liked his 'do'.

We went out one night searching for a cheap dinner (cheap dinners, we think, are often the best). We went down a small street and came across a guy making a local specialty, peanut rollups. It basically was shaved peanut brittle, with a leaf of cilantro in a rice tortilla. Here is the treat that Jane especially enjoyed.

Here is the chef and the monstrous block of peanuts that he shaved off a bit at a time.

Here we are in front of a small concert: a guy playing the electric Chinese flute.

Here is another shot of the kids sporting their specs; I think Etain looks especially funny.

When we woke up for our second full day, we decided to head out to the Xiaman Zoo, because they had just recieved a new Giant Panda. Jane had read how great it was there, that the Panda was saved from an injury and was moved to this zoo where he lived the life of luxury. We took a bus to the zoo, which was about a 45 minute journey. It seemed like we kept going and going. When we got to the zoo, it was a bit depressing, which Jane feared based on a prior experience at a Chinese zoo fifteen years ago. It was small, relatively uninteresting and run down. Jane appropriately describes the Chinese as a culture of merchants, always trying to pawn something off on you. When we got to the zoo, it was all about trying to take pictures with birds, go on rides, etc.

Here is Etain, not too interested in the ostrich.

Here was the big attraction of the zoo, the animal show. At the beginning they took kids around for tiger rides. We saw one too many episodes of 'When Animals Attack" to let our kids in the cage.


Here is a picture of a tiger riding a small pony. While it was interesting to see, you kind of sit there thinking, "What the hell is going on here?"

Similarly, here is a goat on a tightrope with a spider monkey doing a handstand on its head. The whole thing was a bit depressing to see, the animals were not at all excited, and there was a lot of poking them with sticks to get them to do anything.

Here are Evelyn, Dan and I standing in front of the new Panda. His place was not nearly as lavish as we were expecting. The panda is in the back right, resting as some mice ate his food.

After seing Ling-Ling laze about, we decided to head back to town. We did not want to sit on the bus again, so we took a taxi. The taxi took a different route, and we made it home in about 15 minutes instead of 45. The day was mostly over, so we just decided to stroll up and down the boardwalk, which was actually very relaxing and enjoyable.

Here are the kids and I enjoying the nice day, the warmest that we had the entire trip.

Here is a shot of Jane eating a pineapple on a stick. They cut up the pineapples in a way here that I have never seen before. I am interested in seeing if it would work well back home.

We headed up and towards the end of the boardwalk, ending up finding the shipyards. It was neat to see, as many wares were being loaded on and off small ships. There were also people selling tons of fresh caught fish on the sidewalks. We like going places like this, because they are very non-touristy. The kids even seem to enjoy this stuff more.

Dan and Evelyn chilling out on the walk.

We had trouble deciding what we wanted for dinner that night. We were very hungry, but we did not want fast food or very expensive food. We decided on a small Burmese restaurant that Jane had noticed on an earlier walk, which turned out to be very good. We had Chicken Satay (peppry chicken sticks), lamb and mutton lettuce wraps (like PF Changs), sweet and sour chicken (which was like what you would get in Chinese restaurant back home--the first time we have seen it here), vegetable korma (an Indian dish) and a pineapple filled with rice, pineapple, shrimp and frog. Very tasty, I am hungry thinking about it.

Here are the girls on their way home for bed, a major attraction in a city full of attractions.

Here is a picture of a painting that hung in the hallway outside of our hotel room. Danny thought it was pretty funny, and it is very non-Chinese.

Here is Dan in front a turtle monument on the pedestrian walkway, taken the next morning.

That day we went back onto Gulang Yu. Here is Etain checking out the fresh catch of the day, which always includes plenty of tiny snails.

Here is Jane in front of a woman wrestling with a large fish. This statue symbolizes the strength of Xiaman women in providing for the family while men sit around and play Chinese checkers. I am joking, I have no idea what this statue is for.

Here is Dan in front of a tree that was comprised entirely of a bunch of small vines wrapped around each other. The beach is barely visible through the branches.

Again illustrating the musical theme of the island, here are the girls and Dan posing in front of a big guy playing his guitar. This statue was on the far side of the island where few people went. It was right next to a small beach, which we enjoyed for a while (for once, we were completely alone!).

Here are the girls showing off one of their favorite Chinese treats: suckers.

While on the island we stopped in a small restaurant for a bite to eat. It had about 6 small tables, and it served a set menu of fish, rice, soup and vegetables. The fish was fried whole, head and all. The kids loved them, but they were a pain to de-bone. I have one on my chopstick in the picture. Also in the picture is a hat I bought on the island. It is a fitted cap with the Anheuser Busch Eagle. It cost about $3. I dont think anyone on the island has any idea what it means, and I have no clue how it got there, but I really like it.

While we were eating, it began to rain. We were the only people in the entire island that were not carrying umbrellas. Despite the rain, a parade broke out during our meal. Here is a shot of Evelyn watching the procession.

We headed to our hotel room in the light rain, and took a family nap while it continued to pour outside. When we woke up, the rain had stopped. We decided to head out for a nice dinner, but again, we could not decide on what. There was a Pizza Hut up the street from us, which is actually fine dining here (you can get a steak and a glass of wine at Pizza Hut here). We chose against it though, and decided to just walk around and see what intrigued us. Here is a picture of Dan in front of a shop that sold chicken, the very fresh variety. This did not intrigue us.

We ended up making our way down a very small and very Chinese alley. Out front of shops were people selling their street food. One guy sold deep fried sweet potato slices, which are a favorite of the family. We snacked on a few of them until we came across a place that stir fried, grilled and fried vegetables and tofu. Everyone, but I, really likes tofu, so that is what they all had for dinner. I had one bite, and it actually was not that bad, but I still would never get it. Too often I walk by places that sell the famous local dish actually known as Stinky Tofu. It smells like a dirty diaper sitting in a moldy tennis shoe. Though this is just one of dozens of varieties of tofu in China, I can not get past this assimilation.

Here is the family ordering the better tofus that are available (they do not look or smell anything like stinky tofu). It is neat to find places like this one. To get to it, you literally had to walk up a dark and scary alley, which was about 3 feet wide. One each side were tons of small living spaces, shops and restaurants. You go there and think how do they ever make a profit, but I guess it is just seen as the local place to get what they need. The other thing to understand though is that this is where they live, where they work, where they spend almost every day of the year. If they do not make a huge profit, no big deal; they just eat the food they didn't sell. In places like these, there does not seem to be any thought of saving money for the future or to improve their situations. They just seem content with what they have.

As I was not interested in the tofu, I went out later that night after everyone else went to bed. I went to a small restaurant behind our hotel. My meal consisted of soup, rice with a peanut garnish, cabbage, duck and a pickled egg. It was great.

That turned out to be our last meal in Xiaman. We woke up the next morning at 6:00 a.m. and headed back for the airport. Here is a picture of Etain while in the airport lobby. She was acting cute, apparently out of self-preservation. She slept so horribly on this trip (waking up and crying throughout the night), that apparently she thought that she needed to turn on the cuteness factor to ensure that she did not get left behind.

Our cab from the airport took 30 minutes and cost 75 Yuan (about $11). Our cab to the airport, though, only took 15 minutes and cost 40 Yuan. As a result we got there a bit early. Luckily, right next to our boarding gate was a huge indoor playplace. Because it was so early, our kids had the run of the place for 20 minutes or so, while Jane and I enjoyed a game of ping-pong, before heading back to Shanghai.

Here are the sisters holding hands and heading towards the boarding gate.

Etain and I on the plane. I was pretty tired at this point; I slept on the hotel floor with one of my arms in Etain's crib, patting her the whole night so that she would not cry. We don't know what was wrong with her, because she is sleeping much better now. I think maybe she had a small earache, and she may have been cutting a few more teeth as well.

Our flight to Shanghai went well, and we arrived at about 11:00 a.m. We then took the bus to the train station. That was a pretty long ride, as the bus was packed and we had all of our luggage (I had to stand the whole time ensuring that the girls in the stoller and the bags did not flip over). Dan sat on Jane's lap while the girls slept the whole time. When we got to the train station, Jane went to get tickets, which should have been no problem, since there are trains from Shanghai to Changzhou going every 15 minutes or so. However, it was a 1 day national holiday, and there were a lot of travelers. As a result, the earliest tickets we could get were for three hours later. Not too big of a deal, but when you are carrying a bunch of luggage and you are in the biggest city in the world, coming off of four nights of not sleeping in your own bed, it seemed like a long time. To kill some of that time, we headed back to Burger King for lunch. We then went to a mall which was right there. When we got in there, we found out that it was an entire mall devoted to wedding dresses and cameras (5 floors). We walked around and the kids found a bunch of entertaining stuff. There were a lot of shops that were more costumey than elegant. Above Dan is sporting a wig from one such shop.

We also bought some purple nail polish, which Jane used to paint the girls nails. Another thing that was purchased was blue hair spray, which we used for Dan's mohawk, in the picture inappropriately put at the top of the blog.

We arrived home to find a kitchen full of sausage joudzas (dumplings) that Jiu Jie had made for us. Here are some of the joudzas (about 1/4 of them) after we steamed them. They taste great with soy, vinegar and la jao (spice). Evelyn likes to eat them, which she can do without problems, even though they contain wheat.

Here are a few more pictures out of order. These are the kids playing with more wigs while at the mall in Shanghai. I think Dan looks like a Thing from Dr. Suess's Cat in the Hat.

Here is another picture out of order (I am still getting use to the new setup of the computer). It is pretty self-explanitory, though: a picture of the O'Toole China Girls.

Well, that ends our trip to Xiaman, which we really enjoyed. Xiaman was a great city. (Its American sister city is Baltimore, by the way). We had a lot of fun there, and we could see it as a place for us to live in China if the opportunity ever arose. We are back to work now in Changzhou, though. Tomorrow is Easter Sunday, our one day off of work this break. Happy Easter to all, and to all a good night (or morning, where you are).