Mirrors make the best playmates.

Dress-up.

DJ went into her room one morning to play and soon came back out with her winter hat and coat like she was ready to go somewhere.

This is one of the girls that works in the office at Ivy. She came with another of the office girls for our monthly apartment inspection.

This is another time when DJ was helping with the laundry by bringing Suzanne her yellow shorts.

I had some new clothes for DJ made out of some of the material I had left-over from when I had my suits made. There are two sets, one blue and one red. They tailored them after a shirt and some pants DJ is already wearing. The shirts turned out to be too tight but the pants are a good fit.

This is a new shirt I had made with some of the left-over material from the suits I had made. I also had a red one made.

It turns out that DJ loves eating tomato, cucumber and onion salad.

Beautiful afternoon.

Suzanne bought a new guitar for the equal amount of $15US. She plans on taking guitar lessons.

This little boy was just outside when we were leaving to go for a walk down by the river.

DJ ran right up to him.

He was very fascinated by her too.

The corner store put these in last month.

Down by the river looking East.

This is the biggest boat we have seen on the river here.

It came just by us and then started doing all kinds of fancy moves.

This is a newer section of the boardwalk.

These are the tall apartment buildings just behind ours.

It was a great afternoon along the river.

This area is so new that the grass hasn't even grown out yet.

This lot is on the way out of our apartment area going to the main street. There was an empty building here two weeks ago. They tore it down and seperated out the metal, brick, and concrete to recycle all of it into the new building they are starting. This time next year there will probably be a 30 story apartment building here.

DJ was playing with Suzanne on the couch when she ran out of energy and decided to take a nap instead.

Mid May update.

She really likes spaghetti.

Here comes the spaghetti monster.

Dirty face and still cute.

Mom's shoes fit.

A cool rainy day on the couch.

Trying to stay warm while doing school work on the computer.

A balloon mom and dad brought home for DJ.

They really do love each other.

A new kite I can try this summer.

The girl on the left is Roxanne and is the newest teacher at Ivy. She is from Scotland and dual citizen of South Africa. The girl on the right is Sarah and will soon be ending her contract with Ivy. Sarah will stay in China and go to school at the local university and has plans to marry her Chinese boyfriend and settle down in China.

Roxanne will be taking some of my classes at #5 middle school and I will be taking on some new classes at #2 high school while also getting two days a week off except for one Ivy class in the evenings. This will be the first time since I started with Ivy that I have not had to work seven days every week.

This is Sarah's future husband. He drives a taxi. He doesn't speak very much English so it is a good thing Sarah is very good with Chinese.

Sarah invited us to dinner with some of her boyfriends friends to help them celebrate his Chinese birthday.

He liked her but she didn't know what to think of him.

This is the boss of Sarah's boyfriend.

The future happy couple.

In memory of a son, brother, husband and father, TIM PARKER.

Some things in life are easy, like making the decision to marry the woman of your dreams. Some things are perceived as difficult, such as a father taking care of his only baby girl. Both of these things are life changing and help define a man's character. Any man can say he loves a woman, but to show that love,  loyality and caring to that woman by marrying her is a blessing for both the husband and wife. It is also a wonderful thing to be married to your best friend. When two such people have a baby, the baby is a product of pure love and will grow up to be someone special.

Tim Parker was and forever will be Kathy and Johnny's son, Debora's brother, Tina's husband and Kimberly's father.  I am proud to say that  I knew him as an honorable man. He never faultered in thinking of his wife and daughter. He provided for his family in every way he could. He tried to spend as much time with them as possible. He was a very good father and roll model for his baby. I know she loved him and he loved her as much as any father loves a daughter.

It is never easy when someone in your family that you were close to, like a brother, dies. It is even harder when it happens suddenly. Living on the other side of the world and being unable to go home for the funeral and pay your respects is about as hard as it gets. Debora wrote the follow, to be read at her brothers funeral.

Friends and family, this is really an unexpected loss.

Being Tim's sister, we did not get along all the time, but we loved each other very much though. I also know that he loved his dad, Johnny, our mom, Kathy, his wife Tina and his daughter Kimberly very much also. He may not have had a lot of time with his daughter, but you better know he made it count. She loved him dearly.

When I told Timmy that I was going to move to China, he said ok and then later on he said that he would always love me regardless of where I was. I always knew that I could call and talk to him about anything. Even if he did not have an opinion, he would listen.

He was a great son, brother, husband, and father. He loved his family very much. I know that he was very proud of Kim. I am sorry that Kim lost her dad when she was so young, there are so many things about trucks that she may never know now.

Tina, you may feel like you are alone, and that nobody cares, but you will always have so many people that knew and loved Tim around, that you should not ever feel unloved.

We love and miss you Timmy. Glad you are not in pain anymore though little brother.

I hope that heaven has plenty of truck shows for you now, and that you can drive as fast as you want to.

We love you.

Deb, Carl, Susan and DJ.

Play date for Suzanne and DJ.

This is Deb's friend Leann from the tuesday meetings.

This is Cindy and Alice. They are 'sisters'. They are probably just cousins. Because of the one child policy, many kids will call their cousin, brother or sister. Alice is Leann's daughter.

Cindy and Alice do not speak much English but I think they could all be good friends.

Leann is holding D.J. and the other woman is Kim with her little boy named Mike. Mike is about two months older than D.J.

D.J. was more interested with our guest than eating.

I fixed western omelets and toast for dinner. They had never had omelets before. Mike loved his so much that I had to fix him another.

Suanne didn't want omelets, so she had left-over cheesy pasta.

D.J. really took to Leann.

Mike was a little scared by everything new at first, but soon settled down.

Mike and D.J. were not quite sure what to make of each other.

You can see here that Mike is as tall sitting as D.J. is standing.

Kim was trying to get them to hug and he wanted nothing to do with it.

D.J. liked Alice too and was blowing her kisses during dinner.

D.J. even let Kim hold her for a picture.

Mike really liked D.J.'s singing, dancing goose.

Mike was even starting to make friends with Suzanne before they had to leave.

Suzanne was so good with him.

Mike was also starting to make friends with Spot.

I think if they had more time, they would have played for hours. Maybe next time.

He didn't want to go.

We gave him this little truck of D.J.'s. He seemed to like it and she didn't play with it much.

Ladies day.

The ladies went out to play badminton while I stayed in and worked.

They also went shopping for some new shirts. $80us for a dozen new shirts each. Not cheap, but not bad.

DJ had an afternoon snack of ice cream and was watching and listening to CMT when she fell asleep.

Once around the block.

DJ, Deb and I took Spot for a walk around the block.

This is some construction down by the river that was started last year.

This is a faux light house that was put up during the winter.

If you go back to April 8th's post from last year, you will see these apartments under construction still. Now they are all finished and people are starting to move in.

This building wasn't even started last April and is almost finished.

This is the main building to a large factory. It was already here when we arrived last year. I like the clean marriage of modern and traditional architecture.

This walk around the block was 5.5Km and towards the end, Spot was a little tired.

May Day.

This year I nearly get five days off for May Day with only having to work one hour Tuesday evening. We went to the zoo on the first day. This was the first ride we tried after getting in. It's a good thing I took this picture before they got started. DJ doesn't like this ride. She also didn't care for the enclosed Ferris wheel.

We took DJ's stroller with us because some of the hills are a little steep. We knew she would get tired at some point, but she really liked walking around. She is better at going up steps than she is down.

The temperature was middle to upper 60's Fahrenheit with a strong wind from the ESE. DJ didn't care for the bell or the wind.

DJ got stares everywhere we went and several times we had to go around people to avoid stopping. Every time we stopped DJ was surrounded by a crowd.

This is some of the exercise equipment that can be found at several of the parks in the city.

Construction like this can be seen everywhere.

DJ loves her big sissy.

This is what happens at 7pm when you are twenty months old and have a very busy afternoon at the zoo.

On Sunday I took Suzanne to see 'Journey to the Center of the Earth' in 3D starring Brandon Frazier. It was all in Chinese of course, but we still had a good afternoon.

Early Easter.

Getting ready for Easter.

We did not celebrate Easter last year just after moving to China. It never even crossed our minds that we missed it since China is one of the few countries that doesn't recognize Easter even in a pagan form. I have been teaching my kids at the public school this week about the history of Easter. Most of them knew of Easter when I talked about easter eggs and the easter bunny. They showed interest when I showed them pictures of how different countries celebrate the pagan side of Easter. Some of the Chinese English teachers stay in the class while I am teaching and even translate for me so the kids have a better understanding of what I am talking about. I find it interesting they are translating when I am telling them about the secular part of Easter and the son of God, Jesus, dying on the cross and three days later rising from the grave. It just doesn't get any better than that. Here are some pics of a dinner we had with George, Connie and Joanna. They came over to eat and Joanna even decorated an egg for Easter.

Birthday for Zoe and Bancy.

Zoe and Bancy work together at Ivy, are room mates and have birthdays less than a week apart. We gave Zoe her birthday presents on Sunday and Bancy's birthday will be this next Saturday. We were going to take both of them out for dinner at a nice bar the Alexander's found and George told me about. Zoe got called back to work before we even got into the bar so we had a good time with Bancy.

So beautiful at 23.

Now this is the glamour shot.

A couple of small gifts.

Live music.

Beef and potato pizza. Not bad.

Here are some other photos we have taken.

Time to recharge.

Here are some of the mothers, grandmothers and aunts waiting on their kids to finish classes at Ivy.

Playing in big sister's room with her sunglasses.

At Ivy, sitting in George's chair, playing with his toys.

Decisions, decisions.

Get down on it.

Look what Deb and Suzanne found at the 2 rmb store. A cross with Jesus on it for just $0.15.

New hair look for the kids.

Destiny was complaining about her hair getting in her eyes.

Destiny's first hair cut.

Cutting her hair took away all her strength.

Susan's new hair.

Mostly black with a little purple somewhere.

This isn't really blonde as much as it is just bleached with a hint of green I think. She says they didn't have pink. It cost about $40 US.

The sisters playing a game in Susan's bed.

Forth day of the forth month of the solar calendar and Spring is coming.

DJ had a great time taking her new stroller for a ride.

DJ liked going for a walk in the park. It was her first time to walk on grass.

We went to a favorite restaurant of ours for lunch and DJ loved the noodles.

We ordered five dishes: beef noodles, boiled peanuts, beef rice, slices beef and curry potatoes with rice.

We even took Spot in the restaurant. We can take Spot into our local corner store or even some restaurants. Either people like Spot or they don't. There are other dogs and dog lovers in the city but most people don't have pets at all for various reasons.

The river is starting to thaw.

This is the park along the river. We can take Spot into restaurants but we can't take him here, unless we carry him through the park and down to the river.

This is a picture taken just outside a tire shop called V-Kool. The tire shop is at the first major corner between our apartment and Ivy. We pass by it just about every time we go to the river.

We were all tired after our long walk, even Spot.

Debora and I took DJ out again the next day to the underground and bought some new shoes for DJ that she loves and a couple pair of pants. Debora also picked up a new pair of shoes. I couldn't find any shoes for me that I liked that were in my size. I will have to keep looking.

More fun with some of the TA's.

We invited two of the TA's over for diner the other night and had a really good time visiting  and playing games. The one on the left is Bancy and I work with her at Ivy for three of my nine classes. She is roommates with the other girl, Zoe. Zoe works with me at the public school two days a week. They both live near where we do, so we will have to have them over more often. We had beef, rice and peppered country gravy and some fresh vegetables and fruit. They had never tried country gravy before. Just like in the states, we had salt and pepper sitting on the table for anyone to use. Chinese don't usually use these at the table; only in cooking. I have always cooked rice with salt in it but this was there first time for eating rice that was cooked that way. Bancy said she will have to try cooking it that way at home. We played Skip-Bo and then they borrowed several movies from our large collection. Zoe is very afraid of all animals and was very nervous around Spot. We did manage to get her to pet him but not with out her screaming, her heart racing and her breaking out into a serious sweat.

Check out DJ's new ride.

The is the 'Lexus' model of strollers. It cost about $40 U.S. We couldn't afford the best, but second best will do. She also has a potty, and a new red chair I will post pictures of later. The weather is starting to get above freezing during the day sometimes now, so Spring won't be too far away, even though we did just get a fresh 2-3 inches of snow Sunday. She has learned to walk just in time.

Of course, all this walking can be very tiring, as you can see from the first picture. Everyone over here that wants to get around the Chinese internet firewall must have a VPN, and right now most people are having trouble with their VPN's working because the Chinese have made their internet firewall harder to bypass with a VPN. Service comes and goes, so post may not be as frequent. Also, Suzanne is spending more time on the computer doing all her homeschooling over the internet now.

For those that have been following the earthquake in Japan; I have found what I think are some interesting facts. Since the modern scaling systme of measuring the size of earthquakes was started in 1900, the largest earthquake was a 9.5. None of the top 15 largest earthquakes were in California. Three were in Alaska and three were in China. The deadliest earthquake in history was in China in 1556 and killed 350,000. The list of the top ten deadliest earthquakes all have more than 200,000 deaths each.

Another part of what is happening in Japan is the nuclear reactors. Three Mile Island was 1,000 times less than Chernobyl and right now it looks as though the Japanese nuclear reactors may be headed for a close second behind Chernobyl. There are 55 reactors in Japan, providing about 20% of the power. There are 5 reactors in France, providing about 75% of the power. There are 13 reactors in China, providing almost 2% of the power. There are 104 reactors in the U.S., providing around 1/4 of the power. The reactors in Japan are using a containment system that was not used on Chernobyl. The U.S. also uses this same containment system. France uses one additional fail safe measure on there reactors that the U.S. decided was too costly.

Learning to walk can be so tiring.

DJ was still only walking while holding onto somebody or something last week. Now she is standing up, walking and even running on her own. She is just over 18 months. It is about time and I am sure she will make up for lost time. She really doesn't like having her shoes on. We are going to try and get her used to them since the heat will probably be turned off next week.

Back to public school.

 

Suzanne went downtown the other day and got her nails done, ears pierced and bought some glamour glasses.

I vy English school will have seven teachers this year; Scott is from California.

Scott, George, the Alexander family and the four of us had to go register for our new resident permits a few days ago. Like most government things anywhere, it was hurry-up and wait.

DJ was so tired one day that she couldn't finish her lunch before taking her nap. She is really getting a good work-out pushing that stool around. And with both hands busy holding things, she will now stand for a short time and take a few steps, without holding onto someone or something.

Lantern Festival

 

Mei treated the Alexander family, Connie and I to dinner tonight. This is the 15^th day of the first lunar month which means it is Lantern Festival and the last day of the Chinese New Year two week long celebrations. We had a very nice dinner of mostly different fish and vegetables because David is vegetarian. We went next door to TCBY for ice cream after dinner. It is still −16 ̊ C (3 ̊ F) outside but the TCBY was busier than I have seen them during the summer because of the festival. The restaurant and TCBY are next to the river and more than half the two million population of the city was at the river. Mei’s husband purchased a paper balloon for Tigh to send up. There was probably over 50 balloons in the sky that you could count before they went too high or too far and went out of sight. Normally there is room down by the river for kids to roller blade but there were so many people that you could hardly walk without just shuffling your feet. I didn’t take my ear muffs with me and my ears felt like they were on fire because they were so cold. I new we were close to where I lived so I said my goodbyes and started my way home. The road along the river was basically closed because of so many people. There must have been around 10% of the people that were coming or going at any given time. I walked past a restaurant that Deb and I had been too once and they were setting off a huge display of fireworks. I stopped just in front to take a short video and then proceeded home. I was reaching the end of my trip and warmth for my ears when I walked past the end of our building just as someone on the fifth or sixth floor decided to set off some firecrackers hanging from their window showering me with sparks and debris. The Chinese really do love their fireworks. I am headed out tomorrow to buy us a new laptop since this one is more than two years old and nearing the end of its life. I will save it and try to get it refurbished so Susan can have a laptop for college.