Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays everyone! We hope you are having a nice holiday season, wherever you are. We are enjoying our holiday break in Lijiang, Yunnan Province. We are surrounded by beautiful mountains and enjoying a taste of "tourist" China. In a few days we head to Kunming, the Eternal Spring City. I am looking forward to a little eternal spring after the freezing cold nights and mornings here in Lijiang! After Kunming we will head home and Santa will make a specially arranged New Years day visit to our house.

December has been an eventful month for us. We hosted our friend Ellie from Colorado for two weeks, including a short weekend trip to the Great Wall to show her the sights (Tim and Milan stayed home for that trip and enjoyed some boy time and the school staff holiday party). We did our best to show Ellie the sights in Beilun and Ningbo as well. Meanwhile, Tim has been busy interviewing for new teaching positions for next year via Skype! After interviews with 5 different schools, we accepted a position for next Fall with the Lincoln International School in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Tim will be teaching three levels of High School Chemistry. We are very excited for this new opportunity in the New Year! We will move to Buenos Aires in July.

That is all the news from us this month. Have a great holiday and a wonderful New Year!

Shanghai adventure

We had a fun-packed weekend of activities in Shanghai this past weekend, everything from dumplings, friends, crickets, cute fuzzy gerbils, a half-marathon, and a Little Person (other than Milan).

We started off Friday night picking up our good friend Ellie from the Shanghai airport - she is here for a two week visit to China! Hooray for visitors! Somehow she brought with her the most amazing perfect sunny warm weather in December! It was a great weekend to explore Shanghai.

Ellie with a Chinese Santa

See what I mean? Beautiful friends bring beautiful weather!

Saturday we celebrated my birthday with a wonderful American breakfast at Element Fresh and lunch/dinner at the amazing Shanghai dumpling restaurant Din Tai Fung. We were so busy stuffing our faces with good food, we forgot to take any pictures!

The next morning we were up bright and early to see Tim off at the starting line at the Shanghai Half Marathon!

Bring it on, Shanghai!

Tim starting the race

He finished in 1 hour 58 minutes - made it under 2 hours, which was his goal. Go Tim!!

While Tim sweated and ran with 22,000 friends through the streets of Shanghai, Milan, Ellie and I headed to the closest Starbucks and loaded up on sweet coffee and muffins for another yummy Shanghai breakfast. We knew that the finish line was going to be crowded and chaotic, so we decided to take a mini-trip to my new favorite place in Shanghai - the cricket and pet market! I have been trying to find time to go there for over a year. We finally found it after wandering around the neighborhood and asking at least half a dozen people for directions.

There were thousands of crickets for sale, each in an individual cage like this:

These are not your normal North American backyard crickets!

Apparently they are used for fighting matches in China, so there were many very serious cricket buyers shopping, bargaining, and examining crickets. It was fascinating. Of course, I wanted one to take home!

Shopping for crickets. Milan has a little toy that makes a cricket noise, holding it up to each cricket to see if they like it.

Green giants

We eventually bargained and took home one of the smaller green crickets - here I am with my new pet:

He will not have to fight other crickets in my care!

He must know that I am writing about him because he is chirping in my living room right now. It is a nice chirp, but he had to sleep in the kitchen cabinet with the kitchen door closed last night so he wouldn't be too annoying. Since I know everyone will ask, the lady who sold me the cricket said he eats soybeans and cooked rice. After a rocky ride home from Shanghai in my purse (he lost one antennae on the trip...oops), he chowed down a piece of a soybean and chirped his approval of his new cage.

Here he is in his new cage:

Our cricket who still does not have a name. Any suggestions?

If you don't like crickets, there is more at this market - something for everyone, really!

Birds

Cute fuzzy gerbils (this one is for you, Stimey!)

The most frustrated cat in Shanghai - surrounded by bird cages.

One last picture, here is Milan with his new friend who works at the hostel where we stayed:

The munchkin (on the left) and the dwarf

Hope you all had a great weekend!

Drosophila in the house

For the past month I have been consumed by a new hobby - raising fruit flies! No, not from the rotten fruit in my kitchen, although I have those too. I took on the task of rearing some Drosophila for Tim's Biology students to use in genetic experiments. Even though I haven't worked in the fruit fly lab for over 10 years, I thought it would be fun to share some of my bug skills.

Oh yes, I have skills.

I brought back supplies (fly food and tubes) from Carolina Biological in September, and was able to get wild type (red eyed) and white eyed fruit flies from two labs in Beijing. It was a little surprising how easy it was to get the flies - I wrote a couple emails, and two days later flies arrived in the mail. One of the researchers packed them in a box of dried mushrooms to disguise the tubes full of fly larvae from the postal service. Unfortunately he had no suggestions on how I might cook the mushrooms. Oh well.

Every few days for the past month I take care of my little pets, who live in a box in the study/guest room. We keep it nice and toasty in there so the flies stay happy. Tim likes to point out that it is the only room in the house where I turn the heat on, but we can put on sweaters! Or just stay in the study!

Here is my work space, at the computer desk:


And some fly tubes:


It has definitely been a learning curve to remember all of my fruit fly tricks from ages ago. And I discovered a whole new level of mommy-distraction trying to sort flies while Milan fights for my attention. Milan does get in on the fun; he can identify red eyed and white eyed flies and helps make their food tubes.

So today was the first fly lab at school and the 12 ninth grade students learned how to make food, put the flies to sleep, identify males and females, and do a genetic cross. If all goes well they'll have progeny in two weeks and will be able to figure out the genotype of their parent flies.

Hope you all had a happy and yummy Thanksgiving! We had a feast with the entire school staff at a friend's house last night, complete with two turkeys and all the trimmings. I am feeling very thankful for all of our wonderful friends here!

Chinese cooking revisited

In an effort to revive the Sarah/Fuchsia project, I planned a Chinese meal for last night. I brought back two Fuchsia Dunlop cookbooks in September, complete with chapters on ingredients and cooking technique and history. Too bad I don't have time to read all those chapters. The best I could do was find two recipes and try to find those ingredients at the market on Monday.

For the vegetable, I wanted to cook water spinach, 空心菜 kōng xīn cài, but after searching the entire market without any trace of this dark leafy green, I concluded it is not in season. Fuchsia doesn't mention that in the cookbooks, or if she does, I haven't read that chapter. I even asked some of the vegetable ladies and they said, no, not now. So I bought some of this:

I have no idea what is is, but it cooked up nicely in the wok with a little garlic and some oil. It was a little watery, I had to pour off a puddle of water in the wok after cooking. But pretty tasty.

The main dish was Dry Fried Beef Slivers from her Sichuan book Land of Plenty. Here is the recipe on-line. Unfortunately mine looked nothing like the steps photographed in that link. Mine involved fire. Big huge grease-fire flames. The result was not at all "succulent" but, as Tim described it, stir-fried beef jerky.

At least the vegetable wasn't a disaster. I will try again. Stay tuned for more.

I posted a bunch of new pictures on Flickr today: a trip to the zoo, a school field trip, and our recent bike ride.

The Zodiac Lives!

The day finally came: the day Milan can wear his Zodiac costume all day, the costume we have been working on for weeks! Today was fake-Halloween day! Since we are in China and there is no neighborhood trick-or-treating, this is as Halloween-y as we get around here. We started the celebration on Thursday by carving some pumpkins.


I only encouraged the vegetable sellers at the market when I bought these pumpkins this week - they still remember me from last October when I came and bought 4 pumpkins. Every week since then someone in the market has tried to sell me pumpkins. I will enjoy another year of pumpkin pushing, as the lady who loooooves pumpkins.

But back to more important things: The Zodiac costume! If you need some background reading on Zodiacs, please see my post last month on Milan's imaginary animal, a kind of antelope-like dinosaur that eats meat and is, of course, yellow with white spots. We found a yellow sweatshirt a couple weeks ago and that was the beginning of the Zodiac costume.

Milan at his classroom Halloween party

The white spots were stragegically placed to cover some printed pictures and words on the shirt. The pants are hand-dyed, thanks to the expert guidance of my fabric-dying friend and neighbor, Lauren. He actually has two pairs of yellow-dyed pants on, he loved them both so much he couldn't choose just one pair.

Milan informed me a few days ago that Zodiacs have pink tails.


Yesterday he tried to tell me that Zodiacs also have wings but I told him, no, Zodiacs do NOT have wings. Sorry. This costume is done! I am not adding wings!

I had to cover up a print on the front pocket so I decided to give people some clue about his costume. I couldn't help including a not-so-subtle allergy message:

One curious thing you should know about Zodiacs: when given an overload of sugar and then deprived of their usual mid-day nap, they are prone to narcolepsy, especially in the middle of school assemblies:

3:01pm Sorting candy before the school assembly

3:21pm completely zonked

Happy Halloween!
More pictures up on Flickr.

Room with a View

Just before the summer break in June we had to move to a new apartment. It was a pain, but we did it with the help of our friends whose apartment we moved into - they made it incredibly easy for us (thanks guys!). We were able to unpack everything and settle in before we left for the summer vacation.

I am finally getting used to the new place. Although it is the exact same layout as our last apartment, it is the mirror image, so not only are all of the rooms flipped, all the light switches are on the opposite side of the doors and the flow of washing dishes in the sink is backwards. But I am used to all that now and actually like this apartment more. We moved from the first floor to the sixth, so the added benefit is the view!

This was our view last year:

From the study window, during the one dusting of snow that we had in March

And here is our new view!

And this!

The neon lights of RT Mart (grocery store) in the distance

And this! We are right next door to Tim's school, and I can look into his classroom window if I stand in the bathtub:

The red buildings in the foreground are school. The white building on the left is where Milan's classroom is.

When I sit on the sofa or in the study I can see this view. Notice the two knobs on top of the highest peak - that's where we went on that bike ride in May, which makes it that much more satisfying.

And then there are days, like the last four days, that look like this:

Rain and fog

Good thing I have lots of pictures to remember what the mountains look like.

Mid-Autumn Visitors

It is Mid-Autumn Festival and National Holiday vacation time here in China. Which means perfect weather, fragrant flowers, and visitors from Colorado! Tim's mom, Carol, and her husband Joe made the trip to China, spending four days in Beijing and four days here in Beilun. They went on a tour of the major sights in Beijing, and we did our best to provide all the tour-guide services here in Ningbo-Beilun.

Carol, Fan Qin (statue), Tim, Sarah and Milan at the Tian Yi Pavillion

Every time I walk outside for the past two weeks this amazing fragrance fills my nose. Combined with the perfect cool weather, it has made a nice holiday week. (Sweet Osmanthus, 桂花 guìhuā, Osmanthus fragrans). We also discovered that this flower is in one of our favorite green teas - no wonder we love the smell so much!

In case you are considering a guided tour of the Ningbo area with the Sarah-Tim-Milan Tour Company (hint hint), here are some of the highlights you can expect:

We started with a trip to the local fruit and vegetable market and lunch at the noodle shop, followed by dinner at our favorite Sichuan restaurant. Most of the daily activities centered around food, where to eat, and when!

We made two trips into Ningbo, first to the Jiangbei Catholic Church (江北) in the Lao Waitan neighborhood, lunch at the Italian restaurant, and a stroll through the beautiful Tian Yi Pavillion Library and Gardens.

Tim, Milan, Carol and Joe at Tian Yi Pavillion

The second Ningbo day was to the Gu Luo shopping area (Pearls! Swords!) and lunch at the Lake House. We were excited to take them to all of our favorite places, finally have a chance to show off all the hard work we have done scoping out places in Beilun and Ningbo and using our Chinese! In-between Ningbo days we went to a Buddhist temple outside Beilun (Āyùwáng Temple 阿育王寺) and a visit to Milan's babysitter's house for an amazing dinner with her family.

Āyùwáng Temple Pagoda

Dinner at Milan's Ayi's house (Ayi is the lady sitting next to Tim at the back of the table)

We finished off the tour with a pot-luck dinner at our house with teacher friends from school. After a busy week of touring, walking, eating, and visiting, I'm sure Carol and Joe are relieved to get on the plane for 14 hours to relax! I hope we didn't wear them out too much, and I hope they had a nice visit to our little corner of China! Many more pictures on Flickr.

All about zodiacs

Zodiacs are yellow.
They have short white horns.
They have white spots, just like their horns.
They have no ears.
They have no toenails.
They sleep on pointy things.
They are allergic to water.

Does this sound like any animal you know?

Probably not, because Milan made up the zodiac this summer, sometime in July when we were in Colorado. The details about zodiacs and their characteristics have grown since then.

He has written the book on zodiacs, literally.

Illustration from the book "Zodiacs" by Milan

If you ask him what his favorite animal is, he will say "zodiacs and hyenas." He knows they are pretend. And he used to have a pet zodiac, but he gave it away to the zoo.

I am getting mentally prepared for the "I want to be a zodiac for Halloween" declaration coming up in the next month. Any costume ideas for a yellow, white-spotted, short-horned mythical creature?

You have to draw zodiacs on black paper so you can use a white crayon for the horns. Very important. If you do not have a white crayon you MUST find one! Even if you have to go ask the art teacher at school.

And then there were ten

We added some new members to our household this weekend. Not counting the tiny ants that have infested one of my house plants, we now have ten large ants living in an ant farm. We started with 12 large ants, the biggest we could find, from a mountain park near our house. Milan and I went out ant hunting, armed with an aspirator I made this summer especially for this purpose.

Here is Milan using the aspirator. There is a screen between the trap section and the tube section so we won't suck any ants or large pieces of dirt into our mouths.

Not surprisingly, we attracted some attention from the other visitors in the park as we crawled around the path trying to suck up ants. One concerned visitor went ahead to find someone who could speak English and warn us about the very poisonous Chinese ants that could send us to the hospital. I thanked him for his concern and assured him that we were being very careful, as Milan picked up another ant with his fingers.

I have always loved ant farms and even had one in college for a little while. I finally have a three-year old so I can pretend that the ant farm is for him. We are going to share our busy little pets with Milan's class this week too.

After we got the ants settled in their new home, I attempted to identify them through an internet search. Unfortunately, we seem to have carpenter ants that dig holes in wood, not dirt. So there is not much dirt-digging going on in the farm. I thought these guys looked familiar - just like the ones I found running all around my parent's house this summer! But because they are so big, they are fun to watch. We'll keep them around for awhile, maybe replace them with some industrious dirt-diggers later.

Our new friends

Progress

Do you remember this post, where I described the nice country-side and villages around our town where we run and bike on a regular basis? We went for a bike ride in one of our favorite areas yesterday and were shocked to find a favorite little village on the edge of town demolished.


I am trying not to be sad, because maybe the people who lived here are not sad. Maybe they are happy to move to an apartment building in the city. Maybe they received a good chunk of money to move out. Maybe they had built there illegally and were kicked out. I have no clue. I just know that the group of families who lived there are no longer there.

I know that my year living here is only a blip in the life of this town, and all of the tall buildings I see were probably once smaller groupings of homes like these. But this does demonstrate a significant change in China, one that is sweeping many cities and small towns. This village was by no means old or historic, but I just saw this article about the demolition of the entire historic downtown in Nanjing, with some buildings dating back to the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

I will miss this courtyard - I would always peek in there when I ran by. This week I need to find a new route out of town and into the fields to avoid the rubble.

First Day of School!

After a long absence from the blog, I present to you Milan, nursery school student!

Headed out the door.

Milan and I returned to China on Sunday after summer break. We gave him a few days to recover from jet-lag, and then sent him to Mrs. A this morning. He insisted that he was not going to school today (as we are walking to school), but once we arrived and he saw his good friend and the other kids he went right up to the shoe cubbies, took his shoes off, and marched into the classroom.

Here he is with two other boys in his class, ignoring me as I try to say goodbye.

There are eight kids in the Early Years Class, which includes nursery, pre-k, and kindergarten. His teacher is American, and there are two Chinese teacher-aids in the class as well. He and the other two native-English speakers will have Mandarin class during part of the day while the others work on English. And of course there is all the music circle and story time and all that amazing stuff that his teacher organizes every day.

Milan's new class is at the school where Tim teaches, right next door to our apartment, so it is all very convenient and a good entry into school for the little monkey. Oh, and for me too. I can be there in less than 5 minutes if need be, and Tim is in the building next door. Just in case. I feel better now that the first day is over, but have been a little on edge preparing all of his emergency allergy meds to take to class and talking to his teacher about his allergies. Luckily, she is allergic to peanuts, so she understands all this allergy stuff. Deep breaths. I pack his lunch everyday and pick him up as they are finishing lunch in the cafeteria.

So the report from Milan when I picked him up: can I stay for the rest of the day with the other kids? Only he and his good friend W. are half-day, the others stay all day. He clearly felt he was going to miss out on something in the afternoon! But he was tired and came home for a nap.

Seriously, I have all morning to myself and then a nap after that!?!? What am I going to do with all this time? Today I finished unpacking and un-cluttering the house. Longer-term plans include looking for consulting work I can do from home.

But for now, Hooray for School!
Hooray for being back home!!!!

Mindblowing Pork

I have not abandoned my pursuit of learning how to cook Chinese food, but definitely slowed down. I also found my few favorite dishes and make those over and over.

One of them is this pork, 鱼香肉丝 yú xiāng ròu sī, which means fish-flavored pork. There isn't any fish in it; fish-fragrant flavor is a Sichuan combination of salty, sweet, sour and spicy, or so I am learning. I am also a huge fan of fish-flavored eggplant, but have yet to recreate it to my satisfaction in our kitchen.

I found the pork recipe here via Chowhound, another Fuchsia Dunlop gem.

Here is my version, minus the bamboo shoots because I usually forget to buy them, and with whatever fresh brown mushroom I find in the market that week.

We usually have to fight Milan for the pork, he eats it up faster than we can. We're trying to eat as much Chinese food as possible in the next couple weeks before we go back to the States and gorge ourselves on hamburgers and Mexican food.

End of School Bike Ride

Only two more weeks of school left! This is the mad season of end-of-school musical and drama productions (both of which Tim was heavily involved in), last gatherings with so many friends who will be moving to other schools next year, and a recent notice that we need to move into a new apartment in the building next door before we go back to the States at the end of June. But today we forgot all that and went on an ambitious adventure. Our fearless leader, Ms. D. of Great Wall Half Marathon fame, led 8 teachers on a bike ride to a distant mountain which can be seen from our apartment building on a clear day: a mountain-top observatory affectionately know as Knob Hill.

It's a good thing we had a fearless leader because I was lost after the first two turns. We rode through some beautiful villages and enjoyed the clear and almost-cool weather morning.



After about an hour of riding we came to the base of the hill and began the uphill ride. Mostly it turned out to be a 2-hour uphill bike-push for us, since riding with Milan in the bike seat made the hills extra challenging.

The beginning of the uphill

Taking a break on the hill

Our goal in sight!

We all made it! Ms. D on the right is pointing to Beilun, where we started

We couldn't take a picture from the top of the mountain because it is a military zone and no pictures allowed. So this is a nice view on way down the hill. That downhill ride felt sooooooooo good!