What are you going to do now???

Debi and the kids made a quick video to show how we are coping with our delayed plans for moving to China....the house is ready to go, we are ready to go, but we are still in the US....

Learning Chinese

Everyone has been asking if we know how to speak Chinese. Our answer........ not yet!!!

We are using Rosetta Stone to learn at home. It uses pictures to teach easy common words. We are also using the Lonely Planet Phrase Book for common phrases.

We also watch fun You Tube videos like this one:



There are also good websites like these that are helping us:

Mistakes-when-learning-chinese

Sinosplice.com

Master-the-tones

Zai Jian (good-bye)

Snow Conditions on Audrey Mountain

The Ski Report:
Snow conditions on the slope of Audrey Mountain are awesome! A 4" base with 2" of fresh powder this morning.

Kiana got in quite a few gnarly runs on a friend's snowboard and perfected the mini halfpipe. It's too bad the lift was broken (non existent), although later in the day we did spot someone using their mom's minivan as a lift.

That's our house at the top of the hill....we are enjoying an unusual 11 days and 8 inches of snow, with more on the way. A white Christmas - hooray!

When we were so disappointed that our China trip was delayed, I told the kids that often something good will come out of waiting. Well, we can count being able to fully enjoy these 11 days of snow as good - no worries about preparing to move, just lots of time to enjoy the snow together!

The Gingerbread Barrs

Mike, Kiana, Debi, Kevin

We "HAD" a Date!

Well, the move to Dalian is being rescheduled......no exact date yet......but we expect it will be in the spring.....you'll know when we know.

We are pretty disappointed - we were ready to go! The kids are disappointed, they were looking forward to starting at their new school after winter break. The bright spot in all of this is that Christmas will be a bit more relaxed, we are enjoying our extended cold and snow in Portland this week without worries of the "to do" list, and we get to spend more time with our beloved Chimay (the dog) before we leave.

Happy Holidays!

We Have a Date!

We will be flying out on the evening of January 1 - starting the new year with a new city and country! We will fly through LAX and Korea. The total trip takes about 24 hours. We'll spend the last few days in Portland in a hotel and the first few days in Dalian in a hotel.

Only 50 more days.....

Housing??

From DalianCondo

Mike is in China this week - his most important job while he was there was to secure our housing. We are happy to report that we will be in our first choice of housing!!

We will live in the neighborhood surrounding the school called "Campus Village." The kids will be able to walk to school.

The picture above is our condo building. Our condo will be about the same size as our house now. It is designed with Western conveniences, like a washer/dryer, dishwasher, and a soaking tub (this is where you'll find Debi on cold days). No carpeting - we'll have to get used to hard floors and buy some rugs once we are there.

The house is furnished, so most of our stuff here will go into storage while we are gone. We plan to rent our home in Oregon. We get to take two approx. 5x5x5 crates of stuff with us (plus a smaller bonus crate).

Here is a picture of our family room and kitchen.

From DalianCondo