Skipping Christmas

Yes, we are sort of skipping Christmas. We will be touring Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand for the 3 week winter break in school. We'll have our family celebration of Christmas in a Singapore condo. It seems weird, but I think it is helping us appreciate our family traditions even more.

We did get a chance to make Christmas cookies before we left at our favorite bakery (EuroBake).




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Kiana v. China

Kiana is on the school basketball team - a group of girls in grades 8-12. Last weekend they played a game against a Chinese middle school in downtown Dalian. What a great opportunity! It was so much fun to watch and see the girls interact - the tough plays on both sides and the kindness extended when needed. I just kept thinking that it's these experiences that make moving to China even more memorable!


The Chinese School:


The girls:


Action shot:


About to sink a free throw:


Good game, good game, good game....


Kiana and Maddie:


Ok, I can't resist saying that Kiana played awesome! She was the high point scorer on her team!
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UGC, UCG, VGG, LIGG, Oh My!

I took Kiana shopping for UGG boots yesterday. Real UGG boots are hard to find here, so we knew we would be looking at fake ones. And it is amazing how many we found!

The shopping area we went to was downtown. It is a multi-level building with one floor devoted to shoes. If you can picture the floor space of a small grocery store, filled with rows upon rows of 10ft x 10ft miniature stores. Each store is individually owned and is filled with shoes. I would estimate over 100 little shoe stores on this floor.

Since winter is blowing into Dalian (literally), each store had boots. Kiana was looking for a particular pair of UGGs - she needs black ones so she can wear them to the winter concert. I think she tried on at least 20 different boots in 15 different stores!

Some of the boots looked like real UGGs and others definitely were fake. The fake ones had some pretty funny names: UGC, UCG, VGG, LIGG. They ranged in price from $20 USD to $130 USD. The $130 ones were the only ones that actually might have been real UGGs.

She finally found a pair that fit (most were too big or small or too stiff in the soles). We paid $33 USD. (If you are in the US, I bet you are thinking - wow great deal! If you are in China, I bet you are thinking we paid way too much!)

Shoe shopping is much different here than in the US. The customer service is great! We had a lot of help to get just the right boot at each store. The women were all very kind and helpful. The funny part is that when we would say that they didn't fit or she didn't like them and go to leave, they would try to get us to stay by bargaining down the price. They thought we were faking that we didn't want them to get a lower price!

It was a fun day of shopping!
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Our Trip to Xi'an

Xi'an is about 2 hour flight from Dalian and is home to the Terracotta Army. This has been on our list of must-see sights in China, so we decided to go for Kevin's birthday weekend.

Here is an edited blurb from Wikipedia about the Terracotta Army:

The Terracotta Army (bīngmǎ yǒng; literally "soldier and horse funerary statues"), is a collection of terracotta sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor of China. They were created and buried to protect the emperor after his death.

The figures, dating from 210 BC, were discovered in 1974 by some local farmers near Xi'an.

The figures vary in height(6.0–6.4 ft), according to their roles, with the tallest being the generals. The figures include warriors, chariots, horses, officials, acrobats, strongmen and musicians. Current estimates are that in the three pits containing the Terracotta Army there were over 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses, the majority of which are still buried in the pits.

Here are a few pictures from the weekend. It is much more impressive in person!

Double click on the album to view the pictures:

Xi'an

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Happy 10th

Kevin's birthday was 11/11 and he celebrated with a homemade Rubik's Cube cake and a trip early the next day to Xi'an.

Water

Water. Sometimes in China you have it, sometimes you don't. Last time our water went out for 24 hours, we had advance notice so we were able to fill the bathtub to use to flush the toilet (you take a bucket of water from the tub and pour it into the toilet tank). This morning the water is out again, but with no notice. Luckily I'm showered already! And I have 4 clean toilets to use until it comes back on. And I have bottled water to drink.

Kevin left for school this morning hoping that they would cancel school because of the water outage. But the school seems to have things under control:

"Meanwhile, the housekeeping team will try to set up one set of bathrooms on each floor with a bucket of water, using the remaining water we have in our basement water tank. Hopefully you will be able to direct to student to the restrooms that is nearest to the library stairway soon."

Last time we flew out of the domestic terminal at the Dalian Airport, at first I couldn't figure out why the staff was hauling buckets of water down the hall. Then I used the restroom and realized that the airport didn't have water.

Life goes on.
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Halloween

The farmer and his pumpkins:



Families who don't live in Campus Village came to
Trunk or Treat:



The jester and the Jedi:



Right into the ghost's mouth:



Still cute on Halloween even though they are big:

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