Bring on the Bling

Our annual Christmas party theme this year was "Bling it on" or Bring on the Bling" or something like that. Everyone went out to the night markets and bought all the cheap cheesy jewelry they could find. Luckily there is no shortage of it here. We bought a couple of things, didn't get to blingy, we were not trying to win the bling king or queen award. However, when the time came for the cat walk to choose the king and queen of bling, a bunch of us piled our extra bling onto John and he jumped up to strut down the aisle. He of course was wearing his new suit (he would wear it to check the mail if we had a mailbox) and he sidled down the aisle with all his flashing pins and rhinestone rings and won the bling king title! I was so proud! He was crowned with a shiny ring of cardboard and throned with a fuzzy pink toilet seat cover and given a really nice bottle of champagne. What a night!

Christmas Day

We woke up Christmas morning, ate pancakes and opened presents. In the afternoon we took a walk and now are getting ready to go out to eat. Overall it has been a great Christmas. We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and we miss everyone. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Christmas Eve

We went to a party at Brian and Ani's on Christmas Eve. Before we went we walked around West Lake and drank hot chocolate. At the party they had two big turkeys along with stuffing, potatoes, gravy and cranberry sauce. After the party we came home and watched Braveheart. Nothing like a good movie to put you in the Christmas spirit.

Merry Christmas

We are enjoying a quiet week here in Hangzhou. School ended for the year on Friday and we headed up to Shanghai for the weekend. We had a birthing class at our hospital all day Saturday, we spent the rest of the time eating and buying Christmas presents. Nina's pregnancy continues to go well. The first two weeks in December she spent in Shanghai taking a class towards her masters degree. The next class is not until May so that gives her some time to relax (ya right) for the next couple of months.
We head out to Hong Kong on Dec 28th; we'll spend New Years there before spending 6 days in Sanya (the Hawaii of China). Then back to the cold of Hangzhou. We really cannot complain too much about the weather this year. This is the first week were it is cold enough that you really need a warm jacket and the sky has actually been blue this year.
Hope all is well with everyone, as the birth draws nearer we will try to post more often.

Other Odds and Ins

HIS Sports teams are having a good year. We hosted the ACAMIS Volleyball Tournament the last weekend in Oct. The boys finished fifth but the girls won the championship, going 6-0. Both the boys and girls started off the basketball season with a bang winning our very own HIS Basketball Invitational. The girls went 4-0, crushing the competition along the way to title, while the boys dropped their first game by three points before winning 4 in a row to capture the crown.
The girls have a ten game winning streak, dating back to last year.


We finally got some pictures hung up on our wall, and some more plants in our apartment. Nina's belly continues to grow. It looks like we will try to have the baby in Shanghai; we like the hospital up there better then the one in Hangzhou.

Things continue to go well, we are both very busy. I'm finishing up my classes in the next couple of weeks, Nina is getting ready to take a weekend intensive class in December. Basketball takes up lots of weekends and evenings.

We are looking forward to Christmas break; we'll travel to Hong Kong for one week and then on to Sanya (the Chinese version of Hawaii) for a week.

Pictures from Xi'an

We traveled to Xi'an Nov 6-8. This is the city were the Terra Cotta Warriors are. It was the capital of the first emperor of China, about 2000 years ago. He forced 700,000 workers to build his tomb and make the warriors for over 38 years; he believed what ever he was buried with would be his in the afterlife. When he died over 3000 concubines were buried with him. The villagers were so mad, they started a huge fire, burned his palace and smashed all the warriors. His actual tomb as yet to be opened; supposedly it is booby-trapped and the rivers in the map of china are made out of mercury.

The Warriors were rediscovered in the 1970's. Many have since been put back together but most are still buried.

We also visited a village that had people living there 6000 years ago. That one was pretty interesting.

Xi'an is the beginning of the silk road so there is a large Muslim population. We spent Saturday evening walking around the Muslim street eating lamb and bread.
Sunday we visited Big Goose Pagoda where we saw these people doing Tia Chi with swords.

How many vehicles does it take??!!

Our 36 hours of travel to the hotel began at 5pm after school on Friday. We met Nat and Anna and took a rented van to the airport. We flew to Shenzhen. From Shenzhen we took a taxi to the border of Hong Kong, a bus into the city and a taxi to our hostel. So far that is 5 vehicles.

The next morning we walked to breakfast (if I was getting picky I would count our feet as one mode) and then took an awesome double decker to the airport in Hong Kong. Driving through the city with an elevated view made me want to move there. It is a beautiful city and we were blessed with blue skies that day.

We flew to Manila. From Manila we took an airport shuttle into the city, then jumped into a jeepney as it was waiting for a traffic light to turn green. The jeepney dropped us at a bus station and we began the bumpy three hour drive to Batangas pier. Vendors got on the bus with us at every opportunity selling fruit and donuts and garlic peanuts. We watched a movie about a mean snake that eats people and gets really really big and then staticy game shows. We got the Batangas too late to take one of the larger commercial ferries across the bay to Puerto Galera. However, we were mobbed by men wanting to take us in their little boats. We bargained a price and got into a jeepney to a different pier where their boat was waiting. At this time it was dusk and we were tired and hungry. By the time we got to this new pier it was full dark and raining. The waves looked menacing. We sat in the jeepney long enough to begin worrying that something was wrong. We found out the boat had to wait out the rough waves. It began to rain harder and the waves got worse. We waited about an hour. John and Nat went to scout our surroundings for a hotel or other option. They found a guy in a private car who had just dropped his boss off at the pier and was headed back to town and willing to give us a lift. We piled into this car but were stopped by the guy with the boat. He wanted money! We argued back and forth for 10 minutes or so and finally Nat gave him some money just so he would let go of the car and let us go. The nice guy in the car drove us straight to a hotel for no charge. He felt bad that his fellow Philippine had taken advantage of the foreigners. We ate dinner across the street and went right to bed. It was a long day and it involved 7 vehicles. But wait! We are still not at our hotel! The next morning we took tricycles to the pier (the real one) and got a ferry (a real one) to Puerto Galera. From there we took a jeepney to our hotel. WE MADE IT! It only took 15 different vehicles to get there and it was worth it all in the end.

Photos from Philippines

Going on vacation

This Friday after school we leave for the Philippians. We fly to Hong Kong, spend the night and then fly to Manila Saturday morning. We will then head to a beach town for the week. I'll post some pics when we get back.
Nina's belly continues to grow. More pics on that when we get back as well. Sorry we haven't been posting more, it has been a busy couple of weeks with volleyball and conferences and work.
Expect lots of photos in about 10 days.

Volleyballs Games and stuff

The volleyball teams traveld to Shanghai last weekend. I am coaching the boys and the other PE teacher is coaching the girls. On Friday the boys lost their first game to our sister school's JV team. The second game they beat their varsity team. On Saturday they lost their first two games before coming back to win their last game. The girls won three and lost two.

This weekend we host Dragon Cup; a competition between our three campus. Both Shanghai schools will bring their teams down for a day long tournament followed by dinner and a dance. Needless to say I've been busy planning that.

Other than volleyball keeping me busy things are good. Nina's belly continues to grow. She felt the baby move yesterday morning.

Next weekend we will be in Shanghai and we are planning on going to the Philippians at the end of September for a week.

I'll try to post some pictures at least once a week, but probably not more than that.