In Liping... April 5-8

Tuesday April 5... in Liping

I got my dates wrong on my last post, so I've already covered Tuesday.

Wednesday April 6... in Liping

Another quiet day of adjusting to life in Liping. We were home most of the day, Jake went out to run some errands and Monica did laundry, laundry and more laundry. My days are filled with holding Lincoln, helping Creed with his schoolwork, playing Uno, chess and checkers with the kids. I've been going to bed pretty early (have I mentioned that I love my pink foam earplugs??), but I'm not feeling particularly rested. Go figure!

Thursday, April 7... in Liping

Jake and Monica went furniture shopping today so they can get Lincoln settled in to the extra room (that Jake uses as an office), but didn't find what they were looking for. They also went up to the language school at lunchtime to see the students that they worked with last year. Eunice, the girl I'm sharing the apartment sprained her ankle or broke some bones in her foot 3 weeks ago, and Monica took at look at that for her and helped her wrap it. They really enjoyed their time at the school, reconnecting with their friends they haven't seen in months.

The weather has been in the low 50's--chilly and damp. My apartment was 49 degrees this morning when I woke up, so I'm guessing that it was in the high 40's overnight. Seems like the temps are pretty close to MN temps this week; though I'm guessing that my house is a bit warmer than the apartment in the mornings. ;-)

I'm starting a list of things that I promise to NOT take for granted when I return... I've developed a new appreciation for the challenges Jake and Monica face living here--in many ways, it's like the years my parents spent living in rural Alaska--several hours to the nearest necessary supplies; reduce, reuse and recycle as a way of life (not a feel-good effort for the benefit of others); isolation from quality medical care; everything they do takes more thought and effort than we put forth in the states, where everything we need is at our fingertips.

Friday, April 8... in Liping

Jake and Monica are largely vegetarian. Now that I'm here, I can see how it would be MUCH easier to be a vegetarian here than in the states... to buy meat, you wander through the market, looking at the carcasses laying on dirty boards, with dirty cleavers laying beside them, waiting to hack off the part of the carcass you want for your dinner. No tidy little USDA approved packages of meat processed in clean USDA inspected facilities. The most interesting thing I've seen is the skinned head of a pig, hanging by the snout, ready to slip into a pot to make a soup. MMMMM.

Jake and the older kids took me up to a monument on top of the local mountain this afternoon. We wound our way up the hill, around a valley, climbing the whole way on slate steps. Cairns of stone mark the tombs of people buried on the hillsides, and all are decorated with foil streamers and colored foil bunting as well as paper 'monty' and burned incense sticks. When people die, it is believed that if their children and grandchildren leave gifts of food and money on their tombs, they will be blessed by those on 'the other side'. These tombs are covered in incense sticks, piles of disintegrating paper (purchased to represent money for the passed), food scraps and other gifts. There were small altars along the way, each was surrounded with dozens, if not hundreds, of burned up incense sticks. The moisture in the air holds the scent of the incense, so our whole walk was steeped in this sweet smell.

Almost at the top, we came into a spot that was a little wider than the rest of the trail with a pavilion and a spring coming out of the hill where people go to get their daily water (those who don't want to purchase water). It's a LONG way to go to get your daily water!! This little area held one of the altars, so we sat there for a few minutes soaking up the sights, smells and the sound of water pouring out of the mouth of the spring into a stone pool built to catch the water. It was surreal! I'll probably be transported to that place every time I smell burning incense!

During our 90 minute hike through serious forest, I only heard about 8 species of birds. I didn't SEE any, and the ones I heard were pretty isolated. Songbirds are commonly eaten around here, so they can be kind of hard to find! Without a bird book and a knowledgeable guide, I was left to guess at species, but I could tell that there was some kind of relatives of chickadees, nuthatches, thrushes and warblers, but that's as close as I could get to IDing what I was hearing. It's bizarre to hear so few birds in such a natural and remote area!

The valley is beautiful... it's terraced for growing rice, and watered by the spring at the top of the hill. Horses and a water buffalo graze in the paddies... I couldn't figure out where they lived, but they seemed content to slosh around in the unplowed paddies eating the plants growing up in them. The paddies will be plowed this spring, then flooded and replanted with this year's rice crop. Right now, they're standing fallow, filled in with grasses over the past 6 months. The hills look like a non-tropical rain forest. It's so moist here, and so cool, that things grow year round, though there are some trees showing new spring leaves budding, and flowers just preparing to bloom. I was most intrigued with the tiny wild irises growing on the hillside. Beautiful.

Tigers used to roam this area, but we're not sure what species. Locals have extirpated the tigers in response to people and livestock being killed over the years. The last tigers were in the forests here in the 1950's, so they've been gone for a long time!

About eating dog... Though there are restaurants here that serve dog year-round, the primary time of consumption of dog is around the winter solstice. People raise dogs specifically for this purpose (stop squirming... there's an explanation for this). I have come to understand that some foods are 'hot' and eaten during the winter, and other foods are 'cool' and eaten during the summer (like the difference between chili and potato salad). A lot of credence is given to balance here... think Ying and Yang... Dog is considered to be a hot food, and is used for the special occasion of the winter solstice celebration. The people here don't like to talk about eating dog... they know that other parts of the world consider it to be uncivilized and are understandably protective of the custom. I really don't have a problem with it. There is a sense of survival-level-existance here that we cannot duplicate in the states. I haven't been offered dog, and I'm not sure that I'll be in a place that serves it.

About squattie potties... Ok, I've been asked to describe this process. I'm SO glad that I've been an outdoors person for so long... all I've had to do is refine the process for indoor use. Squattie potties are porcelain toilet bowls sunk into the floor. The whole room drains into the pottie, so the shower and laundry can all be done in the same room. The shower hangs on the wall, and there is no door or curtain around the shower space. When you enter a home, you remove your outdoor shoes and put on house slippers (foam flipflops or wool clogs or other indoor slipper) for wearing inside the house. When you enter a bathroom, though, you switch into bathroom slippers that stay inside the bathroom and are not used in the rest of the house. Anytime we enter the bathroom or laundry room for any reason, we change slippers so we're not tracking bathroom germs into the house. Another thing I'll not take for granted... not changing shoes in the bathroom!

We're heading out to a party this evening... I"m sure I'll have more to say about that in my next post.

Thanks for reading,

Wish you were here!

Huaxi to Liping... April 1-4

April 1--In Huaxi

Jake and I walked a couple blocks to a noodle shop for breakfast. Imagine a huge breaded porkchop floating in a bowl of ramen noodle soup. Yep, that was breakfast and it was delicious (are you sensing that I love the food here???). The day was pretty quite, as we rested, napped and got ready to leave again on Saturday. We went for dinner at Zhou Ayi's home--Zhou Ayi is the woman who was Monica's language teacher for the first few years they were in Huaxi. The have a very affectionate relationship with each other, and Zhou Ayi's husband and son prepared us a huge meal!

On the way home, we waited for a taxi for quite a while, then decided to take a bus. We all piled on, and people parted for me (I was carrying the baby--an honored position!). I had a seat, and in about 10 minutes it was time for us to get off. Bus drivers are not patient, so we had to LEAP off the bus, and he started off before I was in the stairs!! The people on the bus started to yell at him, and he stopped right away and I hopped off. Yikes... I can't imagine what I'd have done if he'd just kept going!!

Saturday, April 2--Huaxi to Guiyang to Liping

We got up, loaded our stuff, PACKED a hired van, and headed into Guiyang to the airport to catch our flight. We got all checked in, through security and to our gate in good time, then started to her announcements that our plane was not at the airport yet, so our flight was delayed. We were supposed to fly at 12:30, but at 2pm, they announced that the flight was cancelled. We sat and talked about our options, and as we were talking, three airline officials came and told us that they would help us arrange for a van to drive us from Guiyang to Liping because the next flight would not be until TUESDAY! So... we had to decide if we wanted to spend 3 days in a hotel (the place we stayed in Huaxi wasn't empty anymore) and take a 35 minute flight, or hire a van to take us on Sunday--an 8 hour drive on not great roads. We opted for the van, then Monica called her friend to see what hotels she would recommend in Guiyang.

Monica's friend Rachel, is a hospital administrator in Guiyang, and is married to a guy (Ian) who is China's answer to Oprah. He has a couple talk shows where he helps people solve their problems, and he's the host of China's survivor-type show. They met us at the Ramada, where they'd booked us a couple rooms and we had dinner together. During dinner, Ian arranged for a friend of his to lend us a large van, and Rachel arranged for one of the hospital's staff drivers to take us to Liping. This generosity on their part saved Jake nearly half of the cost of the airport van... what a blessing! The van showed up on Sunday morning, and it was a beautiful, roomy Mercedes 7 passenger van! We traveled in as much comfort as we could possibly expect without flying. More on that in a bit...

We got to bed, and as I laid down, I could tell that something was NOT right in my system... and I spent the night reliving the misery of food poisoning. YUCK. Not only was I miserable with all the lovely symptoms, I was also VERY worried that I wouldn't be able to travel to Liping on Sunday. TIME FOR DIVINE INTERVENTION! At least my concern gave me something to do, and someone to talk to during that long night!

Sunday, April 2- Guiyang to Liping (for real)

At 7am, I woke up and decided that I would be able to make the trip to Liping. Our van arrived at 9, and we loaded our pile of luggage into the van and went to the airport to get the rest of our bags. In total, we had 6 huge duffle bags and 2 large suitcases and 10 carryon bags (including the kids' backpacks and Monica's and my purses). The van was PACKED to the ceiling, and we hit the road.

Now, you need to know that prior to Jake and Monica leaving China in June for their time in the states, the trip from Guiyang took a minimum of 10 hours. It's only about 300 kilometers, but the roads wind around, over and among the hills and mountains that are in this region. The roads are NOT well kept, and they're very narrow. We had heard rumors of a new superhighway that was being built between Guiyang and RongJiang (approx 210 km), that shortened the trip to about 8 hours. The highway had been under construction, so the trip was still pretty bumpy and slow, but it was better than the OLD road, that was winding and rough. What we didn't know what the the superhighway had been completed, cleaned up and opened for high speed travel on SATURDAY--so our trip to RongJiang took 2:20 instead of 5 hours!!! We were delighted and amazed to find ourselves so far along the way in such a short time. I was especially grateful, because my stomach was rolling, my guts were churning, and my head was pounding. But we didn't need to stop for any of my unsettledness, and I just wanted to get here as soon as possible.

RongJiang is the end of the super highway, and the streets there are nearly impassable. Imagine a bulldozed road, with holes a foot deep and 3 feet wide, filled with water and construction debris and piles of bricks, cement, rocks, tools and other junk drifting out into a road that is wide enough for one and 3/4 cars to pass each other. It took us nearly 40 minutes to get through the 10 miles of RongJiang, then we started in on the paved, but rough and rugged mountain roads leading to Liping. This section of road is 90 km long, and took us about 2:30.

For those of you who live in northern MN, the not-so-super highway is like the road that runs through Jay Cooke State Park. They twist and turn, there are no sections of straight road that are more than 500 yards long, they are rough and bumpy, there are no shoulders, so when two cars meet, they almost bump mirrors. The turns are sharp, hairpin turns, often the road switches back on itself 10 or more times in a mile. Dramamine could use it as material for a commercial! The first 60 km aren't too bad, we maybe drive 30 miles per hour on average. The last 30 km, though, was AWFUL! We never went more than 20mph, and the van ahead of us had people hanging out the windows puking. It took us nearly a hour to cover the last 30 km, and it was a pretty miserable hour. Creed was ready to hurl, thank goodness for the homeopathic remedy for motion sickness!!! He held off, and we were all pretty relieved to pull into Liping at 3:30... ONLY 5 hours after we'd started out, and 3 hours earlier than we expected.

We unloaded the van and the driver went to find some workers to help him change the flat tire that we'd been driving on... oops! Jake and Monica's friends came and helped us carry the bags up to the 4th floor. Have I mentioned that in China, elevators are only required for buildings 8 stories or higher, so most of the apartment buildings are 7 stories high. So when I say 'CARRIED THE BAGS" up to the 4th floor, I mean up the stairs. Mom, Carly and Jake know how many stairs there are to their apartment, but I think that stairs are like temperature... sometimes it's less painful to not actually have the number in your mind--just keep going up until you're there! We got my bags back down to the street, the up to the apartment where I'm staying (same building, but the stairwell is 1/4 block away. My apartment is on the 5th floor of that stairwell, so I plan carefully before I leave one place to head to the other! ;-)

My apartment has single pane windows, many of which have holes in the caulking around them. The air moves freely in and out of the apartment, and the apartment has no heat. Jake and Monica have small heaters that they have on in the rooms they are using. There is a small heater in my bedroom, but it's not terribly effective. My bed has a heater, so that gets NICE and warm before I crawl in. Once in bed, I turn off the heaters and snuggle in for a night that rivals some of the camping trips I've been on... temps in the high 30's outside, mid 40's in my room. I sleep in my long underwear, fleece and turtleneck, so I stay nice and warm beneath the covers. I bring my clothes into the bed for the next day, so they're warm in the morning, and dress FAST!!

Sound, like temperature, also travels easily through the glass. I can hear footsteps from people on the street 5 stories below. I can hear people spitting on the street, dogs barking, cars, trucks, music, horns (constantly), banging, construction, loudspeaker announcements, singing... you name it, and I can hear it unless I have earplugs in!

Sunday night, though, I slept deeply and long. I was dehydrated and exhausted from being sick, so I didn't have to get up in the night for any reason. I slept better than any night here, so far, despite all the noise and the cold air.

Monday, April 3--Liping

I awoke at 8 and dressed fast. I fixed myself a quick breakfast, then organized my suitcase, cleaned the apartment and washed the kitchen really well. There is a young student staying in the apartment with me, her English name is Eunice. She is 21, and attending the language school that Jake and Monica's colleagues run. She doesn't know how to cook, so the kitchen has been largely unused since December. She's a sweet girl who's happy to have someone there to speak English with.

We spent Monday cleaning, unpacking, heating and organizing Jake and Monica's apartment. Jake brought noodles in for lunch, and got some groceries so we could make supper. I can't imagine living in a place where fresh-grown produce is available year round!! It would be so awesome to buy fruit that was harvested yesterday... I'll miss that!

It's very humid here, so the chill gets into your bones. It was 47 outside on Monday, probably 62 at best in Jake and Monica's apartment. I'll be showering here... Eunice keeps the windows open in our apartment so her laundry can dry. I can't imagine how long it would take for a pair of jeans to dry. If the sun were out, it would have been in the 70's... the temps can really swing from day to day, depending on the cloud cover. We're at about 3000 feet, so altitude plays a part in the temps, but the dynamics of the mountains hold the moisture, making cool days seem colder and warm days seem hotter. It's a really neat place.

Tuesday, April 4 --Liping

Another quiet day of unpacking and Jake and Monica and the kids getting settled. Creed and Chloe are SO SO happy to be home, and Lincoln is now holding his head up, staying awake longer, starting to coo and gurgle a bit, and is able to spend time in his swing contentedly. He's a very easy baby... and I can't believe how much he's changed in the past 2 weeks! He's much more aware and awake than when I arrived. I'm sure going to miss these kids when I go home!!

Jake took me out into Liping today, we went to the market and the grocery store. We loaded our packs and brought home lots of supplies that they gave away or used up before leaving last June. We stopped by a street market and bought baby mangos, oranges, corn on the cob (best I've had in years!!), pickled beans, potatoes, carrots, and some other produce. The lady Jake and Monica prefer to buy from has very beautiful and very clean veggies, though we still wash everything in bleach water before eating it. Street hygiene is less than sanitary... dirty dogs roam around, kids pee anywhere they need to , the sidewalks are covered in mud (dirt? mixed with what??), people clear their throats and spit everywhere... I will appreciate the FDA standards for produce when I get home to my clean Super One grocery store!

I'll share photos and more stories in a couple day...

Wish you were here!

Chiang Mai to Huaxi (sounds like whaa-SHEE); March 29-31

March 29

We left Chiang Mai at 7:30pm on Tuesday, and arrived in Kunming, China at around 9pm. We took taxis to the Sakura Hotel (sakura means cherry blossom, and it's a former Holiday Inn, so--NICE!). Kunming is a large sprawling city at the foot of a small mountain with a large lake on the edge of town (I only saw this from the plane on the way out). The flight from Chaing mai to Kunming was about 90 minutes, and the temperature dropped about 30 degrees!

On Wednesday we slept late, had a leisurely breakfast in the hotel then laid low around the hotel until lunchtime when we went to the hotel restaurant for one last Thai meal. We caught our flight to Guiyang at 4pm and arrived here at 5pm. Jake and Monica's collegue, Doerthe (she's a German woman working with Jake on the bilingual education project) had arranged a van to bring us from the airport to Huaxi, the town in which they lived for 3 years. Huaxi is about 30 miles from Guiyang's airport, part of the drive was through the city and part of it was out of the city and winding around the hills and formations in the area.

I don't know how to describe the geography around the city. There are tall, conical hills, perhaps 500-900 feet high. Some are shaped like cones, some like pedestals, some are randomly eroded into odd shapes. Some are covered in vegetation, some have been dug out for stone, cement and minerals. They separate the different villages from each other's sight... as we drove out of the city, we'd come around a hill and find another small city in a valley between a series of these geographic structures. They appeared to be farmed in places, with large flat places carved into them and planted with crops. Rape is in bloom right now, as well as some trees with pink blossoms. Because it's considered sub-tropical here, there is an abundance of fruit sold on the street... half pinapples on sticks, mangos, oranges, limes, apples, oranges, watermelons... it's a feast for my Minnesota eyes!!

The largest university in this provence (Guizhou) is located in Huaxi. There are about 500,000 students at this university, and it has recently been promoted to a top-level university in China. There is a very large language research center here, which is the reason so many of Jake and Monica's colleagues live here.

The city is so interesting!! Just behind the downtown area, there are rows and rows of cement apartment buildings, 7 to 10 stories high, with 12 to 30 apartments in each building. All of the windows and patios have bars on them for safety, and there are small courtyards in between them. The streets are made of concrete and stone, and everything looks 30 to 50 years old, even though it's relatively new. On the bottom level of many of the apartment buildings are shops, restaurants and merchant stands. Dogs run loose around the streets and are remarkably uninterested in the human activity. They're more like rats that don't make people scream. ;-) I can totally see how they'd be considered a source of nutrition... they're self sufficient, easy to find and not integrated into people's homes. Some people have dogs, I've seen sellers with small dogs tied to their carts, so some people have them as pets, but the street dogs are not treated as pets.

We ate in a small 'hot pot' restaurant today for lunch. The tables all have a hole cut into the tabletop with a propane burning ring underneath the hole. Meals are brought out in a large, shallow stainless steel bowl and set down into the hole in the tabletop. The burner comes on to keep the food hot. Each restaurant has it's own hotpot recipe that they specialize in. Today we ate at the Red Bean Hot Pot, so the meal was a broth with meat, red beans, bean sprouts, mushrooms, tomatoes in the simmering broth. They brought out a basket of greens--lettuce, chard, pea plants, cabbage and some kind of ivy, and plates with potatoes and er-kuai-ba (a gelatinous paste, similar to tofu, made from rice). We put the potatoes and er kuai ba into the simmering broth and we each got a bowl of rice. Everyone at the table ladles out some juice, then picks outwhat they want from the pot and dips it into a spicy dipping sauce, then picking up a bit of rice on the bite. Bits of the greens are put into the soup, then cooked for a minute or so before eating them, and the potatoes and er kuai ba cook the longest. Everyone eats out of the central pot, and the table gets covered in the broth. It's awesome.

The sound of this city is defined to me by roosters, street callers and car horns. Even though there are only high apartment buildings, people keep chickens and roosters on their patios and in the tiny gardens on the ground level. Because the streets are concrete tunnels and the buildings are so high, the roosters sound surreal. I thought they were coming from some kind of loudspeaker for some reason. Jake just laughed at me when I asked about them... I thought maybe it was a call to prayer, an announcement that the markets were opening, a political alert or something... they sure sounded LOUD and not like real roosters! Everything echos off the buildings and resonates amazingly. Children talking in the street sound like they're on our balcony, and the people in the apartment behind us sound like they're in the next room. The windows are single pane glass, so don't offer much protection from the outside temperatures or noise.

Average temps here are in the high 50's during the day, mid 40's at night. The inside temps are probably 60 to 65 degrees, cooler at night. There are space heaters in the rooms, but they're expensive to run. In many homes, you'll find a 'hot box', which is a wooden box (approx 2' wide by 3-4' long)with an electrical element inside the bottom of it. There's an aluminum sheet over the element, then a wooden grate above the element. The hot boxes are set in front of a chair or sofa and people sit with their feet in the box and a blanket over their legs to hold in the heat. They're pretty slick! It is quite humid here, so one family we ate with has built a mini-hot-box for their dry goods. It's a wooden box, about two feet square with a light on a timer inside it that comes on periodically to reduce the humidity and keep the spices/dry goods dry.

For dinner, we went to a very nice restaurant with friends of Jake and Monica. We had a feast of amazing food!!! Beans with pickled vegetables, spices and hot pepper; breaded Japanese eggplant, stuffed with ground meat and sauced with sweet and sour sauce; spicy scrambled eggs with tomato garlic and chives; chive pies stuffed with eggs and chinese garlic; julienned potatoes with green and red peppers, sauteed greens (probably rape leaves and stems); tofu in brown sauce with peppers, greens, onions, wood-ear mushrooms; and steamed eggs with ham, tofu, peas and carrots. Each dish was put onto a huge lazy susan and we all took bowls of rice and then bits of each dish onto our rice or plates. Once again, it was awesome!!

We walked home from the restaurant in the dark... the streets are still crawling with foot, bicycle and motorbike traffic. The shops are all open, and another thing that is new to me is shops and restaurants being outdoors all the time! The ones with walls/doors keep their doors open, others are set up on the sidewalks every day, with just a tiny part of the store inside. I forget that in some places in the world, there isn't snow all winter!

That's all for tonight.

Wish you were here!

Farewell to Thailand

Lunch today ended with mango sticky rice for dessert. What a way to end my visit here, that will live in my memory as a festival of flavors and a whole new appreciation for thai food!!

Being my first visit to a tropical location, I knew the fruit would be of a whole other dimension... I just couldn't imagine pineapple that was so mild that it wouldn't burn my mouth! I couldn't imagine tree-ripened mangos (they taste NOTHING like the mangos we get in MN!), jackfruit, roseapples, dragon fruit and papaya that didn't smell like Mickey's skates.

I'm sure that I will be able to get good thai food in the states... but it will always be missing the situational seasonings... the scent of jasmine and gardenia in the air, the sound of bottlebirds gurgling on the other side of the bamboo hedge, the indecipherable murmuring of the Thai women working in the kitchen and laundry room. These other sensory stimulants add a dimension to the food that can't be duplicated at home!

I refuse, however, to be a snob when I return!! I will be grateful for the memory trip I can take when I eat kau soi or sour prawn soup... it will allow me to recall the depth of my experience here. I promise to be glad to get ANY form of Thai food once I'm home, without diminishing it by comparing it to the food I ate here.

I have seen plants in tree form here that I only thought of as annuals in my flower garden or plants in a medical clinic. I've never experienced the natural form of many of these plants, though I've seen them in an arboretum or botanical garden... which has always seemed interesting-but-contrived.

If any of you have any experience raising/growing kaffir lime in Minnesota, please be in touch, I"m not sure that's something I'll be able to live without from here on.

Thanks for reading,

Wish you were here...

March 27-29, Chaing Mai, Thailand

March 27, Sunday

We laid low today... breakfast and lunch at Juniper Tree, and Monica started packing for the return to China.

We went to the Sunday Market in the afternoon to get gifts, souveniers and stuff only available here. The market is HUGE, with hundreds of stalls selling everything from junk to traditional crafts to treasures to art. There was a huge food section where dozens of stalls were preparing barbequed foods ranging from bananas to sausages to whole chickens to dove eggs to dumplings to ant larvae soup. I got tons of photos and will try to get them posted. I'm having troubles with shutterfly, so haven't been able to get pics up for people to look at.

Sunday evening, we ate at a restaurant overlooking the Ping River in downtown Chiang Mai. I had Kau Soi, a noodles/chicken/egg/veggie soup that was out of this world!! Jake had TomKha, a coconut milk soup with mushrooms in it, Monica had PadThai and Creed had green curry on rice. Everything was amazing.

On the way home, Monica and I stopped for a massage--she had her back worked on while I just did my feet so I could hold Lincoln. It was awesome, of course.

March 28, Monday

PACKING UP!! I took Chloe out to go birding and we saw some pretty cool stuff. Probably the best bird we saw was a red-whiskered bulbul flying around with a big chunky of gauzy material. I'm pretty sure this is breeding season here, because they were sure acting like they were courting!! After watching the bulbuls for a while, I realized that there was a White-vented Myna that was tormenting them and trying to get the piece of fabric it was carrying around. The Myna eventually succeeded and flew off with his prize.

We returned to the night market to get a few more things, then to central market (an enormous mall that would rival the mall of america for size and bustle to get some items from the pharmacy.

March 29, Tuesday

We leave this afternoon for China. We'll be in transit for a couple days, but I"ll be able to see Kunming and Guiyang/Huaxi on the way, and I'll get to meet some of Monica's friends in Guiyang (where they lived for the first 3 years of their time in China). I'm really looking forward to it! Our itinerary:

3/29, Tuesday:  Chiang Mai to Kunming, Yunnan Province (arrive late at   night, stay at hotel)  3/30, Wed:  Travel from Kunming to Guiyang in the afternoon by plane   (1hr. flight), once landed we'll head to Huaxi (the town we used to   live in) about 45 minutes from Guiyang.  We'll be staying at a   friend's apt. while they are away.  3/31-4/2:  Stay in Huaxi.  We can't get a flight from Guiyang to   Liping until Sat. the 2nd. Creed and Chloe will be able to   play with friends in Huaxi, and Jake will have meetings with officials in Guiyang, and Monica will

 have a chance to reunite with Wang Ayi, Zhou Ayi, and a couple other expats.  4/2, Saturday:  Fly from Guiyang to Liping, arriving home in the   afternoon.

I won't be able to easily post to the blog while in China, so posts will be less frequent.  I'll also be away from email for the trip, but will be in touch again by the 3rd of April.

Thanks for reading, wish you were here!!

March 25 and 26: Chiang Mai whirlwind tour!

March 25, Friday

Chiang Mai, Thailand

Spent Friday with Creed and Chloe while Jake and Monica took Lincoln to the clinic for his circumcision. We had fresh fruit (pineapple, pomello, bananas) and hard boiled eggs for breakfast, then came back to the house to work on puzzles, draw and update our blog.

After lunch, Jake rented a motorbike from Juniper Tree ($5/day rental) and took me into the city for a Thai massage. We had side by side ‘rooms’ with a curtain in between. We each got a one-hour treatment for 150 baht… remember the exchange rate (30 baht to the dollar)? Yep, that’s $5 US dollars for an HOUR! The massage was deep and painful at times, so I didn’t sleep through the whole thing, but I was definitely on a different plane!!

We hit the local ATM and grocery store, where I loaded up on fried seaweed (think wasabi chips, yum!) and dried mango.

We came back to Juniper Tree for dinner, then Jake and made another motorbike run to the market for mango sticky rice.

The streets are narrow, often less than 2 cars wide, so if they don’t take turns in places, they’d hit mirrors as they passed. Motorbikes and scooters are everywhere—it’s not uncommon to come to an intersection and see 30 motorbikes packed into their lane waiting for a light to change! It’s also not uncommon to see families on motorbikes. Yesterday I saw a woman driving with a toddler in front of her on the motorbike, an 8 or 9 year old behind her and a 3 or 4 year old between she and the older child.

Public transport is in the forms of song teows and tuktuks. Song teows are pickup trucks that have been modified with a cap on the back, a step up into the back and benches along the sides. You flag them down on the street and they stop and arrange a price with you based on where you’re going. A $1 ride one day could be a $1.75 ride the next day, depending on the driver, his load, the traffic and any number of other variables. There is no ‘set rate’ to follow.

Tuktuks are 3-wheeled motorbikes with a covered seat for the passenger. I haven’t ridden in one of those yet, but I’m HOPING Jake can take me out on the bike again so I can take some video of what the traffic is like!

I slept like a ROCK Friday night!

March 26, Saturday, Chiang Mai, Thailand

9:30am-2pm

Private Thai cooking class!!! We were picked up at Juniper Tree at 9:30am in an old VW bus. All total, 10 adults and Lincoln (in his car seat) in the van-we were pretty cozy!

Yui Sriyabhaya was our instructor for the half day class. She has a veranda set up alongside her home with 9 gas stove tops and work spaces in it. She teaches 8 students at a time, and they learn either 3 or 6 dishes during their time with her. We started out with pad thai—she demonstrated it first, then we went to our stations and made the dish. All of our ingredients were prepared and portioned for us on a plate beside our work station. We cut up and cooked everything according to Yui’s example. Then we ate the dish we made as a group at a table in the end of the veranda. The other students were 3 younger couples—2 British couples and one American couple. I felt old among them. ;-)

After the first dish, we loaded up in the VW bus again and Yui’s husband took us to the market, where we got a guided tour of all the vegetables, fruits, herbs, meats, rice and noodles. Yui explained all the different produces and how they’re used in Thai cooking. It made me covet a fresh market!!

When we returned to Yui’s house, we cooked a hot/sour prawn soup. OH MY GOSH… this was quick, easy and DELICIOUS! Yui gave us a copy of her cookbook, so I’ll be happy to make this soup for anyone who wants it when I get back!

The third dish we prepared was green curry with chicken. Again… wow. Yui showed us how to make our own curry paste, but recommended buying it and ‘fixing’ the proportions with our own ingredients. She gave a lot of tips on storing, preserving and keeping ingredients when buying them in small quantities at the market isn’t an option (like in Duluth!).

Yui drove Monica and I home to Juniper Tree, then she returned to teach the other couples how to make spring rolls, chicken cashew stir fry and mango sticky rice. It was an incredible day. I learned not only how to make those dishes, but several other asian cooking tips that I’ll use often in my kitchen.

After we got back, Jake and I took a song teow to the local hospital where I had a dental appt to fix the chip between my front teeth. My dentist charges $450 per tooth, and since the chip was on the corner of both teeth, it would count as 2 separate procedures. Here, I paid $40 per tooth. Really. So, I had them make a mouthguard for sleeping also. That cost another $75, but is less than half of what I’d pay at home!

For those of you who don’t know our family… my nephew Creed, is almost 7, and my niece Chloe just turned 4. Lincoln, the baby, is 4 weeks old now. I’ll have photos of them posted to the shutterfly account in the next day or so.

Thanks for reading, wish you were here.

March 22-24... the trip over and my shaky intro to Thailand!

3/22 Tuesday

6:15pm dep MSP

4 hour flight

8:10pm arr LAX (58 degrees, overcast)

4 hr layover

3/23 Wednesday

12:20am (10:20pm cst Wed) dep LAX

14 hr flight

3/24 Thursday

6:00am (6:00pm cst Wed) arr Taipei (55 degrees, rainy)

6 hr layover

12:20pm (12:20am cst Thu) dep Taipei

3:15 flight

3:30pm (3:30am cst Thu) arr Chiang Mai (93 degrees, overcast)

March 22, Duluth, MN

Scheduled to leave on the 1:30 shuttle, but the forecast was for worsening winter weather, turning to blizzard conditions in the later afternoon. I switched to the 11:30 shuttle, and got to the MSP terminal at 3pm.

Flights were on time and uneventful.

On my LAX-Taipei flight, I sat next to a large Bhuddist monk who was quite uncomfortable. I had the second seat in from the aisle, he was on the aisle, so he was up and down every hour or so to move about. PERFECT!! I planned my movement to coincide with his, so neither of us were too bothered. I watched 5 movies during the flights and got about 5 hours of sleep, an hour at a time.

China Airlines served 2 meals in flight, both were some kind of meat on rice with veggies. Not too bad.

I took ‘No Jet Lag’ homeopathic remedies every 2 hours… we’ll see how well it works! I DO credit chamomilla with my ability to sleep. I’m not sure I’d have slept as well as I did without it.

March 23, a day lost to flight and changing time zones

March 24, Thailand

JUNIPER TREE, Chiang Mai

This place is beautiful!! It is a resort-like place with several houses for visiting ‘servant workers’ from all over the world. It was built 12 years ago by an organization dedicated to giving M’s a place to rest, recover, rejuvenate and relax in comfort. There is a dining hall that provides 3 meals a day, a laundry area, pool, FOUR playgrounds (says Creed!!), and a stand-by taxi/van for hire. It is a tranquil, quiet place with beautifully tended gardens and grounds. The trees are in flower and birds are EVERYWHERE!

I arrived at 4pm, and got lots of hugs from Creed (6) and Chloe (4). It is SO good to be with them—they make me feel like the star of the show. A rare feeling, compared to my house, where I’m the wicked witch of the west. ;-)

It’s 90’s during the day, 75-85 at night. We sleep with fans and the AC on, but no mosquito nets.

We ate dinner at the Juniper Tree dining hall—turkey or pork with gravy, broccoli/asparagus/mushrooms, carrot/peapods, roasted/fried potatoes, ice cream. Delicious!

Monica and I left after dinner for a Dr. appt checkup (they have to pay cash for care… the appt was $13!). I’ll be checking around to see if I can find a dentist to fix my chipped front teeth while I’m here!!

After we returned home, I distributed some of the gifts that people sent with me for the kids and got ready for bed. Some things to remember:

- don’t swallow tap water (can use for washing, but don’t injest it!)

- how to work the AC in the night

- keep the door locked

- geckos talk (see next paragraph)

Who Knew!! Gecko’s chirp. All night long. After dark, they talk to each other in our rooms. They make a chirping sound that sounds like a cross between a sharp kissing sound and a stone banging on a piece of iron. Their call is a series of chirps, ascending then descending in pitch, rhythm and volume over 8 to 15 beats (it would look like this: ooooooooooo). It’s a cute noise, but I had no idea that they’d talk all night long! I’m sure I’d get used to it if I were here long enough. In the meantime, I’ll just keep reminding myself that no one is knocking on the door.

So, I crawled into bed at 8:45pm after taking half a lortab to help me relax and sleep deeply. At 8:55, I was almost asleep when I had the sensation of the bed moving. I figured it was a function of sleep-deprivation (I’d been seeing ‘phantom’ insects flying near the floor at dinner) and the lortab, but then I realized that I WAS feeling the bed move. Over the next few seconds, these thoughts ran through my head:

1. Is there a train track outside the window?

2. That rumbling isn’t loud enough to be a train that is causing this much movement of the house

3. Did it just get really, really windy?

4. This place is built MUCH to solidly for wind to move it this much

5. Am I feeling thunder rolling toward us?

6. It’s not raining, and thunder wouldn’t keep the house moving like this

7. This is an EARTHQUAKE

At this point, Monica came running into the kids’ room saying “GET UP AND GET OUTSIDE RIGHT NOW”. I jumped up, grabbed my skirt and glasses and ran out the front door into a field outside the building. We got out into the middle and watched the big trees sway for another half minute, then started to calm ourselves. The neighbor family was also out in the yard and we talked to them for a few minutes. They are from Tokyo and are VERY familiar with earthquakes. Monica, also, is quite familiar, as she grew up on the west coast and she and Jake lived in Southern California for a couple years. This was the longest in duration that she’s experienced, and quite strong.

All told, I think that the strongest tremors lasted between 15 and 25 seconds. I wasn’t scared till after I’d thought through all of the possibilities above, then I was spooked! When we were outside, we couldn’t feel the ground shaking, but the trees were swaying quite a bit. We went back inside, calmed ourselves and the kids and went back to bed.

After I calmed down (my new blood pressure medication is back in the states!!), I fell asleep pretty quickly, but woke up every few minutes thinking that someone was knocking on the doors (geckos…). At 11pm, a strong aftershock woke me up—I went from in bed to bolt upright and half way across the room before I realized that it was over. I’d kept my shorts on so I’d be dressed if we had to run out again.

The whole thing was surreal, bizarre and frightening. I laid in bed and prayed out loud till I went back to sleep. I can see how one’s brain could run away with them from the fear!! It was really scary, and the adrenaline rush was HUGE! I tend to avoid things that give me an adrenaline rush ;-)

It turns out that the epicenter was along the Myanmar/Burma border, about 150 miles north of us. The quake was a 6.8, so pretty big! Amazing that we could feel it so far away. It was all the talk at breakfast today, there were people at our table from Japan and Myanmar, so I got lots of good info on quakes. Google “earthquake in Thailand” if you want more info on it; I’m assuming that there won’t be much coverage in the US about it.

I was up several times in the night—bathroom, geckos, too hot—but overall, I got almost 10 hours of sleep. That’s the up-side of a LONG trip… too tired to HAVE jet lag at first!

Some observations about Thailand:

-Geckos are awesome, but hard to find during the day. I”ll try to get some photos and/or video one of these nights.

-Birds are EVERYWHERE! The sounds are like the soundtrack to a movie!

-Traffic rules: drivers on right side of car; left side of road; people ride in the backs of open trucks, often standing up; lanes are NARROW, sidewalks?? Nah, who needs all that room… the car’s just veer around pedestrians.

-Food… CAN”T WAIT FOR THAT!!!

Jake and Monica are out at a Dr. appt for Creed this morning, I’m expecting that we’ll get out and be a little touristy today… perhaps a massage for my aching body!!

Thanks for reading,

More later,

Julie