The Lake

This is my favorite place on earth!

 When we arrived Zack decided to go straight into the lake so I hung our wet clothes and put on our suites.

 I was so happy that so many of my cousins were up at the same time

And Zack kinda liked it too...

 He never quite mastered the shovel but that doesn't mean he didn't have fun in the sand.

 What 1 year old doesn't like haveing the attention of grandparents, great grandparents great aunts and uncles and second cousins?  They all really enjoyed Zack but I am sure they all needed a rest after we left.

he wasn't so sure about the boat at first but after cousin Kurt started driving fast and over bumps he was screaching in delight

This was after throwing his ball in the pond and before falling and hitting his head on a rock

The COTW carnival

I wore this same lifejacket as a toddler...we wore these the whole time on the beach and dock.

Catching minnows

I'm ready for another smore

I don't know where he gets this stuff...he just picked up the racket and smashed his face

You can't beat a surprise visit from Grandpa.

You can't beat boat rides, family and smores!!!!

YangShou

I am sooooooo mad at myself.  We have been in China for almost a year and a half and this is only the second city we visited within China (other than Shenzhen and Guangzhou…but I feel like a 2 hour car trip doesn’t really count).  Not only that but this resort area was only an hour away from us (by plane…plus the 2 hours to the airport and the 1 hour to the hotel) but it was a super cheap wonderful vacation.  This could have totally been a great weekend regular get away spot. 
People told me that this was the most beautiful place in China…well I was skeptical because I have taken hikes or climbed stairs to see a “great” view and none have been worth it.  But honestly I have never seen mountains like this.  It was truly beautiful (this is a lot coming from someone who doesn’t like looking at pictures unless there are people in them and never appreciates a view). 
We stayed at the Yangshou Mountain Retreat.  This place was really special…the rooms weren’t anything exciting but we were on the river overlooking the mountains.  It is owned by an American who built it using all green materials and they don’t serve anything disposable (not even straws).  The receptionist (who is listed as someone to call if you want to organize an excursion) is a local girl with severe brittle bone disease.  Typically someone in her situation would have been sent to an orphanage when she was young or you would find her on the street begging for money.  She took initiative and got a job, learned English, Quickbooks and Hotel finances.  She was truly a blessing to meet.

The waitresses at the restaurant were great girls.  We only ate a few meals at the hotel restaurant but we enjoyed it because the girls were totally smitten with our little boy and would entertain him so Adam and I could eat a meal at the same time. 

We strolled through west street where there were tons of handicraft shops and great restaurants.  The travel book mentioned that haggling prices for these crafts was tough but honestly (as an experienced Chinese haggler) it was nothing…it wasn’t even fun!  You look at something, they quote a super high price and you walk away and they cut their price by 75% without you even showing more interest. 

Our big outing was a Li river raft cruise.  The raft was made of bamboo and had a motor the size of a personal fan.  We got to see the beautiful mountains while the much needed breeze cooled us off.  We left the hotel at 8:30 and were supposed to be back at 12:00.  At 11:30 we had just turned around on the river and not 10 min after turning around the police boat yelled at us and we turned back in the other direction.  We pulled up to a local fishing village with a restaurant.  Adam and I already planned on having lunch at the hotel where they had a boneless version of the local beer fish.  We each had a coke and took a little rest.  When we were ready to leave we got up and started walking toward the river, our driver said no he wasn’t ready yet, and decided to order lunch.  I started to freak out.  We were an hour from where the car was meeting us, which was 45 min away from the hotel and we had the baby.  After he ate he wondered around so Adam told him we wanted to leave, the driver said he wasn’t going to leave for a half hour.  We called the hotel and after talking to the driver Angel informed us that the government shut down the river and it would open again at 12:30.  I don’t know what happened but once it was 12:30 we left and well we survived.  Once we got on the raft with the cool breeze all was well!

Xin Nian Quai Le!!!!

Happy New Year!!!!
We just spent an amazing few days in Guangzhou.  Guangzhou is the 3^rd biggest city in all of China and it is only a 2 hour trip from Huizhou.  Why haven’t we gone there before do you ask?  Well we took a trip there about a week after we moved to Huizhou to meet up with some friends of ours that were traveling through Guangzhou to complete the paper work after adopting a little girl.  I have actually been there twice by myself to get more passport pages added to our passports.  Our first trip was a total blurr…we were still getting used to everything Chinese and we were really excited to see people from our life before China (anyone who has lived overseas will understand).  The last two times, dealing with the US consulate, left me hating the idea of ever going to Guangzhou again.   
We arrived at our hotel at 1:00 on Wednesday and headed to Baiyun Mountain where you can get one of the best views of the city, and walked through the Yuntai gardens where they decorated for Chinese New Year using flowers and plants.

It was a lot of walking but it was a beautiful day and a great way to start off our trip.  For dinner we stopped at an Asian Fusion restaurant.  They had a huge menu with amazing food (but you aren’t pregnant so you don’t care so much about the food).  The best part of this restaurant was the floor show.  Basically picture an Asian Mariachi band with singers and dancers dressed in costumes (Saturday Night Fever, Cowgirl, Chef, etc…).  They sang a few songs and danced through the restaurant…children and adults joined in and it truly made our night. 
Thursday we went to Shamian Island.  It was the only place the Chinese government allowed foreigners to live while China was closed off.  They gave the foreigners this horrible piece of land, meanwhile the foreigners build mansions, had sewage systems installed and running water long before China did…basically saying screw you.  The buildings have been well maintained and are now apartment buildings and souvineer shops.

We stopped for lunch at a place called Lucy’s Bar and Grill.  The menu had hamburgers, grilled cheese, fried chicken and they served iced tea in jumbo mason jars.

Ironically I ordered Thai green curry and Adam ordered Szechuan chicken…me I am totally having green curry cravings and Adam was excited to have American style Chinese food (good quality skinless chicken without bones with sweet and sour sauce).  At this lunch we noticed there were friends from Huizhou at the next table (actually I had seen the girl a few days before and told her we were going to Guangzhou and it seems like she liked the idea) while chatting with them we found out that the Starbucks in Huizhou had officially opened!  After lunch we went to a couple local markets which were mostly closed due to the holiday.  If we didn’t live in China with access to street markets I would have been disappointed but it was nice to walk through the markets without being bumped and knocked.  These markets made the markets in Huizhou look totally lame, I will defiantly have to go back before we head home. 
We also went to the "Canton School", the oldest building in Guangdong.

We ate dinner at a German restaurant that had good beer for Adam and well…food I liked.  After dinner we headed back to the hotel…even though the whole city seemed very calm I (we are blaming our lameness on me) had a long day of walking and was getting tired.  We skipped the fireworks and went back to the hotel.
Saturday we went to a couple malls where we ate lunch and wondered around the new area of Guangzhou…the area I know well after wandering around for 30 min trying to find the consulate.  This time I actually enjoyed the stroll, partly because the temperature was in the mid seventies, the sun was out, there were children playing in the park and my husband at my side.  We walked through Ikea

(as a Huizhou ex-pat we need to walk through places like Ikea every once and a while).  We ate Thai for dinner and Dairy Queen for Desert (yes you read that correctly DAIRY QUEEN).
Sunday we got to sleep in (if you count the last time I woke up) and take our time packing up and watching news in English.  For lunch we went back to the first restaurant (it was really close to the hotel and it had the best green curry I had since we arrived).  I totally didn’t expect another floor show but sure enough the performers did a Chinese New Year floor show which was the perfect ending to our wonderful trip.  Actually the perfect ending was having our driver pick us up at the hotel and drive us to our apartment…we didn’t have to go through security or immigration. 
We have decided that if we travel anywhere else while we are here we need to travel within China…then when we move back to America I really want to make sure we take our children around the US.  It’s a shame we have been in China almost a year and haven’t really been a tourist in China yet.  We hope to travel at least o Beijing (once the baby comes we will need to take a practice plane trip before we take him on a 20 hour flight anyway).

Winding Down (Melbourne – January 1-4)

We got to our Hotel in Melbourne late in the afternoon on New Year’s Day.  We went to the harbor area where there was a free entry theme park and lots of restaurants.  Do you see a theme “Free” and “Food” were the words of the trip…which seemed to cancel each other out since food was sooooo expensive.  We spend over double what we would spend at an equivalent restaurant in the States…I will never again complain about prices in America.  If we were taking this trip from NC instead of China I would have bought a loaf of bread and some pb&j to pack for lunches and we would have only had ice water to drink.  However we were coming from a land where even the Italian restaurant is basically Chinese and not the best Chinese.  We were also excited (actually I think Adam was more excited then I was) that I was able to eat a full adult meal without vomiting, gagging or taking 1 bite then leaving the rest because the first bite ruined all food for me.  I had new restaurants to choose from (not ones with memories of the gagging or smells etc… from the past 6 months) and I actually wanted to eat.  Adam mentioned a couple times that he liked watching me enjoy food and he showed me how much he actually liked it by allowing me to stop at overpriced cupcake and ice cream shops whenever my eyes got big.  We probably spend double what we thought we would spend on food this trip but it was worth every penny and if I had to do it again I may have enjoyed even more. 

Back to Melbourne…I think the coolest thing we did here was on Jan. 2^nd.  Adam and I went to a Cricket game.  I thought Cricket was a lot like baseball but neither of us really knew anything about it.  Adam “wiki’d” it as we were sitting in the stands waiting for the game to start and it was still very confusing to us.  I apologize to any Cricket fans out there but we both found the game strange and boring…even though we truly enjoyed the experience.  What happens is each team gets 20 overs, 1 over is 6 at bats.  The same batter will hit until he gets out (which happens if you hit the wicket before the runner gets there or the ball is caught.  The bowler (pitcher) keeps changing for each at bat.  The teams don’t change places until the batting team finishes their 20 overs.  Get it…yeah I still don’t.  This was (I am guessing) the equivalent to a minor league baseball league, but we happened to be in the state (we had to root for the home team) with the best team, they had been the champs for the past 3 years or something like that and they totally creamed the Queensland Team…Go Victoria!!!!

January 3^rd was a holiday and museums and what not were closed so we took a free trolley tour of the city and tried to stay out of the cold wind, and went to a mall.  We took it easy strolled through the city, took some maternity shots at the park and ended the evening by ducking into an arcade.  We saw a Deal or No Deal game and decided to use up some of our coins.  I picked suitcase #11 and won the Jackpot…200 tickets!  Too bad it wasn’t the actual game.  We took a major risk because my last 2 cases (mine and the one left) were the highest (200 tickets) and the lowest (1 ticket).  I stuck with mine and bam…I was the big winner.  We gave our tickets to a little boy who was very happy to be able to pick out some quality junk from the ticket counter.  Did I mention we stopped at Krispy Cream for breakfast…yeah what are the chances our hotel was one block away from a Krispy Cream!

at the cricket match

“Normal” Rainy Day Activities (Brisbane - December 26-28)

Our concierge struck again when we decided to take the train to Brisbane from Noosa (we really weren’t excited about paying a taxi driver another $250).  They sent us to a train station that only had one train coming through at 11:00 pm.  Our taxi driver was concerned as we were on the way and said he would wait for us in case we would be stuck, he even said he would take us to the next train station that had more trains going through for about half the price.  This was the nicest taxi driver I had ever been in a car with (not only because he gave us a discount on a holiday when he could have charged more…we probably would have paid anything to not be stuck for 13 hours).  He said that he and his wife had just come back from a holiday in the States and people were nice to them so he wanted to return the favor.  He seemed to know everything about the history of the US and the history of every piece of land we passed.  I can’t imagine what we would have done if we had taken the concierge’s advice about taking the bus (it was free that day) to the abandoned train station.  We figured it may not be easy to take luggage on a crowded bus.

When we arrived in Brisbane the plan was to go to a mall and enjoy the Boxing Day sales.  However everything in Australia is very expensive right now…between the inflation issues there and the low low value of the US dollar we would pay more on sale items then we would pay on regular priced items in the States.  We did pick up a few things for baby (skin care items that I was certain were Johnson and Johnson and not a copy).  The rain the first day was just annoying enough that we didn’t want to do anything outside, which was fine we were happy to be a normal couple doing normal rainy day things (shopping and a movie). 

The next day we planned on going to the Australia zoo, which is supposed to be one of the best!  It was started by the Crock. Hunter years ago!  This was our second attempt to go but it was rainy the first time.  We decided to go no matter what!  However the receptionist said it would be miserable in the rain.  We decided to spend the day at a different outdoor shopping area armed with our umbrellas and rain jackets.  We stopped for lunch at a sandwich place overlooking the harbor and as we were finishing up the skies opened and we got wet even in the covered area of the restaurant.  We hung out until the rain slowed down, which it never really did, and we went back to the mall from the day before.  We walked around a bit then went bowling!  It isn’t easy bowling with a bowling ball poping out of your belly, not to mention I was super careful.  I picked the lowest weight ball and didn’t bend too much when throwing the ball because I was afraid of tipping over.  Adam gave me a 30 point handicap which turned out to be necessary considering the only reason pins fell down was because they were knocked down by other pins.  I don’t think I even broke 80.  I can see my family now trying to fix my stance and telling me how I could bowl better…good thing I don’t really care, I just enjoy the game!

Christmas on the Beach (Noosa Beach – December 23-26)

We arrived at the Brisbane airport at 10:30 in the evening.  We had been told by the concierge at the hotel that we could catch a bus straight to the hotel (which was about an hour and a half away).  We made sure they knew that we would be coming in late and double checked that the bus would be running…we were assured that it would.  I know I should have done more research but I didn’t and for sure the bus wasn’t running after 9:00 pm.  Our only option was to take a taxi for about $350 or hire a private car for $300.  I negotiated a better deal with the taxi driver and we ended up spending $250.  Our taxi driver was hilarious.  We couldn’t understand a word he said but he kept talking to us…he had the redneck version of an Australian accent.  At one point he pulled over at a gas station to use the bathroom.  He then got lost.  I think he may be the only person I know that doesn’t have a cell phone so Adam called the hotel to get directions, the driver was talking to the hotel and couldn’t read the road sign so Adam read it for him but the driver totally got it wrong on the phone…it took everything in us not to burst out laughing at him trying to describe where we were by mispronouncing everything.  Thank goodness he said the directions out loud because he forgot them and Adam and I had to direct him to the hotel.  It was one of those situations where you wonder if you may be on Candid Camera. 
Unfortunately the weather reported rain for the entire time we were in Noosa and Brisbane, so our first full day there was wandering around the beach shops and eating some amazing food and gelato.  We had Christmas eve dinner at a wonderful little pizza place called Zachary’s. 
Christmas morning we woke up to SUNSHINE well a small amount of sun poking through a lot of gray clouds.  We got up to go to the beach before the sun went away and forgot our sunscreen…I assumed that we would be OK for a short time and I didn’t want to risk losing the one bit of sun by running back for sunscreen.  We both ended up Christmas red after an hour before heading up for lunch (and to pick up the sunscreen).  We sat at the pool under an umbrella for the rest of the afternoon.  The popular thing to do on Christmas day is to go out for a big lunch; we decided to go out for a big dinner instead.  We came back to the hotel and watched White Christmas.

can you see the rain?

Christmas Eve Dinner at Zachary's...next year we will have Christmas Eve Dinner WITH Zachary

Video's from Sydney

This was the Animal Park in Sydney...notice how uncomfortable I am with the Animals

This is my favorite video of all time!  This was taken just a couple hours after arriving in Sydney when we stopped to watch this show while killing time before our free tour. 

Sitting on the beach in Bali while getting a foot massage…does life get any better than this?

Our trip to Bali was just what we needed.  I decided to not do a whole lot of planning since this was supposed to be a relaxing vacation and I figured like in Thailand you can get tour packages much cheaper from men on the street then you can from the internet. 
I really wanted to stay in Ubud which is the more cultural area but the hotels in our price range got mixed reviews, the complaints being that they were too far from town to walk.  After thinking about it staying on the beach was the smarter choice (I mean who wants to sit in a cab covered with sand).  We stayed on Kuta beach which is meant to be where young people hang out to get drunk and party…not what I was planning on doing over the weekend so we stayed on the edge of the beach close to the airport.  Our resort had a private beach and right outside the entrance we had an Indian restaurant, a Thai restaurant, a Mediterranean restaurant and a Mexican restaurant.  There were also market streets and DVD shops.  I know we don’t need another DVD but we had to check for Christmas movies since we haven’t been able to find any in Huizhou. 
Friday we got to Bali around noon and went straight to the beach.  We spent the majority of the day at the beach before moving to the pool.  That night we explored the Kuta area and had an amazing dinner at the Mediterranean restaurant.

This is what Adam did...

and this is what I did...the best feeling in the world as a pregnant woman

Saturday we took a tour of Bali which took us to many of the handicraft areas.  We saw how they handmade jewelry, we saw a woodcarving area, an art area, a fabric painting area and a furniture shop.  We also ate lunch with a view of a volcano which is “alive” but hasn’t erupted in 15 years or so.  We stopped at a coffee plantation where Adam was able to taste the fresh coffee.  (Cool story about the coffee plantation: there is a coffee bean which is fermented by going through the digestive system of an animal.  The animal kind of looks like a cross between a cat and a rat…but anyway the animal eats the coffee beans and poops them out, someone gathers the poop and cleans off the beans, which are still intact, and roasts the beans.  This is apparently the most expensive type of coffee…Adam decided against having a sample of this coffee)  The end of our trip took us to Ubud where we walked through a monkey park and walked the streets looking at the handicrafts we just saw being made. 

Sunday we walked around another area of town after breakfast, then, after lunch spent the remainder of the day at the beach.  The wonderful family who worked our beach gave massages and went on beer runs for Adam among other things.  As annoying as it is having people try to sell you stuff while you are trying to relax on the beach my foot massage and Adam’s ability to get a beer without leaving his chair made it more tolerable.  Thankfully living in China has taught 2 people pleasers how to say “no” in a way that makes them leave us alone. 

Like all the other trips we have taken this trip was way too short…I have added it to very long list of places we will take our children to when we tour Asia and show them where mommy and daddy lived for a little while.