Congrats

Over the weekend, my sister got engaged to be married, so big fat Congrats to her and her new fiancée BJ. The preliminary plans right now look like they are going to be married in November and they will do a destination wedding in the Bahamas. Can't wait to go to the Bahamas, although the trip from Shanghai to the Bahamas is not the shortest, but it should be fun.

Let It Snow

Over this past weekend into Monday there was continuous precipitation that included some snow and freezing rain and some other fun. The total accumulation over the 3 days was less then 2 inches, but it was the largest snow fall in Shanghai in 24 years, which tells you that they don't get significant snow falls here in Shanghai. Needless to say the 2 inches of snow caused some problems throughout the city (and throughout the country). Typical to anywhere that doesn't often get snow (and places like Maryland), people were in a little bit of a panic, but when you take the subway to get to work, the weather above the ground doesn't really affect your commute.

The bad weather throughout China stranded a bunch of people who were looking to take the trains home for New Year Holiday, but we are prepping for my parents to come into town, so the snow gave us a chance to finally take down our Christmas decorations and get some of the house ready for their visit.

Sanya Pictures!!!

As promised (a month ago), here are a select few pictures from our trip to Sanya:

View back onto the island

Looking at Hotel

View from hotel to pools and ocean

Nice Clear Water

Kids Having Fun!

Mini-shipwreck

Ready to have fun

That's not completely true?

So I hardly write about things outside of the goings ons that affect my life, besides when I first started this whole blog thing, mostly because I want to keep things pretty light hearted here. But when I come across things that are just not true, I find I have to write something on it, and that is what Renee found when we were looking through the Beijing Olympics website. On the "Places of Worship" webpage, the Chinese Olympic Organizers note that "China is a country with religious freedom and respects for every religion." They then go to list 5 religions and how one might go about worshipping. Some things to point out is the fact that the 5 religions listed are the only religions recognized by the Chinese government, so if recognizing 5 religions is "every religion" and "religious freedom" then maybe they are telling the truth, but I'll let you decide on that. And if religious freedom looks like being able to worship in government approved worship places with government approved worship materials and books with government oversight, then they are surely very free. Unless you hold a foreign passport, like we do, then it is pretty hard to worship with "freedom." To note, there are many people that come to find the Father in the heavily regulated Christian church in China (not to mention the many more that come to know Him in underground churches), but that goes to the fact of how powerful the Gospel message is.

Anyway, just wanted to get out some truths from the statements you might see leading up to the Olympics.

Also as a completely different side note, I have been reading a lot of doomsday-sounding articles about the US economy and a lot of the media have been fashioning the word "recession" in their articles. Again, I want to keep things light, but go ahead and look up the definition of recession and see if in fact the US is in one (or close to one for that matter), sometimes, even in the US, you have to weary of some of the things being said. Just another thought.

My wife is a Supernova

As many of you know, I am a very cheap young man, thus during winter I try to convince my family to utilize as little heat as possible in order to save money on the gas bill. As a result, our bedroom tends to be pretty chilly (or on certain nights, cold). Since I am so stingy about turning on the heat, not only do we pile the blankets onto bed to keep us warm, but Renee also piles on layers of clothes to help keep herself warm during the cold of the night (not to mention those times that she might have to get out of bed during the night and endure the frigid temps).

The only issue with the fact that Renee has about 6 or 7 layers on, is that she radiates heat during the night. I mean, I try to get close to her to get a little warmer and I can only get within an arm's length of her before the heat radiating off of her body makes me too hot and I have to pull away. I mean I am even scared about getting some sort of heat stroke from laying so close to the "daughter of the sun." I even think that I will have to lather on some SPF 50 to prevent myself from getting sunburn…I mean it's pretty bad. I guess I have 2 choices: 1. turn on the heat and actually get to sleep closer to Renee or 2. keep the heat off and hope that my wife does not get to the point where she is literally melting me as I get into the bed (picture me being one of those guys from Indian Jones who is looking while the Ark of the Covenant has been opened).

I think I'll take my chances with the whole melting thing.

How old am I?

Yesterday our Ayi came in announcing that it was her birthday…something that confused Renee and me because she also had a birthday on December 9. The short way of explaining it is that according to the lunar calendar (the calendar traditionally followed here in China), yesterday, January 16, was in fact December 9 on the lunar calendar, so she did in fact get to celebrate her birthday twice, which could be a concept I adopt since my Company gives me my birthday off, so I could get 2 birthdays off a year.

The bigger issue that I have had is reconciling what my age over here is supposed to be. You see, at birth, the traditional Chinese would consider their baby to be 1, not 0 as we are used to in the US. So I think, over the past year and a half, I have been incorrectly telling people that my age (and I will use current age here) is 27, when here in China I am actually 28. It ultimately doesn't matter as most people assume I am around 33-35 when I am walking around with Renee, Maddie and Jacob, which really came to light when I met someone this weekend who told me that he had graduated from Towson High School in Baltimore in 1987 and when he asked me when I graduated I was kind of embarrassed to say that I graduated high school in 1998 (to all you young'ns reading this, that is still fairly recent). I guess it doesn't matter if people think I am 35 or 30 or 28 or 27, all I know is that I was born in December of 1980, so whatever age you want to say I am, I am fine with it.

Ringtones keep me singing in my sleep

Much like the US, basically everyone here in China has a cellphone, and when I say basically everyone, I mean that I have even seen a beggar on the street receive a call on a cell phone. One thing about cell phones over here is that the basic service is like a prepaid service and is not a monthly billed service based on the number of minutes you signed up type of plan that you would see in the US. So you throw a bunch of money on your phone and you hope you just don't run out of money on your phone. With this prepaid service you don't get voicemail, so when a phone starts ringing and someone can't get to it, it will ring and ring and ring and ring… and just in case you don't get the point, let me just say that unlike in the States, people don't hang-up the phone if the person on the other end is not picking up, they will let it ring until someone picks it up.

So it would not be a huge ordeal if you had your phone on soft ring or vibrate, but it becomes a little bit of an issue when you have your phone set on the loudest ring!! That and the fact that it is very easy to get illegally downloaded ring tones over here, so I get to listen to all kinds of fun Chinese Pop songs all day long as phones throughout my office ring away for minutes at a time. The best part of it is when you see a really masculine guy walking down the street and his phone goes off and the ringtone sounds like a mid-90's Celine Dion song. Coincidentally as I write this post, I just heard a phone with an excessively loud Destiny's Child song ringing and it turned out to be the operation manager's phone… a guy in his mid-40's. Oh well, maybe I have to look into getting a Hannah Montana ringtone so I can blast it in my office whenever someone gives me a call.

Am I the San Francisco Treat?

One of the main reasons that the past couple of weeks have been crazy is that I have been spending much of my free time studying for this darn CPA Exam that continues to haunt me. So on January 2, I hoped onto a plane and headed back to the US for a quick couple day trip to take the exam. First the plane ride was smooth and easy, actually when I travel alone on a 10 hour plane ride it doesn't feel like it is that long.

We arrived about 2 hours early, so I was able to get some shopping in before heading to my hotel room for some final hours of studying and sleep. I took the tests the next day and went back to my room to crash.

Today has been interesting because there is a huge set of storms coming through town over the next couple of days, today was really windy and rainy, to the point that I was turned away by some of the stores I needed to get stuff in because their power was out. The same flight that I will be flying out on tomorrow was delayed today by 6 hours because of the weather. I am hoping that the weather is not as bad tomorrow (although it is still supposed to have periods of T-storms and rain) cause a six hour delay is not going to sit well with me. Oh well, what is six hours when you have a 13 hour flight to look forward to (don't write me any messages about this, the flight from China to SF is 10 hours, the flight back to China is 13 hours, ask someone in aviation why).

Anyway, my visit has been okay, but I can't wait to get back home with the family.

New Year's Eve

I have to admit that I don't completely understand the whole New Year's Eve celebration. I mean, I guess the turning of the New Year can be seen as a start of something new, but really, I think the whole thing is a little overrated. Actually, I understand that we can utilize that night as a time to celebrate with friends and/or family and find another excuse to have a big party, but I guess I have always used New Year's Eve to go to sleep early to prepare for the full day of college football, a much bigger holiday in my mind (although dimished because the "important" bowls don't even happen on New Year's Day anymore).

Anyway, Renee and I spent the evening watching a couple of movies, including Gone Baby Gone, which is an awesome movie, really really good if you haven't seen it yet. We listened to and watched some of the fireworks that were going on all around us, but they were nothing compared to the "real" New Year's that won't be happening until early February. Now that is a celebration. It was a nice evening and at about 12:30am I went to bed, it was a nice quiet evening, actually, the way I would prefer to spend New Years (maybe adding in a couple of friends into that group), a nice quiet evening.

Sanya!!!!

As I have mentioned before, Renee, the kids, and I all hoped on a plane on Christmas Eve and flew done to Sanya in the Hainan Province of China. We stayed at the Hilton Resort and the place was awesome. Sanya is described as the Hawaii of China. Well I haven't been to the real Hawaii, but the water was clear and a nice temperature, there were rolling hills around us and the weather was beautiful. The vacation was amazing, the kids had a great time and, of course, Renee and I had a great time. We spent a part of each day sitting out at the beach and swimming in the ocean and then we would go to the pool, or at least one part of the huge pool that they have there. The kids wanted to go to the pool that had a sandy beach around it so they could swim in the pool and play at the beach at the same time. The only downfall was the price of the food, but if you have ever been to a resort that has nothing around it, they will gouge you for all you got. Actually, since we didn't have to pay for our rooms, it ended up being not too bad, but the meals were definitely more expensive then what we are used to.

One day down there I signed up to do some kayaking and I said that I could handle the legit ocean kayak. Just as a little background, I really enjoy kayaking, but prior to this, I had only kayaked on lakes. I thought it wouldn't be too different and I was very very wrong. I hoped into the ocean kayak and it immediately flipped me right into the ocean. Thinking that the incident wouldn't happen again, I hopped right back into the kayak, only to have it flip again. The workers then went and got me the beginners kayak that you really need to be trying to flip over. It ended up being a lot of fun, but the workers definitely chuckled at me when I returned the kayak because I was still soaking from my two flips into the water.

I can honestly say that I could do this for Christmas every year, it was a really nice escape. I will be posting pictures sometime in the future so you all can see how beautiful Sanya is.

Happy Belated New Year

Things have been pretty crazy with me, so sorry for the sparse postings as of late. Happy Belated New Year everyone, I hope you are enjoying 2008 thus far. The postings that will follow this one will be a slight step back in time in order to catch you all up on what is going on in our lives.