Just a pretty snow fall

Mike went to India and missed our second snowfall.

They say it doesn't snow much in Beijing.  We have, as of this writing, had four.  Olivia and I missed one since we were here.  These are shots of our compound while it was snowing.

The roadway into the compound.  The houses on the right are inside the cement wall that surrounds the compound.  So peaceful, the snow muffles the cars.

 I am on a bridge heading into the compound.  The people are standing on a pond.....It has been cold the past week but I would not trust that ice just yet!

The flash caught the branch in the foreground making it look like night has fallen.

 Sweeping the sidewalk.  The man in this picture is wearing a suit and tie....not your typical compound worker wear.....I guess he felt the crew wasn't working fast enough!

From the other side of the man sweeping the walk.

Christmas comes to Beijing.  There are many decorations in our compound.

The proper tools for the job? 

You ride your bike no matter the weather here! 
















Workers bikes parked at a rack....

Walking towards my house.  We are lucky to have this nice green-space right out our front door.  I know, it looks white now:)

Our Home!

 Our front gate.


Love, fondly, sincerely,
zaijian,
Ramona

Getting to School

Or, taking your life into your hands.

One of the reasons Mike chose the compound we live in is because of its proximity to Olivia's school.  I have always wondered how far it is........just went to google maps, did some rerouting as it put me in two wrong locations, then found a converter, it gave me distance in kilometers, and I do not do that sort of math in my head....and discovered it is 1.25 miles.  It is actually more because we have to get out of the compound to the gate, about another quarter mile.  That being said, it is not all that far. But the fact that I walk or ride a bike most days to the school and eating virtually no junk food for the past four and a half months has certainly had a positive effect on my body.  
Anyway, that is not what this post is about.  It is about getting there (and home).  The main road right out side our compound is a nice wide road with wide lanes on either side of the driving lanes for bicycles.....oh, and motorized bikes, three wheeled bikes, (some motorized), scooters, horse drawn wagons and cars who just have to get around slower cars....yes they think nothing of passing on the right here.  No matter that a bicycle is going along or one of the other slower type vehicles.  
There has been some sort of construction project going on on this road since we got here.   For the most part it has not impacted traffic until very recently. What was there were these blue buildingesque things, inside and under which work was going on.   They took up about half the bike lane for short sections but you could still easily get by without having to go into traffic.  But it did force sidewalk users into the mix of small conveyances.   About a month and a half ago they started taking them down, very exciting!  Ha!  As soon as that process started they started pounding holes in different sections along the road and constructing more blue building things taking up one entire lane of the road and its accompanying bike lane.  Now if that isn't a mess I don't know what is.  This is a heavily traveled road, especially at typical commuter times.  They are funneling all the traffic into the one side of the road, no more separate lane for the slowpoke vehicles.  


This is what it looked like prior to the blue building construction.  To the left of the solid white line is the bike lane......See, someone is passing on the right into the bike lane!!!  Mike and Olivia are riding on the side walk as it is the first time they rode tandem.....I think the last too:)  The side walks are separate, hand-laid blocks, very bumpy when sitting on the bike rack....The locals keep a cushion strapped on it.  Little did we know at the time this would all be hidden.

On this particular day I was walking and had my camera with me.....no attempting to photograph while riding now!

 This is the road now.  Large blue walls to keep cars from falling into the 12 foot deep pit on the other side....it runs the entire length of the wall.  You can see one of the little three wheeled things going along.  Usually they are sharing the bike lane.  Over under the trees is where you just saw Mike and Olivia on the sidewalk.....now covered in dirt from the hole behind the wall.

You can see everyone has caught up to the cart thing.  If I were riding my bike home I would be right there in that narrow lane along with the cars.  They can fit along side and go around you but they can't seem to do it without honking their horn at you......"I know you are there, I am trying not to ram my handle bars into the lovely blue wall."
If I am riding with someone we just ride side by side and the cars have to go along behind us......Just like the natives do.
You can see how much space there is to fit along by the car.....the other side is much narrower!

This is the sideride, oops I mean sidewalk!  Some people are not willing to try to ride in the skinny lane so walkers beware.  I tried this method the first time I rode along with the new setup.....It is harder than in the road.  Sometimes there are wheelchairs going along and they usually stay in the road.  There must be an old peoples home in the village off to my right.
The picture above shows a guy just entering the construction.  Directly behind him is the intersection.  It gets very crazy here because they have right on red but you don't seem to be required to stop before you go right....they are experts at merging, or not.  I have to go left at this light to get to the school.  I go with the crosswalk lights most of the time, but.....you have those right on red people from the other direction and they don't give a hoot about you.  (Neither do the ones going straight!)

Hence taking your life into your hands!
After this intersection it is smooth sailing

 (This is actually a different day)  Much more smog, very cold and I am riding my bike.  Yep, just got through the construction zone in one piece!


Love, fondly,sincerely,
zaijian,
Ramona

I love this place!

Muxiyuan Market revisited.

I think as long as I live in China I will not tire of exploring this market.  I have gone here four times now twice with friends, twice alone.  They have everything you can imagine needing for a sewing project and things you never imagined.  I don't know what time it officially opens but the last two times I have gone I got there by about 9:00 and it didn't seem too busy yet.....perhaps all the others had been and gone, buying things for their shops and businesses.  I think I read somewhere that it covers an area of about 6 acres....it is possible.  One of the best things is that in this giant place I am recognized when I return to a shop and they are genuinely happy to see me....of course I am usually spending money!  I have gotten lost in a new area every time I have gone there.  Never had so much fun being lost as I have here.

The first time I went I picked up some yarn.  Now this is not the Yarn Market, known as Wool Spinning City, more on that later, it is a fabric market but it certainly holds what ever you need for what ever you plan to do.  I should have foreseen  Olivia would love this yarn and purchased sufficient quantities to complete the projects.....hind sight is 20-20 right?  Of course my failure to think it through to completion necessitated some of the repeat trips.  I was so sad to have to go again.  This is 100% wool yarn that costs about three dollars a skein!

This is cotton batting, each large bag holds ten or twelve individual batts.  I bought one to see what they were like and to try to quilt with.  They are strange and come apart so easily I am not sure I can do much with it besides use it for stuffing.  It is soft, soft but comes apart as I try to open it up.  Maybe it is what the old cotton batting was like that had to be quilted an inch apart....Oh, that is so not going to happen with me.

This is a window like several other windows full of woven label strips. (up above is just a more distant shot of the same window.)  Where there is one store/stall/shop for a particular type of item there are twenty.  You can bargain here but I think you need to buy in a bigger quantity than I would ever do.  The prices are so low I don't feel I have to bargain, maybe the native Chinese do.  I know a woman from New Zealand that has started a business making womens clothing and she shops here for all her fabric.  She has a small shop right near Olivia's school.  If you come to visit I will take you there:)

In these windows you see spools of ribbon.  Any one in need?  On the table, different weights of string spools.  Store after store.  I have no idea what is in the green bundles, probably more string.  All the stores seem to get their items wrapped in this green stuff.

Another shot of a batting pile.
Some of the areas are under a roof some are not.  If you could see above in the left of the picture you should see a roof.....they drive,bike and park any where their vehicles fit....you have to keep your ears open so you don't get run over by a scooter.....they go wayyyy faster than they should.

There was even a chicken at the market.  Someones lunch?  Providing lunch for someone?  Behind the chicken is polyester batting...a different area and shops from the cotton! 

One of a gazillion lanes, batting, fabric........

There are stacks and stacks of this type fabric.  It is very wide...I think they use it to make bed coverings.  It has design repeats that are sometimes the size of the bed or just all over prints.  It is cotton, but too heavy for me to quilt with.  I know there are twenty million people living in Beijing and China is the most populous country in the world but I sometimes have difficulty wrapping my head around the fact that they can use this much stuff!



I will go back....this is not the last you have seen of the place:)

Love, fondly, sincerely,
Zaijian,
Ramona

Travel log Date: 12/16/12

America Here we Come!

We are just starting out and very awake here in Beijing.  Flight leaves at 5:00 pm Beijing time.

That is 4:00 am EST.  You guys are nestled all snug in your beds!

A sign we are in the right place!!

A little store in Newark.

Here we are on our last leg....of the journey, or our last leg......we just had a 13 hour flight and a two hour layover where we had to collect our bags go through customs and immigration and recheck our bags,  Go through security again...much slower than China.... then find our gate only to find our flight was delayed!  Poor Mom and Dad had to sit in Albany airport an extra hour waiting for us.  Thanks Mom and Dad:) 
We are still smiling!!  It is 10:00 pm EST.

Love, fondly, sincerely,

Zaijian,

Ramona

My Christmas present

I picked out an early Christmas present:)

Olivia's school holds a Charity bazaar every fall the weekend of Thanksgiving in America.  I am on the charity link at school so I helped out with setting up the school stores which were open that day and with selling apples to support an orphanage, as well as setting up the gym for the vendors who rented tables at the bazaar.  They have many vendors of all sorts of things.  When I got time to go and see, the first table as you went in the door was a  woman  selling wooden nativity sets and other Christian items.  I have always wanted a wooden nativity and these were absolutely beautiful!  I went to ask the price on the largest one and realized the woman was from our church.  It turns out her family makes these from Camphor wood.  I wanted to share it with you all, I absolutely love it!  I only wish I could get one for every one.

The neatest thing about it is the people are Chinese.  Mary and Joseph have topknots.  Look closely at the angel too.  

Wisemen, Shepherds, sheep, camels, an ox, donkey and three very different trees.  





Love, fondly,sincerely,
Zaijian,
Ramona 

She is still playing!

All those flute lessons have paid off!
On the 29th the school held their Band Winter Showcase.   Olivia is in the Concert Band at WAB.  She is second chair flute out of at least 8 flutes.  The girl who is 1st chair is majoring in music.......hard to beat that.  The head of the music department  and director of the bands told me he loves the way she sits up so straight and never slouches when she is playing, always holding her flute high and even.  She owes that to having a fantastic teacher in South Carolina.  Ms. Kristin was really a stickler for appearance while playing and looking professional, the lessons took:)

 A friend took these pictures for us as I forgot to bring the camera.......I always forget the camera:(

Love, fondly, sincerely,
zaijian,
Ramona

My eyes are bigger than the backpack

It is getting mighty cold here in Beijing!

I am finding it a bit chilly riding the bike these days.  The wind just bites right into me, both the one nature provides and the one created by my moving fast through the atmosphere.  So this evening I walked to the market instead of riding.  I was only going for one item.....you know how that is.  I can send Mike to the store for one item and he comes home with exactly that one thing.......I am incapable of doing that because I know what is getting low or what I might want to make for dinner in a day or two.  So, on this excursion I was supposed to get yogurt for Mike's lunch.  I got carried away.......
This is me on a return from the store minus the flip-flops   You do not wear your shoes in the house here, too much nastiness on the roads and sidewalks.  Our high today was 36 degrees according to weather.com.  I don't know that it got that high as there is a leaky faucet on the side of the house and the icicles did not diminish in size during the day.  (Said leaky faucet has now been repaired by compound maintenance.)  (Notice the towel at the bottom of the door?  3/8ths inch gap has not been dealt with by said compound maintenance.)

Now that backpack doesn't look like much but it has a pretty good capacity.  I am holding a carton of eggs I decided not to squish on the way home.

However, all this stuff on the counter came out of the backpack and by the time I got home it was feeling mighty heavy:)  We have Mission brand tortilla's....although my friend gave me a great recipe for homemade ones that are fantastic.....cream cheese from Wisconsin, butter from New Zealand, and mozzarella from some other place......the eggs, milk,yogurt and chunk of chicken are from China.....how is that for international cuisine?  Those are frozen cranberries on the back left......not sure where they are from, I thought they were only grown in the US but perhaps not.

Can't just jump in the old jalopy and head on over to the store!!!

Love, fondly, sincerely,

zaijian,

Ramona

Family Visitors!!

Who is next??

We had a great weekend with Sue, Jim, Drew and Ella.  They came to town on Thursday before Thanksgiving to spend a few days with us and then headed off on a heritage tour Sunday with other families who have adopted children from China.  For those that don't know, our niece Ella was adopted about four years ago.  I don't know all the details but the children and families are somehow invited to come back to China to see where they were born.  (Maybe Sue can read this when she gets back to the states and set the record straight.)  
We showed them a bit of ordinary life here in Beijing......or our life anyway.  Our local veggie man, a Chinese grocery, a nice Chinese restaurant;  where we ordered a fish dish and a few minutes after placing our order a guy walks over to our table with a live fish in a bucket to be sure it was OK for our meal....you don't see that every day in the US.  Mike took them to a shopping center/mall...these are hard to explain exactly but Mike took them there specifically for Ella to get her nails done:)  I took Sue and Jim to Pan Jia Yuan so they could look for treasures to take home.  It was a cold day for the Californians!!   We had tea in a little cafe, very interesting looking tea....
Drew made good headway in learning how to ride a bike.....now you might think he would already know how but he sort of bypassed two wheels for one.  He is a unicycler, one wheel is all he requires to get around.  He needed to learn to be able to take the bike ride on the great wall later in the week with the tour.  
We also took them on a tour of Olivia's school.  It was even a tour for Mike as he saw parts of the school he had never seen before.  I have spent much more time at WAB than Mike so I know my way around pretty well.  They thought it was pretty neat especially the Koi stream in the High School.  We even got to see Olivia on her lunch break sitting in her favorite chair and we met some of her friends.  
It was fun to see family here on this side of the world.  Come on over for a visit, we have plenty of space!  

Olivia celebrating her birthday with her cousin.  One turning 17, one turning 6.....guess who is who!!

The atrium in Olivia's school.  Also showing the amphitheater.  The school also has two other theaters/stages in the elementary building. 

Looking down from the top of the ramp to the giant red Chinese chairs.  If you look closely on the left you can see some koi in the koi stream, and yes, some people have stepped right into it, I almost did one day.  The chairs up at the left are where I can usually find Olivia at lunch time.....how is this for a high school cafeteria?

The weird looking tea.  Very welcome on a cold morning at the market.



It is very hard to load pictures with a VPN that keeps shutting down:(  
My Aunt said she was going through withdrawal as I have not been posting....I am trying:)

Love, fondly, sincerely,
zaijian,
Ramona

It is a small world!!!

Thanksgiving  in Beijing, China. 

My friend loves to celebrate Thanksgiving.  They have a tradition here to have each member of the family invite a family to dinner….rules apply…..should not be American and cannot be invited a second time.  Fairly easy to accomplish as the international community here is huge and varied as well as being transient.  Thanksgiving being a regular work day here, my friend had her dinner last weekend.  So this year at their dinner conversation was learning about each other.  One gentleman said he worked on MR systems.  My friend mentions me and says my husband works on MR for GE.  He asks the name and says I know him……!!!  So here we are in Beijing and this guy used to work at GE Global Research in Schenectady on MR’s while we were in South Carolina the first time.  He left GE to work with another company here in China and just moved to Beijing last year.  It’s a small world!!  And he is not American, he is Dutch.

Love, fondly, sincerely,

Zaijian,

Ramona

Squash and pumpkin excursion

I never really know where I am going.  

Having a driver or riding in the car with someone else's driver does not lead one to learn exactly where things are.  Consequently I don't know where this place is.  It is a road with roadside markets somewhere outside the 6th ring.  If you look at a map of Beijing you will see that there are roads running in circles around the center of the city.  No they don’t actually run…they are thereJ  Due to congestion and pollution there are days when you cannot drive your car inside 5^th Ring Road.  This is based on the last digits of your license plate.  Currently our day is Monday; I believe your day changes quarterly.  Lucky for Mike our driver lives outside the 5^th ring on the east south side of Beijing and we live outside the 5^th ring on the east north side and work is somewhere back on the east south side.  (Just giving directions the way it is done here.)  On the day your car cannot go into the city you either take a taxi or shuttle or subway.  Mike never has to do that, very lucky guy.  

I am having a great deal of difficulty with the VPN so a quick bit of wording before all is lost!

Looking along the road showing the pumpkins and apples as far as you can see.

Just huge piles!  So colorful.

Not a lot of variety of apples, just plenty of them.

An interesting looking tractor type thing, for lack of a better description.  At first I thought it was a rototiller but here it is being used to haul the wagon load to the stand.  Perhaps it is a rototiller in the spring and the tines are removable.

Some funky varieties of squash.












A huge pile of the type we bought for our 'pumpkin'.

Some of the ones I bought.

Sparkles approved!!


Love, fondly, sincerely,
zaijian,
Ramona