Accidents happen

When accidents happen in China,
no one moves their vehicle until the police get there.  To heck with anyone trying to get past.  It doesn't matter if there isn't a mark on either vehicle, you just don't move them.  Consequently they cause major traffic snarls......

This one was a bit different.  When  Olivia came home from school one day she said a truck had hit the little police building on the corner of our road.  The next morning it was still there as I rode my bike to the school. That afternoon it was still there when I rode back home.  I got a few shots of it but there were people all around and I didn't want to get into any trouble...some had uniforms and you just cannot tell who is who here....At least in this case it was not blocking traffic but it sure caused a great deal of rubber-necking!!

It is hard to say why this truck crashed into the little building.  My only explanation is that the majority of the people here drive like idiots.....yes much worse than where ever you live...They really like to pass on the right here, going into the bicycle lane.  Heaven help the cyclists who are minding their own business riding where they are supposed to.  Someone probably cut him off at the intersection and he had no other option, the building was  softer than the brick and cement wall beside it.  It is all better now.

Love, Fondly, Sincerely,

Zaijian, 

Ramona

That was then, this

is now.

November 1995.....November 2013.....
As many of you know we just celebrated Olivia's birthday a couple weeks ago.....my baby is an adult.
Probably the last birthday we get to have with her for a few years:(

Happy Birthday to Olivia!!

Love, Fondly, Sincerely,

Zaijian,

Ramona

Snug as a bug....

Here we are all cozy....
In our beds.  I made these beds for the cats a few months ago and they really like them.  I had just taken them out of the dryer and tossed them on the floor.  Onyx approached with caution, sniffing as she went like it was something new.....Just clean and warm.  In she crawled.  Sparkles had been laying in the little Ayi room off the kitchen on a little rug.....the floors here are cold!!  She decided to get up and investigate....she was much quicker about getting comfy.  If one is comfy in the middle of the kitchen floor.  Sparkles does not ordinarily allow Onyx to be in such close proximity but I guess you can make sacrifices for the sake of comfort!

You might notice that Onyx looks a bit small for her bed....or, conversely, Sparkles looks a bit large for her bed.... Can't really explain to them whose is whose:)

Love, fondly,sincerely,

Zaijian,

Ramona

ONLY

In China...LOL
Yesterday the shower drain in the MB decided to take a vacation...ie not drain as was proper, that being it's only job.
So I called the front office for some assistance.  I made an appointment for them to come and clean it out or what ever needed doing.  These two workers show up to fix things.  Mind you, these are the workers who usually hang my pictures or put in new light bulbs.  She always carries a dust pan and towels and cleans up whatever mess the guy makes with her tools.  This is her job, she does it day in and day out....with a smile:)
I answer the door and there they are, her with the dust pan, him with a ladder.....not sure what that is for so I pantomime the shower action, say water in Chinese, and try to indicate the drain.....wish I had all that on video, must have looked pretty amusing from their side.  They did figure out what I meant and left the ladder behind.  Up we went to the 3rd floor....I hate those stairs and do everything in my power to only go up them once a day and that is at bed time!
So, in the shower I resort to pantomime again trying to show that the water won't go down.  I remove the plastic removable drain part and set it aside, point to the hole the water is suppose to go out of and say "Bu shui"  and look at them.  He picks up the plastic part and starts inspecting it.....really?  I put it in the corner of the space.....I tap him on the shoulder as he is crouched in the shower,  "Bu, bu" as I point to the pluggy...
He starts to adjust it with a screw driver....really, omg I can't take this.  I call my friend, my lifesaving, Chinese speaking friend, but she texts she is teaching and cannot talk now.  I call Mikes admin. she picks right up.  I explain to her and she explains to him.....this takes a bunch of time I do not have as I am trying to prepare a nice birthday for Olivia.....We finally get him to inspect the drain but he thinks it doesn't have a problem till I turn on the water and let it run for about 40 seconds and it starts to fill the shower and go nowhere.  Then it is determined he doesn't have the right equipment to fix this and will contact the office....The conversation with the admin about that took forever because she wanted them to then call me and make an appointment and I couldn't make her understand that when they say they will send somebody it is usually in a matter of minutes, no appointment needed once they have shown up!
Those people leave, the doorbell rings about 5 minutes later.  Two guys with a compressor are now at my door......All I was hoping for was a snake....I guess they don't have those here.   They bring this thing in the house, it is ancient and covered with dirt.  They wheel it across the room to the stairs, they carry it up to the third floor, they set it down, planning to drag it across the bedroom where I have my silk Iraqi rug!!!  I make some sort of noise and they got the idea they had to carry it.  In the bathroom again I am looking at this trying to figure out if it is gas or electric.....yes they would start up a gas engine inside a building with no ventilation....luckily it is electric.  They start it up at which point I see that the fan blade cover is non existent!  It is loose and rattles like it could fly off at any second!  I make all kinds of comments and tell them that is bad and make a cover with my hands....they smile and laugh.  Now, Mike likes to take pictures of unsafe working conditions he sees to use at work to show the people what NOT to do.  I get the idea of taking a picture so I rush down those awful stairs grab the camera and run back up.  I show them the camera.  "Wo de airen xihuan zhe ge."
"My husband will like that one".  "Dui". he says....that means right so I took that as approval to take the picture.

Here it is in all its glory.  And here are the guys.  And look at that tiny hose they have...                   

(I want to write beside the picture and can't figure out how:( )

I don't know what the wobbly fan is made of but if it flew off there could be issues with work related injuries!!  The best part of all is once they turned the thing on there was this hissing then spewing of water, disgusting drain water out of the sink and all over the bathroom.  While they stood there and watched, I threw out the toothbrushes:(  It was so gross!!  I didn't have time to clean it then as I was, perhaps you remember, getting ready for Olivia's birthday celebration!!!  

The drain was cleared.....

Maybe we need to invest in a snake!

Love, fondly, sincerely,

Zaijian,

Ramona

Bet you've never seen one of these before!

A Map......
Not just an ordinary map, mind you.  A map of the United States of America.  Not just an ordinary map of the United States of America, mind you.  It is all in Chinese!!
My friends sons passport got misplaced and after tearing apart the house for four days they decided they had to get a new one because the Visa was going to expire on the entire family's passports and you only have a certain window where you are allowed to apply for new ones......
So on Monday I went with them to the US Embassy while they applied for it.  I really wanted to see the Embassy and this helped for any future issues I might have....I now know how to get in....American passport holders go to the head of the line!  And it is a long line.  I would show you pictures but since you cannot take even a cell phone into the Embassy I didn't get any:(  The Embassy opens at 8:30, we arrived about 8:20 and the line has about 100 foreigners in it outside the building but then as we went in it was obvious there were more like 200 worming their way through the labyrinth.  We just followed the hallways up to the American only section, no waiting on this day.  I am sure it isn't always like this, I think we were lucky:)

When we got there all these people were running about in the street passing out these flyers.  Not very helpful to us but the Chinese need to be able to say/show where they are going in order to get their Visa to go to the US.

Sorry the pictures are not so great....little camera, glossy paper.....

Oh yes, I have had a helper this morning.  She is so sweet:)

This only took a million years to post.....so love blogging in China!

Love, fondly, sincerely,

Zaijian,

Ramona

ART!!

Olivia's Art.....
Installed at school.  Can't be missed, it is right at the bottom of one of two staircases in the High School building....I guess because she is in High School?  These are stickers she had printed.  She cut the sheets into whatever sizes she wanted and meticulously applied them to the mannequin.  She also hand lettered and painted the paper behind.

She is in Higher Level (HL) art in the IB program.  They have to produce 18 pieces of art all of which are supposed to somehow be related......Her first pieces started out with her adjustment to living in China.  She has moved on to another aspect about........I will have to let her explain, I am only here to show off her stuff:)

Love, fondly sincerely,
Zaijian,
Ramona

My Birthday present

Well, it was a long time ago.....
I haven't shared what Mike got me for my birthday.  I have been wanting a set of scrolls.  The only requirement was traditional Chinese design. I have seen many that I really liked but could never commit to any set in particular.  Mike has rescued me from my conundrum.

And the best thing is, when I came home from the States he had hung them up for me:)  He is so nice to me.  I tried to make a bigger picture but all the stuff on the side ends up on the picture...not good.

I need to get closeups, that is for another day.

Love, fondly, sincerely,

Zaijian,

Ramona

Oh My Gosh it is November!

And I have certainly been neglecting things! Specifically, this blog:(

We have been busy living our lives...isn't that what we all do?

As you can see by the new picture at the top of the blog I went with Keary back to the pumpkin place.  We packed two cases of apples, some bags of the squash we cook down for pumpkin recipes, some bags of apples, some bags of a fruit that isn't quite a peach, and a whole lot of pumpkins into the back of her van.  We felt a bit selfish not inviting someone else to come along but we knew there would be a spacial challenge involved in fitting more people and more pumpkin in.  This is the back of the van with squash and pumpkins all the way up to the seats.  This is the lady that sold them to us.  She thought we were cute.  Especially me and my lousy Chinese.  She liked us so much she gave us several of the pumpkins!!  I made applesauce, and apple crisp.  Peachy crisp and baked then smushed the pumpkin.

My sunglasses broke a couple months ago and Olivia has been wanting a pair of sunglasses and glasses are CHEAP here.  Or maybe I should say inexpensive for prescription glasses at Glasses City.  Sadly I have no pictures of Glasses City.  I will get some when I take Mike to get some new glasses.  It is a huge building that is full of little glasses shops like all the other market places to shop around China.  I have a friend from Finland who can test your eyes and write your prescription for glasses.  (We actually went to the Dr. to have them done here.)   She used to work at Glasses City so I asked her to go there with me and show me how it is done.  The advantage of going with her was I didn't even have to bargain, they gave me the best price right off the bat.  So nice not to have to haggle. But today I can post pictures of me and Olivia in our new sunglasses and Olivia in her new glasses.

These are the new glasses....umm, I know that is obvious they are not sunglasses! They have purple bows:)

These are the sunglasses in case you weren't sure:)

I think they are cute!

She is happy, she has never had prescription sunglasses before.

This is her glasses case, it looks just like my new glasses case....so to solve the problem of not knowing whose was whose I made a little charm for hers from beads I brought.

My new sunglasses:):)

They are taking a bit of getting used to because they are brown lenses, never had them before always the blue/gray sort.

I will try to be better.

(I keep saying that.....)

Love, fondly, Sincerely,

Zaijian,

Ramona

The Railroad Museum

Mike discovered a museum.

Mike likes to go out exploring on the bike on Saturdays.  With the map apps on his phone this is fairly easy to do.....I have no such phone so don't get too far from home on my own.  

One Saturday he found this museum, it was a bit late in the day so he came home and we planned to go the next Saturday.  It is only about a half hour from here by bike.  It was a beautiful sunny day with real, puffy clouds...such a rarity.

The roads being what they are here I didn't take pictures while riding.  Some of them didn't have bike lanes so it is a bit precarious,what with people constantly passing on the right and just about running you off.....

I forgot to take a picture of the sign at the entrance....I am so  bad at documentation!  I did , however, get some signs inside.  Most of them were along these lines....we really couldn't quite figure out what they were trying to tell us, we just haven't learned out characters.  Although we do know it happened in 1947.

However, all was not lost because some signs were significantly easier for us to read....ok, ok I know it isn't technically a sign in the truest sense of the word but it certainly got our attention:)

Gee, I wonder where this train was made??

Or this part below??

 A very large wheel.  I thought the gear looked cool:)  It belonged to the train below.

The shot below is just a China moment I thought was a bit amusing.   He went in and determined it wasn't where he belonged....it is hard to see here but the sign says 'women's toilet'.  So he popped back out and just decided this was the best place to go!  I don't know if he thought he had privacy or not, probably didn't care.  This was directly out the window of the wall of windows at the end of the museum:)

This was a metal plate or tag showing the weight capacity of whatever train it came off of..why would I post this shot?  Because I could actually read it of course.

Need I say more?

Mike, wearing his Virginia Tech hat, holding his Virginia Tech water bottle in front of a GE train.  Yup, bases covered!

 The ride back, my view of Mike, and me....There was actually this section with a good bike lane and fairly light traffic so I braved a shot.  Still enjoying the brilliant blue beyond.

We topped off the day by going to the school to listen to our friends son play in his band at the WAB Community Picnic then heading out to dinner.

Xiao Qing and Keary

Us:)

Love, fondly sincerely

Zaijian,

Ramona

Mike's new plant

In case you are wondering....... 

The new picture on top of the blog is Mikes plant in Tianjin.  Not a lot there yet but this picture and the ones below are a few months old.  I will get him to take some new ones so I can post when we go home.

Mike on the left and a couple of his guys from South Carolina on the right.  The two next to Mike are from his Beijing team.  I cannot tell you exactly what is going on in the construction stuff.  I think he is going there this coming week so I will have him take more pictures.

Love, fondly, sincerely,

Zaijian,

Ramona

Life in China in no particular order.....

Tianamen Square....

Mike had a visitor from Florence come to work for a couple weeks so we took him around to see some sights one Saturday in June.   As with any excursion with Mike we walked, a lot...it was hot.  There is so much to see here in Beijing.  Such a huge city....

A typical hazy day making the sky appear white.  These are flower balls and pillars.  I will have to come back in the winter to see if they leave the structure up that the flowers are in.  Sometimes these are just pot holders...but they sure make them look interesting.

Mike being Mike in the Square.  There is a sculpture he is mimicking.  I don't seem to have taken a picture of it, next time:)

Our visitor....Mike and Mike, (I can't remember his last name).  In front of the Bell Tower.

The Drum Tower.   These two towers sit across from each other.  We didn't go in them but I believe you can.

Bells and drums were musical instruments in ancient China.  Later they were used by government and common people as timepieces.  The Bell and Drum towers were the center of Chinese chronology during the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties.  The Bell and Drum Towers continued to function as the official timepiece of China and government until 1924, when the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty was forced to leave the Forbidden City and western-style clockwork was made the official means of time-keeping.  You can read more about them here.

Love, fondly, sincerely,

Zaijian,

Ramona

Long time no write.....

I stayed busy
at my parents and was just not too interested in posting.....several people have gotten after me about that...one in particular knows who she is;)

This will just be about the things I did there.  I am in Florence now.

1) I made a big wood pile with some help from Ptarmigan and Dad.  In blistering heat.
2) I made two pairs of booties
3) I finished the quilt!!
4) I made some skirts for my great nieces.
5) I cleaned up a lot of brush, branches, bark and decaying pine needle glop from the wood splitting area.
6) I did other things like mow the lawn but there are no pictures of that stuff:)
7) I drove to Indiana.....and back of course.  We didn't stay for ever!
8) I saw the sewing machine I helped my niece to win;)  (no pic)

It doesn't show well but behind me is a small hill covered with branches from pine trees.  Been there a couple years and half rotting away.  You can see it a little better below.   I hauled it and more down back to compost....see the shot below.  90 plus everyday.  Dad ran the lever, I hefted logs.

From the upstairs window the day after I carted much brush down to the compost.

The day after Ptarmigan and I finished cutting and sawing, she saws, I don't.  Then I hauled off more brush and tons of bark.

Three pallets wide and two deep.  There is a bit more room for more, there is more to split!

Ready no matter the gender of whoever reproduces next!!!

Skirts for the great nieces.

Finally finished this quilt.  She was happy, slept under it the first few nights she had it even though it was so hot out:)

And gave away one I finished last summer....isn't she a doll?

Looking out my sisters kitchen window.

My parents and a niece:)

My sister and Stimpy.

My sister and her hubby with three of their girls.

My parents too!

Love, fondly, sincerely,

Zaijian,

Ramona