Month: February 2018

Here at the University, Mark and I have the whole month of February off to celebrate Chinese New Year.  Unfortunately, Alex’s school only had two weeks off right in the middle of the month because they also got two weeks off at Christmas. So that limited our travel plans to more local adventures, which worked out just fine since we had lots of problems with our house sale back in the States that would have ruined any travel plans we had.

Before everyone went their own ways to celebrate the month off, we had another Taco night.  This was with slightly different group of people and to be honest, it was still snowing and so we had some people who couldn’t make it.   Alex lives for Taco night, it’s one of his favorite things that we do here.  We made plans for this during a dinner with friends where the planning got more and more elaborate- some of the plans worked out, some will have to wait for the next one.

One thing that everyone decided we needed, was a variety of fun mustaches.

When there was hesitation from party goers about wearing a mustache, Alex decided to up the ante….

But he wasn’t done yet.

 

Eventually others got in on the mustache action too, although it was too hard to eat with them on.

 

We had a new chinese friend who hadn’t ever tried tacos before that night, and we had a good time experiencing that with her for the first time. We also got a pinata (it ended up being the smallest pinata I’ve ever seen), which was a first for a few of the guests.  Alex was excited for days about the pinata, he couldn’t wait for people to get started with it.

And this was a tough nut to crack. It was made with cardboard instead of paper mache, we all hit it and it still wouldn’t break. By the time we got it opened, half the candy was crushed.

I made a key lime pie from scratch, my first.  no graham crackers to be had in China, so I got a cross between a shortbread cookie and a sugar cookie, and crushed it up to make the crust. It turned out better than I was hoping. We will do another Taco Night, and probably more after that… each one will get more elaborate I think. Next time the goal is margaritas, and maybe chicken or fish tacos as well.

 

If you’ve talked to me (or Mark ) in person in the last few months, I can almost guarantee you’ve heard about Scooty McBooty.

Call him what you’d like, a scooter, a moped, an e-bike, Scooty is amazing. We’ve had Scooty since the middle of October and Alex immediately named him.  There was a student here selling his e-bike to buy a bigger, faster e-bike, and a mutual friend connected us.  Originally I was so gung-ho to get the scooter “it’ll be so much fun, think of where we’ll be able to take it, blending in …” and Mark was not.  He was concerned for safety, and cost (rightly so).

We met up with the student to take Scooty for a test drive. And as the student is explaining all the buttons and workings to Mark,  I felt the anxiety start to rise and an impending sense of doom came over me… “We’re going to die on this scooter, this is a stupid idea, what was I thinking?”

As Mark put on his Bob the builder helmet and prepared to take a short test drive (on a protect sidewalk, we’re not even talking about the street here) I started nervously laughing and asking if he was sure it was safe.  He hopped right on, scooted to the end, turned around and scooted back.  ” See, no big deal, you’ll like it, give it a shot”

I, very cautiously, climbed on, and went as slow as I could without falling over. When I reached the end, instead of turning and coming back, I got off, walked it to turn it, got back on and came back in a straight line.  Mark was sold and we went home that day with a new scooter.

For a little while, we would ride the whole family on the scooter, I’d be in the back, mark in the middle and Alex would stand in the front.  That makes me way too nervous to do anymore. We talk about buying a second one at some point, but the reality is that we’ll be getting a car at some point soon and probably don’t need two scooters and a car.

It took me a little while, and some practice, but I’m now very comfortable riding Scooty around. It’s actually my favorite way to get around Haining. I feel like I blend in a little more on my scooter, and I can just hop on and run to walmart or the grocery store and get back quick.  There are special lanes for scooters on all the major roads, and a bike lane type arrangement on the roads that don’t have the dedicated lane. So it feels safe too, since you’re not usually riding with the cars.

Another perk to the scooter is that I can pile it up with packages and all the other weird crap that I bring home and don’t want to carry.  I bought a desk online and had to worry about how to get it back to the apartment, no problem, toss it on Scooty and away you go!

It’s a bit too cold right now to be super fun, but we’ve even bought a blanket to keep on the scooter to keep the wind off while you ride.  We joke about going native, but our scooter does look like everyone else’s now.

I took a ride to Walmart the other day to pick up some things for our upcoming trip and I decided to take some pictures along the way to show you my scooter ride.  This is one of my favorite streets to ride down, and while it didn’t photograph particularly well on this trip, expect to see more of this when the weather warms up.

After all the excitement of Christmas, we moved into January with a small bang. Coral and james came over, Alex stayed up until midnight for the first New Year’s ever.  I’m pretty sure we had hot-pot.

Coral and James gave Mark a hot plate designed for hot-pot for Christmas, since then we’ve been trying things out and improving on hotpot at home.  We’ve figured out what meat to buy, where to get the best mushrooms,  I even bought live shrimp and brought them home for Mark and James.  We’ve got our sauce station down, and even bought special sauce bowls just for this purpose.  So when you come to visit, we will do hot-pot.

 

New Year’s eve and day had the worst pollution we’ve seen in China yet. Normally here in Haining our numbers are between 50-120, on New Year’s it was 345. It was so smoggy that when we went to the mall, there was smog inside the halls of the mall.  Alex wore his face mask and Mark and I become motivated to find some for ourselves.   We didn’t go out much for a few days because it was still so polluted. We’re very lucky that it is a once in a long while event for our area to get so polluted.

Alex had to go back to school and I had to go back to work.  This month has been just a lot of work for all us, Alex had end of terms exams which lasted a whole week, Mark has been working on proposals and papers and research, and I have been unofficially promoted to 1/2 of the international recruiting team for our institute.   In addition to my other duties, I’m now involved in our Facebook page, virtual open day, and so very many emails.  I’ve been studying to take my driver’s license test here as well. It’s taken a while for me to get caught up to speed on everything, which is why there hasn’t been much blogging this month.

Mark’s birthday is in the middle of january, and so is mine and our anniversary,  so we went out to a new restaurant to celebrate.  While it wasn’t as good as we were hoping, it was a really beautiful atmosphere and good friends to share it with.  We have a new friend who joined us from Urbana for the semester (and maybe longer), Kent, so we dragged him out with us too.

 

Right now, we’re counting down the days, because tomorrow starts our month-long vacation. The university (and most other things as well) shuts down for the month of February for the Spring Festival (Also known as Chinese New Year).  Because Alex had two weeks off at Christmas, he only has two weeks off for the Feb. holiday.  But we’re planning on exploring more of local (ish) China, another visit to Wuzhen, visiting Shanghai for the first time, and going back to Hangzhou.