Between moving to Houston, getting settled here and trying to catch up on all my work, the blog here has gotten lonely. I will try hard to keep this more updated.
The good news about Houston, aside from getting to see family we don’t get to see that often, is that Alex has a friend in the apartment complex who is his age and may even end up being in his class at the new Houston school (which also teaches Mandarin, so he might get to catch up on his Chinese). The downside is that like every move, its starting over. We bought a car, figured out the grocery stores, and how to get around the downtown area.
So this post is just going to be a catch up post, with those fun pictures that didn’t fit into another post but I didn’t have enough to make one whole post about.
We have a tea shop in Haining, that I think I’ve mentioned in other posts. We go there all the time, and Mark and I almost always get the exact same thing- lemon teas. Picture an iced tea with a bit of sugar and a whole lemon squeezed into it, and for extra kicks they leave the lemon in the cup. It’s refreshing, and light and exactly what you need for an afternoon pickup- especially when we can take the scooters over there. When we bring Alex with us (on non school days of course) he has a couple favorites he gets, a strawberry tea, which is a very light oolong tea with lots of strawberries blended and smashed in, or a grape tea. This picture below is sitting outside the tea shop on a coolish fall day, showing us how purple his tongue got from his grape tea. The lady who owns the tea shop is really nice and they all love to see and talk to Alex.
We took a weekend trip into Shanghai with our friends Sebastian and Belinda, they hadn’t had a good experience yet in the city and we wanted to show them some of our favorite things there. We did things that people on this blog will be familiar with, like a trip to Boom Boom Bagels and new things like a friend recommended restaurant called Da Dong Duck (Mark, correct me if that’s not right) which is a Michelin star restaurant – the first I’ve ever been to.
Funny story about Da Dong, we were all excited to go, we of course ordered the Peking Duck- it’s the reason to be there, but on the menu was this beautiful crab dish and we all thought it looked great. So with our trusty Chinese translator Alex, we tried to order the crab- the waiter was trying to tell us how much it would cost per pound and we were like, yeah- fine cool, let’s get the smallest one and do this. And then the waiter leaves and comes back with the chef, carrying the largest crab I’ve ever seen in my life on a cutting board. I mean, we’re talking a crab the size of a two year old. We all stared and then started doing the calculations and it would have been around $1600 worth of crab. We politely said no thanks, and thanked them for clearing up our confusion on what we were ordering!
That same weekend we met with a friend of my advisor and her husband. Laura and John live in Shanghai and have been there for at least a few years, but I think more like 10 or more. They were kind enough to invite us for a brunch at Mr & Mrs Bund, a fancy french restaurant right on the Bund. John and Laura are a wonderful couple, and we had such a good time with them. Laura and I had the most amazing bloody Mary’s- complete with cherry peppers and pickles.
Fast forwarding a few weeks, and it was Halloween. Most of you know, Halloween is my jam. It’s my favorite holiday and has been for years. I keep Halloween in my heart all the year the way other people do Christmas. So in this way, China has been a bit hard for me (although I’ve had amazing friends who have sent me little gifts at Halloween to keep around the house, or American Halloween candy– you know who you are!). We organized one year of trick or treating, last year we had a belated “party” just us and Belinda and Sebastian- we watched some horror movies and ate candy.
This past year, our friends Marco and Rachel (owners’ of Rosemary’s restaurant in Haining) had a Halloween party at the bar of Rosemary’s. And the english school in the same strip mall had a party for the kids. Some of the kids from Alex’s school were there, and there were games to play and crafts to do and even a pinata.
Halloween ended for me by taking the boy home (since it may have been a school night, I can’t remember) Mark stayed with some of the other faculty and had an apparently amazing time- there were blood bags full of Sangria, drinks galore, he ended up coming home around 3am. The next day was not nearly as fun!
So many of good memories happen at Rosemary’s, and this one Mark’s favorite. Mark loves to cook, he loves cooking for friends and family, and we have long joked that if academia doesn’t work out – or when he retires that we would open a diner. I’m in charge of breads and desserts, he does everything else. So one day, I don’t even remember how it came up, but Mark asked for a recipe of Marco’s to try at home. And Marco said come in to the restaurant and we’ll cook together. And Mimmo, the other chef of the restaurant showed him another restaurant.
Mimmo taught Mark how to make carbonara
Traveling Expat Family 