Traveling Expat Family

So, this was a solo trip for me, the boys did not get to go because this was a work trip- don’t feel too bad for them though, they had a great boys weekend in Shanghai while I was gone. This was also my first trip with my new camera that Mark gave me for Christmas. It’s an absolutely fantastic camera with a terrific zoom, I certainly notice a difference in my pictures, I wonder if you will too.

Because of my studies, and who my advisor has contacts with, I get to do fieldwork in Uganda. This is great for a variety of reasons, one being that my friend Christine is Ugandan and at the time I was there was also in country getting work done.

I’m not a great flyer, I get pretty anxious, and usually I have Mark and Alex to buffer me and keep me on track. This was a super long flight, well really two long flights- Shanghai to Doha and then Doha to Entebbe. When I got to immigration check in, you have to pay in USD$ and I was prepared, except that one of my dollars had an ink mark on it so they wouldn’t accept it. I had to ask to run outside and meet Christine to have her help me get more cash to pay my visa. Luckily for me, she’s amazing and had extra money just in case. It was so good to see a friendly face at the airport!

There are two hotels with the same name, one right by the hotel that my boss would be staying at when she joined us later and one across town…. which one do you think I booked my room at, and which one did I show up at after such a long flight? That’s right, but luckily Christine had booked a room she didn’t need because she would stay with her family that night, so I got to steal her room and then we made a reservation for her to join the next day. The hotel was very nice, and the breakfast in the morning was great.

I took this picture below, and the police in the truck were not thrilled that I had taken it, but I’d never see a police truck like this.

This was traffic in the morning on the way out of Kampala, we were on our way to my first meeting of the trip. There is a group named COCTU, Coordinating Office for the Control of Trypanosomiasis, and they were having their annual training and review session. I had to meet with the man in charge in between sessions because he is going to be essential for me getting any work done in Uganda.

Meeting with COCTU was also what was bringing my advisor to town as she had a big project progress report with them at the end of the week.

Christine’s brother Moses drove us around town, and even helped me get a sim card for my phone so I could use the internet while I was out and about in the country. Moses was a really nice guy and so much fun to be around.

The scenery was amazing, and Moses knew every back road and shortcut to keep us out of traffic!

Unfortunately, the day I arrived in town Christine had lost a mentor and professor from the University that she graduated from, and as a result, we needed to go to some meetings about how he would be honored. While it meant we had to postpone a trip to the source of the Nile, I got to see Makerere University, and Christine got to have some say in memorial arrangements.

Kampala is made up of Seven hills, which make up the different neighborhood areas. It’s a very unique landscape with lots and lots of ups and downs while driving. To get to Makerere we had to leave on hill neighborhood and drive up another hill, it was a good opportunity to see a lot of Kampala on one trip.

At Makerere University, there are tons and tons of Marabou Storks. I was in the parking lot killing time while Christine was in her meeting, and the trees in the complex next to us were full of the storks. It’s hard to judge size by these pictures, but these are some ginormous birds, approximately 5 feet tall.

I spent a lot of time wandering around the surrounding buildings with my camera out, a security guard came to see what I was doing and I asked him about the birds- he told me he didn’t know what they were called and walked away. He came back about 10 minutes later with the name of the bird written down for me, he had gone and found someone who did know to get the information for me, it was very nice of him.

I chased this butterfly for a good 10 minutes to be able to get this shot, every time I would get the camera set up he would fly off or close his wings.

In the area behind the Veterinary school building, there were wild flowers every where, and all this beautiful bright red and orange, butterflies and bees buzzing all around, it couldn’t have been prettier if someone had planned it.

While I was walking back to the main building, I found this bird taking off to fly up to a shed in the wildflower garden. I was so excited because I thought I had found a Ugandan crane, the national bird. Its not one as they are pretty rare now and almost never seen in the cities, but it’s still a pretty cool bird.

This was the end of the second day in Kampala, it was such a neat experience, and I’m looking forward to going back. There are a lot more Uganda pictures to come!

I forgot that I had a second post on our Thailand trip in October, so I’m finishing this one quick to add!

It was pretty rainy during our trip to Bangkok, and you can tell from Alex and Mark dripping during dinner how wet that walk had been.

We went back to our favorite game cafe Throne of Games. We played Sushi go Party, which we liked so much we bought our own copy of it.

We also got to play the remake of Fireball Island. This was such a cool game when I was a kid and I loved playing it when we went to my Oma’s house. So when they made a new version of it, I really wanted to get it. It’s fun, but not so fun that I needed to spend $150 on it or whatever it was.

After games, we went to Bangkok’s Korea town and had some fantastic food. I can’t remember the names of anything we got, but it was all great.

We had been at the doctor’s earlier that day getting Alex’s other ear tube removed and he took a kid’s face mask and had it in his pocket. We put it on his head, I thought it was hysterical, I think Mark thought we were crazy!

After dinner, we went a couple doors down to a Bing Su place. Bing Su is shaved ice, but instead of water, the ice is made with milk. So it’s little like ice cream but much healthier because it’s only milk, and then it’s topped with all sorts of goodies. The one Alex has here is just shaved milk and strawberries, but he has in the past had things that are piled high with cookies and chocolate.

I’m going to take a second here and tell you about this doctor’s visit. You might wonder why we didn’t just take him to the doctor in China -you know, since we live there and all. China doesn’t do ear tubes, it’s not a thing they’re familiar with, and while we’ve had really good experiences so far with the doctors there, we thought language barriers plus a procedure they’re not familiar with wasn’t our best option.

We have always heard good things about medical care in Thailand, and the boys had had a good experience at the dentist office there, so we looked into a doctor there to check his ears.

We went to Bumrungrad International hospital, and the doctor who saw Alex was not only an MD but also a PhD who teaches Ear Nose and Throat to incoming med students, we really couldn’t have asked for a better situation. It is a very fancy hospital, with top notch wait rooms and staff- the wait was pretty short for our appointment. It was as different an experience from the nightmare emergency ear situation in Illinois as could possible be, he got drops to numb the ear, he couldn’t even feel it being removed. The doctor talked to him and not us, made sure that Alex didn’t have any questions or concerns and then addressed us. We got to see the pulled out tube, and kiddo was good to go.

The experience was so good that I made an appointment for myself to get two moles removed that I had wanted gone for years. Alex’s costs with no insurance costs less than one doctor’s visit with no procedures in the US. Mine were a bit more because it was a cosmetic procedure- but I’ve literally never been happier with them gone, well worth the money. We will go back to Bumrungrad for any non emergency procedures we can. Imagine going to see the doctor getting something done and resting and recovering on the beach in Thailand- what could be better?

I think everyone knows at this point how much we like escape rooms, so we did one in Bangkok, well really we did two, but I only got pictures at one. This was room number 1. The company offered a Star Wars room that we really wanted to do with Alex, but they said it’s really hard and less than 10% of people finish it. So to avoid disappointment we tried this one first.

You start in a jail cell and have to escape into the main room to find the Nazi codes to escape the room in general. We did it with 15 minutes to spare and no clues given- however, there were two things not returned to the way they were supposed to be so we got two free things that we didn’t have to figure it out.

I didn’t take pictures after Star Wars because we were pretty mad about it. There were two elements in the room (at least maybe even three ) that did not work, so we wasted 10 minutes trying to figure out a clue that we had right, but the light was broken so we didn’t know we had it right. And when we finally got into the second room there was no way to win it because of that loss of 10 minutes in addition to having to shoot targets that even though the laser hits them don’t register as completed. We say we won that one anyway because every completable puzzle we were able to finish it. The boss wasn’t there when we did this room and the kid who wasn’t running it didn’t care that we told him things were broken.

There was a famous restaurant in Chinatown that Mark wanted to go visit, and it was a good chance to check out the chinatown there- we’d always talked about it but never did it. The restaurant was ok, I thought not as good as the hype but perfectly good food. The cool part was the parade going on outside. We had to go to Chinatown in Thailand to see a dragon parade, we’ve never seen one in China!

The last day in Thailand we went to brunch at this little cafe across from the hotel, we walked past it every day and never tried it. It was adorable, all rabbit themed and just a small inside sitting area. Because the air pollution was pretty high while we were there they had closed the outside tables.

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

So, during this latest hiatus, the traveling expat family has travelled to Houston- where in theory we will hang out until we are able to head back to China. We are lucky that during this pandemic we have had so many people offer to put us up, we stayed with one set of parents for almost 5 months and now my lovely aunt has allowed us to stay in her empty place in Houston. So we packed up, rented a van and drove from Miami to Houston in 2 days. We’re still safe and healthy, and adjusting to our new surroundings. Keep in mind that I’m so behind on writing these that all blogs are from before coronavirus and that’s why there are crowds and no masks. And now, we will return to our regularly scheduled programming…

This trip seems like ages ago, and I guess it really was. We decided to head back to Thailand for our first Golden Week that we could actually travel. Golden week is the first week in October in China and is a national holiday similar to 4th of July if I remember right. The first year in China we all had to turn in our passports to get our residency permits attached, and last year Mark and Alex had their passports but because I had switched from working to being a student I had to turn my passport back in for a new student residency permit. This last year though, we were free and clear and decided to head to Thailand to deal with some medical issues and have a vacation.

If you’ll remember in one of the last blogs, Alex had all kinds of issues with tubes in his ears and it was recommended for us to get them taken out. Tubes are not a common procedure in China so rather than fight a language barrier to work on a unfamilar issue, we found an amazing hospital in Bangkok to take him. It was also a good time for dental check ups, which we have a dentist in Thailand if anyone ever needs one.

The week started with vacation though, and as usual, my boys voted for a cat cafe. I’ve now gotten to the point where I’ve developed a procedure to minimize my allergies while we’re there, and Mark and Alex have so much fun there it’s hard to say no.

This cat was very pushy and determined to eat all the chicken treats that Alex had, he was very friendly though.

And this derpy guy below, I don’t know why, but the cats with issues always come by me to be friends. In the first cat cafe it was the cat with the smooshy face that kept blowing boogers all over the place, here it was this guy. He had something wrong with his eye, and he kept trying to drink my tea.

I love the little bandanas and neck ties that the cats were wearing, it helped me tell them all apart.

Mark found (in whatever magic way he has) this famous place for pad thai, and since we didn’t have any other plans, we decided we would wait the 40ish minutes to get in. It was hot and humid out, but in that nice way you don’t mind in Thailand.

This was the line behind us waiting to get in, they also had a window service to get drinks while you were waiting. I couldn’t believe the constant line, no matter how many people went in, an almost equal number joined the wait list.

Almost our turn to get in, the people waiting varied from backpackers and clear tourists (us included) to locals. Although admittedly less locals than others.

When we sat down, the waitress recommended an orange drink- I was not into it at all, but when we got it, it was fantastic. It wasn’t really orange juice, more like Tangerine juice and it had chunks of tangerine (or orange or whatever) in it. It was sweet and refreshing and I could finally see why they had a walk up window outside for it.

I didn’t take any pictures of dinner, it was a different style of pad thai than we had had before, I believe it may be called wet? It was more saucey than other ones we had, with a fair bit of oil. It certainly wasn’t bad, but not my favorite either.

Since dinner had been a little less amazing than we had hoped for, Mark found a dessert place on the way home that promised good things. There was a little bit of a wait, but it was worth it. Mark picked Raspberry butter cookies, raspberries are always going to be his go to.

I got a box of their toffee cake to take home, this is one of, if not the, signature dishes of After you cafe.

And Alex picked a brownie ala mode, which was delicious and a lot of dessert for a 9 year old!

And what day in Thailand would be complete without a tea break? Mark and I got thai ice tea and Alex got an apple italian soda type drink that seemed to me to be 4 types of sugar in a cup, but it made him happy.

This trip we stayed in a motel that we had stayed at before, but overall I was less impressed this time. We had a crummier room, the service was lackluster at best- but the location is nice and the price is pretty good.

One of the things I love about this place is the flowers in the driveway and across the way. I love plumeria, it’s become my favorite flower, and there are so many variations of the blossoms.

The humidity and difference between the temperature of our room and outside kept fogging up the lens on my camera, but it worked out in my favor because I think this is a positively dreamy picture of the plumeria.

These pink plumeria are on a house just across the street from the motel, and I loved the pink and white and yellow- so bright and pretty.

The one downside to this trip is we were here during the rainy season again, and boy did it live up to it’s name. But there is something beautiful about Bangkok in the rain, and the hustle and bustle of traffic in the rain.

With everything going on today in the US, writing my little travel blog seems so unimportant and irrelevant. It is, however, my stress release, my procrastination from school work, my small happiness in a sad and confusing time. I’m not going to make this a political blog, but I feel that I would be doing a disservice to myself and my country to not at least talk about the realities here.

Our traveling family has been back in the US since the beginning of February due to the Corona virus, and like every family around the world, we’ve struggled with boredom, stress, anxiety, but also had some fun times inside and enjoying each others company. We’ve all missed events we were looking forward to, as well as being displaced from our home in China for 5 months so far. But we’re still lucky.

I am happy to stay at home to try to protect my family from getting sick, to try to keep the community around me from getting sick. I’ve been extremely lucky in so far as no one I know personally has been sick or died from CoVid, in China, in the UK or in the US. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t realize the potential that it could happen to anyone at anytime.

This week, in addition to Corona virus, there is another crisis happening in the US, the killing of George Floyd by some Minneapolis Police officers. Many of you know that Minneapolis is where Mark’s family lives and we visit there often, it is a home away from home for us. If George Floyd were an isolated incident, his death would still be tragic, but it is one of many by Minneapolis police over the course of the last 5 years and one of many more by police in general.

Police brutality and killing of Black men and women needs to stop.

Militarization of police needs to stop.

Hypocrisy of celebrating Hong Kong protesters but not the protesters marching in the cities of the US needs to stop.

We need to look out for our neighbors, of every color, this is a time to ask ourselves how we can help, what we can do to make a difference. That’s going to look different for each of us- but we can all do something.

My friends from outside the US have seen things on the news and are sending messages daily to check in on us. We are ok, we have a roof over our heads, food to eat, and safe surroundings.

Over the summer between our trip to Malaysia and our trip to Illinois, we heard that one of our professor friends had died suddenly on a conference trip. We were all surprised, he was relatively young, and had seemed in good health before he left. Richard was a constant figure in our lives in China, we often ate lunch together, and due to his dislike of cell phones, I did most of his online shopping there for him. He would find something he liked, send me the link and I’d pick it up for him. He is definitely missed around campus.

In our original Illinois plans, Richard was going to be in Urbana for some of the same time that we were and it would overlap. Richard loved baseball and had made plans to travel around Illinois and the surrounding states to watch both major and minor league teams in as many places as he could during that time. We had already been planning to go to a Cubs game, and thought that this would be a good memorial for our friend.

Alex got to get a new Cubs hat just for the occasion, and we were watching the Cubs vs the Oakland A’s. Alex had just seen Moneyball not long before this and was super excited to get to see them play.

It was a good game, not crazy crowded although the stadium was mostly full. We were able to get pretty good seats for not too much- and we even lucked out with parking! It was a weekday game and we didn’t know that the free parking lot with shuttle bus wouldn’t be running. We had given up trying to find street parking and were just going to pay $25 for a paid lot, when the nice kid running the lot pointed across the street where someone had just left and vacated a nice free space just big enough for our car.

It was a good game, the Cubs won by 9 runs. Alex was thrilled to be there again for a winning game. It was a nice way to do our own little memorial for Richard since there was nothing done at the university.

I didn’t really get any pictures of them, but I was extremely lucky to have some new friends come all the way out to Urbana to hang out with us. My friend Nic put a group of women together in an app called Marco Polo where we can send videos to each other, think Facetime but not live. This works out well for all of us in different time zones (when I’m home in China I’m between 12 and 15 hours ahead of these ladies). Even after only a couple months of talking, when I told them I was coming back for a visit, they decided to come by for a reunion with Nic and a girls’ week.

It was great, we had such a good time hanging out, getting to know each other better, and doing fun toursity stuff around the Urbana area. Despite being in the Urbana area for roughly 8 years (Mark’s grad school and then when we moved back with Alex) I had never stopped to see some of this little local treasures.

We started at the Lincoln house, which while being really cool, I was disappointed to find out that Abraham Lincoln never lived there- only his father did. Kind of a let down, but whatever. What’s neat about this place is that it is a reenactment of the time (Think Colonial Williamsburg but much much smaller) so they have people in the cabins with fires burning in August, knitting and quilting, and working farmer folks. It was a neat experience.

There was a chicken coop, with some of the loudest chickens I have ever heard, and some fairly lazy cows having a nap in the heat.

This was the inside of the main house, I couldn’t believe that in the heat of August, a poor women had to dress up in all the old layers of clothes and sit in this room with the fire going to work. Although the fire did help keep the mosquitoes and flies away.

On that same trip, we also headed to Arthur, which is a small Amish town in Illinois. We had a nice lunch at a famous place (I can’t for the life of me remember the name) and it was packed, I couldn’t believe how many people were waiting around.

And then we went to Beachy’s… Beachy’s is a place I had heard about for a long time, it’s a bulk store that is Amish run and has all sorts of interesting things available in bulk, and lots of fresh baked goods and old school candy too. I ended up buying some small pies, a large bag of Lucky charms marshmallows only, some interesting sprinkles, a variety of old candy (like jelly rings and jelly fruit slices) and most importantly cheese curds. I don’t think I’ve talked about cheese curds on the blog, and if you’re from the Wisconsin/ Minnesota area you’ll already know about them. Basically it’s a cheese that hasn’t aged at all, right after the cheese is separated from the whey. It could go on to become a cheddar, or it could be eaten right then. Now there are a lot of opinions about what constitutes a good cheese curd or what the right way to eat them is ( deep fried, plain, over french fries with gravy on them– I’m looking at you Canada) but to me, the best way is just plain out of the bag. And you know it is good and fresh when the cheese makes a squeeky sound when you bite it.

I never knew I was going to have such a strong opinion about cheese curds, but that’s the result of being Minnesotan by marriage. When we go visit my in laws in Minnesota, we also stop into Mall of America, for fun too but mostly to get cheese curds from Ribicky’s, a Wisconsin shop in the mall with a variety of cheeses, packers gear and cheese curds. I personally like to get the cajun flavored ones, but that’s mostly because no one will eat those but me so I don’t have to share.

This was a long tangent to tell you that I found really great cheese curds at Beachy’s and they were almost as good as Ribicky’s.

And like every good tourist in Amish country, we had to get some pictures of the horse and buggies parked outside the store.

We also took some time to go to the St. Joe’s Fair, which Nic and I had taken Alex too not long before we left for China. This time we brought Laura and Abby (the new friends who flew in, I think Angie might have been in Florida then) and we got to see Nic’s girls Brynn and Lily perform their dance routine at the Fair.

This year Alex had Brynn to go on rides with, so it was a little more fun for him. They rode the Berry Go Round more than once I think. And had Lemon Shakeups, and I think shaved ice too.

Brynn is a lot like Alex in a lot of ways, and I think their energies play off each other well. It was great for Alex to have a friend (really friends, but Lily isn’t into the rides as much) to do the fair with.

They waited so long to go on this ride, the line was forever long, and they were so excited….

This was their faces after getting off, they thought it was a little scary and a bit too much and “why didn’t you warn us it would be so scary?” But really they had fun with it.

Laura and Abby weren’t able to stay long, as they both had things back to do at home, but it was so lovely and nice to spend time with them and to have this amazing group of women who all cared enough to spend their free time with me. I am forever grateful for the time we got to spend getting to know each other and look forward to spending more time together eventually!

In August this past summer, we had the opportunity to head back to our home town for a few weeks so that Mark could meet with people at the university and get some work done there. Alex and I got to tag along for the fun of it and to see our friends that we hadn’t gotten to see during the polar vortex that kept us from driving down.

On the flight from Shanghai to Chicago, Alex started complaining about his ear hurting, and we thought, maybe he’s got a slight ear infection or more likely it’s just the pressure in the airplane. Halfway through the flight, it hurt him enough that he couldn’t keep his headphones on touching that ear. By the time we landed though, he had stopped complaining, so we thought we were past the worst of it….. oh boy were we wrong.

Let me just tell you that the US is not the place to get stuck with medical problem with no insurance. We’ve never really done the traveler’s insurance, but we do now. We tried finding free clinics in Urbana, they were all closed or wouldn’t open for days, we asked his old doctors office at Carle and they wanted $800 just to see him. Finally we decided we’d try the Minute Clinic at CVS. Before you think we’re over reacting, I’m going to show you a picture of Alex’s head, the ear on the left is normal, and the ear on the right is the painful one, and so swollen it is leaning out and down.

We had to drive to Bloomington, about 45 min away, to find a clinic that was open and had appointments available. And to his credit, my kid is a trooper, he felt like crap and just kept going because that’s what we had to do. When we got to the clinic, the doctor said that his ear canal was so swollen she couldn’t see anything, but also didn’t feel comfortable just giving us an antibiotic in case it was mastoiditis (which can be life threatening if not treated properly). What she did for us though, was call Christie Clinic in Bloomington and help us get a same day appointment to have him see an ENT there.

Again, the new ENT can’t see into his ear canal because the swelling is too bad, she removed some wax to try to see in and it was so painful for the kiddo- so we were sent home with some antibiotic drops and pills to take and an order to come back in three days. The swelling came down, and he was in so much less pain, when we went back in three days she was able to see to his ear drum and was able to find the source of our problems.

Before we left for China, Alex had ear tubes put in at the same time they took out his tonsils. While they were being put in, we were told they will fall out on their own in 6 months to a year. This was two full years later, and the tubes were still in. The one causing the problems had come out part way and turned, so it was blocking the ear drum from healing all the way, and causing it all to get blocked up with wax and trapping water behind that tube causing ear infections.

This poor kid had to have the tube pulled out with no anesthetic, and it was very painful. Since the second ear wasn’t an issue yet, we decided to wait until we were back home in China (well, actually our next trip to Thailand) to have the 2nd tube removed. The doctor we saw in Bloomington was great, and really took a lot of time and care with Alex. And luckily for him, we spent the rest of the trip with no more ear problems but no swimming either. All told it cost $650 to see the doctors and get him treated, and it would have been more had the new ENT not helped us out with $200 antibiotic ear drops.

With the ear crisis averted we could go back to our vacation, and seeing our friends. James was in Alex’s class when we lived in Illinois, and Pippy is his adorable younger sister. It was so good to see them again after 2 years away.

Our other friends, the Jones family, had great toys– like the fart gun from Despicable Me that I would never buy for him. He laughed so hard he was crying, all from a fart gun.

While in Urbana, we decided to do some of our old favorite things like check out some games from the library and head to Einstein’s bagels to play games all day. After two years gone, some of our people at Einstein’s still remembered us- which made my day.

I don’t have any pictures of Mark and cats for this one, but I do have Mark with Phantom instead. Our friends Liz and Robin (who were featured earlier in the blog when Liz and kids were in China for the semester) had a get together with the China crew of ZJUI who are back in Urbana, and Mark, like he does, gravitated towards the animals more than the people.

And Phantom loved the attention. It was great to get to see everyone again and catch up as it had been a couple months since we had seen most of them.

Our little buddy Ethan (who I’m pretty sure has also been featured on the blog before) was there with his parents and like he does, stole the show with his cuteness. He loved crawling in and out of the doggie door because he couldn’t quite reach/open the door to come in and out like he wanted. Cutest thing ever.

He also loved the kennel, and that reminded me so much of the time when Alex was little and crawled into a kennel at Petco.

Liz and Mark cooking, while Alex shows us his arsenal that Jack and Doren have let him borrow.

It was the beginning of a great couple of weeks in Illinois.

So I’ve been struggling to write with everything going on- I’m not getting tons of real work done either. What I’ve decided is that while we’re in lockdown/shelter in place/ whatever you want to call it with Covid-19 that I’m going to remember the good times and keeping post our adventures until I’m caught up (I’m almost a full year behind now, so there’s lots to catch up on).

I hope you and your families all are safe and healthy!

I’ve been putting off writing on here because I’m in a bit of a funk- so bear with me while I explain the funk and then I’m going to skip some posts to post something that makes me very happy and I will go back and cover other adventures later.

I was very lucky to get to go to a meeting and begin my fieldwork in Uganda in January. The downside is that I had to miss my birthday, and my dear and lovely husband’s 40th birthday. This trip also became the longest I was away from Alex, 10 days total with travel. I will write the next post about Uganda. I came home from Uganda, did laundry, and our family flew to Hong Kong to enjoy what was left of Alex’s spring festival break from school.

By the time I got home from Uganda, we had already heard about coronavirus, but we weren’t really concerned yet. We did think about breathing the same air as everyone on the airplane, so we bought masks to wear on the plane ride– and the day after we got to Hong Kong, they were starting to discuss closing the borders to keep the infection out. We ended up cutting our trip short (I’ll cover the Hong Kong trip in another post) because we found out that we couldn’t go home to Haining, and we were going back and forth between riding things out in Bangkok or heading back to the US. We overall decided on the US and our original tickets to Miami got cancelled the morning of our flight because that was the day the US carriers stopped flying to and from mainland China and hong Kong. We were lucky enough to get moved to Cathay Pacific flight to San Francisco and then to Miami (on the eve of the Super Bowl between San Francisco and Someone else, being hosted in Miami).

We know that we are lucky to have somewhere to go (Huge shout out to all our friends and family who offered to put us up, and can’t thank my dad and stepmom for hosting us for what has already been a month and we don’t know how much longer it will last).

Alex’s school in China started online classes– so did our university, but the online classes for Alex don’t work for us because of the time difference, so we enrolled him in the local school here in Miami. He’s very happy at the new school, he’s made some good friends and seems well liked overall. There’s been a bit of adjustment with classes, some things are new to him because the school in China taught them in a different order, but he’s getting to learn Spanish at this school and that makes him pretty happy.

Mark is still teaching his class, it’s just being done via online lectures- he’s looking forward to getting back to normal so that he can teach his class in front of the students.

I’m struggling to find a routine that works for me getting work done here, it feels like a long vacation and that makes it hard to get motivated. With the exception of the short 2 day turnaround time between Uganda and Hong Kong, I’ve been away from my home for 6 weeks already and we’re looking at another month probably…. it gets me a little down. And I miss Chinese food, I could go for some hotpot right now… or a big bowl of noodles.

Our friends in China are all doing well, no one we know has gotten sick, and most of our friends who were able to leave did. We still have friends back there stuck in their houses for the last 6 weeks waiting to return to work and school- (Hi Marco, Emma and Rachel!) and we think about all our friends at home and hope you are staying healthy and dealing with the boredom!

So that’s the update, we’re all fine, I’m behind on posts but I will start getting caught up now.

We had so much fun in Malaysia, I don’t think this will be our last trip there. We barely scratched the surface and didn’t even really leave KL. There were so many great options to visit and see, but in the time we had we had to make some tough decisions on what we wanted to do.

For me, I always pick temples and mosques and historical spots, Mark is more about making sure we eat good food, and Alex is down for anything fun!

After not seeing as much as I had hoped of the first mosque, I took the boys to another mosque, and I’m really glad that we did. We were so welcomed at the 2nd mosque, there was a guide who showed us around, and he really enjoyed his job. The architecture of the buildings was absolutely beautiful, it had a charming Turkish look to things.

This is one of the main entrances to the prayer room- the arches are so beautiful, the details put into everything really show up in person.

How could you not love this building? The roof is gorgeous, I admit though I missed most of the conversations being had with our guide, I was too busy taking pictures and wandering off.

I’m going to let the pictures speak for themselves.

This was our guide, he took us into the prayer room and we sat down and had some conversations about Islam. Islam isn’t a religion I had known much about before, so it was interesting to hear. This was not at all a requirement of the tour, he asked us if we were interested- had we said no, he would have skipped this section.

We were actually invited to sit in on a prayer session ( in the back in a dedicated visitor section).

Again, kids get it the easiest, Alex got to go in just how he was. Mark got a lovely robe to wear to cover his shorts, and I wore my hajib again (although this time I didn’t have the nice ladies outside to help me with it, so it’s a little wonky).

After the mosque, we went back to the hotel had a bit of a swim break and then walked over to Petronas towers. On our way, I saw this giant moth on the building, I made Mark put his hand there for some size perspective. I’ve never seen a moth that size anywhere in the wild.

Obligatory holding up the towers picture. Next to the towers was a park with a great playground. Alex got a chance to run around and swing until he felt sick.

The next day, our last full day in KL, we started off the day at a Chinese Temple, Thean Hou- You would think that we would be tired of Chinese things, but there is nothing like this in China that we have seen yet.

This temple is a popular place to get married- and I can see why, it’s very pretty here.

I’ve seen such beautiful flowers in Southeast Asia, someday I’d like to have a garden or greenhouse with all my favorites in it.

The artwork around the temple was worth the drive alone. I liked seeing the iconography that I’m used to from home presented in a new way.

Despite the fact that this temple was only built in 1987, there is an old feel to it- something I can’t quite put my finger on.

Alex told me the story of the two guys on the doors below, they are the Door Gods, pictures of deities posted on the door outside and inside the house or building. They are expected to keep ghosts away, to protect the family and to bring peace and good fortune.

This is where you put your incense offerings.

Alex did some of his own joss sticks, they were hard to light though.

He took it very seriously, I give him a lot of credit for being so mature and respectful of other people’s cultures and religions.

Even the ceiling tiles were cool, I wanted to lay on the floor and just stare at this for a while, but I thought that would be too weird …. even for me.

Charming details everywhere you looked on the temple grounds, I’m sure these happy critters represent something, although I’m not sure what.

At first I thought this was a peacock, but Alex pointed out to me that it is in fact a Chinese phoenix. I really like this phoenix, I’d like to have a version of this in my house somewhere.

And we couldn’t have a Chinese temple without some dragons. On every corner of the roof there was either a dragon or a phoenix. The blue one below was my favorite dragon, his colors were so bright, the picture doesn’t really show how bright blue he really is.

On the side of the hill next to the temple, in the landscaping, is a giant Chinese chess board. Alex has been learning about this at school with his friends, and was explaining to us how the game is played.

My guys range from extremely patient to not having it at all on pictures (although Mark has gotten much more patient with me since I started the blog). One thing I love about this picture, is seeing so much of Mark in Alex, the lean, the half smile, the “are we done yet?” attitude.

The strings of yellow lanterns just look so festive and happy, we both mentioned how much we wish that more places looked like this back in Haining.

In a garden in the front of the temple, they had statues of the 12 animals of the zodiac. This Dragon fountain was my personal favorite, I have never been a dragon person- but this temple may have changed my mind.

This same day, Mark had found an awesome adventure for us, I can’t remember how he heard about it though. We went on a firefly excursion, the company picked us up in KL, brought us and two very nice Korean girls out into the country outside the city. First we stopped at a light house.

And right there, was the first monkey. For those of you who don’t know, I got my bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and primate studies was my favorite. So I was so ridiculously excited to see a monkey.

We don’t get many family photos because it’s usually just the three of us, and one of us needs to be the photographer. This one was taken by our fantastic tour guide, the one downside was that to get the lighthouse in the picture, we had to face the sun… which is why we’re all squinty.

Just down the road from the lighthouse, and in fact at the lighthouse we bought food specifically for this purpose, we went to meet and feed the monkeys. Now, these are wild monkeys, but are used to being feed. We were told to avoid the little brown monkeys as they can be aggressive, but it’s also kind of unavoidable as they are cheeky, thieving monkeys.

At first there weren’t very many monkeys down, the guide told us that there had been a dog around earlier which scared them up the power tower.

Alex was so excited to feed them and make friends, these are silvery langurs, and were very friendly for the right treats.

Unfortunately, there were bus loads of people doing this same activity with us, so it was a bit of competition for the monkeys’ attention.

Again, I have to commend Alex, I don’t think I could have been that chill around monkeys when I was 9. He waited patiently for monkeys to come to him, didn’t push or complain when other people “stole” his monkey’s attention. I love my adventure buddy…

I couldn’t believe how much interaction we had with the monkeys, and how much we all enjoyed it.

This polite little guy was getting impatient waiting for Alex to pull the treats out of his bag. We had green beans, bananas, yams, some kind of leaves, and a small bag of peanuts… the peanuts were the favorites.

At this point, my camera died, and I had to take the rest of the pictures with Mark’s phone. I don’t remember why not my phone, maybe it was dead too?

Everyone had monkeys on their back… and Mark commented today as I’m writing this that he remembers the weight and feel of them jumping onto your back, and can see where that expression came from.

I wanted to show in this picture, these are some spoiled monkeys…. forget your stinking green beans, they would throw them down on the bench here. I assume they come back for them later, or maybe the mean brown monkeys eat them. If you look at the bottom of the fence right behind the second monkey’s head, you can see the brown monkeys a little. I didn’t get any pictures of the brown monkeys, I thought I had, but I think that’s when the battery went out.

Like with most animals, Mark was the favorite (at least out of our group of three) I don’t know how they know, or what makes him so special to them, but whatever it is- he’s got it.

This guy decided Mark was taking too long to pick something out of the bag, so he would just take a peek and get something himself. Maybe something good at the very very bottom.

Alex absolutely loved having the monkey on him, pure joy!

There is a lot of Mark in Alex, especially his love of animals, whenever a new monkey came to be his friend, he just laughed and beamed. It reminds me of when he was little (I think around 2) and at the Zoo in Fresno by my sister’s house, he got to feed the giraffes, and there was so much happiness in that moment.

Mark almost continuously had a friend, one would hop off and another would jump up and take it’s place. You can see in the background how many monkeys there were, and this wasn’t even all of them, not by a long shot. But with so many tourists, the monkeys were able to be picky and only eat what they liked most.

I think this lasted for about 30 minutes, we honestly could have stayed longer, but we had dinner to get to before the fireflies.

The poor Korean girls we were with, one had so many mosquito bites on her legs, and they were really red and swelling. We gave them our mosquito repellent bracelets and shared bug spray since we were going on the river after dinner and it would only get worse from there.

Dinner was ok, nothing fancy but not bad either.

After dinner we went straight to the line for the fireflies. Because our guide got us there early, we were fairly close to the front, maybe 10 people ahead of us, and Mark got to wander off to find some kittens he had seen on our walk in from the parking lot.

We doused ourselves in bug spray and waited for it to get dark. A group that came after us bought a small bug spray at the gift shop, and barely sprayed one person before it ran out. We let them share ours too, I felt a little silly earlier in the day packing all that, but it ended up helping us and other people out so it worked out just fine.

I don’t have an pictures, but the firefly ride was great. We got into our little boat, and the guide quietly paddled us down one side of the river, stopping a few times to let us see the fireflies up close, and he even caught one for us to hold and release. It looked like Christmas with all the flashing fireflies- I’ve borrowed this picture from Tripadvisor, same place we were at, and it really did look like this.

It was a really fun experience. After that, we head back to shore and back to the van. The Korean girls bought Alex a firefly key chain as a thank you for the bug bracelets, they were very nice girls.

And that was it… we had to go home the next morning. But we had an amazing time, and I think all three of us would be happy to go back to Malaysia- even with all the bumps getting there!

I want to give a little shout out to one of my favorite readers, so Ceci, thanks for being you- hopefully one day you can join one of our adventures!

Mark and cats… I know I mentioned that in the last blog, but half of my pictures from Malaysia involve Mark petting or following a cat. We lovingly call him Dr. Doolittle because he can get stray animals to follow him anywhere.

This cat was hanging outside our airbnb everyday, so Mark even thought about getting cat food for it. He’s a very good man, and I couldn’t think of a better adventure partner.

Alex is learning the ways of his dad…. always with the cats!

We were waiting for our cab to come and get us while we were making friends with the neighborhood cat. KL, like most of Southeast Asia, uses Grab- an Uber like car service. If you’re ever heading to that part of the world, set yourself up an account before you get there.

We were getting a cab to head out to another Hindu temple, well, really two that are right down the street from each other. I very much like the aesthetics of Hinduism- the artwork is unlike anything else.

Unfortunately this temple was under construction inside, so we didn’t spend very long inside. The outside is still beautiful though.

Nearby was the second temple, and for personal reasons I’ll explain, this one was near and dear to my heart and I made it a priority to head there.

While walking from the first temple to the second, we noticed a terrifying amount of pigeons…. Hitchcock’s The Birds numbers of birds.

Every power line, street light, fence, car, sidewalk… all had birds on them.

And so much bird poop… I was afraid one of us would slip and fall like a cartoon!

This temple is the Sree Veera Hanuman Temple – Lord Hanuman’s temple. When Mark and I were first married, we went to see a movie at Ebert Fest in Urbana, Sita Sings the Blues. It is a great movie and tells the story of Rama and Sita (with the help of Lord Hanuman) and the trials and tribulations of their story interspersed with the director’s marital trails. It is a different style, and after the movie was over, we got to see a panel discussion with the director. The Hanuman temple shows lots of scenes from the Rama and Sita story, along with other stories from the Hindu mythology.

Rama (center, the blue one)

Also Rama, with a white cow- we didn’t find out the story that goes with this, but he is often pictured with a white cow.

Statue of Lord Hanuman on the building next door, also under construction, that will connect to this temple when finished.

Lord Hanuman, the divine monkey, Rama and Sita.

At the temple, there was a Pujari (Hindu priest) who was changing the garlands and offerings on the statues, he gave Alex a few of the removed flowers, which is supposed to be

The pujari completing a ritual. He was very nice and invited us to take pictures and be included in the process. I got the impression that they don’t get a lot of tourists in there. But Alex and I screwed up– I forgot the rules about left hands and right hands, in India, the right hand is used for eating, and the left hand is considered unclean. We took the offering water to drink with our left hands. And the pujari noticed but didn’t say anything, it took me a couple minutes to realize what we had done wrong.

This little boy latched on to Alex and followed him around the temple. We thought he was with one guy, but then the guy left and the boy was still there. Alex shared his offering flower and this little guy was so happy. I think we could have brought him home without too much trouble ;-).

The Pujari, waiting between offerings and rituals.

At the temple we met a representative of the temple who was curious about us and why we were there. We chatted for a while about the temple, the people who go there – and given some suggestions for lunch nearby.

As one might expect, we were on the border of Little India, and we decided to head over there to find lunch instead.

Alex standing at the border to Little India. It was very hot that day, but the smells and music and atmosphere made the hike over there worth it.

A view of the Petronas Towers- I was surprised how close we really were to the towers from our Airbnb.

That night, Mark found a Mediterranean place for dinner, and we hopped in another Grab to head over there. We got there before it got busy, and the manager really liked Alex, he taught Alex how to do a style of twiddling his thumbs that they do where he is from.

Alex and the manager– Alex is such a delightfully weird kid.

Dolmas, really good dolmas- I never really ate them before, because they are usually dripping in olive oil and are just off putting, but these were amazing, not oily, just delicious.

Alex got a Kit-Kat milkshake, and he was so happy, it was “as big as my face Mom”. Also pictured is the tastiest hummus and pita bread, I didn’t realize how much I missed hummus!

Alex ordered a very traditional Mediterranean dish… salmon. This kid is ridiculous, but it was tasty. We had a lovely braised lamb with rice, and also chicken and lamb kebabs.

This was a really nice day in KL. The blend of different cultures in this city make it feel like you are visiting more than one city. I’d go back to KL anytime, and this was just the beginning!