Mom and Paul's visit

Other than the earthquake, we're having a good time with mom and Paul. They came back from Qingdao on the 8th and are leaving for home today. We'll miss them!

Let's see...what did we do... oh okay we had a full body massage, and everybody, especially John was so sore the next day. I guess they were too hard on us. We watched Iron Man in a nice theater and had a nice dinner afterwards. We went to the knock-off stores and mom bought John some North Face jackets, very nice ones. It's always fun to go into those stores.

If you (meaning you with foreign faces) walk on the busiest road, Nanjing Road in Shanghai, people would come to you and ask you "you wanna Rolex, Gucci, Addidas, NorthFace?". If you show any interest, they'd take you to one of those back allies and go into a store. After they make sure no cops are around, they'd open the hidden door on the wall and take you into their "real" business. They have all the knock-off products you could ever want. The bargaining is fun, too. For a two-piece Northface jacket, they'd ask for 600 US dollars. And you just shake your head, laugh, and tell them "ya kidding me?" then offer them 50 dollars. Usually you can get them for about 60 bucks. And they are actually very nice quality jackets. I mean who can tell a knock-off from a real one?

Paul also got some very nice Chinese paintings for a good bargain. Mom got some pearls, of course and she got me a pretty red coral necklace since I don't wear pearls all that much.

Yesterday after the earthquake episode, we went to the Shanghai Museum and had Beijing Duck for dinner. After climbing down 35 flights of stairs, we felt a need for a good foot massage, and so we did. It cost 10 bucks for the four of us to get an one-hour long foot massage. We felt better afterwards.

Here're some of our pictures.
http://picasaweb.google.com/HobblyJig/OldTownTempleAndMotherSDay
http://picasaweb.google.com/HobblyJig/ShanghaiMuseumAndBeijingDuck

Earthquake Day

You might have heard there was a 7.8 earthquake in a province southern China at 2:28pm yesterday. At about 2:40pm we were in a meeting on the 35th floor of a skyscraper in Shanghai (about 1000 miles away), everyone in the room started to feel very dizzy. We soon realized that the building was actually moving. Along with thousands of other people we ran down the stairs. When we got down we saw that some of the other buildings had emptied, but not all of them...which was odd. Rumors quickly spread that it wasn't an earthquake but the government had simulated a terrorist attack by pumping gas into the buildings to make us dizzy (lol, people are funny).

So far the news says that there are 10,000 expected dead, and at least 900 kids injured and possibly dead in a collapsed high school along with more kids in 2 other collapsed schools (who's building these schools!?).

Just want everyone to know that we're okay. I was so glad John and I were together when it happened. Cellphones were all out of service. I couldn't have possibly got in touch with him if we weren't together. We had a little taste of what it was like when the Twin Towers were hit. It made us so grateful to get out of there safely.

We're sad about people in Sichuan. Please be prayerful about them.

May Day Holiday

May Day Holiday is also known as Labor's Day in China. People usually get the first week in May off for this national holiday and go traveling to different places.

John and I flew to Qingdao to meet his parents there. We spent the day there, visiting friends and going to the tailor's. My best friend from college Julia came all the way from her hometown Weifang (which is about 3 hours drive from Qingdao) to see John and I. She brought us so many gifts that we don't know how to take them back to the US. John got a summer suit made. It cost us 50 something US dollars. Mom and Paul also got some stuff made. We'll show you pictures later.

The next day, we took a bus to go to my house. The 3-hour long bus ride turns out to be not so pleasant. The bus is old and shaggy and the driver honks every time he passes other cars, which turns out to be every 2 minutes. And China's having a shortage on diesel because the driver had to stop at three places before he could spend his money on gas. Mom tries to tell him it'd use more gas to honk the horn, but I didn't think the idea got crossed.

But we made it and got home where my almost-whole extended family were waiting to meet the parents. Mom cooked up a feast and we never stopped eating for the rest of the time we were there.

About 30 or more people showed up to see John and his parents. They just stared at them and talked away. Mostly things like, "oh they look nice." "oh they have very white skin, so pretty..." "Oh John looks like his mom a lot." "Look, John's joking around with his mother..." Ya know, things like that. And of course, everybody, especially my 90-year-old grandma keeps telling them to take care of me and keeps saying how thankful they were that I married into a nice family. Well I did. John gave grandma a little massage, which made her so happy. He spoke a lot more Chinese this time, which made everyone so impressed, especially my parents. They know now there is hope :-)

We went back to Qingdao and played on the beach. It was a nice day. For dinner we called up an old friend of mine, Jim Ely (I know him through Max and Deanna) and he recommended this nice little German restaurant. We met my cousin Megan and her boyfriend there and had a very nice German dinner. We're trying to help Megan to get into BYU to get an MBA degree.

We flew back to Shanghai the next morning and went straight to our training meeting at the Berlitz school. We're expecting John's parents to arrive tomorrow. We'll spent several days together in Shanghai and then they'll be on their way home.

Summer's definitely in Shanghai. We're wearing short sleeves and still sweating.

Here's a link to some of our pictures from our trip.
http://picasaweb.google.com/HobblyJig/MayDayHoliday