Hangzhou Trip

We decided to take Juliet and Lillie to Hangzhou for New Year's. Hangzhou is a city about 2 hours by car from Shanghai. It was dubbed by Marco Polo 7 centuries ago as the most splendid city in the world. We figured if it was good enough for the guy who invented that great swimming pool game we all played as kids then it was good enough for us.

Here's a photo collection of our few days:

The city sits amongst rolling hills and surrounds a huge lake:




Here are the three lovely Richardson gals trying to keep each other warm:


It was nice to see a sunset not shrouded in smog:


On the lake outside our hotel they had a water and light show ala the Belaggio in Las Vegas:


Here's a pic of the man-made bird's nest that housed the bird that crapped on Scott:


Who says you have to go to a college football game to see the Goodyear Blimp on New Year's Day ... a little glimpse of home that brought tears to our eyes:

Dude ... that's some really good tea!

We happened upon a store this week while vacationing in Hangzhou, China (more on that trip tomorrow) ... we couldn't resist snapping a picture:

Kung Fu Master

Over the past several years, Juliet has taken both ballet and tap dancing lessons. She never really took to it and, in fact, when she was 3 ½ she was quoted as saying “who signed me up for this?” Nonetheless, we wanted her to stay active and meet other kids. Thus, this September her mother once again signed her up for ballet lessons here in Shanghai.

However, after the first six week session was over, she pleaded with us to not “make her do it again.” We obliged, but told her that she was to find another activity. When we received a flyer in the mail advertising upcoming Kung Fu lessons at the compound, Scott jokingly asked Juliet if she wanted to become a Kung Fu Master. She immediately responded affirmatively. So beginning last month, our sweet, dainty, quiet Juliet began her training to become a badass.

Time Flies When You're Having Fun

The year-end is often a time of reflection for many people, and this year is no exception for us. We are shocked by how fast our time here in China has gone and how much our lives and perceptions have changed. When we look back 18 months ago to where we are now as a family, we can’t believe how much we’ve changed:

• The "Three Amigos" (Annie, Scott, and Juliet) have morphed into the "Fab Five" with the additions of Lillie and Shanna
• Mr. Chen and Xue Feng are effectively members of the family … despite the fact that we primarily communicate via “charades”
• We went from eating “American” Chinese food about once every 6 months in the U.S. to eating “real” Chinese food five times a week
• Men peeing on the side of the road aren’t seen by anyone as “out of the ordinary”
• Juliet is reading chapter books
• We’ve learned that Thai food (which none of us had EVER eaten) is fantastic and helps scratch the spicy food itch we have from no tex-mex
• Instead of having “can’t miss” shows every week, we just wait until the day after the season finale, buy the full season for $4 and have a “Grey’s Anatomy” marathon over the course of 28 hours
• As much as the quote “you can take the family out of America, but you can’t take America out of the family” applies to us, we have developed an immense appreciation and respect for the people of this very mysterious and interesting country. Nonetheless, we’ll take a Chili’s Old Timer with Cheese over sautéed cow balls any day of the week.

Songtime with Lillie

In our house, ever since Juliet was born, it seems as though someone has always been singing ... as Annie says "My life is one big musical!" This has not stopped with Lillie. She's thoroughly enjoyed learning new songs at school and making up new ones at home. However, no matter how hard she tries, they often are just a bit off. Here are a few of our favorite "Lillie versions" of some of the all-time classics:

1. "Baa Baa black sheep how are you? Yassir yassir 3 bags full. One for my master and one for the little girl that lives down the street." Who knew Yassir Arafat doubled as a shepherd?

2. "On the first day of Christmas true love gave to be, a partridge in a tree. On the Tuesday of Christmas, true love gave to me ... something else."

3. "We wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Chistmas, and a Happy New You!" Apparently she's sending a shoutout to those of us looking for a little plastic surgery in 2009.

4. "Old McDonald had a farm, and on that farm he had some whores." We wonder if Mrs. McDonald knows what's going on out in the barn?

The Sunny Shores of Thailand

After being robbed in late September, our planned vacation to Thailand the first week of October was a welcome respite. We spent a really great week on the beaches of Phuket, Thailand (about 2 months ahead of the current military coup currently underway there). We enjoyed the food, the weather, the elephants, etc. Here's a snapshot of the fun.

This is "Jumbo" - the resident baby elephant at the JW Marriott. Jumbo roamed the premises with his handler giving rides, taking pictures, etc:


After over an hour, a few tears, and multiple women's hands cramping up, here's the final product of Juliet's hair getting braided:


Mom and daughter by the pool:


Juliet and Jumbo giving each other a high-five:


Juliet taking a break from swimming:


Scott and Anne posing for Juliet:


Here's a pic from the elephant trek we went on:


Juliet enjoying some Reduced Fat Cheez-its (she's trying to keep her girlish figure):


One of the more curious aspects to vacationing in an area with a lot of Europeans was the prevalence of the Speedo:

Crime Scene Investigation ... In our house

In late September, one of the low points of our ex-pat assignment occurred when our house was robbed. While we were out for dinner on a Friday night enjoying our favorite authentic Italian food restaurant, a "perp" entered the house through a window he pried open and stole our laptop and cash.

We called the police and they sent a Crime Scene Investigation team out to do a detailed investigation. After a few hours of thorough investigating and lots of mumbling in Chinese, they determined our house was robbed by a man about 6 feet tall ... so basically the investigation did nothing except narrow down the suspect list to about 100 million people (about 1/3 the population of the United States). Nonetheless, two months later our case "has gone cold" and we're not expecting the return of our computer any time soon.

Early September Happenings

September is typically one of our favorite months (highlighted by Scott's birthday of course), and 2008 was no exception. In early September, we began fostering another child from China. When Annie was asked by a friend why she agreed to take in another child, she responded, "One, I just can't say no. And two, you have never lived until you've seen the shocked look on your husband's face when he gets home from work and you greet him at the door with a screaming infant and say "Hey guess what? ... we got another baby today!"

Shanna came to us when she was 10 days old. She was born with spina bifida, but after spending a month in the hospital for surgery in late September, she's doing quite well and has a terrific prognosis. Juliet and Lillie adore her and Scott thoroughly enjoys the fact that whenever he yells out "Her name is Shanna," Lillie responds at the top of her lungs wherever she is in the house "It rhymes with banana."

Here are some pics:

Back to Blogging

Greetings ... we apologize for the hiatus from blogging, but today, in honor of the day that OJ finally went to jail, we decided to jump back into the swing of it. We'll add a series of updates in chronological order over the next few days to catch you up on what has been going on the last few months.

A Bit of a Hairy Problem

There was an article in today’s paper about a teenager who was having stomach issues, but many people speculated she was just pregnant as her belly was getting quite large. After extensive tests doctors found what they thought was an extreme amount of fiber-like material in her stomach. Apparently, the girl had been eating her own hair for the past 15 years. The giant hairball weighed in at 1.5kg (about 3.5 lbs) upon removal. Doctors don’t know why she was eating her own hair, but it sure does beat eating duck tongue or chicken stomach.

The Daily News

We subscribe to the local English newspaper here in Shanghai. Despite being filtered, it provides the basic going ons around China and the world. However, after being here a year now we’ve noticed one very significant difference in the paper service here versus the U.S. (in addition to the ads for “Happy Ending Massages”) … collections.

Just like in the U.S. you prepay for a given subscription length - 3, 6, 9, or 12 months. However, not like in the U.S., when your subscription runs out … no more paper. No pre-warning, no friendly note from the delivery man, no pre-emptive phone call … no more paper. This is bad in that it takes at least a week and 3 phone calls to the “sales office,” which apparently only has sales people that speak Chinese (funny, for an English newspaper), before the paper gets delivered again.

However, this can be a good thing because you can actually stop the paper service whenever your subscription runs out. This is certainly better than the U.S. where you can decide you don’t what the paper anymore yet it still gets delivered for the next three years … at which point you receive a bill for $7,000.

A Taxi Ride with Added Benefits

We have posted before that taxis are cheap – here in Shanghai you can go across town for less than $10. However, this week Scott was in Hefei which is located in Anhui Province. He took a 45 minute cab ride from the airport to his hotel. This journey set him back a whopping $3.

$3 for a cab ride – what a steal!!! It’s even better when you consider that the cab had no air conditioning so he got a free blow dry whizzing down the highway with the windows down. If this wasn’t enough, the driver was apparently offering his “Tuesday Special” as he threw in a complimentary case of whiplash on the 25 kilometer journey.

What goes up ...

One of the peculiar things about Shanghai is that often the direction of escalators is switched. We don’t know the particular reason but after several weeks of running in a certain direction, the “up” escalator is changed to where it runs “down” and vice versa.

As you can imagine, this can cause some confusion if one is not paying attention when walking on an escalator that he or she uses fairly regularly. In the building next door to Scott’s office, there is a Starbucks located on the second floor. He will occasionally walk to get a cup of coffee in the mornings. Last week, while on the phone, he headed to the escalator on the “right” because that is where the “up” escalator had been the last time he had been there. Little did he know the “switcheroo” had been conducted since his last visit.

Now, as you can imagine in the lobby of an office building next door to the Shanghai Stock Exchange in a city with 25 million people, there is quite a bit of action at 9am. As Scott took two clumsy missteps up the “down” escalator at least 25 people (especially those riding down) wondered shockingly with their co-workers “What’s wrong with this moron? Don’t they know in America that it’s a helluva lot easier to use the stairs that are moving upward? And wow look at that – you ever seen somebody’s face turn redder than the Chinese flag?”

Ahhh … the ups and downs of China!

This translation was right on

Often we read English translations that are really not accurate or descriptive – particularly when it comes to Chinese foods. The ever-so-helpful “Chicken in Sauce” or “Beef with Grains” doesn’t really help in figuring out the dining options.

The other morning Scott was in a small city in China and went downstairs for breakfast. He quickly noticed that it was not a Chinese/Western Buffet Breakfast as is typical, but rather, a Chinese-only setup. He began opening the lids of the various dishes in order to survey his options. He came upon one dish that was titled “Closest to Flesh and Blood.”

This little treasure looked like skewered meat, but Scott couldn’t really understand the title. He started running through the options in his head, “What is close to flesh and blood, but not in fact … flesh … or … blood? Maybe it’s tendons, or ligaments, or cartilage, or bone? It could be knuckles or joints I guess?” Ultimately he decided that it had to just be meat with a funny name. WRONG … after taking a mouthful of the not-so-delicious sustenance he deduced the skewered items were some random, chewy combination of tendons, ligaments, cartilage, bone, knuckles, AND joints. He then made the bold conclusion there has never been a more accurate translation of a Chinese delicacy.

Salutations

One of the more beneficial aspects of our international assignment has been the exposure to people from all over the world. The ex-patriot community is largely comprised of Europeans in addition to Americans so we are learning about many different cultures and customs.

One of the more curious discoveries we have come across has been how different people close an e-mail before typing their name. In the U.S., typically we Americans stick to “Thanks”, “Thank You”, “Regards”, or maybe even “Kind Regards.”

However, we’ve noticed the Europeans tend to mix it up a bit. It’s not uncommon to get a “Cheers” or maybe even a “Mit freundlichen Grüßen,” but our personal favorite has to be “I Remain.” We really can’t figure it out though. “Thanks” … we get. “Regards” … it makes sense. “I Remain?” Maybe the writer is just trying to get the point across that he or she is still alive, or is just trying to say “In case you thought I was considering changing my name, I didn’t.”

In any event it’s been another of the interesting curiosities as we become more “worldly.”

We Remain,
The Richardsons

This stuff is riveting

The other day while traveling on business, Scott heard a very curious recorded announcement while at the Shanghai Airport.

“Attention passengers, please pay attention to the time printed on your boarding pass. Even while watching the Olympics on the airport television you must arrive at the gate on time in order to board your plane.”

As fabulous as coed, one-armed, blind-folded badminton is, we really can't see missing our flight for it, but to each his own we suppose.

Nothing Like a 3 Year Old Translator

As we have stated before, the speed at which Lillie has grasped English has been incredible. However, she refused to speak Chinese with us at home. We knew she still was speaking Chinese with our driver and housekeeper, but we were unclear as to how much she was retaining. With Annie in the states, Scott has figured out her retention is just fine.

Our housekeeper has been watching Lillie while Scott is at work. It has worked out well so far despite Xue Feng’s lack of English capability. For the most part Scott can fake enough Chinese to figure out what’s going on and communicate with her. However there are times at which he has no clue. Last week, one morning when he was leaving she told him something that left him clueless. Sensing the blank stare on Scott’s face, Lillie stepped in. “She says I need a bath and that she will do it before you get home tonight.”

Now if she could just bargain for purses in the market ... we'd be all set.

The next Willard Scott?

Annie and Juliet are currently back home in Texas for a few weeks enjoying Tex-Mex food and the ability to drink tap water before another school year begins. Thus, Scott and Lillie are holding down the fort alone together in Shanghai. As you can imagine, he is having some very interesting conversations during his "one on one" time with her. One such moment occurred yesterday and today.

Last night about 7pm they were walking over to a friend's house for dinner when the following conversation occurred:

Scott: "It sure looks like rain with the sky really dark and all that thunder."
Lillie: "It's not going to rain today, but it is going to rain tomorrow."
Scott: "It might rain tomorrow, but I really think it will rain while we're eating tonight also."
Lillie: "No!!! - it is going to rain tomorrow ... not today!!!"

About 10pm they were walking home on dry ground:

Scott: "Well it hasn't rained yet but I think it still might rain tonight."
Lillie (vehemently): "It is not going to rain today ... it is going to rain tomorrow!!!"

Fast forward to this afternoon at 4pm. When Scott exited a meeting, he looked out his office window to see it raining so hard he couldn't see more than about 100 yards outside. We're not so sure her sudden acquisition of ESP is ready for Vegas or a career in palm reading, but at least we'll know when to take an umbrella with us.

Where's the Camera?

Tonight we had dinner at California Pizza Kitchen. This is a normal stop on our rotation and we typically hit CPK every couple of weeks. We were having an early dinner (a little before 5pm) so the restaurant was quite empty with only about 4-5 tables filled. We were about halfway through our meal when a few guys wearing "USA Basketball" shirts walked in. They were kind of looking around deciding where to sit and walked over to us. One of them said "I am so sorry but your nice quiet dinner is about to be interrupted."

At that moment, LeBron James led the majority of the USA men's basketball team into CPK. Kobe Bryant, Dwayne Wade, Chris Paul, Carlos Boozer, Chris Bosh, Dwight Howard, Darren Williams and Dominique Wilkins all followed him in to enjoy a nice "American" meal.

We couldn't figure out why they didn't stop down for some local fare as we assume pig's feet, duck tongue, etc would be good protein boosters prior to the Olympiad, but their loss was our gain as we got to dine right next to this year's "Dream Team" and their traveling party (coaches, trainers, etc).

Little did we know that about one year ago to the day that we were swiping sugar packets to take home to put on our Cheerios, that in that very spot Kobe Bryant would thank us for wishing them good luck and we'd get to hear LeBron James look at our kids and say "how are you all doing tonight?"

Summer Camp

One of the best parts of being a kid in the summertime is the ability to attend "summer camp." Summer camps come in all shapes and size - sports camp, scout camp, arts and crafts camp, etc, etc. So you may ask, where does a six year old, soon-to-be first grader go to camp when he/she lives in Shanghai, China? Yep, that's right ... Chinese Camp.

Juliet just finished three weeks of daily Chinese Camp. For 6.5 hours everyday she attended a camp with native English and native Chinese speaking kids ranging in age from 6-10. For the first three hours of the day they learned Mandarin (with the teacher only speaking in Chinese). In the afternoon they did Chinese arts and crafts and learned about Chinese culture.

Some may call us cruel parents for taking the f out of fun for her summer, but she loved it. Despite the fact she may not be able to kick a soccer ball, spout the girl scout's pledge, or roast marshmellows by the fire when she moves back to America ... we suspect she'll be the only kid on the block that can write the numbers one through ten in Chinese characters.

Return to Blogging

Sorry for the delay in our lack of posting ... there is really no excuse for it ... unless you count the fact we have another child from an orphanage staying with us for the summer. "Bing" or as Lillie calls her "The Bing" is a three month old little girl who was born with spina bifeda. She has come along way and is recovering well.

We have been looking for the right way to break back into blogging and the compound's newsletter came today and we thought this was very appropriate. The following was in a section titled "Area Moral Initiative" (no these are not typos):

"A litter less bickering, a litter more neighbors hello;
A litter less selfish, a litter more mutuel assistance;
A litter less height throuing, a litter more care;
A litter less dispose of pet's poo everythere, a litter more civilization walk;
A litter less illegal structures, a litter more quiet decoration;
A litter less parking barbaric, a litter more humility driving;
A litter less vulgar life, a litter more flowers mood;
A litter less social, a litter more harmonious joy."

A Warm Welcome

Scott was on a business trip the last few days, and had a very long day today. It started off with meetings in the morning, followed by lunch of something "interesting" in a chemical plant canteen. Then an hour drive to the airport to catch his flight home. After boarding on time, the announcement came over the intercom that the flight was delayed due to "air traffic control" ... which typically means something is seriously wrong with the plane that you're about to embark to 35,000 feet on.

However, after a 45 minute delay with the benefit of no air conditioning and more flies buzzing around on an airplane than Scott cares to remember (who knew flies have no problems mating right in front of humans ... you'd think they want some privacy), the flight departed for Shanghai.

After landing and retrieving his bag, Scott phone Mr. Chen who informed him he was stuck in traffic 45 minutes away. So off to the cab line, which was 150 people deep and took 35 minutes to wait in ... outside in 100% humidity.

When Scott arrived home, the first thing he did was embrace his kids and told them how much he missed and loved them, and how good it was to be home. After setting Juliet back on the ground and expecting her to respond to his terms of endearment, she turned to Annie and remarked, "Daddy smells like China!"

Welcome Home, Dad!

Big Milestone

Juliet lost her first tooth over the weekend - a huge milestone in her six years of existence. After loosening the tooth for the past 4 weeks it finally fell out with no blood or pain whatsoever - much to her excitement.

The most exciting part of this little development is that the tooth fairy was able to find us here in Shanghai - rewarding our little darling with 100 RMB ($14) - proving that the tooth fairy did REALLY well during the internet boom as it's a far cry from the $0.50 per tooth we got back in the 80s.

Bite Free Plus Fresh Breath

We have had a bit of a mosquito problem lately - the blood suckers are back ... with a vengence. After having received 5 bites on her face overnight, Annie decided today to take action. She had been told that if you spray Listerine around your doors and windows the mosquitoes will stay away (apparently they are opposed to clean breath).


So tonight Annie sprayed all the doors and air in the office of our house with Listerine. Now Listerine has a very distinct taste and odor and Scott and Annie both were a bit overwhelmed by the intense "fragrance" that was penetrating our nostrils. At that moment Lillie walked into the room and in a very deep voice remarked "mama, this smells GOOOOD!"

Scott quickly remarked, "Honey, flowers smell good ... fresh-baked cookies smell good ... mommy smells good ... our office smells like a donkey vomitted up a barrel of vinegar."

A Few Roses for a Special Occasion

Today Anne and Scott turn 9. That's right we have been hitched now for nine years.

In honor of our anniversary, Scott wanted to order Annie some flowers. He asked an administrative assistant if she could call and order some flowers (since he knew the english proficiency of the florist was probably not college level). He gave her the following instructions.

I would like red roses delivered
I have been married 9 years
It doesn't matter what the flowers cost
I want the card to say Happy Anniversary in Chinese

So his colleague took the instructions and ordered 99 red roses. There were so many roses that Annie had to put them in a trash can with water because she didn't have a vase big enough.

Here is a pic of the massive order of flowers: