Life is wonderfully busy...

Our life in Nanjing is moving right along...QUICKLY!   My days are filled with some wonderful new things.  I started doing Tai Chi.  Tai Chi is no joke!  My teacher is very tough and it works my legs until they are jello.  I really like it though.  I just take it at the club house in our complex.  

I have also met several ladies in Nanjing.  And we have become fast friends.  There are many activities that the wives do here.  Their are tai chi classes, cooking classes, language classes, painting classes and probably many others that I do not know about yet.  We also do a lot of going out to lunch and venturing out into the city to find cool new places to shop. ;o)  There is no lack of activities to participate in.  I feel blessed to be a part of this community and to have the opportunity to meet new friends and experience some new activities. 

Our friend Jon was also in town this past weekend.  He was on an Asian adventure of his own visiting people in Japan, Nanjing and Hong Kong.  We were happy to see a friend from back home and we had a great weekend with him.  He arrived late Friday night, so we just picked him up at the airport and then came home and had some pizza and beer.  The next day we visited Purple Mountain.  There are many, many, many things you can do at Purple mountain.  You can walk and walk for miles and miles.  We went to Sun Yat-sen's Mausoleum. We also went to Ming Dynasty Tombs.  That was my favorite part because they have these huge stone animals that are AMAZING!  If you know me, you know I love animals so I really enjoyed the statues.  I have many pics below of the statues.

Michael taking a picture of our friend Jon

entering Sun Yet-san's mausoleum

many steps to climb

Michael's first...Can I get a picture with a white person picture.  It has not happened yet in Nanjing because most people in a city like Nanjing have seen white people.  But at a tourist attraction like Purple Mountain many people are from out of town, maybe the country side or from places in China that are not that exposed to Westerner and are they are excited when they see white people. ;o)  Michael got asked for pics more than once that day.

eating lunch...it was YUMMY!

these beef noodles...AMAZING!

these beans...REALLY Amazing.  if you know Jon ask him, he said it was the best thing at that meal

stone horse

these stone elephants...SUPER COOL!

stone camels...really COOL!

These are 2 of my new best gals.  We went shopping at IKEA this day.  Angela is on the left and Carol is on the right.  The are both from Michigan as well.  They are have been super sweet and supportive.  They have helped me find all the yummy places to eat, all the great places to shop and have literally made life easier for me here in Nanjing.  Not only by spending time with me and showing me the ropes, but also because they introduced me to the best thing since sliced bread....my Ayi!

This is Li Huai Ping and myself.  She is awesome!  She is super sweet and pretty much does everything for me these days.  I really can't put into words how great she is.  She is sweet as pie and works extremely hard.  I really wish all my friends and family could have an Ayi.  I don't know how to describe all that she does and how much I enjoy her help without sounding like a spoiled brat.  So I will leave it at that.  She is amazing.  I know Michael and I are blessed to have her.  Having house help is not the life we came from and it is not the life we will return to, but we are very thankful to God for blessing us with this experience.  We know that all we have comes from Him! 

What I saw today...

Coco with me on the mountain...taking a water break

pretty flowers on the mountain

Coco Tired on the Mountain!

a man running up the mountain in a wife beater and boxers?

another man walking on the mountain..fully clothed

me on the mountain..flushed

woman on the mountain...getting their work out on!

more woman...hmmm. unusual.  I usually only see a handful of people

ok ...really unusual...never seen crowds like this

ok...must be a tour group or something

pretty mountain berries

me eating the berries!  NOT!  you know what they say about berries...if they have not been eaten by some animal in nature it is probably because they are poisonous!  I left them alone.

made it home..walking up the path to our house

our front gate

my chinese tea...everyone here drinks it in bottles like this

they have filters on top like this so the loose leaf does not come through

our friend Jon made it into town from Michigan...sorry about the red eye Jon, it is to late to edit photos! :o)

Hello Kitty in a Kimono...Jon got it for me in Japan!

What's going on...

I am finally starting to get my rhythm in Nanjing.  I have friends. ;o)  I found food that I like. ;o)  Coco and Willow made it safely here and that helps the house not feel so empty during the day.

Overall....Life is good. We live in a kind of subdivision that houses mainly expats from America, Europe and Australia.  But there are wealthy Chinese who live here as well.  Since there are so many expats living here, there is a nice network built up to help you connect with each other and the city.

Even though we are on the other side of the world these days, it is funny how small the world is.  I have a good friend back in the US...Liv.  Her husband, Bart,  has a good friend from work and that friend's brother just happened to be living in Nanjing already.  So Bart gave Michael and I the guy's info and he actually works at the same company as Michael.  So we met up with him and his wife and their cutie pie son and we have become fast friends.  I have to say in the expat community you become fast fast friends.

So Angela was the first girlfriend I met here in Nanjing and she was truly a God send.  She knows all the good places to eat, drink and shop! ;o)  She speaks the language really good.  She does not give herself enough credit for how great she speaks Mandarin! ;o)  And she connected me into the many networks here in Nanjing, the Nanjing International Club being one of them.  I am an official member now! ;o) Through her I met another wonderful gal, Carol.  She is a doll.

Her and I went to cooking class yesterday and had a great time.  We made hot and sour soup.  Well, not actually.  The instructors made it and we ate it.  But they showed us how to make it.  So that counts right?

 

It was extremely yummy...sour, sweet, spicy.  The pic does not do it justice  Then we made dumplings or pot stickers.  And we did make those by ourselves.  Mine were kind of a hot mess, but I had fun making them.

We have another girl that we have met here named Rita.  And she is Italian like Michael.  Her mom is in town visiting for a few months and she came with Carol and I too cooking class.  I went over to her during class and showed her my pot stickers and was like, "Carms, don't these look like mini Calzones instead of pot stickers?"  Being Italian I knew she would appreciate that.  One of Michael's favorite foods is Calzones.  Carms and Rita are going to be making us an Italian feast in a few days and Carms and I said wouldn't it be great to make mini Calzones for appetizers!  I think we might have come up with something.

This week I also met Michael's team from work.  We took them out to dinner.  They chose the place and it was awesome.  I guess it is one of the places for the best roast duck in town.  And it is walking distance from our house, so I am definitely going back.   You eat the thinly sliced roasted duck on little crepe like pancakes with spring onion, cucumber and hoison sauce.  YUMMMMMY!  It tasted so good.

I felt like a queen that night because it was me and 5 other guys.  And they were all adorable.  They are young guys with fun personalities.  I was asking them all about their love lives and what they do for fun.  They were laughing at all my "jokes." ;o)  And making me feel very welcome.

One of the most HILARIOUS things that happened during the dinner conversation was when one of the guys was telling me about his hobbies.  One of the things he loves to do is sing karaoke.  No surprise there.  Karaoke is an Asian way of life. ;o)  So he proceeds to tell us what type of music he likes to sing.  Things like American pop, Britney Spears, Michael Jackson, etc...  He also said he liked singing American country music.  Now, I have to say these guys spoke excellent English.  One thousand times better than my 5 mandarin words.  But of course it is still a bit broken and things always get lost in translation.  But back to country music...he started naming the artist he likes.  And he proceeds to say he likes the Dick Chicks.  I was dying because he kept saying, you know those Dick Chicks.   He obviously meant Dixie Chicks.  But it was just so funny.


Needless to say,   Michael loves his team and now so do I.  They are young and eager to learn.  They are warm and welcoming and funny.  I can't wait to spend more time with them.

You never know where the road will lead you...

There is a mountain (very large hill) by our house.  It is called Jiangjun Mountain.  I like that I can walk to it because I can take Coco there for walks and it is a nice place to get a workout in.  I walked up it for the first time last week.  I just went up the hill and back down because I was just trying to get familiar with my surroundings.  This week I went for a further walk up the mountain and I came across this sign.

I decided to follow it.  And where it lead me was an awesome scenic park in Jiangjun Mountain.  It was a Monday when I went there, so I saw only a handful of people there.  I liked that because it was just a nice place for me to walk peacefully and meditate.  I think that it is supposed to be a popular place.  They had people working there at food stands and a little souvenir place.  But it was dead the day I went there.

I just wandered around because I could not read the map.  And the things I came across were awesome.
I first came across the Dragon's backbone.

They said this rock is called the dragon's backbone because it looks like a dragon's backbone. ;o)  Thought I should write that out in case you were wondering. ;o)

This is not the best picture.  You take the steps up to the dragon's backbone.  It was rather steep, but not very far up.  Coming down was actually the tricky part because it was rather steep and the rock was very smooth.  I am glad I did not slip and crack open my skull because I probably would have just laid there and bled out because no one would have been around to rescue me anytime soon. Anywho..moving on! ;o)

Next I came to one of my favorite features of the park.  The Metasequoia trees, they were AWESOME.

The sign said China fir bridge.  And it pointed to this...

It was this awesome maze made out of logs.  The Metasequoia trees were all in water, probably about 6-8 inches.  It looked really cool.  It was rather daunting walking on the logs because they were not flattened out, they were still rounded.  There was a warning that if it was raining or snowing they would be very slippery and it had been raining that day.  Luckily, I did not have any mishaps, but I can totally see how someone would could fall in.  Especially if there were other people on the bridge and you had to pass them, because the walkways were not that wide.

Next I came to a cute fat Buddha carved into stone.

He was totally cool...just chillin' in the side of a mountain. ;o)

Last I saw something really awesome.

 
Guanyin is a Buddhist goddess of Mercy.  She was really awesome.  Even though I am not a Buddhist, there is still something very relaxing and awe inspiring when you are around such a awesome work of art, right out in nature.  I mean someone carved this goddess into the side of a mountain, in stone.  It is really cool and I can totally appreciate all the time and effort it must take to do something like that.

at this point I had walked halfway up the stair

this, of course, was when I reached the top

Needless to say, I feel very fortunate to have this essentially in my backyard.  I mean it did take a while to get there.  I left the house at 12:30p and did not get home until 5:30p.  So my little feet were feeling the burn.  I walked pretty much for 5 hours straight, just stopping now and again to admire the carving.  And a lot of the time I was walking up hill!  It was a good workout and I definitely want to bring Michael back to check it out.  There was other stuff in the park that I did not even get to see.  For 5 hours and 40 Yuan, not bad!

I hope everyone out there takes the time to explore what's around them.  No matter where you live, country or city, big town or small town, north or south, east or west, God has placed beauty all around us.  Sometimes they are things that hit us in right in the face like these statues and the beautiful path over water through beautiful trees.  And sometimes it takes a bit more effort to see the beauty around us.  Nothing irked me more than when people would complain about Detroit or Michigan because I believe there is beauty EVERYWHERE, sometimes you just have to take the time to open your heart and your mind to see it. 

our Landlord and yum yums...

Moving into our place was a bit more stressful than expected because it was not ready when we got here.  It was not all the landlord's fault.  Our contract ended up getting signed later than expected and the landlord would not start working on the place until he was sure he was going to get paid and that we were really coming.  So that happened like 2 weeks before we got here and 2 weeks was not enough time for him to clean the place up, fix what needed to be fixed and order all the furniture we needed. 

So needless to say we have been living among workers going in and out trying to finish stuff up.  I feel like I am constantly mopping the floors and trying to clean up after them.  And also the pollution is bad, so dust is always coming through the windows as well so everything is gets a coating of dust after after a while. 

Things are a bit better this week.  Well today is Monday, so I should not speak so soon. ;o)  No but really we are starting to feel settled.  We only have one suitcase of stuff left to put away.  Coco (our dog) and Willow (our cat) should be here tomorrow and we did not realize how much your pets make your house feel like a home.  But it has felt extra empty without them, so we will be very happy for their arrival.  We have not seen them since the 24th of September and I am sure they will be traumatized, so seeing how they react to everything should be interesting.  Our stairs our marble, so we anticipate Coco having a few wipe outs because they will probably be slippery to her.

Also it is frustrating because the landlord will tell us he is going to be here at 2p to do work and does not get here until 4p.  So we wait around and wait around for him.  I think he has felt bad and is trying to be accommodating because our first night in our place he told our realtor that he wanted to take us to dinner.  Our landlord speaks no english so he communicates to us through Nathan, our realtor.  Nathan said he has never seen anything like this before, a landlord taking his tenants out to eat.   So we definitely could not say no.  My stomach has been on the rocks since we got here and I was thinking oh no... we are going to go to some Chinese restaurant and I am going to have to try all these random scary foods because I need to be polite. 

But thanks goodness he too us to the Sofitel.   I have never heard of the Sofitel, but Nathan told us it is pretty much the best hotel in Nanjing, 5 stars all the way.  It is also kind of a country club here with golf and the whole bit.  And I guess our landlord is even richer than we were told.  I guess he is a VIP at this place and it was a welcome sight because I had just been eating saltines and water. 

Conversation was hard because Nathan had to interpret for us.  But Mingbai (our landlord)  proceeded to say he wanted to invite us over to his house for the next Chinese holiday.  He also wanted to take us to another really good buffet in Nanjing and the hot springs they have here.  He said at the hot springs they have the "fish pedicure" which I have actually wanted to try.  He asked if we rode horses because he also owns horses, of course.  It was really fun and funny.  He kept toasting to Lingling (my chinese name) and Mai Ke (Michael's chinese name).  It was cute.  So I am not sure if he was taking us to this nice place because he felt bad our place is not done or if he was just being nice and hospitable.  Either way, the food that night hit the spot.  The desserts were MMM...MMM...good!

mini tirmasu, creme brulee, opera cake, a lemon meringue tart...they were all Delicious!

our landlord, Mingbai

doing laundry in China is a...

Real chore!!!  I had been warned.  I met up with a friend I had just met at my church before leaving Michigan.  She had just moved back from Shanghai after being there for 4 and 1/2 years.  She mentioned to me that to do 1 load of laundry, yes 1, that it would take all day.  These are the things you hear and you just brush off.  I figured that she must be exaggerating a little bit. 

Well..... she wasn't.  First of all the washers in China are also your dryer.  Don't ask me how it works because IT DOESN'T. ;o)  Also, in the USA you have washers that can now wash, I think it was 13 pairs of jeans or something like that.  I saw it on a commercial.  The load capacity in the USA is big, bigger or gigantic.  In China the load capacity is small, smaller and teeny tiny.  I mean I can barely fit a pair of Michael's jeans through the washer opening.  Now I am exaggerating.  BUT...it is true that I can only fit his jeans and about 2 or 3 shirts at the most and the washer is full.

Next, to do what is labeled "cotton" wash, which 99% of our clothes are cotton, that is about a 3 hour wash time.  After that you put it on the dry cycle.  When you push that button up pops 100 minutes.  That is what...I think an hour and 40 minutes to dry.  And once you push the dry button there is no turning back.  You cannot stop it and open it up and check on the clothes.  It just keeps going for the ONE HUNDRED minutes.  The great thing is when the 100 minutes is over, the clothes are still damp.  Not a little damp, a lot damp.  And I have did two 100 minutes cycles and sometimes the clothes are still a little damp.  I guess that is why I see everyone hanging laundry from their windows, their garages, their balconies and pretty much anything that will hold a hanger you see people hanging clothes to try and dry them.

Luckily, I was thinking ahead and bought a cool clothes hangy drying thing before we left the States, but that will not be here for a while.  And I can imagine in the summer when humidity is 100% , that we will never have dry clothes because they will either be wet with sweat or wet because we could not dry them after being washed.

So.... to all my friends back home, do not take your washer and dryers for granted.  Give them a nice pat once in a while, clean that lint trap, maybe wipe the dust off of them and put a nice vase with flowers on them to make them look pretty.  Because BELIEVE me they deserve it!!! ;o)

my lovely LITTLE washer...I put a candle and plant on her to try and make her work harder for me ;o)

We're not in Kansas anymore, CoCo!

Well Coco is not in Kansas, but she is still in Michigan, so closer to Kansas than Michael and I.  She will probably be here in a week.  It is Chinese National Holiday right now, which is like 4th of July.  It is nice because Michael does not have to work until Thursday.  So we get a few days to try and settle in to our house together, which I am very thankful. 

Because it is Chinese national Holiday fireworks are going off ALL the time.  This is the land where fireworks originated after all, so I guess we should expect nothing less.  Here is a video of me watching some fireworks go off in the street.  Every time there was a loud bang the camera shakes because that is me shaking and when you hear a girl scream that is me as well because I think I got hit by one.  It was exciting! ;o)

We also went to lunch with Nathan (our realtor) and he ordered for us because it is just easier that way.  But he orders whatever.  I think he tries to order new things for us to try.  My stomach has not been doing very good adjusting to all the new food, so I have not been able to eat too much because I feel nauseous a lot of the time.  So I just ate vegetables and rice and a little fish.  Michael on the other hand ate liver, who's liver I do not know and pigeon! I for sure was not going to be able to stomach the pigeon or the liver, just thinking about it made me nauseous.  Luckily Nathan speaks english and I was able to tell him I just was not feeling well.  Otherwise it is offensive to not at least try a bite of the food. 

sorry, it is a bad picture...the pigeon is on the little plate (top right)

Things have been a bit stressful the past few days.  We are trying to get settled in our house and a lot of things still needed to be done, so there are men going in and out.  I am glad that Michael is off work until Thursdays, so I am not here by myself.  Our place is really nice, just has some quirks that were unexpected.  I cannot complain though, because God always keeps things in perspective for me.  Not too far from where we live are some really bad slums and I see the way the people are living there, pretty much in a shack.  It hurts my heart and it is a reminder to me that I have no reason to complain. 

Our internet is also not the best.  That is why my posts are so far apart.  I need our VPN to get onto my blog and sometimes it is working, sometimes it is not. 

Things overall our good here so far.  It is hard getting used to the differences in food and drink.  And of course not knowing the language is frustrating.  But I am able to get out on my own once and a while and I know it is going to be baby steps until I feel really comfortable.  But I continue to praise God for the opportunity, because I think that is only making me a stronger person.  Either that or it is going to break me ;o) but I hope that is not the case. 

I definitely have not been myself here.  I hope to meet some friends soon at Masterland, but have been a bit unmotivated to get out and about.  When Michael goes back to work, I think I will try and connect with some people here.  So far, so good.  I will write again soon.