Guess who's back?

After a five year hiatus, our blog is (temporarily) back. Enjoy!

Last month, I graduated from nursing school with the 2017 cohort of the SCSU ACE Program. It was an incredibly crazy, but wonderful year. I was chosen by my classmates to give a graduation speech at the pinning ceremony.

Next, Chris was the Best Man in Hunter & Corinne's wedding. Here's the toast.

Last week, I passed the NCLEX and we moved to Kyoto, Japan for the semester. Bit of a week, eh?

Our initial flight departed JFK at 1:45am, so that was a bit of an adventure with three kids. But, we made it to our layover in Shanghai more or less in one piece. Then, after a few hours of "patiently waiting", we headed for Osaka.  The kids were really excited about the flights since they were the first that Vanessa and Zoe had ever been on. Xavier had only flown once previously when he was a baby, so he was as excited as his sisters. They did great.

Now, we are in our apartment in Kyoto slowly recovering from jetlag. It's great to be back in Japan!

 

China Photo Pages

Without further ado, here is the first of the photo pages from my trip to China. I'm sorry it took almost two months to get this posted. Life has a wonderful way of making you live... so there's not much time to document said living. I've been very busy "extracting maximum value" out of Japan and loving every second of it. Maybe, I'll find time to go into detail about that someday. :)

Shanghai

Wanted: A Shanghai Husband

I'm beginning to think that every country has its own special brand of tourism humor.

Just like every tour operator in Costa Rica tells you that it's the bus driver's first day on the job, every tour guide in China (every one that I met, anyway...) jokes that the best souvenir to bring home with you is a Shanghai husband.

Shanghai husbands are notorious for treating their wives very, very well.

When dating, a future Shanghai husband has to be very attentive. They often go shopping, carry their girlfriends' purse and anything she buys, and plan excellent dates.

Before they are even "eligible" to propose, a Shanghai husband must own a car and an apartment or condominium. This is no small feat since apartments are expensive and you usually need to have 30% down before securing a mortgage in China.

Then, when they do get married, these men usually do all the cooking, dishes and laundry in addition to being the main bread-winner for the family. Wow!

Why is this the case? The main reason is that China's One-Child policy (which began in 1979) caused a gender imbalance - leaving many men to choose from a limited pool of potential wives. This gave power to the girls who can be more choosy and demanding than ever before when selecting a boyfriend or husband. So, now, if men in China want to get married they have to meet ever increasing requirements from their future wives. Poor guys!

(The above photo is of Haibao - the mascot for the 2010 World Expo Shanghai. Of course, he must be a Shanghai husband in training.)

Children's Palace

Not a typical tourist mecca, one of the more surprising stops on our tour of Shanghai was the Children's Palace of Xuhui District.
There are several such schools throughout the city.

This particular Children's Palace and its grounds were the former residence of Rong Desheng, a famous Chinese industrialist. In the 1950's, this residence was converted into an extracurricular activities center where children can go after school or on the weekends to study things like the Beijing Opera, theatre, ballet, dance, singing, chess, calligraphy, painting, sketching, music and martial arts.

The Children's Palaces are not free of charge, but the class fees are fairly cheap and anyone who can pay can attend. You don't need to be elite or a child prodigy. I wish I could enroll in some of these courses - what fun!

We got to look in on a couple of classes and watch the students at work. In several classes, mothers and fathers were there to provide extra instruction and encouragement. Because it was completely new to me, I found the erhu class especially interesting. Erhu is something like a two-stringed violin. It is a very expressive instrument, often used for playing sad songs.

Chinese 101

Once I arrived in Shanghai, I was very interested in learning some Chinese. With all the conflicting vocabulary and grammar from English, Spanish, French and Japanese floating around in my brain why not try to learn a bit of Chinese too?

Our local Shanghai guide, William (Hong Wei), and our national guide, Rocky, were happy to help us learn a few words and phrases each day.

To impress us, or maybe to scare us, we learned about the importance of Chinese being a tonal language right off the bat. The awesome example they used was the five pronunciations and meanings of ma:

ma = flat, no emphasis = sentence ending particle that indicates a question
mā = high, level, long tone = mother
má = high, rising, medium tone = hemp
mă = low, dipping, long tone = horse
mà = loud, falling sharply, short tone = curse, scold

Using only one syllable but four tones, you can ask "Did mother curse the horse?" (Mā mà mă ma?) How cool is that?!

But, of course, with the meanings being so diverse and the pronounciatons being relatively close, it would be very easy for a new Chinese language learner to get themselves into hilarious and unintended linguistic nightmare situations. Sounds like a fun challenge to me. Bring it on!

We've been Shanghaied!

The word "shanghaied” means to be deceived or tricked and it comes from the 19th century practice of shipping companies hiring unsavory folk to get other men drunk in order to abduct them and force them to work on a ship bound for China. Thankfully, I am not an indentured sailor in China. But, my parents and I did start our tour in Shanghai, the most populous city in China.

The above photo shows a view of the Pudong area of Shanghai as seen from the Bund. Pudong means "east of the (Huangpu) river" and Bund means "riverside, embankment and waterfront." There is a scene in Mission Impossible 3 where Tom Cruise jumps along this skyline from building to building. It seemed a little ridiculous in the movie, and now, having seen the actual size and location of the buildings, it seems even more ridiculous. I guess we were shanghaied after all. Thanks a lot Tom!

We crossed under the Huangpu River (via the cheesy but nonetheless amusing Bund Sightseeing Tunnel) to get to the Pudong side of the city. Our main goal was to have a drink in the Grand Hyatt Hotel's Cloud 9 Bar. We had it on good authority that the skyline views from this bar were unrivaled in the city and were definitely worth an overpriced drink or two.

To achieve this mission, we had to get to the Jin Mao Dasha Building. The photo to the left is a shot of the Jin Mao Dasha Building from the bottom looking up. It was built in 1998 and is currently the third tallest building in the world at 421 meters high. To arrive at the entrance of the building, we had to cross an extraordinarily busy street without the aid of a crosswalk. We followed a crowd of locals and other bewildered tourists into the street and somehow managed not to get run down in the process. An additional benefit to this exercise was that we confirmed the healthy functioning of all of our adrenaline receptors.

Cloud 9 did not disappoint. From the vantage point of the 87th floor, the views of the Bund and the Pudong area were stunning. It was easy to pick out the highlights of the Shanghai skyline like the Oriental Pearl Building and the Westin Hotel. Plus, we got to experience the full Friday brightness of the cityscape. In an attempt to conserve electricity, Shanghai made the decision to turn off all "landscape lights" except on Friday and Saturday nights from 6:30 to 9:30pm. How lucky that we could enjoy the skyline in all its neon splendor.