Happy Birthday, Mama!

Wonderful birthday wishes from China (everyone in China, I asked around) for my mom. I hope you had a very happy birthday and I'm sorry I wasn't there to treat you to a margarita :)

I tried to post this on the 29th, but China has blocked some websites, including Flickr, Blogger, Wikipedia, and SuzhouExpats. But only sometimes. What a pain in the pigu.

Last night, GP and I went out to eat with our good friends Sun Wei and Guo Qin Qin. We had some northern Chinese food (rabbit, lamb with vegetables, chicken with potatoes, mmmmm) and then spent 3 hours with my favorite new hobby. Mahjongg! I finally learned the real game. Oh, boy! I could have played for 3 more hours if it wasn't Sunday night and if my eyes hadn't dried out so much from my contacts :p

I grew up playing Rummy with my grandparents and older sister. Pinochle in high school and college. Euchre, Hearts, pitch in College. Then I moved to PA and never found the people to play card games with again. I did miss it and am glad to have found Mahjongg.

Everyone in the US thinks of Mahjongg as a matching game like Go Fish. In the actual game, the tiles are played like rummy. You try to make short runs of 3 numbers in order or make triplets (three-of-a-kind). You through away the junk, pick up other peoples discards (distiles?) to make yours and scream like a little girl when you win.

The Mahjongg tiles are a mix of cards (there are 3 suits - wan, tong, tian) and Monopoly (there are the 4 winds, flowers, etc). The rules are different in the details from other games I've played, but still basic. It's also fun to handle the tiles instead of cards and the Mahjongg parlor we played at ($2.60/hr) has tables which automatically mix and stack the tiles. I'll have to post the video when I can.

I hope we can play again next weekend!

Merry Christmas!

It's about as good a Christmas as we could hope for. Well, if GP and I could have gone to the US, it would have been a little better.

Christmas Eve Day my driver brought a USPS box to my office. Goodies from home! He was confused as to why unpopped popcorn was falling out of the box, but I made him understand my mama does some funny things sometimes :) GP and I are enjoying the candy and look forward to the other goodies.

GP had a test last night (business correspondence in English), so we had a late dinner at the Scholar Hotel (only so-so, some seriously dry turkey) and then a massage combo for our badminton-abused bodies. Finally back to home to start on the fudge and coated pretzels. Yum!

This morning, we found that Santa had visited during the night (photos soon) and GP received not 1, but *2* cars. One almost big enough for her to drive ;) We both received some more candy and DVDs. A pretty good haul.

Finally, I heard that the package of Xmas gifts made it to KBF's house Monday night, so everyone can enjoy the gifts (tiny little gifts) on Xmas day.

Have a Merry Christmas everyone!

Matt & GP

Movies and Rain

Another week is over (it's Saturday morning here) and the rain continues. My driver has been sick and I am trying not to catch his cold. I'll risk it to go out and buy some coffee and other groceries this morning.

GP and I have been watching movies the last couple of weekends. We both like old US movies and it might be a good way for her to learn English. She often sings "Good morning, good morning!" from Singing in the Rain (just those lines) and last night she was singing "I want to live in America" with a Puerto Rican accent. Actually a Puerto Rican-Chinese accent (probably only Jeff and I hear a different song reading that).

Friday nights have become "cook dinner together" night and we tried something new - homemade pizza! The just-add-water crust mix was pretty good and we topped it with olive oil, heavy on the garlic, roasted red pepper, onion, spinach and just a bit of mozzerella. Mmmmm.


(sorry, no video)

We found a late Christmas dinner; late on the 24th, that is. Almost all of the places are having their celebrations that night and GP has a test until 8pm or so. I really need to get out and buy another gift or two for her.

Happy Birthday Suzy!

Everyone please send happy birthday wishes to my niece, Suzy. Set aside a piece of cake for me :)

A little Christmas in Suzhou

I surprised Gaoping with a wreath and a couple of stockings. She marked them so Santa knows which gets the English goodies and which the Chinese :)



The snowman came from a vendor and I thought he looked good in the wreath.

We also had fun Sunday night making chocolate chip cookies again. I used the Tollhouse recipe on the back of the bag, but they are more cakelike than I remember when I made them in the US. Maybe it's the foreign margarine and imported flour. Perhaps the eggs. I dunno. They still tasted good, though, even if we did bake them on a pizza pan.



I wanted to make the chocolate chip + oatmeal recipe, but we had no baking powder. I think it's fairly easy to find, so maybe I'll do those next time.

Happy Birthday to Ben!

First nephew, Ben, will celebrate a birthday on Thursday. GP and I hope it is a great one :)

In China, no big changes. I've still got a little head cold and GP came down with some stomach virus. We went to the hospital to see a doctor Monday night and she ended up with the always-prescribed IV (glucose, KCl and something else). She got two bottles and the KCl makes the transfer more painful, so we had to go slow. Left home at 8pm and got back at 3:15am :P It was fun seeing what shows up at a Chinese emergency room.

Christmas decorating is big in China. The trees, the fake frost in the windows, the stockings. I'm not sure they understand *why" there is Christmas (probably no worse than the western world's understanding), but they know what lao wai (foreigners) like. I bought a nice wreath and two stockings. I'll have to come up with some stocking stuffers for GP's first, real Christmas. And teach her carols, of course.

I really need to find A Christmas Story DVD. "You'll shoot your eye out" will sound very cute in Chinese :)

The cold, the waiting, the cold, friends?

Winter has hit Suzhou. It's not terribly cold - 40-50s F - and it probably won't snow at all, but the air is very dry and heating businesses is low priority. At work, they've cut back heating to save energy. I suppose it's the same for the grocery store I went to the other night. The checkout girl had her winter coat on and was obviously wishing for her gloves. Too bad they didn't close the door, it may have helped keep some heat in.

Relative humidity is about 20% which makes skin, sinuses, eyes, everything painfully dry. Time to buy two more humidifiers :p

It's been 5 weeks since we sent GP's paperwork to Beijing for immigration. I checked with the lawyer and neither of us have gotten a case number receipt. The lawyer called and found that there was a huge influx of applications just before the filing fee increased, so the normal 4 week wait is about 15 weeks. We'll check again in 2 months. Blech. Good thing we started early.

On the health front, I'm getting a sore throat. It probably matches the other sick people in the office. The ones who cough on me >:^( I'm going to hand out copies of "Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten". Rememeber what you learned? Wash your hands after using the toilet, cover your mouth when you cough, don't spit in the hallway at work on the carpet, don't push in line. There should be a TV channel just with this.

There is a new engineer at work, a young, Swiss guy with a Taiwanese wife. Sounds like instant friends. We will show them around Suzhou on Sunday and teach them all the good places to go and not go. I hope we finally met someone for dinner and mahjongg. Last night I met another possible friend at the foreign food store. She was buying a case of beer, dozens of cherry tomatoes, and a case of milk. Turns out she and her husband moved to Suzhou about a year ago from the Toronto area. And, she made it official: she agreed I sound like a Canadian.