We have found a local bike shop that sells high-end mountain bikes.

The kinda funny thing is that, even though we are in the mountains, these riders have barely been on a dirt trail, and certainly nothing steep or technical. They get together and do a two hour ride every night and a long road ride on Saturdays.
Translated from their website, the purpose of the bike team is for “Unity, fitness, environmental protection, progress, participation”, the official name is the “Locomotive Cycling Team”. The cycling team actively promotes the “bicycle fitness movement”, advocating “green healthy fashion,” in a “new life”. Unity, mutual help, and seeking common ground while reserving differences between teammates; sincerely into nature. Basically, the owner wants to advocate cycling as a green alternative to other transportation and the bike team serves to advertise this.

Simon went on two of these rides so far. Unfortunately the last one was cut short by a cyclist who hit some uneven pavement and crashed onto her face. She was not in the bike group, she just happened to be near them when it all happened. Simon did a quick assessment of her, just some ‘road rash’ on her face, no major injuries, and the ambulance showed up very quickly; there are many hospitals in this city. Here is a photo of the attendant and the cyclist, what do you see that is ‘odd’ in this photo?

The ambulance attendant is wearing stilletto heels!!!!

We have been here at the hospital for about 5 weeks. In that time frame we have already seen quite a few people come and go. The latest, and greatest, exodus happened yesterday. Three families left, totalling 10 people, so it seems a lot quieter around here now. Most people leave when their visa expires, a few leave for other reasons. Some positive and some negative. We try not to dwell on the negative thoughts of some of the patients. Some of them have not seen the cure they came here for. Some of them were not comfortable in this environment. Simon reminds me that we have each other, a happy family of four and that no matter where we are or what it is like where we are living we will always be surrounded by the positive energy that envelops each of us. Life is what you make of it, and we are experiencing it on a daily basis, no matter what our outcome may be. And we have you, our friends and family to keep us strong in our hearts, and we thank you for this.

After our weekend swim at the pool, we walked along one of the downtown streets looking for a place to eat. I would say that this is the hardest thing we have to do on a regular basis. 99% of the places to eat have no english or even no pictures on their menu. This place had a picture on the wall of a plate of a bunch of foods arranged in a circle. We didn’t really know what to do so just said, “pork”. With that, the server was happily off. She returned a few moments later with a plate of vegetables and a plate with thinly sliced meats, which she indicated was all pork, but it was raw. Simon almost sent the plate back but I had a hunch about the trivets on the table. Sure enough, soon the chef came out with a pot of boiling hot broth, and threw the contents of the 2 plates in, instantly cooking the meat, and some long noodles as well.
Since we had been at the pool, we forgot to bring our spare forks for the girls, so they had to make do with spoons. It is not very easy to eat long noodles with a spoon, especially if you’re 3, so they resorted to using their hands. This was a source of amusement to the fellow patrons and the servers. It was all in good fun.
Everyone was especially enthralled with Madeline’s methodology:

When abroad you never know what you’ll be doing the next day. Today I was taught to make Iranian-style flat bread by our friend, Ali. He comes from a long lineage of bakers and his bread is fabulous! I never knew you could turn a wok upside down and use it for a cooking surface!! Here we are in midst of baking:

He also taught me to make halva, a delicious treat! Many thanks to Ali and we wish he and his family safe travels!

Living in a country where English is not generally spoken, combined with the use of a completely different alphabet, leads to some fairly interesting signage. Here are a few of the latest…
A gas station convenience store:

A bar, of some sort:

Just like your mother told you:

On the train:

Last Saturday we went on a group outing to “Memory Hall”, which is a place commemmorating the 2nd Japanese-Sino War (1937-1945), and the surrender of the Japanese to China in 1945. Unfortunately the place is in the midst of major renovations and the power was out when we were there, so the visit was slightly less ‘memorable’ than anticipated. Nevertheless, it was nice to get out and see more of the countryside, it was about an hour out of the city.

We also were taken to a local restaurant that seemed to specialize in bus tours where we had our first taste of one of the local specialties; duck. Even the head and bill were up for grabs on the serving plate but we passed on that. I am constantly fielding questions from Emily about things like, “How do they get the feathers off?”. She’s definitely learning MUCH more about the world around her than at home.

I found Emily a replica of a cheongsam dress the other day. She LOVES it! She calls it her Chinese princess dress. I should have bought a few, but I didn’t have much money with me at the time.

Yesterday we all went for a hike. We took a short taxi ride to the edge of the city and started up the mountain road. Simon had done a reconnaissance mission a while back and scouted out this trail for us to follow. It was a bit steep at first but Emily was very helpful in getting her sister up the steep parts.


We saw many, many dragonflies and small butterflies. Among the other ‘wildlife’ we saw were nice birds, beetles, grubs, crickets and tiny frogs. This may seem boring to you but is pretty exciting for the under 6 crowd!


We hiked through varied forests, something that looked like spruce, but with bark like cedar…

There was even some bark that had some sort of wierd thing happening…

Later we came to a bamboo forest, we stopped to have a little picnic.

The hike ended at a small lake that had some touristy things at one end, but some really nice Chinese buildings, statues and sculpture at the other end.

There are a LOT of hair salons in China. Maybe their hair grows really fast…? I don’t know. So when we needed a haircut, in the below post, I decided on this one because the people inside were always really excited to see us walk by on our way to the market a few times a week. The staff seemed young and enthusiastic so I thought that was good.

Another lady at the hospital, Janet from the Phillipines, was eager to get her hair done, so I offered to go back with her and get my hair colour touched up in the process. I thought I’d go for something a little different so picked out a reddish shade, which they said they couldn’t do on my hair, so I picked out the slightly darker reddish brown. All went well and after the colour, wash and blow dry it was like the first colour I picked out. I thought that was great. THEN they proceeded to put the plastic apron on my again and seemed to be getting ready to start over. I questioned this, luckily I had my trusty Chinese-English dictionary with me, I pointed to ‘conditioner’? No, they said. In sign language they indicated that the roots did not match the ends and that they were going to fix it up. It looked ok to me but who am I to argue? I am not a hairstylist. So the process started over again, with what I could see was a darker colour. After the shampoo and blow dry, it ended up PURPLE!!! Not reddish with a tinge of purple, FULL-ON purple!

Again, with the help of my book I indicated that I was NOT happy with this, and that I liked the first colour and they had better fix it!!! Now the senior stylist took charge, he had only been consulting inbetween reading his kung-fu novel. Again the plastic apron, this time bleach. No measuring, but they did a test swatch first. In the middle of this one of the girls ran down to the nearby bakery and got me a juice and a coconut bun. I think she felt sorry for me, I had been there 6 hours. Well the story ends out well, they bleached it back to the original red, the roots are somewhat a different colour, but close enough. I grudgingly paid my $15 and went on my way. The moral of the story, don’t let anyone touch your hair if it looks ok in the first place!! By the way, Janet’s hair cut and colour turned out great!

I was in need of a haircut, and since it is so hot here, I decided that the girls should get one too. Off Emily and I went to the salon. We picked this one, of many, because when we walk by the women inside are always looking out the window and very excitedly waving to us. The women who worked there literally were jumping up and down when they saw we were actually coming in to get haircuts. Emily and I enjoyed the hair washing part, a nice scalp massage and you are lying down on a table/bed while this is happening. There was a scramble of which stylist got to work on Emily, and somewhat for me too. It was pretty quiet in there mid-afternoon so Emily got the attention of several stylists at once.

My stylist did a great job, probably considering he’d never cut anyone’s hair that was as fine as mine is. The poor guy kept trying to get some body in my hair so it ended up quite short. That’s ok, it’s hot here. As usual, the trip ended up with nearly hundreds of photos being taken of us.

When we got home, Madeline insisted on getting her hair cut, so off we went, back to the salon. They were equally excited to see me bring Maddie in, and she got the royal treatment as well.

The finished product: