Pictures - Monkey Island boat, Scooters, Abigail & Zoe

Pictures - Pa La U Waterfall & Elephant Village

Christmas - Thai Style!

Well if you can't spend Christmas at home, we highly recommend spending it in Thailand with friends! What an amazing week filled with sunshine, laughter and lots of new adventures! Here is the quick recap...

For starters as soon as we arrived Monday night we met Zachery & Katie Sue Linn - two of our dearest friends from Fayetteville (actually some of Kelly's best friends) so vacation was a 10 already despite anything else that we might do!

Tuesday was spent discovering the resort & area of Dolphin Bay - the pool by our 3 bedroom villa, two large resort pools, the open air restaurant, the beach, the local shops. We also already had a Christmas tree all decorated (thanks to Katie Sue & Zachery) - we brought it home and have decided it will be our traveling Christmas tree until we are home in the US again!

Wednesday, after a short stop to learn how pineapples grow (thank you Zachery!) it was off to the Pa La U waterfall to swim and try to catch the fish with bare hands (which people came close but never actually caught one). We had a Thai lunch at a local outdoor restaurant and then headed out to the Hua Hin Elephant Village - very fun trudging through the forest & water and going off track when the elephants got hungry.

Thursday was another relaxing day at the beach for Sue, Megan, Lindsey, Zoe & Abigail, while the others rented scooters to go into Pranburi (the nearest town) for some grocery shopping. Megan was planning to go but changed her mind after seeing her Dad drive the scooter for the first time and decided he needed a little practice before she joined him! The older kids also took the scooters down into the national park to do some hiking & caving and also have some scooter breakdown fun! In the evening we headed back into Hua Hin for the night market - dinner was meat on a stick (in Asia you can find just about any meat on a stick but we stuck with the chicken & pork) and fresh fruit smoothies - very yum! We did a bit of shopping and then headed to Swensen's Ice Cream shop - where the older kids had chocolate fondue with ice cream balls & waffle cookies. Can anyone say delicious?

Friday - Christmas Eve day (which we needed to keep reminding ourselves!) we headed out with a local fisherman to Monkey Island, a short 20 minute ride from the beach at the resort. There were probably 15-20 monkeys, all very friendly unless you threw something at them (just ask Katie Sue!) as they took the bananas right out of your hand and if they thought you still had some they would just right up on your leg and crawl up! We had Christmas Eve dinner at the resort - all the fixings of turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, plus a whole assortment of Thai food. After dinner Santa came to give gifts to all of the kids...only Andy was missing from our table since he was Santa riding in on a rickshaw!! He said it was actually a lot of fun just with the look in the younger kids eyes as they gazed at Santa...we had Zoe & Abigail on strict hush orders, although I'm not sure they really would have recognized him if we hadn't told them!

Saturday - Christmas Day! We started off with gifts & stockings - a fun assortment of gifts from Shanghai, India and Fayetteville! Then it was another Tesco scooter run for the older kids and Andy (with Megan this time!) - yes that's right, a grocery store trip on Christmas Day! For Christmas dinner we headed back to the night market to the Mexican restaurant we had seen earlier in the week. While it probably wasn't the best Mexican restaurant when compared to some back in Fayetteville, it was absolutely delicious for the 8 of us that have been overseas for several months and missing some really good nachos! The owners were from Texas and very friendly and we arrived early enough to have the entire place to ourselves - it was wonderful and certainly a Christmas dinner like no other we have ever had!

Sunday was another adventure day heading out to the floating market - lots of small boats loaded with fruits, vegetables, prepared foods, and souvenirs. It was wild - if you looked slightly interested in someone's wares, they had a pole and pulled your boat over to theirs. Then when purchasing you had to negotiate them down to ~30% of their original price to pay something reasonable for your purchase! We bought quite a few more souvenirs and tried the jelly tea (some kind of slimy drink!) with some mango/sticky rice/coconut milk (much more tasty than the tea!). We then headed further north into Thailand to the River Kwai where we floated down the river on a bamboo raft and then took a tour of the historic bridge & area. Another reminder of how what our freedom means and all the people who fought through many wars for it. What should have taken normally 3 years to build, took 6 months because of the forced labor from Asian laborers and POW's.

Monday was everyone's last day - Zachery & Katie Sue spent the day up in Hua Hin for some last brother/sister time before they are together again in May when Katie Sue returns from India and the Thielman crew relaxed at the beach, took some photo walks among the local area. We had dinner at the resort - fondly known as Abigail's favorite restaurant because she enjoyed the breakfast there so much! The older kids then stayed up (similar to several other nights) listening to music and playing cards out in the restaurant until Zachery's taxi arrived at 1am for the 3 hours trip up to Bangkok.

Tuesday morning we left for Bangkok as well - the Thielman seven and Katie Sue who is staying with us for another 3+ weeks!!! Leaving vacation is not as bad when you get to take your friends home with you!!

Shanghai Christmas!

Merry early Christmas from Shanghai! Since for the first time EVER we will not be 'home' for Christmas, we celebrated our Shanghai Christmas on Saturday with a mix of some old & new traditions. Started off the day with our favorite holiday breakfast - french toast casserole, fruit salad and blueberry muffins. A few alterations on the normal ingredients and it all pretty much tastes the same! After that we headed to the subway for our Merry Metro Madness Christmas scavenger hunt! We traveled together to People's Square (the largest metro stop) and then broke into our teams - Andy/Abigail, Sue/Lindsey/Zoe, and Kelly/Megan. We were then off traveling about the city for the next 3 hours - snapping pictures of smiling Chinese children, things that are red, Christmas trees, and our team as we explored new areas of Shanghai. It was great fun exploring more of this city that never seems to end! After returning home we played the exchange game (using the gifts we had purchased on our scavenger hunt) and built gingerbread houses - I think the older girls enjoyed these more than Zoe/Abigail, putting all the decorations on just right! Ended the day with a viewing of "It's a Wonderful Life" while eating our apple crisp! Today everyone was filled with excitement as we packed for Thailand to see Katie Sue & Zachery on Monday!!! We have a few people that won't be able to sleep tonight from sheer excitement alone!

Sheng Dian Kuai Le (aka: Merry Christmas!!)

Grocery Shopping

Thought we'd share with everyone a typical grocery shopping trip - only because they are all so fun! So we primarily shop at Carrefour (figuring it is a global chain, meaning reliable safe supply of food) - we supplement Carrefour with trips to Pines or City Shop which are expat grocery stores where you can find Dorrito chips for $7 USDabag, a can of soup for $5 and a box of 12 candy canes for Peppermint Bark for $5. Andy & I went to Carrefour last Friday and it was such a sight we just had to take some pictures! Friday is fresh eggs day so A LOT of people come out, first thing in the morning and wait in line for their eggs - there were probably 40 people in line and you would buy a bag of eggs (not sure how you actually get them home without breaking!) We bought our pre-packaged eggs (which are still not refrigerated, similar to the milk!) and moved on to the fresh section - where you can find fish in the tank, or already gutted sitting on some 'bloody' ice (and no I am not swearing in UK English!) or you can also find your fresh eel, frog and turtle. There is a reason we usually don't take Zoe & Abigail grocery shopping (and it isn't just because we've seen lots of unpackaged raw meats in the carts that kids ride in!). So we move on to vegetables - where people rummage through various green leafy veggies in buckets on the ground and also where the cleaning crew dumps their garbage into the same buckets as you are searching for just the right 'fresh' veggie - we decided to go without the salad that day! Take Wal-Mart on a Saturday afternoon in the States, double the people shopping in store, add some really strange selection of goods (oh and take away most of the stuff you like to buy) and you've got it! It is quite an adventure - that must explain why we do it so often!!

On a different note, we did hunt down the one Krispy Kreme location in Shanghai last Saturday - fun trip on the metro to West Nanjing Rd, asked lots of locals where to find it (since our only information was 'near the metro stop') and finally came upon a most wonderful sight! Even with the 'hot now' sign not lit, they handed us donuts as soon as we walked in, we watched them make the donuts, then proceeded to buy more donuts to eat there and finally bought some donuts to bring home! Obviously they were quite tasty!

In the Air

It's that time of year...the fresh snow, the smell of evergreens & fresh baked cookies, everyone out doing their Christmas shopping...WAIT...STOP...that isn't here sorry! We do have carols in the stores, large displays of plastic decorations and a lot of expats getting ready to leave the country on vacation! We successfully found an artificial tree (key word artificial as nothing about it looks remotely real), some bright and fast blinking LED lights (the only option!) and now we just need some presents to go underneath (as you can see the tree starts about 2 feet off the ground!) - we try not to look at the tree too closely because it could give you a headache or worse yet, cause some seizures! Good thing Christmas isn't about anything but JESUS!!! He is all we've got and He is all we need!

We celebrated the holiday season with our church group here (fondly referred to as the B team!) - actually had a meal with all the typical US fixings including sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, apple crisp and pumpkin pie. It was absolutely delicious and such fun to have some fellowship with other families!

Andy ran in the Shanghai Half-Marathon last weekend (him and 25,000 of his closest friends!) He went with two other guys he has been running with and ran with them for the first ~5 miles until they got separated at a water break amidst the sea of runners. He finished strong at 2 hrs 6 minutes - it sure was easy to spot him coming across the finish line as the only blonde person!

Our latest distraction is air quality - apparently really bad in Shanghai since the world expo ended (not trying to impress any foreigners any more!) and also in our house with the discovery of mold in both of the girls bedrooms. We are having the Cadillac of air/mold/water/lead/radon tests done (along with lots of calls to the landlord to fix the mold issue) and will hopefully have a plan soon so we at least feel like the air we are breathing is clean! Please be praying that the issues get fixed!

We've had a variety of school field trips (Anita - Zoe saw first hand Coke in a bottle being filled!), Christmas concerts (Zoe and her friend Genevieve from Singapore in the picture) and a start at the Christmas shopping. Can't believe it is 17 days to Christmas (or 12 days until we leave for Thailand!) - praying for you all as we prepare to celebrate our Saviour's birth!

Thanksgiving...China Style

So when you take away the friends & family, the football games, the really delicious food (turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole!!), what do you have left…still a whole lot of blessings and reasons to be thankful! This Thanksgiving sure was like no other…actually on Thanksgiving Day, the girls still had school and I was traveling in Guangzhou. So we moved our celebration to Saturday – trying to keep some of our traditions and celebrating Kelly’s birthday too! We put up our Christmas tree (more about this in a later post!), watched ‘Miracle on 34^th Street’, and dined on pumpkin bread, white chicken chili and stuffing – it was one of the best meals since we arrived and tasted just like at home! Had to go to 5 different grocery stores to get all the ingredients – but it was worth it (although I’m pretty sure Mr. Xu thinks we are nuts sometimes!).

We also celebrated Kelly’s 17^th birthday – WOW 17! This was the third birthday we celebrated since arriving in Shanghai and we are getting closer to 'normal' – her presents weren’t wrapped in pillow cases and she got an actual cookie cake! When we went out shopping (for the dinner items!) and got into the car, Mr. Xu gave Kelly a present (miniature figurine of the Great Wall) – very sweet and also another indication that he understands more English than he lets on since we had only talked about it in the car the night before!

In terms of other happenings, last weekend Lindsey finished up the soccer season with tournament day - at the soccer fields for 8 hours, played 6 games and won the entire Division A international school league! It was great fun to watch them play so well (especially given an 0 wins-2 losses-2 ties season record!) Great experience for Lindsey to play on a more competitive team and a chance to make more connections with other girls her age!

Megan has also ‘co-founded’ the Concordia International ultimate Frisbee team with a friend in 10^th grade (yes the grade she still feels she is meant to be in!). They have about 10 co-ed kids playing Sunday afternoons – another great carryover of such fun from back home!

As we think of all the blessings in our lives, we are so thankful for all of our friends and family back home…we miss you all immensely!

Random Happenings

Starting with the big news...Zoe lost her first tooth! Quite uneventful as she pulled it herself but then proceeded to put her wallet under the pillow with the tooth! Of course with today's exchange rate for the first tooth you do get 30RMB!

We've had a busy fall with field trips - the BioFarm for the kindergartners, Carrefour for the first graders (yes that's right, a trip to the local grocery store!) and an amazing race day riding the metro for the eight graders! Lindsey & Kelly have been busy with soccer that wraps up tomorrow with a day full of tournament play. Kelly also worked on the backstage crew for the Fall play - had a great time doing make-up, costumes, props and head sets. Megan and I found the M50 art area - a very neat area of local artists & photographers, art supply stores (quite the find) and some very cool graffiti!

Now that we are completely settled with things from home and have some key amenities (like silverware, etc) we hosted Ling Tong (a friend of the Harlan's who was at the University of Arkansas) and his family for dessert. Their 10 year old daughter Dreamy didn't speak much English - but we found that coloring is universal!

We are also now the proud owners of a lovely enormous map of China (which is exactly what we wanted). Our driver, Mr. Xu, heard us talking about getting a map and on his lunch break one day he went out and got a fabulous map that is now hanging in our den - our goal is to mark all of the places we have visited while 'on tour' here. Unfortunately Sue is seeing a bit more than anyone else right now with lots of travel for work!

Given there is no reason to celebrate Thanksgiving here, they have moved right on to Christmas - apparently everyone here loves to celebrate Christmas so the decorations are in full swing and the carols are in the air. Now we just need to add a bit more Christ into that Christmas!!

Too Short!

How do you sum up two weeks with Courtney and then a 3 day weekend with Betsy & Karina too? One word...BLESSING! What a joy for our hearts it was to spend time with best friends from home - it refreshed us, renewed us and reminded us that we are here for a purpose!

Saturday we picked up our overnight travelers and headed out for some traditional Chinese food at the Zhujiajiao water village. Dumplings, tomato & eggs, fried rice, chicken, and noodles (lots of them!) - all the simple yet tasty, harmless stuff! Quick trip on the canals and then it was off to the underground market to pick up Courtney's Chinese dress (beautiful!). Sunday, after a relaxing foot massage, we headed out to Century Park - along with lots of other people who went to the park to sit in their tents...we however went to enjoy a bike ride on a sunny day! Topped off the day with church and Courtney's favorite Sweet n'Sour Chicken for dinner. At the last minute the older girls all decided to go trick or treating! It was fun watching them come up with costumes at the last minute (cat, Ninja, paparazzi, Book-face, and the Bollywood star Karina!). We sent them off with 100RMB (about $15) to buy Snickers from the convenient store in case there wasn't any candy to be had...they came back with a good small load of candy and a Snickers for everyone! My favorite candy they all got was a piece of Viactiv....yes, the carmel flavored calcium chew (clearly some people think medicine really is candy!).

Monday morning was a special time at the Healing Home - playing with the toddlers and holding the babies, all until they fell asleep in our arms! Precious Rachel (celebrating her 1st birthday), Andrew, Anna, Jenn, Joy, Sophia, Samuel...such a wonderful home and adorable kiddos! Monday afternoon we learned (not to anyone's surprise) that saying good-bye for a second time doesn't make it any easier! Abigail asked yesterday how many sleeps until we go back to Arkansas...sadly, too many to count!

On the bright side after a sad Monday night, our sea shipment arrived on Tuesday! We now have all of our stuff from home...not quite unpacked yet, but everyone has a bed, we all have warm clothes and some decorations for the big empty walls!

Beijing and bargaining

This post is long overdue! As most of you know, we (Andy and Lindsey) had the chance of going to Beijing with Courtney in October. We left Shanghai Thursday night by sleeper train and arrived in Beijing Friday morning. The sleeper train was a wonderful experience! It was very smooth and we all slept well. Beijing's weather was very cold in comparison to Shanghai!

After settling in at hotel we walked over to the Forbidden City. It was an awesome experience! It is so much bigger than what we had expected! In ancient times, only the emperor and his advisors and servants were permitted in the Forbidden City and (we were told) the emperor did not leave the Forbidden City. It was an incredible maze of hallways and buildings like the Hall of Mental Cultivation (Andy could have used to spend more time there) and the Palace of Prolonging Happiness (who wouldn't want to hang out there?). To think of the history that took place there is pretty remarkable.

After that we walked across the street to Tian An Men Square (similar to the Mall in Washington DC as it is the center of China's government) and then took a short cab ride to the site of the 2008 Olympics. Very cool to see in person what we watched for so many hours 2 years ago; the Water Cube where Michael Phelps won 8 golds, the Bird's Nest where Usain Bolt broke 2 individual world records...but the most welcome site for us was the McDonald's. We were very hungry and pretty cold. 'Nough said.

Friday afternoon we visited the Museum of Natural History in an effort to stay warm and dry. About 5:00 p.m. we left to go back to the hotel. Ever try to find a cab in Beijing on a cold, rainy, Friday afternoon during rush hour? It was definitely an answer to prayer that we made it to the Acrobats show at 7:15. Amazing show if you ever get a chance.

Saturday was completely filled with a tour of the Great Wall (amazing), Tombs of the emperors of the Ming Dynasty, a tour of a Jade museum, delicious lunch, foot massage (for everyone on the tour except Lindsey and Courtney..."not healthy for young people" (what?!?)), a visit to the Silk Museum, and a tea tasting. It was packed and it was really worth it.

Woke up Sunday to nasty weather and visited the silk market which is actually a shopper's paradise. Courtney was able to further hone her negotiating skills buying souvenirs for her family. Caught a cab to the Beijing International Church Fellowship for a really cool time experiencing God and then headed to the airport to meet up with Courtney's Uncle David Addington who was passing through Beijing a few hours before our departure. Very cool of God to arrange that meeting.

Arrived back in Shanghai about 8:30 exhausted from an amazing weekend and happy to be back with the family.

Too Fun Not to Share

Three words characterized our day today...Jedi's, Dr. Pepper (this counts as one word!) and Barbie. Last night we let Zoe watch Star Wars for the first time...she has already played many a game of Star Wars Wii and has Star Wars legos, so it was a natural transition to watch the show (once it arrived in the shipment!). As only a girl could when watching Star Wars, Zoe says "I am so excited I feel like I should get Fancy Nancy (the name of her Build A Bear stuffed animal) and put her in her Jedi clothes!" Megan, Abigail and Zoe spent this morning playing the "Jedi's of Shanghai" - we have a powerful spaceship made of a cardboard box, umbrella light sabres, and blanket uniforms. Love the imagination of children and the willingness of teenagers to join right in!

As the Jedi's were saving Shanghai from the dark forces, Kelly and I were out making a most wonderful purchase. For background, you can only find Dr Pepper at one import grocery store and it costs $1.25US per can (so we don't have it often!). Today in a 'I really miss the tastes of home' moment we wandered into the grocery store looking to buy two cans of DP when we saw that it was on special...just $0.35 per can! So we bought all we could carry - that would be 34 lovely cans! The checkout lady laughed at us and then our driver laughed even more...but we have 34 cans of DP, and they don't so who is laughing now?!?! We plan to go back tomorrow with our box and purchase the rest of what they have on the shelves!

To top off the day, we took the littler girls to the Barbie Store Shanghai - 4 floors of everything pink, girlie and Barbie! (Abigail and Zoe loved it most, but from the pictures you can see that Kelly & Megan had fun too!!) We watched the 'runway' show, ate Barbie cupcakes, drank huge Mango & Strawberry Shaved Ice, took lots of pictures, did lots of playing and finally selected a couple of fun Barbies to bring home.

Thank you Jesus for providing some fun times to just be a kid today!

Birthdays and boxes!

Still riding the 'high' from seeing Betsy & the girls on Sunday - what a perfect way to start the new week! Having sweet Courtney here has been a blessing - everyone is enjoying her visit and Andy has seen more of Shanghai as they sight see each day! A special trip for them was to the Healing Home - a pre/post op home for orphans who have cleft lip/cleft palette. The kiddos were so adorable and they just spent their time down on the floor playing with them - until the kids started to fall asleep (at which point Andy rushed to get one of the little boys before the Ayi's did so he could fall asleep on Andy's shoulder!).

Monday they delivered a new washing machine - hurrah, we can finally do our laundry again without lugging it in a suitcase to the nearby laundromat! And Thursday they delivered our air shipment! We are so excited to have silverware and the legos! Of course seeing what was shipped via air...I am now convinced that we were living in a blurr (perhaps a state of denial!) that last week in Fayetteville...much of what I was expecting in the air shipment isn't here because it actually got shipped by sea. Go figure - Andy is the only one who got more clothes, we got stuff from the garage and a mattress topper for a mattress that is in the sea shipment! Ah well...apparently the slow boat to China actually takes about 7 weeks as our shipment landed in country last Friday and we should have it at the beginning of November - just a little longer to wait (at least that is the plan!).

We also celebrated Abigail's 6th birthday on Wednesday! She looked right past the 'wrapping paper' (a pillowcase, sweatshirt and grocery bag) and just loved the opening the gifts. We made some progress since Lindsey's birthday (clearly not in the wrapping paper department!) as we had matches for her birthday candles. Of course we couldn't find a real cake and didn't have our pans yet to make one - so we got something in the shape of a cake that looked like carmelized flubber (as the girls define it!) with some chocolate swirls on it...won't be doing that again! Andy, Courtney and Mr. Xu get A+'s for persevering to find something to stick a candle in!

On the school (actually sports) front...Lindsey made the Division 1 Middle School soccer team - a more competitive league for the higher level players - great news for her and something she was really hoping for! Also Kelly was asked to coach one of the middle school soccer teams - something great for her as well and thankfully not Lindsey's team!

Thanks for all the prayers...living her in Shanghai is fun, although we miss our family, friends and pets immensely!

The Best Day

So we have had many good days in Shanghai...but yesterday was the BEST day! No we did not get our shipment (even though it was supposed to arrive last Monday), no we did not get the new washing machine (even though the old one has been broken for 10 days now), we did get...some of our BEST friends from Fayetteville to arrive in Shanghai!!!!! What a wonderful sight to see Betsy, Karina and Courtney Linn walking out from customs and how fabulous to give them hugs! The tears this time were tears of joy!!

Today we took Betsy and Karina back to the airport as they head further on to India...while we would LOVE to have them stay, we are so excited that they are spending the next two weeks with Katie Sue! We would stow away in their suitcases so we could see Katie Sue too (if they let you take more than one checked bag!). What a blessing it is though that Courtney does get to stay with us! It will be a fun filled and busy two weeks!

Yangshuo 2010

I, Lindsey, had the privilege of going to Yangshuo, China this past week with 6o other 8th graders. There is an old Chinese saying "The mountains of Guilin are the most beautiful mountains in the world. But the mountains of Yangshuo are even more beautiful." It was gorgeous there! Over the coarse of the week, we did everything from kayaking on the Li River to repelling from a 60 foot cave to the cave floor. We did two activities each day and were there five days total. We began with kayaking. We kayaked amongst water buffalos on the Li River. (In the "mildly acidic" water!) It was tiring yet beautiful! Next we did rock climbing. It was so neat to do actual rock climbing! Even though I only made it half way up the easy coarse, I had so much fun! The next day we went abseiling. Abseiling is just a fancy word for repelling. It was very intimidating at first but once you began repelling, it was so cool! Later, we went orienteering. During orienteering, we went through the country side in groups of four looking for different check points. It was a great way to learn how to use a compass and read a map. The next day, we went to a cooking school. We learned how to make an eggplant dish, pork with vegetables, black pepper chicken, and a veggie dish. It was so delicious! Afterwards, we went on a 17 kilometer bike ride. We stopped at a 400 year old village on the way and saw how they lived. At the end of the ride, we stopped at a bridge crossing over the river and had the chance to jump off into the river. It was very neat! One night, we went to watch the locals fish. The way they fish is very unique! They use birds, called Cormorants, to catch their fish for them. They tie a rope around the birds neck and throw them into the river. They wait until the birds have caught a fish then they pull them out if the water with their pole. Since they have the string tied around their throats, they couldn't swallow the fish. So they use their reflexes to make them spit it back out. It was so neat! Every day, we got at least a half hour of free time to do whatever in the city. Normally, I shopped! I had an awesome time there and I would go back in a heart-beat! I am so happy that I was able to go into God's creation and spend this past week in it! God really helped me to grow this past week! I can't wait to see how the rest of His plans unfold in our lives!