Xie Xie!

Xie xie: Thanks for joining us on this great trip and following our adventures. We're home, safe and sound, after an amazing vacation. To sign off, I'd like to share some photos of a few of the things I'll miss from our Chinese adventure.

Shanghai Nights:

Hermit Crab lunches:

Fish-in-a-wok:

Chillin' with the girls:

Marc teaching the kids "rock, paper, scissors":

Squat toilets:

ZAI HUI!

Hong Kong: A Shopping Mall Disguised as a City

Whew! What a great day we had today ... walking and shopping throughout Kowloon. It started with us venturing out, by ourselves, on the HK Subway. It was clean, well marked and remarkably easy to use. We only spent a few minutes trying to buy our subway ticket from what turned out to be an ATM, but soon found and negotiated the ticket machine.

It's easy to find the right subway stop when they have such catchy names:

Our first stop was the Flower Market, followed by a visit to Goldfish Street where Marc fit right in. Goldfish are "very, very lucky" for the Chinese and they buy Goldfish every day, like we might buy a bubka from the bakery. To my knowledge they do not eat the Goldfish which is very unusual because they eat EVERYTHING that moves (except cars, trucks and buses), including deer antlers.

Even though I have long since sworn off Chinese watches, I was enthralled with the nice lady selling $3 ladies watches. I picked up six. Watch Lady then spent about 20 minutes working on each watch for me: checking and setting the time, checking the latches, taking off links to size the watches for me (and Temi, Becky, Julie and Allie) and putting each in a fresh plastic baggie. I liked her so much and she worked so hard to ensure I got a good product that I decided to engage in Reverse Bargaining. That is, I tried to give her MORE than the $18 I owed her for the six watches and she kept bargaining me DOWN to $18. She thought I was nuts and this just adds to the pervading notion that Chinese are better at math than Americans. Two hours later, we moved on with our six watches.

Marc suddenly felt compelled to buy a kimono.

At this point we had walked about five miles throughout Kowloon (which is part of Hong Kong) and my feet were really killing me. We ducked into the Yue Hwa Chinese Department Store where we bought "special good fortune Chinese" outfits to wear to Thanksgiving Dinner at the Stalders. As we were going down the escalator, we noticed the Chinese Medicine Department, where the locals pick up their herbs, special rubbing products and acupuncture needles. They were promoting a new "special lucky Chinese medicine ultrasound acupress machine" which is basically acupuncture without the needles. (Sure to be a big seller.) I agreed to a twenty minute medical trial to find out if this works on Westerners. Since nothing on me "hurt", I told the technicians that my feet were tired from walking. They wired me up to the machine and zapped the "special-tired-from-walking-right-foot" pressure point on the tip of my right forefinger for twenty minutes.

It doesn't work but I must say, it felt good to help advance Chinese Medicine here in Hong Kong. And it did feel better to sit down and get off my feet for twenty minutes.

Then we did a bunch of other things, ate a hamburger and pizza for lunch (ahhhhhh...) and wrapped up the day at Swiss Optical Shop so we could pick up the eight (8!!) pairs of prescription glasses we had ordered last night. Now -- if you have never been to Hong Kong, you may not know that the Hong Kong Optometrists are EASILY the finest Optometrists in the world. And, their fabulous line of designer glasses frames are EASILY one-third the price of frames in the USA.

We bought multi-focal glasses, reading glasses, sunglasses reading glasses, regular sunglasses, small fit-in-the-shirt pocket glasses. Here's a photo of Marc with our new BFF Optometrist in Hong Kong - Pierre Chang. "Pierre" ... go figure.

Time to pack it all up. Going home tomorrow!

Hong Kong in Pictures

Hong Kong is AMAZING! I'm too busy shopping (Chinese: Shah-ping) to write a blog. Enjoy these pictures from Hong Kong.

Dr. Marc to the Rescue

4,000 years of acupuncture here in China and good ole' Dr Marc was pressed into service to perform Western Medicine.

We're sitting here on the runway in Shanghai - waiting to take off for HK and one of our travel mates, Tom, passed out, came to and then had a full blown seizure. Oy vay ... Don't ask.  His wife screamed and Marc rushed over, shoved the plastic water bottle between his teeth and tended to him. Thankfully, Tom came to - with no visual impairment but Marc said Tom had to get off the plane.

After some frantic calls to try to find "the best hospital in shanghai", Tom, his wife and another couple traveling with them were taken off the plane. Marc said that it was an act of god that we were on the runway and not in the air!

Well.  You can't imagine what's going on here. (I'm writing this from the plane). Every one of our travel mates is breathing a sigh of relief that Marc did not go with them to the hospital. They are afraid to do anything unless Marc is with them.  So far, he has assisted two travel mates who have fainted, a few with diarrhea, and several colds.  What a vacation!!  Haha

Shout out to our friend Tom for a quick recovery and a return to USA at some point. For now, Tom has been "Shanghi-ed".

EXPO Blog

As you may know, the International EXPO has been in Shanghai for the past six months.  We were able to get tickets and attend today with Gail and David and their good friend Yi Jin as our guide and translator.  This was quite lucky since the EXPO is closing in a few days.  There are about 190 Country, State and Business Pavilions -- you can "google" it to read all the details and stats.  Like everything else in China, it was too vast to be able to take a photo to show what it looks like so you can also look that up online.

We concentrated on countries today and were able to see the exhibits for Spain, the African nations, Israel, France, Sri Lanka, and Italy (OBVIOUSLY where we ate and drank lunch).  The most popular pavilions such as China and Japan had long lines so we were not able to see them. It's hard to explain how remarkable this EXPO is for the Chinese.  Their lives have been so isolated that very, very few have ever been outside of China.  It's a big deal for them to travel to Shanghai to get to the EXPO - and so it is incredulous how many photos they took of every single exhibit and display.  They are devouring the cultures and information of other countries.

At the end of the day when we were dragging our feet and our tushies - exhausted after 6 hours of touring.  The USA Pavilion had a long line, but with our American passports, we were able to cut the line and enter through a VIP gate.  Almost as an afterthought (since we were pooped) we entered the USA Pavilion.  As we were waiting for the start of the program, a mother and her two daughters (one of whom was fluent in English) started smiling at us and touching us.  The daughter told us that her mother said we were very beautiful.  The mother kept talking to us in Chinese, smiling and mugging for photographs with us.

It took a while to fully understand why they were so enthralled with us, but the essence was this:  This family was so excited to be entering the American Pavilion and they could not believe their good luck of walking into the American Pavilion with four Americans!!  The daughter made a big speech about how they have the greatest of respect for America and the American citizens.  It was quite a moving scene and I hope the photos capture it a bit.

The USA Pavilion was extraordinary and the highlight of the day for us.  They showed three fantastic movies.  We were in there with a few thousand Chinese and we were the only American guests.  We laughed at the jokes in the movies, clapped and cheered.  I'm not sure whether the Chinese guests understood all the innuendos of the films -- but it was clear that being in that Pavilion was a highlight for all of them as well.

It felt great!  What a wonderful day at EXPO and thanks to Gail, David and Yi Jin for hooking us up with tickets and shepherding us through the EXPO.

Visit to the Shanghai Foreign Language School

Ni hao (Chinese shout out) to our new friends Jack (12th grade), Bofan and Minhui (both 10th grade)- all Camp Rising Sun Alumni and their teacher Shirley who welcomed Marc and me as their guests at the Shanghai Foreign Language School yesterday.  Thank you for greeting us, welcoming us and helping us understand what it means for a student from China to have the opportunity to study in America.  Good luck to Jack who is applying to several colleges this year in the USA.

Our guests were delightful, bright and articulate.  Their English language skills "wowed us"!  We look forward to greeting Bofan in Princeton in a few weeks when he comes to participate in an international math competition.  See what I mean? Wow!

Peking Duck Dinner at Quan Ju De

We had a delicious Peking Duck and corn pizza dinner with old friends Gail and David (who are traveling through Shanghai on business) at Quan Ju De in Pudong. Corn pizza -- the perfect comfort food!

Now that we're in the big city, the  food has really improved. Sauteed bok choy, spicy kung pao chicken, seafood and noodles, corn pizza (!), Peking Duck (with all the trimmings), beer and watermelon for $36 a couple!   I could get used to this...