BOO! Halloween Time

We enjoyed our first Halloween in China last night. Vizcaya, our compound, had trick-or-treating for the kids. Then we headed to the Miller's for a Halloween party. So it was a full night of candy and fun. Believe it or not, it was actually pretty easy to get some basic Halloween decorations and a costume for me. Carrefour does have it's value. So you can see from the picture that

Lauren and Jamie Miller came to Vizcaya around 4:30 (they are the beautiful vampires in the picture). We headed to the clubhouse around 4:45. The Miller's arrived dressed as vampires, and I was a vampire as well. So, we were a scary vampire family with a cute princess daughter! Tom stayed and took the job of handing out the candy, tough life! By the way, for those of you who are familiar with Natalie's trick or treating experiences in the past, you are probably wondering how excited she really was. Well, having some friends go with her that were older helped a bunch. But I still caught a bit of hesitation on her face a few times. Overall though she did great! When the trick or treating started at 5pm, there were about 150-200 kids streaming from the clubhouse down to the first street of villas. Needless to say, that first house got quite a hit of kids all at once. In fact, the whole street was a steady stream of kids. After about 15 minutes though, things spread out a bit.

So you are probably wondering what kinds of candy we had here. The girls all raked in quite a bit, an interesting mix of Chinese crackers to a single Reese's cup. Some families had brought a lot of candy back from the states for just this reason. Makes you a bit homesick to see real Tootsie rolls and Twizzlers! But you know, kids are kids, and I think they were all pretty pleased with the "take". The gummy Eyeballs were the favorite treat of the night. I would show you a picture, but they ate them all! But, I think the picture of Jamie to the left shows what happens after about 5 of them! After hitting about half of the houses here in an hour, we headed up to the clubhouse for haunted houses and pumpkins. One funny thing that happened was that the bartenders were making drinks with sprite and dry ice. The kids thought they were great. Natalie finished her Sprite and then said "This ice is REALLY cold!". Geesh, I told them then not to swallow it. How dangerous!! I wonder how many kids drank some of that ice last night? Anyway, turned out that we did not have pumpkins to carve, so we went ahead and walked back to the house.




And headed to the real party. The Miller's celebrate big at Halloween as they were married close the holiday. It was a great evening with good friends, good food, and fun games. Lots of good things to eat, good friends, and many laughs.


In the picture to the left, you can see Cave woman (Kathy), Ms. Cell Phone (Ceyda), and Ms. Pirate (Angie) checking out the good food. Ceyda's kept coming up and telling us "hit 555-8888", it's hits all my favorite areas!". Ceyda! You can't take her anywhere... Everyone had really good costumes (except for Tom, see below). And that is quite the accomplishment in China!



We got a good picture of the men: Caveman (Brian), Viking (Heinrick), Tom (oh, he went as himself), Matador (Haken), and the "Best Dressed Man Here" (Michael). Wasn't Tom clever? Who knew his sense of humor went so deep?


The kids really had a good time. Lots of fun games and everyone won something (good job Kathy!). Grace the bunny looks like she is having a good time. Natalie and Jamie won the "Make a Mummy" contest (sorry, I probably helped her too much!). They also had a fun game with string, counting peanuts and candy corn, and a fun word game. Natalie was beat by the time the evening wore down. We had brought her pj's and so she ended up staying the night for her first sleep over with Jamie and Lauren. She did really great too! She said she got to have pancakes in the morning for breakfast. We are so proud of her for not being afraid. Now she is asking for sleepovers every night!

The Miller's had a copy of Rocky Horror Picture Show and so we stuck it in the DVD player, but the put sound down. Of course all the kids were drawn like flies to honey! The picture here is of the scene where Brad is floating in the glass fish tank. What we let our children do when we are entertaining ourselves!



At the end of the evening, I was gathering up our belongings, and I found Brian (see picture) in the entryway. I swear that there was no staging involved with this photo. Now, there might have been quite a few drinks before this particular shot, though I doubt that Brian would EVER drink more than 2 or 3 in an evening!
There are three choices for the real action behind this picture:

1. His caveman costume was not actually a costume, but his normal day-to-day GM uniform
2. His love of the Chinese toilet goes way beyond normal admiration
3. He is showing us how REAL Chinese wait on the corners with their bread

Oktoberfest In Shanghai

[DISCLAIMER: I NEED TO EXTEND A WARNING AND APOLOGIES TO ANY OF TOM BRAMER'S FAMILY AND CO-WORKERS WHO WILL BE SHOCKED BY THIS ENTRY'S PICTURES AND VIDEOS. IT ONLY HAPPENS ABOUT ONCE A YEAR. NO NEED FOR AN INTERVENTION!]

Ah, you know that fall has arrived in Shanghai when the Lederhosen and Schnitzel arrive! Wait, is this Munich? No, of course it is Shanghai. The Holiday Inn Pudong was host to a wonderful event, lasting 10 days this year. Tom had attended the event last year as it occurred during on of his trips here to Shanghai and he stayed at the hotel. He had such a good time, he wanted to go back again. We attended with a few of our favorite beer-drinking friends this past Friday evening. Who needs to spend the holiday with real Germans? Well, there were a few real German's in the house, but mostly it was local Chinese. And an authentic die Blaskapelle (band). Oh, and a few good-looking Russian women, but wait, I get ahead of myself...

Our attendees at our table that evening were Dan, Marty, Tom, Craig, Shelly, Brad, Jamie, Dave, Kathy, and Brian. All you can eat and drink. Das Bier was good and though none of us ever finished one glass to the bottom, we seemed to drink a lot of pitchers of it. Tom started the evening by trying to steal one of the band member's hat. Though he does look pretty good with that little thing perched on his melon. Marty, Craig, Brad are the three blokes performing one of the many cheers that night. I am afraid I do not have a good picture of the table, though I seemed to have plenty pictures of Tom.

Many Chinese attended, they were probably 60-70% of the attendance, and they were true to character. When the buffet lines were opened, 60-70% of the room got up and jostled for food! It was all you can you eat! Not many buffets here in China for a good reason. They go crazy! And they ate in a typical Chinese fashion: individual plates piled high with a single item for sharing at the table. So the women at the table, or the lowest ranked man I guess would slog into the line and grab a plate of Sausages, etc. I don't know why, but this really cracked me up this time. I guess I should not be so surprised that the Chinese do exactly what anyone else does: adapt the situation to your own known culture. It was still good for a laugh or two. The table behind us apparently had no faith in edible food being served as they brought 7-9 bananas and some apples and oranges. Or maybe they took them from the displays??? Brian Miller, bless his heart, took pity on us westerners and went and filled quite a few plates of food and brought them to our table. We felt so Chinese, but it was good to have some food, which was actually pretty tasty. So, we ate. OK, enough about the other stuff we saw, let me tell you about us...

We watched the band, which was really good at getting the crowd involved. They played your typical German polkas (the darn Chicken Dance is still playing in my head) and a few other songs that tended to be heavy on the horns, but good crowd pleasers. It was difficult to talk and to see, and we found quickly that the best way to watch the whole show was standing on the benches at the table. The band did a really funny song, I am sure there is an appropriate German tradition for this, that consisted of one of the male band members to dress like a German woman and then periodically "gong" two men naked except for a cloak and metal pan. The "gong" song was hilarious. Check it out.

I could tell Tom was having a good time as I had to suggest he "slow down" half an hour after we got there, but there was no slowing the man down. He had a huge grin on his face all night. He also found a slightly smaller version of a bald man that he attached himself to for part of the evening. In the picture to the left you can see mini-Tom, Brad, Marty, Brian, and Tom enjoying the evening. I am not really sure what Tom is yelling here, but you can be sure he was screaming as he had no voice for 36 hours afterwards!

About 3/4 of the way through the night, it was time for that wonderful German tradition, Russian girls dancing on tables. And no, I am not kidding. The picture to the left is not of one these girls, that's Tom doing part of a "Y" in "Y.M.C.A.". Dan and Tom, who had attended this event last year, were giddy with excitement all evening, but I am not sure they rest of understood why. But yes, 8-10 Russian girls were escorted in, surrounded by "handlers" and assisted to the the table tops. I think the boys were disappointed that our table was not one of the selected "table dance" areas. Irregardless, we didn't see Tom for quite a while! Well, that is not exactly true, as the other video uploaded to You Tube shows. Now, many of you might think a wife would frown on this sort of chauvinistic, demeaning, insulting behaviour. I learned a long time ago with Tom that his "bad boy" image never goes too deep especially at the point of intoxication that he had reached at this point. I guess you gotta luv him...

So, The man in the chef hat at the left is Tom. As you can see, he still has a smile on his face. Though I have no idea where he stole the hat from! Now that would change for the worse in about 2 hours, but he was a happy camper at the end of the party! A fun time was had by all that evening I believe. Tom gave Craig his goodnight kiss (see why I wasn't worried about the Russian dancers!) and got our coats. We grabbed a taxi along with the Millers and headed home. Unfortunately, Tom lost a day of his life the next day, and he swears he will never drink again... Well, at least until next Oktober...

FIFA Women's World Cup Finals

The Women's World Cup finals were played here in the Shanghai area last week. We were fortunate enough to get tickets to the final night of action, Sunday, September 30. Actually, Kathy Miller got our families the tickets (Thanks Kathy!). The picture here shows the whole crew, from the left is Tom, Natalie, Jamie, Brian, Lauren, and Kathy. We loaded the kids up Sunday afternoon and headed to Subway for some sandwiches. That turned out to be a good idea as the local food inside the stadium was pretty limited. Our driver had originally indicated that he would not be able to drop us at the Hong Kou Football Stadium and would have to drop us at another subway stop. But, that turned out to be a false alarm and he was able to drop us just half a block away. The stadium itself was really nice! It is very new and is located in the northeast portion of the city. Neither Tom nor I had ever been to a soccer game before, so we didn't really know what to expect. It was actually really fun to watch. Jamie and Lauren, Kathy and Brian Miller's kids really enjoyed it. Natalie had a good time too, but mostly because she got to spend the evening with Jamie and Lauren. The short walk into the stadium was actually pretty quick. We had assumed that it might be more like shopping at Carrefour, lots of jostling and a bit inefficient, but it was not at all. The only slight wrinkle was not being able to take our water bottles into the stadium. It was also amazing to see all the food that people brought into the stadium. KFC did a good business that night, that's for sure! The girls made signs and held them up during the games, the Miller girls even had German flags on their faces for the final game!




The first game was 3rd place, between the US and Norway. The US team looked pretty good, though I didn't know any of the players! Well, I guess we knew one, Lilly. The US won, 4-1. Not a whole lot of US fans there, maybe 4-5 pockets of them scattered throughout the entire stadium. The stadium was not quite filled when this game was over, but it filled up before the final. The second game was between Brazil and Germany. Hard to say of there were more Brazilians or Germans there! The majority of attendees were Chinese and they seemed to basically cheer for offense. We left at halftime, the game was zip-zip. But Germany ended up winning, 2:0.