Christmas in Hong Kong

Instead of going back to the US this year for Christmas, we stayed in Asia. Neither Tom or I get the official "Christian" holidays here in China, so we were had to localize our Christmas plans. We decided to take a break from China and head to Hong Kong for some shopping and an English-speaking break! Little did I realize that in fact, many Chinese also took advantage of the shopping side of that quest and were also in HK during this holiday! Oh well! I put all of the pictures out on our updated (finally!) website. And there are a couple of YouTube videos as well, including some from her earlier 1st Grade Christmas show.

The night before we left, Dec 23, we let Natalie open a gift she had received from our driver, Zhong Biao. She got a neat game and some cut-out animals. It was very nice of him and his family to do that for her!

We arrived in Christmas eve, almost two hours late. Air traffic going to Hong Kong was cited as the reason we sat on the ground in Shanghai for so long! We arrived around noon and worked our way through the Hong Kong airport to the Airport Express station (fast train) which is right at the airport. From there we headed to Kowloon where we exited and grabbed a taxi. We stayed at the Holiday Inn Golden Mile which was close to the Star Ferry and had a MRT (subway) station right across the street. We checked in and then headed out to go to the island. We took the Star Ferry over to the island portion of Hong Kong. From there, we caught the subway and headed to Times Square. We grabbed some pizza for lunch and then went and hit the stores! We bought about $200 in books! Natalie spent ALL of her saved allowance on books. She ended up with about 15 new books she picked out. Plus Gammaw bought her a book too! After buying our books, we shopped for some new athletic shoes for Tom and Natalie and some dress shoes for Tom. Unfortunately we had to haul all this stuff back to the hotel on the subway. When we arrived at our stop, we found out that the exit by our hotel was closed due to Christmas events being held outside in the streets. Oh well! Finally made it back to the hotel around 7:30. Went and had our meal in the Executive lounge. Then to bed!

Christmas day got going with Natalie opening a couple of gifts from Mom & Dad, the book and Fairy craft that Gammaw and Pappaw had bought her. Breakfast in the lounge, and the off to Disney! We took the subway and made it there at 10.15, right at opening! Hong Kong Disney is soooooo much smaller than Orlando! It was really nice, at least from our perspective. You could easily get from one area to another with a 2-5 minute walk. Still long longs for a couple of the rides, but overall was pretty easy. Only thing we underestimated was the temperature. It was pretty warm, and our little Heat Miser was wearing long sleeves and jeans. She had pink cheeks all day. We called all of our Family once we got there. Sad to not be home this year, but that's another blog...


After a full day of playing at Disney, we headed back to the hotel. Again at dinner in the lounge and then Natalie passed out around 7:40. So we all went to bed (we share a big king size!) reading our new books! Lovely Christmas!

Finally, Friday came and we just spent the day shopping at a big mall, Harbour City, that was close to our hotel. Natalie had a meltdown in Toys R Us when we first arrived. She wanted some toy and we told her she had already gotten lots of stuff and Santa had probably delivered gifts, but she totally started crying and saying we were mean. I was pretty frustrated with her, but I guess it is understandable. She had gone for 3 days getting everything she wanted, so why not continue that! Anyway, I got to shopping by myself for awhile. I got a new pair of shoes, new jeans, and a skirt and top. Nice to find western sizes. Tom and Natalie went and saw Bedtime Stories, which none of had heard about, but was the only non-dubbed movie to see.

Then we headed back to the hotel, checked out, and headed to the airport. We got back to Shanghai and our house around 10.30. A bit late, but not bad. Natalie got to see the gifts from Santa, but we waited until Saturday morning to open. She got lots of stuff from Santa, including a new Nintendo DS. She got lots of stuff from Santa and turns out that Santa had stopped at Grandma and Grandpa Bramer's and brought some stuff with him from them!

We wish all of you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!

Old Man Tom

As you recall, I am an old man (just turned 43 last week) in an older man's body that tries to play basketball twice per week.

Friday, I went to an acupuncturist to try and fix an arch issue and a neck issue.

They put 12 needles in my neck; 3 in my right hand; and 10 in my arch.

Application of the needles in my neck and hand were painless. The needles in my arch stung as they were inserted. Doctor warned me that it would hurt since the feet are very sensitive.

The concept is rather easy.
The body heals itself. An example is if you cut yourself, it will heal 100%. If you cut it a second time in the same spot, it will only heal 97% - and so on and so on. Eventually your body will stopping trying to heal it because it will think that it is supposed to be cut. Acupuncture forces an injury in the area of pain which forces the body to start to heal that area

Here is the process.
I had to lay on the table on my side. They put the needles in my neck first. Then my hand and finally my feet. The needles in my hand were needed as there are a couple of points in the hand "connected" to the neck. The needles are 4 1/2 inches in length and varies in diameter.
After he put all the needles in he then swirled/spun the needles while in my skin. After that he was done. I had to stay there with the needles inserted for 15 minutes. A nurse came in and swirled/spun them again. She left again and then returned in another 15 minutes to remove them.

That was it.

Doctor instructed me to visualize the pain in my neck and my feet and let the pain flow through my body and out my fingers and toes. Pretty corny but I did it and I could feel the pain leave my arch and neck when I did it. I did NOT feel it travel through my body and out the fingers and toes.

Doctor said it would take 2 or 3 treatments to fix my severity of injury (minor). I have to admit, my neck and my arch has been pain-free for 30 hours now. This is great since I have had this pain in my arch for 4 weeks and in my neck for 5 weeks. I even played basketball this morning which typically leads to a great amount of pain for several days in my feet. Today, I ran well - played well - all without any pain. Even 12 hours later I can walk up and down the stairs with no issues.

All in all - pretty amazing

I have two friends who had a co-worker and a father quit smoking via acupuncture with no relapse (both over 1 year cold turkey). Previously, they had tried every trick in the book to quit.

Natalie's 1st Grade Christmas Program

This past Tuesday was Natalie's 1st Grade Christmas Program, Grandma Visits Santa. She was an elf! The program was actually very cute. The elves all wore their parents white shirts and striped or Christmas color socks. They held this year's in the Rittman Center which is a really nice auditorium that they built last year. I was so surprised at how bold Natalie was this year! She walked right out for her part, no real hesitation.

We had a hard time finding socks for her costume. Seriously, I think I looked in at least 20 stores and the fake market twice looking for knee-length socks in a Christmas color. We ended up borrowing Abi Spofford's fuzzy pink socks. Abi is the daughter of our friends, Deb and Tim Spofford. Abi is a Senior at Concordia, so wearing her socks was quite the cool think from Natalie's perspective. She was really cute about it. She put them on and said "Mom, I think I actually kind of pretty in these." Out of the mouths of babes!

I also uploaded some videos from the show to Youtube. I apologize for the bad video, I was taking pictures with my Nikon and video with the Sony! Thank goodness Tom got a better version off of the real video camera.

That's Not My Name.... That's Not My Name....

On a daily basis I am reminded of the Ting Tings' song "That's not my name". Why you ask? Because here at work most of the folks I work with call me Shirley. Don't think that I am making fun of my peers here, I know that the whole "ER" sound is VERY difficult to make for most Chinese. Heck, in Mandarin, it took me 3 months to make the sound associated with the Pinyin for "c". It sounds like "ds". Try that for a while. No that is not the problem, it is that Shirley seems to have been accepted as my name, not as a poor pronouncement! How did that happen? I guess because I stopped correcting anyone to be polite. Unfortunately every time I think of Shirley I immediately think of ReRun, Dwayne, Rog, and Dee. C'mon. You know who I refer to, right? Of course, it's What's Happening!! Now don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with being associated with a black, overweight, waitress. No it's not that. It's the idea of supervising Maurice (played by crazy Martin Lawrence!) during the "What's Happening Now!!!" series. Frightening...

By the way, have you ever noticed how listening to the song "C'mon on Eilieen" always makes you smile??? Why is that? Those Dexy's Midnight Runner's knew how to write (one song).

One last thought for the day...

This morning I woke up from a dream with Natalie in it. In this dream, she was a flower. yes a flower. A pretty yellow flower, sort of like a Daisy, in a pretty blue pot. We were in some room with tables and stools. She was sitting on the table and was signing Queen's Bicycle Race. She was entertaining the whole room and was smiling and enjoying herself. I looked at her sweet, smiling face, thinking about how her voice was just about the most beautiful thing I had ever heard. I glanced around the room and saw that everyone was listening but more importantly, they also had serene smiles on their faces. I turned back to Natalie and bent down to whisper encouragement, and then... My alarm went off.

December 2008 Update

Wow, my blogging is pretty bad! Quite a while since I have taken the time to come out here and update. So, let's see what has been happening? Not much I guess.

Natalie started 1st Grade. She is doing well. She has had to adjust to a male teacher who has a good deal of sarcasm in his humor. You think that would have been easy for her considering the levels of sarcasm she has dealt with her whole life! But she just now is feeling comfortable. Luckily Concordia has a policy of combining 1st/2nd grades for some subjects and so she is actually doing quite well in the 2nd grade math class. But, she considers it boring. We keep telling her how boring it would be if she was with the rest of her class doing 1st grade math, but she doesn't see it that way.

Tom's parents came to visit in October. We did a grand tour of China during their visit: Xi'An, Jiujigou, Chengdu, Beijing. They said it was a trip of lifetime. And we had a fun time showing them everything. Natalie had a nice time with them while they were here.

Halloween was fun. We have some YouTube videos you can check out.

Thanksgiving meant a couple of Turkey dinners. The first was Thanksgiving evening at the Vizcaya clubhouse. It was good food, but interesting entertainment. A Filipino band played Muzak for us. Weird. Then that Saturday we all went to Fansetts to enjoy some real turkey and lots of friends.

Tom and I are both busy at work. With the economy the way it is in the US, we are pretty lucky to be homeless and overseas. Hopefully things will look better in the spring. Our plan is to come back to the US in December of 2009, but who knows what will happen? Tom's division is for sale (got any cash?) and so we have to just wait and see who buys it up.

Ok, I know this was a lame catch-up, but this will let me move forward without a lot of guilt!