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!

Hong Kong Trip, or Was it???

This past weekend was the last weekend before Tom came home. So I had planned to take a little vacation to Hong Kong with my friend here. Sort of a Shanghai Girl's trip. Kathy M, Angie, Deb, Raquel, Rebecca, Karen, and I all were looking forward to shopping, eating, and maybe more shopping. But, we forgot to plan on the unplanned. Tropical Storm Nuri. It blew through on Friday afternoon. Three of us (Raquel, Rebecca, Karen) took an early flight Friday morning. They successfully left at 8:40. Unfortunately that was the last flight out that. Boo Hoo. And in fact it took most of the afternoon to figure out if we could even get there on Saturday. But we were able to rebook for Saturday morning at 9:45. We four got on our flight and headed out. All was looking good until the pilot came on and said that Hong Kong was currently overwhelmed with flights and that our flight would have to wait a bit until we could receive clearance to land. After 45 minutes, he came back on and said there might be a chance that we would be diverted to Xiamen (an hour and half away). And another 45 minutes later he said we would in fact land in Xiamen for fuel. It was supposed to be about a two and half hour flight. At this point, it had already been 4 hours. We did land in Xiamen, fueled, and then the pilot again informed us that we had not received clearance from Xiamen Customs. I guess they thought we had smuggled a bunch of HK migrant on or something. We were almost 3 hours delayed on the ground in Xiamen. Then we took off and landed in HK about 3 hours later. We basically were on the plane for the same amount of time as it would take to fly from Tokyo to Minneapolis, US. And none of were prepared for that long of a flight. But we did entertained ourselves with hangman and drawing pictures.

After we finally got to Hong Kong, it was 8:30. And there were huge lines at immigration. We had originally made plans to join up with the other girls at the Felix at the Paramount hotel, but we were all wiped out and decided to just head to the restaurant in the hotel. We stayed at the Cosmopolitan Hotel, on the island, near Happy Valley Race Course. After eating, a few of us headed to Lan Kwai Fong, which is on the island as well. I felt pretty old. It was sort of like going to Mardi-gras. There were several blocks of restaurants and bars. Open containers and people walking around with drinks. And the girls all seemed so young and vastly under dressed. We didn't get back to the hotel until after 1 a.m. What a long day...

Sunday, some of us headed to the Peak. The weather, believe it or not, was great. Hong Kong is so much cleaner the other big cities we have been to in Asia. It is nice to be able to breathe. The Peak is at the top of a mountain and has a tram that goes up and down. The views were great. Then to shopping at Times Square. That was nice as there was a huge English bookstore. Nice to shop with such a nice selection. Finally to lunch at the big IFC Mall where the Central station is. You can check in to your flight there, check your bags, and then go back to shopping.

All in all, a nice getaway. If we had not had the logistics issues, it might have been perfect.

Macau

While Natalie is gone (boo hoo), Tom and I decided to take a weekend trip to Macau. Our spur of the moment activity for the year! We decided on a Monday to go that upcoming weekend! So we flew in on Friday afternoon. After we arrived and figured out the local currency situation (they use the Pataka generally and the Hong Kong Dollar) we headed to the Rio, where we stayed. The lesson learned with the hotel was that unless you are staying at the Wynn, MGM, the Sands, or the Venetian, go cheap! While our room was nice (see picture from the window), because the idea of a "Strip" doesn't really exist yet, there was not much at the Rio. The casino was awful, one blackjack table, slots mostly with "blue screen", and no real life there! I saw better Casinos at the Denney's off-strip in Vegas. It is definitely the place to go to escape the "mainland" either. But that is primarily due to the fact that 75% of the money made in Macau is from the big players who play in private casinos or rooms. But really, it is not really fair to compare to Vegas right now. There are lots of casinos, but only the four I mentioned are run by guys with Vegas experience, so it is just different!

It was also our first trip to Southern Asia in the summertime. Let me tell you, I will no longer complain about Shanghai being hot. In the picture on the right, you can see the heat haze. You practically melted walking to far.

After we figured out we would not be playing in our Casino, we headed out to the Wynn. And it was a mini-version of the one in Vegas. They had this big gold tree that "grew" in the lobby. After entering we walked around. No video poker (my fav!) to be found! Many Baccarat tables, some Black Jack, no Keno, no free alcoholic drinks??? What was up with that? And it took me half an hour to find a place to have a drink! The bar was tucked way in the back. Weird. We then headed back to the hotel and then on to the Sands. The layout was nice with a stage with live entertainment right in the center of the casino, open to the rest of the casino. And a big bar wrapping around it. The entertainment was so-so, with the funniest thing being the Filipino band singing. It is totally acceptable in Asia for the bands to use sheet music. Sometimes I guess that is because the bands are just a step above Karaoke. Even when the band is playing, people still think it is karaoke! Hilarious. And that was the Case this night. Many of the guests were singing right along with the band, and really loud too. The funniest part was that the most rocking song was "Ret's Get Roud". Oops, I mean Let's get Loud, by Jennifer Lopez.. But that is not how they sang it or what the audience sounded like singing with them. How funny is that song selection? After the band, the next entertainment was 3 sets of ballroom dancers. No kidding. How do you end up with that job??? Anyway, it resulted in most of the crowd dispersing.

Saturday we headed early over to the Venetian. It is on the Cotoi Strip which is on the two small islands of Macau. That Friday night the US Olympic Basketball team had stayed here and played some non-Olympic team. So, there were many more foreigners at this hotel. We enjoyed this one the most I think. And not just because we both won there. We watched a band play in the Bellini Bar in the casino. Mostly jazz with a decent trumpet player. Tom enjoyed a drink and funky little cigar while we relaxed in the bar. I focused on more interesting things such as making art out fruit and thinks from my purse. There was lots of shopping and so many things to do there. We ate dinner that night at the Morton's Steakhouse. Wow, it was delicious. Of course we ate too much and felt miserable, but it was fun.

I noticed a big difference in that there were not a lot of attractive women here. Part of this is due to the fact that Shanghai in general seems to have more attractive women. But it also seemed to be a different mix of people. There were quite a few Malay, but many were hard to place in term of ethnicity. Another big difference was that we saw people looking on the floor for dropped chips. I saw someone doing that and wasn't sure what it was, but Tom confirmed later that it was a chip searcher! Another thing you would never do in Las Vegas is to put chips on someone else's hand. If you are at a table with other players, you can play money on their hands. Kind of freaks you out. But I guess if a player is hot, you can win long with him! At the end of the day, Tom and I both lost what we had won Saturday. But we had a nice time and enjoyed our adult weekend.

Olympics - From a Shanghai Perspective

8/08/2008 at 8:08 pm night was start of the XXIX Olympics. Watching the ceremonies from a location in China was a special treat for us. Really, who didn't think that it was awesome? We made a reservation for about 10 of us at Malone's in Thumb Plaza to catch the excitement. And it was exciting. Albeit in Chinese! One downside to watching live here was that meant we watched the CCTV feed, not a nicely translated, and as it turns out, interpreted, opening ceremony. I had many favorite parts, with the opening drums probably being one of my favorites. I am sure you have heard by now that many of the synchronized scenes were conducted by soldiers. Your country can do that when you are not fighting wars around the world! (sorry, political commentary not intended!) . It was interesting to watch in a location with about 50% international and 50% Chinese. Let's just say that the crowd was not overwhelmingly for the US. You can get a sense of that watching the video on You Tube of the US team entering the stadium. They were clapping for the team, but booing at the clip of Bush! And you have also heard about the scandal of the two-girls-one-song situation. Oh, and the footstep fireworks (which really was my favorite euphemism, "walking through history", that was great!) were taped the night before to ensure clear visibility. But com'on, really, besides those little things, it was an awesome display. You can see from our pictures that we all had a great time. It did take a quite a long time though! Finally, many Tiger beers later, the finale of the Lighting of the Torch. Tom and I rode the scooter (it is about 3 miles from our house) so we had a bit of a wobbly ride home (someday I will blog about drinking and scootering). By the way, Tom and I purchased a DVD of the opening ceremony. Pretty awesome to re-watch!!!

Since the opening night, we have been watching table tennis and badminton non-stop! In Chinese. Here, you get a totally different set of sports to watch and you get to see about 5-6 different CCTV channels (who says controlled media is bad???). In the US, it is probably the basketball, volleyball, swimming, etc. Plus since it is usually only NBC, CBS, or ABC, you are limited to the edited version! Here, we get to watch hours of rifle shooting and weight lifting. And as of right now, China is pretty solidly kicking our butt overall. But, the track and field events have started, so maybe we will draw a bit closer soon. We are missing a lot due to the language, but we simply augment with Internet updates.

Final comment regarding the Olympics was a funny comment made by Natalie. She was watching with family in the US and stated "I don't know who to root for, the US or my country". And recently she told my mother that it was kind of like cheating: She wanted both the US and China to win, so whoever won, she was happy!

Natalie with Gammaw, Pappaw, Uncle Angel, and Aunt Eyeball

Well, Natalie spent some time with her other grandparents, my parents, and my sister and brother law, Angel (aka Uncle Angel) and Tony (aka Aunt Eyeball) Smith, after we left. She got a chance to play in her little house, which was a birthday gift from Gammaw & Pappaw when she was only 3. Pappaw built it and Gammaw painted it! It was at our house in Ohio, so we moved it back to Indiana before we moved. It is such a cute little thing.

But the big thing for her this year is that Gammaw put in a small, above ground pool. I think that Natalie has spent more time in the pool than out of it! Besides these pictures, I put some videos out on You Tube. Check them out!

My sister Angel was also in Fowler for part of the time. Angel borrowed a tent from my cousins and Natalie and Angel stayed out all night in the tent. Oh, and Nikki was with them! I think they had lots of snacks and luckily it wasn't too cold.

For the 4th of July, they went to the parade in Fowler and then went to the park to watch the fireworks. On a side note, I thought I should share that I never missed a 4th of July in Fowler Fireworks show until I was out of college! Here in the picture she is sharing some ice cream with Pappaw!

Finally, she got a chance to the Children's museum in Indianapolis. They met all of her Uncle Tony's family there. she had a great time. In this picture, she is digging for dinosaur bones!

And don't forget that she has been watching Fox news with Pappaw. It helped to determine her preferred presidential candidate.

Working in China

Last week, I had a chance to go to travel for work. We had a 3-day management meeting in Hangzhou, which is about a 3 hour bus ride from Shanghai. Let us just say that it was a total immersion into Chinese culture! In the group, I was the ONLY western face! There were a few American Born Chinese (ABC), but you can't tell they have more of a western background. Also, 95% of the meeting content was in Mandarin. I exhausted quickly trying to comprehend the conversation. I quickly learned that comprehending casual conversation, which I typically can at about 50%, is much harder when listening to business presentations. The words they use are definitely NOT in the small vocabulary list I have in my head!

• I thought it would be interesting to highlight some of the main business differences between China and the US.
  When travelling for business events like this type of meeting, it is very common for businesses to book two travellers into a single room. This is the second time I have had to stay in a room with another co-worker. I NEVER in the U.S. did the same thing. Americans are such private people, I don't think the whole room-share thing would go over well. My roommate, who thankfully I actually knew, ended up leaving a day early, so I had the room back to myself for one night. Whew...


• There were no name tags and no effort into introducing the employees. Keep in mind that this event was for Roche more senior employees (150 or so) from all over China, so many employees did not know each other. Nor did it seem there was effort to get to know them. Not one person asked me who I was or where I worked! I think in the U.S. it is much more common to use meetings like this to get to know each other and that starts with names and organizations.
• The Senior Management team for China presented overviews of the results and upcoming activities, but there was NOT 1 ORGANIZATION CHART in any presentation! I find that really weird. There is not a real sense of organizational awareness here.
• The Chinese workers tend to have interactions ONLY with their own small departments. During the three days, I observed very little interactions between the various business areas. Contrast this to the US where may individuals embrace the networking opportunities associated with a get-together like this.
• There were many secretaries who appeared in the hotel. Hmmm... In the U.S. most managers do not even have secretaries supporting them, let alone the flexibility to have them travel with them! And the implication of observing a manager who had to have his secretary come with him was that she was travelling with him for more "aesthetic" reasons!
• The idea of team building is a bit reversed here. The smaller break out groups I participated in had more trouble expressing individual ideas then they did expressing a group opinion. Asking a person for the thought on something almost always resulted in them looking around the table for an ally, who was usually sitting next to them, and then they collaborated on the answer. Weird. In talking to some Hong Kong-born Chinese, they shared that this is normal.
• I don't feel that the younger employees have a real sense of what it would take to be deemed successful in the long-term. Right now, it is all about the money. they define success in terms of how much they make or can make. Contrast that with the U.S. where we really are made to understand that our career decisions have to about the end-game. I would guess that if you asked many Chinese employees where they want to be in 5 or 10 years, it would have nothing to do with the company they are working for! It would be about money and status. When I was younger, I felt that that I needed to find ways to move up the ladder and worked to get that next big opportunity, but usually it was inside the same company. Maybe the younger American generation has the same view as their Chinese counterparts!
• Professionalism is totally different here. From the clothes to the behaviour in meetings. Women in particular do not seem to be particular interested in dressing in a Western-style professional way. Now, the standard dress for the event had been determined to be "Smart casual". Their 4 inch stilettos and short skirts did not exactly call out "future executive" to me! However, there were a handful of women in very smart suits and conservative shoes! And many employees chatted away during most of the meetings. That drove me crazy! several got up and actually just started having a normal volume level conversation right in the meeting rooms! In the U.S., many speakers or presenters would have asked for some respect. But the speakers at the event just tolerated it.
• Our dinner events involved going to a restaurant and eating a Chinese meal. That meant groups of 8-10 sitting around big tables. And of course, the same people sat together for both meals! There was no Happy Hour, which is more conducive to mixing and getting to know everyone.

I think that some of this differences probably sound negative, but really, it is just in contrast to the U.S. I am betting that if I had worked in the U.S. in the 60's and 70's, the contrast would not be so great. China business will mature rapidly, they know they have to to survive. But I hope I don't get another immersion for a few months...

2008 Presidential Elections - Who is Natalie voting for?

Funny story regarding the "influences" that Natalie is under while in the states...

A couple nights ago when George (Tom's Dad), Sara (Tom's Mom), and Natalie were returning from Church, Natalie was in the backseat and she asked George who he was going to vote for in the presidential elections. George replied that he didn’t know and jokingly asked Natalie who she was voting for. Much to George’s surprise, Natalie said that she was voting for McCain because Obama was on TV too much.

After George and Sara quit laughing they assumed that Natalie picked up her political position from influences in Fowler, where Shelly's parents live.

Know any other 5-year olds who are involved in politics as much as Natalie?????????

It was requested that for the best interest of everyone – the Johnson's (Shelly's parents) should NOT let Natalie talk to her radical aunts about politics!!!!!!

The Oympic Mascots - Who Knew???

OK, I admit that while I am living in a country that will soon be hosting the 2008 Olympics, I haven't really absorbed a lot of the details associated with it. Pretty much like it was when Atlanta hosted! However, I was talking to someone the other night about the mascots and the fact that there was a lot of symbolism involved with the Fuwa, very typical of many activities here in China. I felt pretty silly not being able to actually summarize the symbolism, especially after living here for a year and a half. So I jumped online and learned a bit. I have only in the past 4 months started learning Chinese characters and I find them totally interesting, so I was very surprised at the symbolism just in the characters. Thought I would share my learning's for any interested!

First of all, I am sure you have all seen the mascots, right? Each of Fuwa has a rhyming two-syllable name. Using two words for proper names like this is very typical with children is a common way of expressing children. Beibei is the Fish, Jingjing is the Panda, Huanhuan is the Olympic Flame, Yingying is the Tibetan Antelope and Nini is the Swallow. When you put their names together, Bei Jing Huan Ying Ni, it translates to "Welcome to Beijing". Chinese: "北京欢迎你", I'll not argue with that, though the literal translation (with my simple 14 months of mandarin lessons) would actually be Beijing Welcomes You. Weird, huh? And the position in which the Character are standing are somewhat in the same design as the characters of their names. The characters each loosely translate to prosperity, happiness, passion, health, good fortune.

Some other interesting notes about the characters. In traditional Chinese culture, the fish represents prosperity, as the character for fish (魚) sounds the same as that for surplus (餘 / 余). The Chinese character for swallow (燕) is also used in Yanjing (燕京), an old name for Beijing; thus the swallow alludes to Beijing.

Anyway, I better get back to surviving without my little girl!!

Summer is Here! Week 1 at Bramer's

Tom and I are here in Shanghai now, but we did make it home for a some R&R. I thought I'd post some pics from our first week. Natalie will be in the U.S. all summer! I think, based on all the stuff she did in just the first week, she is going to have a good time this summer.

Natalie started the summer by learning how to drive the tractor. I am not kidding!

She talked her Grandpa George and Uncle Ted into letting her drive the new tractor around the barn lot. She actually got pretty good. One of the pictures shows her dumping a load of rocks.

One morning I went out to see what Tom and Natalie were up to and was a bit surprised to find them on TOP OF THE GRAIN BIN!

What were they thinking???

Natalie helped her Grandpa Bramer and Uncle Ted paint the barn. I think she was actually a pretty good helper.





So all this in the first few days. I didn't even put pictures of her palying in the sprinkler and driving the boat (well, the tractor was pulling the boat). More later on her next week with Gammaw and Papaw!

OK, So I am a little behind!

Just returned from Summer trip home and realize how many people keep in touch with us here by reading the blog. So, I will have to do MUCH better at putting updates out here! Sorry to all of you who are feeling out out of touch. Here is a quick update of what has happened in the last few months:

• I participated in the 2008 Great Wall Marathon. Well, it wasn't pretty, but I did it! I did the half marathon and did it with a combo of run/walk. My goal was to finish in under four hours, which I did. Check out the final results here. I think there is a video somewhere, if I find it, I will put it on YouTube.
• Work for both Tom and I is going well. Tom has a decision to make regarding staying with Delphi or going with the new company that will be buying the brake business from Delphi. Both appear to be good opportunities, we will just have to wait to see what the final decision is...
• Natalie finished Kindergarten. All good stuff! In fact, they would like to have her move up to 2nd grade math (only math, the 1st and 2nd grades at Concordia are already combined for some classes). So, now she has to do math worksheets this summer!
• We all traveled home to see family in the States in June. Very short visit as I am working now and don't have as much time as I used to. Sorry to all I didn't get a chance to see!
• Tom and I went to St. Martin in July to celebrate our 20th anniversary this year (it is in August). Stayed at the Alamanda resort which is right on Orient Beach. Took another Random Wind tour (highly recommend) and basically just laidon the beach! This was our first vacation of more than 7 days. Very nice!
• Spent the last few days in the States with my family.
• Said goodbye to Natalie for 6-weeks! We felt it best to let her stay in the states rather than come back here with us working every day. Plus, Vizcaya is a ghost town right now! Nothing for her to do without me home all day. I am sure there will be more to come in the future blogs regarding my loneliness for my little girl!
• Went to Indy to catch my flight back, then had to reschedule for following day due to flight delays. rented a car, drove back to Fowler, then turned around and drove back in 15 hours. I HATE TRAVELLING!

Which brings me to my only rant for the day... Travelling. When did travel become such an awful activity? If you have travelled by air lately, then you know what I am talking about. The whole activity stream, from booking travel all the way to actually executing the travel plans is just not a pleasing experience anymore. I know it is an industry wide problem, but come on, surely there is some what for someone to figure out how to get people from A to B without all of the hassles. Anyone have any ideas???