Joy to the World

One of them days

A quick run to the grocery store, that's all it was meant to be.

I grabbed my down coat, scarf and gloves, and headed down to the basement to retrieve my e-bike that was being charged in the storage room.

I zoomed over to the nice new grocery store in my neighborhood, which is in the underground floor of a sparkling new mall. And even though it is not common in America for malls to have grocery stores, it is quite the norm here.

The eight-story mall is decorated for Christmas, has Christmas music playing, and is just lovely!

To get from my place to the mall I had to maneuver through the road construction that I've mentioned previously.

I decided to get lots of groceries. After all, I could carry them back home on my e-bike, so it was no trouble. I got big heavy items, like liquid laundry detergent. I put everything into two big recyclable cloth bags, which I estimate to have weighed about 25 pounds each.

After shopping, I went to the other end of the underground floor of the mall to enjoy coffee at the new coffee shop. Ah, it was so relaxing! There's nothing quite like an infusion of hot caffeine on a cold day.

Then I started back to my place on e-bike. I got to the construction part of the road when my e-bike died. I tried to re-start it. The scent of burnt wires wafted through the air. I pushed my e-bike to the side of the road. Fortunately, half a block away was a repair place. After an hour, they had repaired my bike. The repair lasted for about ten feet. I pushed the bike back. They fixed it again. That repair lasted about 20 feet. I pushed the bike back. They couldn't fix it. And I couldn't stay there forever.

There are no buses in this area, and no empty taxi is cruising for passengers in a construction zone. So I had to leave my e-bike there and walk home. I walked about a mile back to my place, carrying about 50 pounds of groceries (it could have even been more, quite seriously).

And I was wearing heels.

Furthermore,  I am not 20 years old anymore and I have a chronic muscle ailment anyway. I'll be better in a day or two, but right now I can't walk or otherwise move without pain.

Oh, and I had an important work document that was due, and since I had hung out at the repair shop all day, I had to stay up half the night to finish my work document.

We all have days like this, huh? It's just one of them days. At least it wasn't raining.

Cinnamon

Yesterday I made a slice of cinnamon toast. I buttered a piece of bread, sprinkled cinnamon and sugar (artificial sweetener, actually), and put it in the oven so the toppings could melt into a bubbly texture.

As I was putting away the bottle of cinnamon spice, I looked at it more carefully and noticed it was not cinnamon, but chili powder. Oops!

The butter wasn't melted yet, so I quickly got a paper towel, scrubbed off the added ingredients, and using the same piece of bread I started over.

So, today I made apple cider. The recipe called for apple juice, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. Whew, I got it right this time!

Better than Charlie Brown's

It may not be the most beautiful tree in the world, but I like it! I guess you're supposed to trim Christmas trees to give them a polished look, but I like the wild, natural God-given look so I left it alone. I really love the red ceramic tree pot. After Christmas, I'm going to try to keep this tree alive on my balcony for future years' use. I will rely on the advice of my American friends in town (one studied horticulture in college) to keep it alive. Of course during Chinese New Year the tree will have to be moved indoors so it won't catch fire from flaming pieces of fireworks that always land on my balcony during that pyrotechnic nightmare of a holiday. I actually have very little confidence in its survival under my care, but I'm going to try.

Let it rain, let it pour!

Mimi got a raincoat in the mail today from my mom and dad. After I took these pictures, I realized I had it on inside out. It's a wee bit snug, but on rainy days this rain-hating diva doggy is going to be dry!

She's really, really thrilled about wearing it, can you tell? The only thing she hates worse than rain is clothing.

But I make her wear clothing sometimes anyway. Here (above) she is being the life of the party, my recent Christmas party, that is. The dog clothes protect people's clothes from getting so much dog hair on them. Except for a few minutes on the sofa with her new friends, Mimi (also known as "The Meems") sat in the rocking chair with that same guy for the entire two-hour party. He has (or had) four dogs growing up. He started to tell us what happened to one of them when he almost started crying, so he decided not to tell us. Fine with me, I don't want to know.

You see, Mimi and clothes just don't get along well. She likes this soft t-shirt material better than some of her other clothing, and it keeps her warm on frigid days, but she can't seem to figure out what the armholes are for. Don't worry, she still has all four of her limbs intact, she's just hiding one of them. This works fine until it's time to get up and walk around. I always have to take her clothes off when I leave the house to run errands to prevent this from happening when I'm not around.

Mimi turns 7 in January. My, how the years fly by!

Party time

It's December, it's cold, it's Christmas time!

I decided an artificial tree was unbearable (this year anyway), so off to the nursery I went a few days ago. Cut pine trees are not available for purchase, but live ones can be bought. So the little old farmer guy on the far edge of town (20 miles away), anticipating the arrival of foreigners like me, had already dug a bunch of pine trees out of the ground and had them ready to take away. I picked the shortest one, bought a red pot to put it in and a little extra dirt, and I was set for Christmas! The tree cost the equivalent of $19 and the pot was $6.39. The round trip taxi ride cost almost as much as the tree.

Some city slicker was at the nursery and jokingly accused the old farmer of hiking up the price because of me being a foreigner. The farmer said, "I did not! Why would I do that? Only foreigners buy these trees in the first place, so the price is the same for all of them!"

(Christians in this country celebrate the spiritual aspect of Christmas, but not the traditional and commercials aspects of it that we are most familiar with. They go to church on Christmas, but they don't put trees in their homes.)

I got my "short" tree home, and found out it is about 8 feet tall. It's perfect. Photos coming some other day.

I am busy making fudge, cookies and Rice Krispy treats for my big blow-out party this weekend. The invitees are all 20-something (and a few 30-something) young professionals who may have never been to a foreigner's home before, or else they have never been to a Christmas party before. They seem pretty enthused at the prospect of coming over. I've invited about 30 of them. If they all come, there won't be room for them. But there will be food for that many. Maybe some of them can stand on the balcony and eat fudge.

I went out and bought six small folding chairs and about 50 pounds of groceries today, and carried it all back to my place at the same time by e-bike ... with a wind chill factor right at freezing. Not fun, but definitely not boring -- no no, not my life!

Now if I can just keep Mimi out of the candy until the party is over ... I'm gonna collapse when this party is over. But hopefully it will be worth the trouble as I deepen relationships with local people.

Christmas makes its mark in the Middle Kingdom

                        
Christmas may be just another day in the Middle Kingdom, but it has still made its mark.


This year Christmas is on a Sunday, but when it is on a weekday, the sight of people going to school and work is enough to deflate any westerner's balloon full of traditions.


But shopping malls, restaurants and hotels are decked out in Christmas trees and Santa posters. You may even find a few gifts. But those crowds at the mall are not there to buy gifts, they are just there because it is too cold to stand outside.


Still, on a weekend, it is worse than any Christmas shopping crowd you have EVER seen in America.


Young people think it is fun to celebrate key American holidays, namely Valentine's Day and Christmas. If you invite them to a Christmas party, they'll be ecstatic and probably show up dressed like Santa (they don't know enough about the reindeer or Frosty to go that route, and they sure are clueless about the nativity).


Before Thanksgiving ever arrived, I had bought stockings and decorations. I have a hopeful feeling that it will be a wonderful Christmas this year.

Thanksgiving Day

The sun shone down on this cool, crisp day, making it perfect Thanksgiving weather. I made a tossed salad and eggplant casserole before taking a taxi across town to join my American friends for a Thanksgiving lunch feast. Seventeen of us had deep-fried turkey with all the trimmings. It was a nice day and really felt like Thanksgiving.

On the way back to my place in a taxi, I saw men putting down new sidewalks, and thought what a shame it was that they had to work on Thanksgiving Day. Then I got jolted back to reality. Today's Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday. It's not celebrated in the Middle Kingdom. I had a great holiday anyway.

Thanksgiving Holidays of the past

In 1969, I looked out the wide-slat blinds in my bedroom early on Thanksgiving morning in Fort Stockton, Texas, and told my mother, "I wish it would snow." But it was sunny, probably around 80 degrees Fahrenheit, so my mom told me not to get my hopes up.

Imagine her surprise when, a few hours later, the skies opened up and sent a blanket of snow to the west Texas desert. Being with my family that day made for one of the most memorable Thanksgivings ever.

When I was in either junior high or high school, my dad and brothers went deer hunting the day after Thanksgiving, so my mom and I went an hour and a half away to Odessa, Texas, to go shopping at the mall, buy a Christmas tree that we put in the trunk of the car, and eat at Manuel's Mexican food restaurant. That was a really fun day for me too. That was back before people called the day after Thanksgiving "black Friday." We were some of the pioneers who made black Friday black!

I think it was about 1980 when my brother James and I were traveling from our college in central Texas (Brownwood) to our home in West Texas (Pecos) in an ice storm. We had an 8-track tape of the Imperials Christmas album playing in the car as we slowly slid halfway across Texas. It was worth the trip though.

A few years later, I took my grad school friend (from Iowa) from Fort Worth to Pecos, an eight-hour drive. After eight hours of desert, a hypnotized Angelia had figured that in the same length of time it took us to get across Texas, she could have probably gone home to Iowa for Thanksgiving.

Every year is a good one, wherever we may be, whomever we may be with. 

By the way, if anyone needs a good dressing recipe, my mom's is the world's best.

Happy Thanksgiving!

East Nanjing Road, Shanghai

I went to Shanghai by train recently. You have to buy your train tickets in advance to guarantee a seat. Unfortunately, the sunny forecast was replaced by a rainy reality. Never mind. Shanghai's Nanjing East Road, the pedestrian street, makes even the gloomiest day seem bright.

The rain was light. I remember being on Nanjing East Road in 1997 when it was not a pedestrian street. It was a famous shopping street, but it was full of cars. It was also pretty backwards at that time. There was nothing worth buying. Now there's a lot worth buying, but only rich people can afford most of it.

I took my small instamatic camera instead of my better but heavier camera. So these pictures are not all that great. But I didn't want a backache at the end of the day.

At the end of Nanjing East Road lies the Bund, the riverside walkway. The Huangpu is a river that dissects downtown Shanghai from ultra-modern Pudong across the way. I took a ferry from one side to the other. The other ways to get across are by tunnels and vehicle bridges (taxis, buses, personal vehicles and subways).

Shanghai is probably my favorite city in the whole world. I could spend weeks there and never run out of things to do. 

Fall in Bamboo Forest

 A tree-lined bus stop area.

Falling leaves along the bike path.

I'm back from my trip to Thailand. I'm clearly allergic to that country, as I catch a cold 9 out of 10 times that I go there.


Anyway, I didn't want to be gone long from Bamboo Forest, because fall is the most beautiful time of year here. I looooooovvvvve it.


There's a Christian bookstore at a government-sanctioned church here, and they sell Bibles, calendars, and a few little tidbits (nothing extravagant like Christian bookstores in America). I went to get a calendar today. A lady who appeared to be in her 60s stopped me to chat. She wanted to know if all Americans were Christians, because that's what she'd heard. "No," I told her, "some are and some are not." I told her how I had made my decision to follow Christ when I was young, but it is each person's decision and some don't make it for Christ. She was shocked to know that all Americans were not believers. I guess that in the same way we think all Israeli citizens are Jews and all Saudi Arabians are Muslims and all Tibetans are Buddhists, she thought all Americans were Christian.


Today was not the first time I had heard that question. Many people here think that way. You know, they watch the movies that come out of Hollywood (face it, most are not very "clean" at all) and think that's how Americans/Christians live their lives. They think we call ourselves followers of Christ and live like the devil. No wonder some are not very interested in hearing the Message. Oh, I try to tell them that most of us don't live like it shows in the movies, but they don't really believe it. So, though sometimes I fail, I try my best to be living proof in their midst.