Happy Birthday!

This week we are celebrating three birthdays.

Tucker - Jan 25

My sister Dawn - Jan 28

Abi - Feb 1

Back in Shanghai

We arrived in Shanghai late Friday evening. Tim had school on Saturday and today he is studying and writing papers. Oh...boy what fun! Just two more weeks and he will be finished with the MBA program. Yippee!

I am still working at cleaning up my computers. I backed up all my pictures on two portable hard drives and while I was in Taipei I finally got brave enough to delete them from my laptop. All is well....my laptop is running a little faster now and I have confirmed......for the 4th time that my pictures are all where they should be. Wheeewww!

Bummer...we are back in the land of censored and slow Internet.

Eslite Bookstore

Today is our last day in Taipei. It is raining and a little bit cooler this morning. Did I mention that I spent some time at the pool this week? It was that warm....such a difference from Shanghai right now.

Yesterday, I found the coolest bookstore ever! Eslite bookstore is close to Taipei 101 and is the size of a shopping mall. It has 6 floors plus basement level 1 & 2 and is open until 2am. Every floor has funky, trendy, edgy, quirky, designer-y (see why I like it) things for sale in addition to books. I saw wonderful bags and stationary items, funky journals, clothing, watches, cameras, dishes, and home decorating things. There is an entire room (twice the size of our apartment) just devoted to "Art books". Oh! And they have American magazines!

Tim asked me if this bookstore is as good at Powell's in Portland. I tried to make an analogy for him....it went something like this....Powell's is like a comfortable well loved slipper where Eslite is like a 6 inch sexy red stiletto.

Taipei Sights

Pedestrian street close to our hotel

Is it a cat? Or maybe a tiger? I don't know but I like it!
This kitty/tiger thingy is about 6 feet tall.

Another interesting sculpture. This one is in our hotel lobby and is also about 6 feet tall.

I went on a city tour this morning and the highlight for me was the National Palace Museum. This museum houses priceless Chinese artifacts from main land China. Chaing Kai-Shek took these items from the Forbidden Palace when he fled the country in 1949. He had an army of 30,ooo smuggle the treasures onto three war ships and took them to Taiwan.

Stone sculpture at a temple

I also visited the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial hall.
The hall is huge and very feng shei.
The details are amazing and very thoughtfully designed.

Chaing Kai-Shek statue

This is the view from the memorial hall.
Opera house on the left and the Concert Hall on the right.

Chaing Kai-Shek always believed that he would return to mainland China. He was very home sick in his later years so his son built the memorial so he was looking across the water to mainland China.

Taiwan has an interesting history and has been occupied by many different countries.

Taipei

Tim and I are in Taipei this week. He is working (poor guy) and I am being a tourist. We arrived late last night so we got the "night taxi tour" from the airport. The sky line is much shorter than Shanghai with only one very very tall building.....Taipei 101
This morning we did a very American thing....we went to Costco! YES!...THEY HAVE A COSTCO IN TAIPEI!!! And....they carry the same products as in the US. This Costco is two floors...weird huh? I know I should be out experiencing the Taiwan culture but I was very happy to have an outer body experience and be transported back in time for just a few minutes.

So....I bet you are wondering what we bought at Costco.....really exciting things like gallon zip lock bags, Q-tips (the Shanghai Q-tips are really bad), face wipes, Honey Nut Cheerios (because they are $15 for a small box in Shanghai) , and a few bags of chocolate covered fruits. Ah...it was a great shopping day.

We are staying next door to Taipei 101. This building held the record for the tallest building in the world until the newest building in Dubai was finished.
It is taller than the WFC building in Shanghai.

In my opinion...it does not look tall enough to hold this record.

The taxi's are very cute here. And the drivers all speak English!

Rent a bike for the day or for the hour...I think I will try this tomorrow.

There is a shopping mall in the bottom of Taipei 101.
Oh darn!

Covered, elevated walk ways similar to the walkways in Hong Kong. I like it!

I walked Tim to the HP office this morning. It is just on the other side of 101. It is hot here! I had on a short sleeve shirt and I was "steaming" when I got back to the hotel.

There are lots and lots of motor cycles here.....and...... they go really fast compared to the scooters in Shanghai. AND...they stop for pedestrians!
Life is so civilized here.

PS....the internet is really fast and I am free to roam any internet site I want....even Facebook!
I love freedom!

A few more Christmas sights...

Snowmen......man made....or should I say Abi made

Gingerbread house....Even in China

My little darlings

And now....we move on to Chinese New Year which is Feb 14th this year. The stores are full of decorations and songs about the new year. BTW....this will be the year of the Tiger. Xiao Zhang said this is not a good year for her. "Why not?" Because she is a rooster and tiger's eat roosters. Yikes! I wonder how they feel about rats?

More Pics from the Holidays

Xiao Zhang and I in the kitchen.....

That was about the only time I went in the kitchen during the holidays. We ordered a turkey dinner for Christmas Eve from one of the hotels. Our oven is very small and will only hold one dish at a time. That was my excuse.....and I am sticking to it!

Oh...I guess I went in the kitchen one other time. I tried to make fudge but we did not have all the "normal" ingredients. So...we made some substitutions and they did not work out very well.
"Epic fail" on the fudge.

Christmas Eve in China

The family just "chillin"

Abi and I at a Chinese restaurant eating Peking duck.

Krispy Kreme comes to Shanghai

Doughnuts are goooooood!

Abi and Tim off on a scooter ride. Brrrrrrrrrrr!

Noodle night at the Spoffords

Google leaving China?

In the news today...."Mixed bag of reaction to Google quit threat". That is the head line for the story about Google. It will be interesting to see how this will be resolved. It is also interesting to read article in the New York Times and the article in the Shanghai Daily.

Ah....and just when I got all my "stuff" moved to gmail because it was a solid choice.

Mandarin lesson for today:
The word for "hacker" is hei (4th tone) ke (4th tone).

Wow....Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year just pasted at warp speed. It is hard to believe that it is the 13th of January already.

We had a great visit in the US over Thanksgiving.

It was fun to see our extended family. Some of them we have not seen for 3+ years.

Thanksgiving day...kids working a puzzle...

The turkey carvers

The dinner crowd

Decorating cookies...

Fast forward to December 12th

The kids arrived in Shanghai to celebrate Christmas Chinese style

Abi and I at Shanghai Bay with our new friend

Our little Christmas tree...
The poor thing did not have a top so I had to create one with sparkler things.

Fast forward to New Years Eve

Happy New Year from the Spoffords

Yes...this is us on New Years Eve. We had dinner with the kids at one of our favorite restaurants. After dinner the kids went out with friends and Tim and I went home. We (the older gen) watched the world from our window over looking the river. I had to wake Tim up at midnight to see the fireworks and say Happy New Year!

We are such party animals!

It's a new year...I hope to blog more!