CHINABRATION 2012

Chinabration. Such a funny word yet such FUN! This was Archie's second year performing with the Blacksburg Chinese school at the Virginia Tech annual Chinese American Student Association event. Last year, they had a Kung Fu Panda theme. This year, they did somewhat of a spoof on a classic Chinese legend. The kids work really hard on their dance for weeks before the performance. They danced to a song called "Celebrate." I really liked the lyrics to the chorus. I'll write my translation at the bottom.

Here's what the hard work produced:

Grace before the show:

Celebrate!

Every dream receives a blessing

Every tear becomes a treasure

Every light is a candle of promise

Every day is worth CELEBRATING!

Happy (Chinese) New Year!

The kids at Blacksburg Chinese School did another great performance. Archie went to so many practices and worked so hard! (Grace, on the other hand, was added to the program at the last minute.) It's funny how hard kids can work and how out-of-rhythm they can still get. Still, they were SO cute! (On the far right, are two older kids doing Chinese yo-yo tricks. It's pretty cool, but I'm not sure how much of it the video captures.)

I was so proud of Archie for remembering to walk through this door and strike his pose. (It's a common congratulations pose.) He kept forgetting at practice but remembered when it was important.

My little performers. Grace LOVED being on stage. She also loved her costume so much she wore it to church the next morning.

You may notice the dragon coming through in the video. Dragon dances are traditional at New Year's celebrations, and this is the year of the dragon.

Archie and his friend Theo.

This little girl is so cute! I love to watch her and Archie play.

What's Cooking?

First, for my father-in-law who is quite allergic to shrimp, you might want to skip this post. To everyone else, welcome to the world of raw shrimp cooking. The grocer at our local Chinese store is very persuasive. I'm really not sure what I was thinking the other day when I went in and asked him for shrimp when I was hoping for pre-cooked, deveined, peeled. I mean, I know what kind of shrimp Chinese people like to eat. Sure enough, that's what I was offered. He made such a good sales pitch, I just couldn't say say no. Plus, I wanted to serve authentic for my guest coming that evening.

Shrimp are actually gray until they're cooked.

Yum, Yum! (Actually, I much prefer the other kind. Getting the brains out is rather messy work.)

I forgot to take a pic of the discarded shells, legs, brains, etc. You're glad, right?

More Dou Dou Long fun!

Archie had his second stage performance last week with the Blacksburg Chinese School. They once again sang "Dou Dou Long," which is the theme song from a Japanese cartoon that has been translated into Chinese. Archie's the shortest one in the red shirt.

This move with a partner was really tricky for a three-year-old, but he did a good job. His partner is almost five!!!

They had lots of fun hanging out backstage with the other performers. The Chinese American society put on the performance at the Graduate Center of Virginia Tech. They did a Kung Fu Panda theme and did an excellent job staying with the movie.

Here's one of Archie's teachers. The other is the president of the Chinese American Association so she was kind of hard to catch backstage.

One of the best things about being backstage was that Memaw and Papa came to see them.

Archie also got to pose with this cool lion head.

The older girls from the Chinese school did a fan dance. It was really tricky, but they did a good job.
A shot from Kung Fu Panda:

There was also a cool lantern dance performed by college students:

And this cool dance...Aren't the costumes pretty? Chinese are really into elaborate costumes for shows.

This was one of my favorite parts. It's a traditional lion dance. Two people are in each costume. I was glad they let the kids sit in the front row during the performance so they could see the other acts.

There was also a really cool Chinese yo-yo performance, but I didn't get any pics of it. I can't wait for next year!

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival to You!

One thing I love about Blacksburg is how many Chinese there are. It's easy to make friends and practice language. Another great thing is we don't have to give up our favorite Chinese holiday celebrations. Last week we went to a GREAT Mid-Autumn Festival at Virginia Tech. The festival celebrates the full moon and people eat little cakes called moon cakes (which Archie was a big fan of). The evenings festivities included the finals of a karaoke competition and some great performances. Our friend won second place!

Some kids memorized an incredibly long chant that is made of groups of three characters! Pretty impressive!
All the participants in the performances:

I just wanna dance with you!

What do we do in our free time? I think in the past weekend I've danced more than I've danced in the past five years! Tuesday night we had a going away party for a friend and taught some local friends the electric slide. The next day I went to an end-of-the-year function at a local college and learned a new dance. (Thankfully, it only had about 10 steps so how bad can I possibly be at maneuvering through ten steps?) But, the best was going out on our square with Hunt the other night where all the old folks dance. Under some serious pressure from our friends, he finally asked me to dance. He looks perfectly at ease, right? Hehe!

A cake by any other name...

Is, of course, just as sweet! Aren't these cakes beautiful? Birthdays are always fun here!

I'm not the only one!

I'm not the only one who skipped my college graduation cause I didn't want to sit through a long ceremony with boring speeches. These guys will, too. Actually, all graduating seniors will "skip" their graduation ceremonies because the colleges here don't have them. Students just rent robes for photography purposes. I don't know these guys from Adam but it looks like they're having fun. Congrats!

Joyfully writing all the time...

Does this pic really need an explanation? Sorry, I don't have time because my notebook is so comfortable I've got to get back to writing...

Squatty potty superiority!

Here are my reasons why the squatty potty (so ubiquitous in Asia and much of the world) is really superior to the American sit down version.

1. Do you really want to sit down on a nasty public toilet?

2. It's SO convenient for potty training little boys.

3. It makes interesting pictures for your blogging audience who may never have seen such a potty. They've become such the norm for me when I'm out in public, I forget some of my American friends may have never seen one...

Want to have a try?

Giddy up!

One of the things I love about living here is the wide variety of vehicles you see everyday. (One of the things I don't like, of course, is crossing the street since the pedestrian doesn't have the right-of-way.)See the red-three-wheeled thing in the background? Yep, it's called a "bouncy/jump bouncy/jump car". Maybe I should do a post on transportation sometime?

Non-partisan

I like to keep a nice clean blog free from all political commentary :) But, when you're walking down the street with your friends and see Obama socks for sale can you really resist taking a picture? Isn't it hard to believe the President of one country has his picture on socks halfway across the world?
Over the next few weeks I will be sharing pictures of funny/interesting things some visiting American friends and I have run into nearby recently. Photography mainly courtesy of them :)

For those of you wanting an Archie eye update:
Hunt just took him to the doctor for a post-surgery checkup. His right eye is pretty straight, but his left eye is starting to cross back in so he's bumping his prescription back up to the highest possible 6.0. We're thankful for progress, though.

Grace and I would've enjoyed a nice girl's weekend, but she's been sick. When she started with a fever Sunday, I thought it was just her fourth tooth coming in, but I'm thoroughly convinced it's something else now. She has slept in bed almost ALL day. Definitely not her norm, but the good news is I think her fever has finally broken!

Southern Culture

This blog post is probably not what you're expecting. I'm not talking about American grits and mashed potatoes with gravy here. I'm talking about the culture we just experienced from Hong Kong and the Southern part of the country we live in. (We made it back yesterday, by the way, and the initial reports about Archie's eye surgery are good.)

Never seen bamboo scaffolding before but it was EVERYWHERE in Hong Kong. Seems sturdy enough? Wonder if the pandas are upset. Did you know an adult panda eats about 18 pounds of bamboo a day? Would you want to crawl around on that?

The first few days we were in Hong Kong we couldn't find the market. I mean, we found a super crowded grocery store with some imports but not a nice open market like we're used to. I felt like I was home when I ran across this.

In the mornings everywhere you looked outside there were crowds of older people doing their Tai Chi and other exercises. TONS of them!

I love this picture because it is so revealing about cultural differences. We took a side trip to Shenzhen (a very developed Chinese city across the border from Hong Kong) on our way home. Everywhere we go, our white children always attract a crowd. See the photographers capturing Archie's antics on video. I also enjoy the guy to the far right of the picture with his shirt rolled up. This is a very common way for men to stay cool here. (People always call Grace a "foreign doll" and I nearly cracked up when Archie informed the crowd that he was a foreign doll, too.)

This next picture is a restaurant down south featuring food from our neck of the woods. Typically, food from the South and middle parts of our country is more popular around the world so I thought this was pretty funny. I think the waitresses were a little surprised to run into a foreigner from the same place as this restaurant! Didn't eat there. Figured we got enough food from our hometown. Opted for some frog on rice from the place next door. The flavor was fine but a little bony for my tastes.

Winter wonderlands and weddings from windows

When looking out my window slightly before 8 a.m. the other day, I caught sight of this lovely bride being picked up for her wedding. Unlike America, where the groom can't see the bride on the wedding day, the groom must head over early to the bride's house to pay her family and friends some "bribe money" delivered in red envelopes for the privilege of picking her up. (Nowadays I think that is mainly just part of a fun tradition.) I couldn't resist leaning out my window and snapping a few shots.

Here is the processional of cars. Most Chinese weddings take place in restaurants. Once you've registered and paid your fee, you're legally married (no need of further ceremony) so the wedding is just a celebration. Traditionally, the bride wears red but Western style wedding dresses are more popular every year.

The return of winter. What was missing from those wedding pics (snapped Saturday)? SNOW. What's back today (see below). Yeah! What's this, April 12? Winter, will you ever let go? I got so excited one day last week because I saw snow for the first time in about six months (meaning above freezing temps) but now...

It's the most wonderful time of the year (in Asia)

Nope. Not Christmas. Here's the scoop on the Lunar New Year and how our family celebrated. (Maybe I should say "is celebrating" as the festival will continue for another week or so.)

Here's the appetizer to our walk through the New Year: My preciouses in their traditional New Year garb:

On New Year's Eve day, we packed up and headed over to our friend's grandmother's house. We ate a late but bountiful lunch with lots of relatives.

After lunch, there was a trip to the nearby park for Archie and visiting for the adults. However, firecrackers exploding constantly on the ground all around brought the excursion to a rather quick end as I feared for our safety and hearing.

The afternoon was spent playing cards, watching the New Year gala on TV, text messaging every friend you ever had, and making dumplings to eat at midnight (blog post coming soon on the art of dumpling making).

At 11 p.m., it was time to go set off our own fireworks. Can you believe they sell things this monstrous to the general public without a license?

Some pretty heavy duty fallout, wouldn't you say?

This lady made my life wonderful. She is my friend's aunt, and she loved taking care of the kids. As you can imagine, kids kept up until the midnight meal get a little grumpy, but she helped keep them happy. I enjoyed the conversation she kept having with Archie while attempting in vain to get him to take a nap during constantly exploding fireworks (these things never stopped).

Aunt: The airplane is going. (Archie loves talking about airplanes.) The rabbit is going, too. The tiger is also going. When the airplane comes back, the rabbit will come and say Hai Tao, Hai Tao (his name) wake up, wake up. Archie's eyes nearly close then jerk back awake. Deep, huh?

On Day 3 of the New Year, we went to a different friend's uncle's house for lunch. It was a crowd that was lots of fun, and the uncle is a professional chef so the meal was FABULOUS!

There were also lots of uncles and aunts for the kids to play with there and even some little cousins! Here's Grace with an aunt (to me) and Grandmother (to her).

Goodbye for now. I hope you'll come again next year. All doors are made festive with these couplet verses wishing good fortune and money over the next year!

Happy New (Tiger) Year!

Happy Tiger Year! Today is the Lunar New Year, which is the biggest holiday of the year where we live. In a few minutes, we're packing up the kids and heading over to our friend's grandma's house to ring in the new year. (Every year has an animal attached, and we will watch the cow year fade away while the tiger year draws nigh.)

Actually, this will be my first time celebrating a traditional New Year festival because I've been in Thailand the past two years. I'm pretty excited. I'm expecting a huge meal at 2 p.m., lots of TV all day long and fireworks and dumplings at midnight. Actually, fireworks will be pretty non-stop as they were going pretty strong by 8 a.m. or so.

More coming soon on this great holiday!