Shanghai Ice Farm

Some of you may remember the 4th of July debacle of a few years ago when I tried to make red, white and blue ice cream? I thought I was so crafty; I made vanilla ice cream, picked all of the red and blue mini M&M's out of a bag and threw them into the machine. At the end I had purple ice cream with chocolate chips...at least it still tasted good!

We have decided to have a 4th of July barbecue and I will make ice cream. I won't be getting so involved as to try the red, white and blue again because this time my dilemma is a lot more basic: to make ice cream, one needs a key ingredient- ice. I think the American culture is the only one in which ice is sold in such accessible quantities. How many of you will stop at the C-store or gas station, or while at the grocery store pick up a bag or two of ice this weekend? But if you don't, you can rest assured that if you do run out you can just go down the street and get more, right? I don't have that luxury, so a few days ago I started farming ice. I searched all of my drawers and cupboards to find any and every container that could make a cube big enough to be worth it, but small enough to fit in the drum of my ice cream maker, I cleared out as much of the freezer as I could, and started stock-piling ice.

If she didn't before, my Ayi truly thinks I am nuts now! I can just see her shaking her head: "crazy Americans". My next concern is that my maker works alright plugged into the voltage converter. I don't have a lot of rock salt either...Wish me luck- I'll let you know how the ice cream turns out. Stop by and have some if you're in the neighborhood. Happy 4th everyone!

Late Night Snacks, Beijing-style

When we were in Beijing a few weeks ago we had an opportunity to walk through one of the night markets near our hotel, about 10 minutes walk from Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. There were about 40 food vendors lined up.

Many of them had the same basic fare to offer: some fruit (although they serve it covered in this clear jelly goop that looks so disgusting I could never bring myself to actually buy it), dumplings, a plate of noodles, some steamed buns. I couldn't resist a plate of fried dumplings, even though we had eaten earlier. As we walked on through the stalls, though,  

it definitely got easier to resist. And harder to hold back what I had just eaten... 

Interestingly, I did not see anyone buying from these meticulously ordered displays. The one thing that I did observe someone buy was the scorpions on a stick. I missed getting a picture of that though: For about 1$ US you could buy a stick with 3 or 4 1-inch scorpions on it but the picture wouldn't really have done it justice anyway because in most cases the scorpions were still moving while skewered on the stick, before being plunged into the deep fryer. I saw a couple of what looked to be American college kids daring each other to buy them. I found myself staring as a gutsy girl engaged in her own private Fear Factor episode (although they'd probably still be alive on the real FF). "Crunchy," she said. "Bitter", she said, without so much as a gag! We moved on just as she was daring her male companions to rise to the challenge.

Walking through I couldn't help but wonder: what is the order of this food chain? Does someone go out and look under rocks and in tidal pools to harvest their inventory? Do they have to clean them like vegetables pulled from the earth before they lay them out? Are they farm raised? I can't even begin to imagine how it works. Or what it might be like to eat a deep-fried silkworm pupa. According to Born Survivor: Bear Grylls bugs ARE a great source of protein. Hungry, anyone?

And just for fun, here are some of the other interesting foods seen around Shanghai in our daily travels:

And on the lighter side, a choice for dessert perhaps:

You might notice that they are labeled as an American product. Has anyone seen them on the shelves at Kroger or Meijer lately?

Our Latest Toy

This...

is our new best friend. No, I have not taken up tennis suddenly as a way to shed that last 10 pounds of baby weight (that training for and running 3 half marathons in 18 months has not helped me to shake-how sad is that?? As I have said before: I can find chocolate cookies ANYWHERE in the world; TimTams have conquered the globe!) No, the Bjorn Borg fanship remains solely the territory of my sister Sharon. (Sending you love and hugs in your recovery my dear sister!)

This is an

a handheld, rechargeable electronic bug zapper.

It is mosquito season everywhere in the northern hemisphere, I think. After going from cold directly to hot, the weather here has settled down a bit and is now quite mild, even pleasant, most days. A few of our windows have retractable screens, which is nice, so we were able to enjoy the breezes and the fresh air for a while. It didn't take long however for the mosquitoes to decide that inside our house was the place to be. And they were showing up in droves. Vivi looked like a little leper, she had so many bites. We didn't get a decent night's sleep for about a week, they kept waking us up. Enter the bug zapper: Skeeters, say hello to my little friend! As a kid growing up I was always kind of creeped out by those purple bug lights but now I am of the mind that there is no more satisfying sound than that ZAP! of a mosquito defeated! No more chasing the little 6@$+@rds around the room, trying to clap them between your hands, only to miss and have them fly away in triumph. Simply wave the "EMT" in their vicinity and you are likely to catch them. Pop! And Heavens above, I do not know how we would have survived without this. At first we thought it must be holes in the screens. We couldn't see any but moving parts are always an opportunity for failure: they must be climbing in along the tracks or something, we thought. Then the heat returned and we had a day over 90 degrees with about 90% humidity. (We've started Plum Rain season but more on that later.) So we closed the windows and finally turned on the AC. And I swear, the next 2 nights were the worst of all. We've decided that there must be an air intake somewhere that doesn't have a necessary screen on it or something because it is as if we have a window wide open somewhere and they are just pouring in! Within the space of about an hour one evening we killed about 20 with our little friend. I am the Mosquito Hunter! Around dinner time we "sweep the perimeter". That lasts until about bedtime and then I sweep the bedrooms before I put the kids to bed and close their door. I also found some of those Raid diffusers where you insert the repellent soaked pad and it diffuses repellent into the air but I think it took a day or two for the repellent to saturate the rooms adequately because even with those in place there was always at least one or two-or 12 that would wake you up at night. One night Heinz and I laughed that we were going to have to sleep in shifts to protect each other because we had already killed about 8 but no matter how much we tried to hunt them all down, once we turned off the light and dropped off to sleep another one came buzzing along.

I truly think this could be the greatest invention ever. If it wasn't for the voltage conversion issues (and probably some anti-electronics import regulations), I would bring a suitcaseful home to my family and friends when we head Stateside next month. It must emit a sound because every time we press the activator Barney looks up, twitches his ears and he does that cute little head twist. It bothering him would be the only thing that might make me hesitate to use it but thankfully he doesn't seem to care. After that initial response he simply puts his head back down and goes back to sleep. My Mandarin instructor also has a maid service in which she teaches her Ayis a high level of English to work for Western families. She said one of them asked her what the English name was for this little beauty. She was surprised that we haven't got a word (other than "bug zapper"?) for it and so am I! Where have they been all my life? When we move home I will happily buy a converter specially for my little baby so that I can use it through the Indiana summer!

Wishing you all Mosquito free days~

The Great Wall

I was hoping that my time in Asia would present some really neat opportunities and I think this one is going to be hard to beat! This was definitely one of those where, halfway through you're saying to yourself "Who is the idiot that thought this was a good idea???" and then you actually do it, you cross the finish line, and it's like giving birth: all the pain and agony that led up to that moment is completely washed away by the euphoria and the flood of endorphins! I did it! It was an amazing challenge, impossible to prepare for and possibly the coolest thing I have ever done. (Although the Race through the Jungle at the EFRC in Indiana does come close....roaring lions 20 feet away: very cool!)

I was really worried going into Race Day for a couple of reasons: my legs were still sore from walking the 2 miles of wall on inspection day 2 days prior; the 3:30 bus departure from the hotel on Race Morning meant at least a 3am wake-up call; and knowing that, since this is not a race one does for time, I had let my training slip and was not as fit on race day as I might have wanted to be. But Race Day dawns, regardless, doesn't it?

The bus leaves at way-too-early:30 but a breakfast box provided by the hotel puts a smile on my Sherpa's face! Love you honey!

Pre Race activity in Yin and Yang Square, the heart of the Fortress, where the 1/2 and full both begin and end.

Number's on; if I wasn't so freakin' cold (it was about 50 degrees) I might be ready to go! Thank God the sun came out and it turned out to be a perfect day for running, about 70 degrees.

And at 7:40, we're off! Out through the Fortress main gate

on the road to the wall, to what I affectionately refer to as...

The Hill of Attrition! 5 kilometers straight UP....

...and UP....

...and up. I was really freaked out on inspection day when I realized this part of the course. I learned a lot about reading a course topography map that day!

I was so relieved when we finally hit the 5 km. mark (you can see it propped against the road sign) because that meant we were around the corner from

Just a few more steps up...

And there it is

Now the fun starts!
 

You can see: it was a beautiful day! It was the biggest field ever, 2000 participants (over 500 in the full, over 800 in the half, 350 or so in the 10k and and about 225 in the 5k) so unfortunately there were a lot of bottle necks

But that was alright because it left some time for taking pictures

My motto for the day: "The journey is the reward"

Along the wall the steps vary in height and depth but in many cases it was little more than a stone ledge or ramp with a sheer vertical drop to one side. You couldn't see the bottom here without hanging out over the edge a bit. I chose not to do so.

The last portion of Wall was "The Goat Track": mostly dirt trail, straight down, with the occasional steps thrown in. But it afforded a beautiful aerial view of the Fort and the Square, including the beginning of the 10 k race, starting out under the bridge (see below). The course for the half wound around the fort once (which basically surrounded all of the buildings that you can see in these pictures; about 1 km), went down into and through the square, and back out onto the road for another 7+ miles. The next 1 1/2 miles was on the road, the middle 4 was in the nearby "village" circling back to the road to retrace the 1 1/2 miles back into the square. That middle 4 miles was a real trail run: all dirt, in some cases rocky path, and also full of hills.

 Some views through the village:

Almost there!

And finally, over 3 and a half hours later back in the Square!

It felt so good to be finished! And it really is true, once the endorphins kick in, you forget how miserable you were at mile 9! Am serious about doing it again next year so those of you who want to join me, let's start making some plans! All in all, it was a great race. I'll go into more detail about some of the fun anecdotes from the morning on the course in a next installment. At the moment I am surprised that blogspot has let me put this many pictures in one post so I won't push my luck. I'll wrap this up for now and write a little more soon. Happy running everyone! 

Who's Hungry?

Just a quick note to share some of the more entertaining sights we have come across lately. Naturally we expected to find some really outrageous foods while here...
(This was spotted last fall during our recon mission, but it gave me such a laugh that I have to share it again here:

)

In Malaysia I was entertained to find Cheesecake Slurpees at the 7-11. I thought Black Fungus Juice was the strangest, most unappetizing thing I would come across here, until I found this:

I didn't think it would be possible but I've gotten so used to seeing the cured, whole chicken, cuttlefish, whatever, laid out in heaps in the grocery store for everyone to simply paw through that I don't even notice them anymore but the great cleaver next to the pile in this case did give me pause.

I guess you are supposed to use the big stone chopping block as you hack off your own piece of cured ham. Everyone around me thought nothing of it but they were freaked out by me taking a picture of it. Something else that cracked me up the other day, although I was unable to get a picture of it: I was visiting a school to apply for Conrad to join their Kindergarten. As I dropped the application off at the admin's desk, I noticed that she had her afternoon snack ready to go, sitting next to her stack of paperwork: 2 enormous chicken feet, each individually wrapped in it's own shrink-wrap package, like a Slim Jim. Yum. I didn't think to ask if they provided those to the students. That might be a good detail to know.

But perhaps you'd like something a little lighter. Here, as in Malaysia, we have Soft Shell Crab and Seaweed flavored Pringle's. Lay's has taken a different route: 

If, like me, you are not a tea drinker, there is another choice:

These I have tried. If you're having a sweet craving, they might do the trick. The blueberry is strong, the first flavor to come through, along the lines of a blueberry Poptart. But then the salt and potato catch up, and it just doesn't work.

This sign was seen in the Shanghai Ikea. Perhaps if you take this English phrase and turn it into Chinese, and then back into the Original Swedish, it will make sense to someone. I am not that someone. Are you?

This one falls under the heading "Doesn't work when translated literally":

And this was on a vending machine in the metro station, selling key chains.

I thought it was funny and it made me happy.

Hope they gave you a chuckle. Let me know if you've seen anything you like and I can bring some to you when we come home for a visit this summer. Blueberry Lay's, you know you want 'em!