Steven, Laura, Sulu, Alicia, and June

The two butterfly photos below are by Alicia.  I taught her a little more about how to use her camera and she was really happy with these shots.  I agree – pretty!

(photos by Alicia)

We took the cable car up to the wall, walked for quite a while along the wall, then took toboggans down the mountain.  It took a few hours and we were all exhausted by the end.  All except the two-year-old, who had her own personal Sherpa to carry her the whole way.

Our whole group (photo set up by Jon.)

We stayed at The Schoolhouse in Mutianyu, which is a tiny town about an hour and a half outside of Beijing.  It was a pretty cool place.  The first day we just hung out, napped (after the late night and early morning on the train), watched the Rugby (Mike brought his projector and laptop, and streamed the game live in Slovakian to their make-shift AV room), ate, played games, and walked around the town.

On Friday we took the train to Beijing as the final part of Brendan’s birthday surprises.  He just thought it was a family trip – until there was a knock on his cabin door and Paul, Suzy, Mike, Casey, and Jon and I were there with a bottle of bubbles singing Happy Birthday! I think he would have fallen over if he hadn’t already been sitting down.

Mike and Jon got a hold of my camera and fisheye lens and took most of the photos in the gallery.  The tiny confine of the train compartment was a perfect place to use it.  More to come!

Brendan’s Tattoo from Emily Minor on Vimeo.

On Sunday, we met at Crystal Jade for lunch to celebrate Brendan’s 40th birthday.

Johnna told Brendan about the tattoo she’d had designed in a song… and then told him the appointment was in 30 minutes! He didn’t back out and a group of us hung out while he was getting it done.  This is a time lapse video of Ting from Shanghai Tattoo.

This is what Brendan had to say about the day:

I turned 40 on the 25th of July.  With help from a lot of friends, and particularly Paul and Suzy, Johnna had been planning my 40th for many months. I had absolutely no clue what she had planned for me!

We started the day with a Dimsum brunch at Crystal Jade in Xintiandi, and then had a wonderful banana birthday cake made and decorated by Suzy.  At the end of brunch Johnna sang a song about me set to the tune of a Sonic Youth song!  The last verse was about my present; a tattoo!  I was pretty cool, calm and collected at that point because I had been talking about getting a tattoo for years.  That’s when Johnna told me the tattooing was starting in 30 minutes and had already been designed!  At that point all of the blood drained from my face.

Luckily, I loved the design and the whole story behind it.  In Chinese, a set of boy and girl twins is called “龍鳳胎”, or in English; a dragon and a phoenix.  This means the dragon/taniwha in the design represents Finn and the phoenix represents Jade.  Neve’s Chinese name is 白星， or “White Star” in English, so she is represented by the star.  The background is a traditional Maori Koru pattern.

At 2:30PM I sat down and Ting, the tattoo artist, got started.  All our friends sat around in the tattoo parlour drinking wine and beer and periodically coming over to check out the progress.  Jon provided some great advice on how to cope with the pain, and Mike provided cans of cold diet coke and a human fan whenever it looked like I was getting too hot!

It was all done two and a half hours later so we went downstairs and had a couple of quiet drinks.  The guys all performed a haka to bless the tattoo, and then we moved on to dinner at 1221 – a Chinese restaurant that has been our favourite over many, many years.  It was a great meal and a great way to end a huge day!

Nishant and Sandhya repatriated on July 1st, and Corinna and Andrew moved to Australia.  Jon and I also left for the US on July 1st, so we had a farewell party before we all left for different continents.  I set up my camera and laptop so everyone could take photo booth photos.

We ate at the Kurrawa Surf Club.  It was awesome to sit outside, have a beer and enjoy the view!

I was holding a sleepy Alex while Wendy ate (and the girls at the next table oohh and ahhed all over).

He was not so thrilled when I shifted positions on him.  (Notice his little finger.)

We had a bottle of wine and some drinks at the bar on the top floor.  There was a nice roof top bar that would be amazing in the summer.  (We all are wearing the new glasses we’d gotten that day.)

Hanna mentioned something about singing, and we decided to go to karaoke around 2 AM.  Really, it is a totally Chinese cultural experience!   Here they are rocking out to Queen.