Emily's Escapades

George and Marion (our Dutch surfers) on the top of our roof.

Boots likes to lay on our CSers stuff on the bed and wait to get petted. (photo by Marion)

Marion, Sandhya and I. Sandhya and her husband Nishant hosted the party and cooked delicious vegetarian Indian food. VERY delicious!!

A very diverse group – guys from San Francisco here for the eclipse, a guy that lived at the South Pole three times (my cousin Brian did that; worked at the research station there and shoveled a lot of snow), people from Isreal, Lithunania, Columbia, the Netherlands, Italy, India and a guy with Pakistani heritage living in London – all getting together in China. The world is really small now!

After the ceremony, a massive party commences. (It even said on the invitation: MASSIVE party to follow.)

As soon as the groom leaves the head table, all of the guys rush up to kiss the bride. The girls all kiss the groom if the bride leaves the table too. Not just once – every time either of them leaves.

There are a lot of songs sung by everyone, usually ending in a toast. We also saw lip-sync performances, many speeches by their parents and siblings, and various fun activities by friends.

During one traditional game, they had to answer questions about which partner had more of certain traits by holding up the shoe of that person.

After the dinner, toasts, games and general fun, we went to another building for coffee and cake (this was at 11 PM. Swedes love their coffee!)

The dance then started about midnight. I think it was 3:30 AM when we left. It was certainly a massive party!

An excited bride! Hanna was one of the most expressive (and fun!) brides I’ve ever seen.

We all got on a boat to take us to the castle grounds.

Approaching the castle… it was actually the summer home.

A simple ceremony was performed outside. Because they had so many international guests, it was in both Swedish and English.

After viewing the SWFC, we decided to check out some live jazz at the House of Blues and Jazz. After a couple drinks, we went to the Captain’s Bar, conveniently located right across the street. It’s the top floor of the Captain’s Hostel and has the Bund view without pretentious drink prices.

Marion and George are Couch Surfers who stayed with us 4 days. They’re from the Netherlands, and George was studying business Chinese in Beijing.

The view is quite nice when the lights are still on. Behind us is the infamous view of Pudong across the Huangpu River.

37 Fuzhou Lu, near Sichuan Zhong Lu
福州路37号，近四川中路

Daft Punk came to play Shanghai!

Actually, #14 welding glass is an approved method of looking at the sun. Steve got the whole mask to be extra safe. :-)

Steve, Jon, Dan and Wendy watching as the eclipse starts.

Mid-eclipse

These were taken in castle ruins about 20 minutes from Jonkoping. It was raining and the sun was setting.

We just got back from a week in Sweden. Our best friends, Hanna and Henrik, tied the knot. We had a wonderful time and you’ll be seeing photos from it for several days!!

They asked me to do a reading (in English) during the ceremony. It was really an international wedding, so a lot of things were both in Swedish and English.

Bonnie took a professional cake-decorating course in the US, and Claire and I wanted to learn, so she put on a little class for us. I’ve decorated several things before, but knowing the proper way to do it makes it a lot easier! We only learned a few basic things so I think we’ll have more classes later.

My roses look more like cabbage….

Recently, we had Sonja, a German woman who is doing her PhD study on China’s influence in Darfur, stayed with us several days. She was staying in Shanghai longer than we could host, so she moved to another host.

Bettina, a German woman on sabbatical from her job at a EU Library in Greece, stayed with us a little while after that. Since they were both in town, we had a little CS get-together for lunch Friday.

Bettina, Jon S., Sonja, me & Jon at the Blue Frog in Daning.

At the local dive bar after a fabulous meal at Da Marco.

We have had all good experiences with Couchsurfing so far. We’ve hosted four times now, and will host two more couples in July. We’re hoping to surf sometime in the future!

Catherine and Rebekah

I’ve been home since April 13th. I really surprised my parents by showing up the day before my dad’s 60th birthday. These two cuties are my first cousins once removed. (I think that’s right.)

Singing, playing Liar’s Dice and drinking. Good times.

Yvonne invited us all to her hometown for dumplings, to wander in the park, and dinner with her parents. It was a great day!

I’ve only seen the dishes piled on top of each other a couple times. Usually there is tons of food, but not piles and piles of it!

Saturday morning, a group of Dakkies with cars went to pick strawberries in Qingpu, which is on the outskirts of Shanghai. There are rows and rows of greenhouses. Cody negotiated the price for the group. They wanted 10 RMB per jin, but Cody negotiated to 9 RMB. He told the lady, “We have foreigners here. You must think about the international relations!”

Roc’s daughter Emma. All of us wore plastic bags on our feet because it was really muddy.

Jon and I picked 8 kilos of strawberries, which is almost 18 pounds. It cost 145 RMB ($21).

Rapeseed is planted where ever there is a little extra space.

After the concert, we went to check out a little bar near Da Marco. It’s just through an alley from our apartment. It’s small, dark, and wasn’t busy. Perfect.

Last Friday, Steve, Jon and I meant to go to a jazz concert at twocities, an art gallery where a few of our friends work. Jon had just gotten back from Guangzhou, and when we arrived our friends Eva and Chelsea were just finishing cleaning up. This week we decided to be less fashionably late, though we were still quite late after waiting 40 minutes in the rain for a taxi.

The concert featured American fiddler Hanneke Cassel, who played with two Chinese men named Tom and Jerry. They played a blend of bluegrass/Americana and Scottish music stylings. (from the twocities website.)

Chelsea and I at the gallery. They showcase mostly glass work, which is a fairly new medium in China. They have some very beautiful pieces.

Jon’s brother sent us these photos taken from his front porch. They just got a LOT of snow!

Notice the car buried in the street at the top left?

That drift across the sidewalk is probably about as tall as me.

Jared and I both had birthdays in March. When we were growing up in South Dakota, we never knew if we’d be able to have our birthday parties or not. There was a good chance we’d be hit with a storm. I remember a couple times not getting to go roller-skating in Madison (20 miles away) because the roads were too icy or you couldn’t see through the snow. I also remember Kirstin and her mom rolling their car into the ditch; I think Dad pulled them out with the tractor.

March was usually too early for Dad to start calving; though sometimes we’d be lucky and have a birthday calf. It probably wasn’t so lucky for the calf to be born early, but we really got a kick out of having one born the same day we had been.

One treat we’d get when it was cold was home-made ice cream! Dad would grab a bucket of ice slabs he’d made when he’d chopped a hole in the dugout for the cattle to drink. Mom would mix milk, sugar and a few other things together, which went in a metal container. That container was put inside the wooden bucket, the top placed on, ice and rock salt packed around it, and then we’d crank. For hours it seemed! We’d try to take turns but I’m sure Dad did the majority of the work.

Happy Birthday, Jared.

Recently when Jon was in Guangzhou, along with Aileen, Dan, Geoffrey, and Larry, a guy selling sketches approached them. They decided to see just what it would turn out like, fulling knowing this guy probably couldn’t really draw. (He also couldn’t spell the name of the restaurant they were at, even though it was right in front of him.)

Any guesses as to who is who? Put your answer in the comments below! (Hint: See the “women” on the far right? That’s actually a man.)

Dan turned a year older on the 21st, so a group of friends went to dinner at DeMarco and then to People 6 to celebrate.

Probably the scariest photo of Dan ever…. BTW, he’s not 18. But perhaps he wishes he were.

What is a birthday without shots? The bar had a huge selection of bottles… unfortunately, they were all empty bottles for show! It took Mark over 30 minutes to come back with a shot of something, which turned out to be tequila. Someone decided Wendy needed to learn the American college party way of shooting tequila.

It started pouring rain. Steam was rising from the lights in the bamboo. Try clicking on the photo to see a little detail. It looked cool.

My friend Bonnie hangs out with some of other American expat women and was given tickets to one of their events. It was a Las Vegas-style poker night, complete with costume contest, black jack and unlimited wine and beer. Her husband wasn’t too kneen on going, so we made it a girls night out.

We spent most of the night playing Black Jack. It was amazing… everyone kept winning! (Apparently the dealers weren’t so skilled.) We got free chips as part of the entrance and just expected to lose those quickly. Bonnie won a few bottles of wine after cashing in her big pile of chips.

After it was over, we followed a small group of new friends to Lane 274, a bar which one of them owned. The husbands and Steve (who’d been playing pool) met us there. We stayed out entirely too late, but had a great time.

Jon’s birthday is March 12 and mine is March 13. (Yeah, what a coincidence.) Our co-workers surprised us with cakes and singing, and featured us in the employee newsletter.