Emily's Escapades

(photo by Jon)

(photo by Jon)
Lots of people waving burning incense all around. Very safe.

Why do people have to touch everything? We all know that the oils from our skin ruins old things. So, they’ve put up a fence to stop people from touching the very old carvings of Buddha. This doesn’t stop them though… they just use it to stand on to lean over and touch him!

Too many people!!! Everyone seems to need to get a photo in front of everything, so people are just constantly standing everywhere.

Last weekend, Jon needed to go to Hangzhou for work. Saturday, we took the slower (and very loud and annoying) T train there. Mr. Fan is also very interested in photography, so he took us to West Lake twice, as the famous lotus flowers are in bloom.

We took a one-day cruise in Sweden that went from the Stockholm archipelago to an island in the Finland archipelago. Since alcohol is SO expensive in Sweden, a lot of Swedes go to other countries to get it. So, it was basically a beer run!

(photo by Jon)
We had a couple of hours in Stockholm before we left, but it started POURING rain, and we’d left our umbrellas with our luggage. Jon and I sat down at a pub and watched the weather and had a couple beers.

It finally stopped raining as the ship left Stockholm.

Celia, Hanna, Andreas, Henrik and Jon in the dining room. We ate a couple smorgasbords. All very traditional Swedish food like herring and salmon.

Enjoying a last drink.

Celia the movie star… looking fabulous after a nice relaxing massage.

Henrik bought Hanna a Canon DSLR for a wedding present. What a sweet guy! She loved it. We teased them about bringing 4 extra people on their honeymoon, but they claim that the honeymoon isn’t until they go to New Zealand in December.

In Örebro, we also visited the castle. Instead of a traditional tour, they made the tour into a play of sorts. It was much more interesting than hearing a guide rattle off dates!

A person walking over the bridge is reflected in the moat.

I think this little ducky was laying eggs in this flower pot.

Cute little cabins that just sleep two.

Cute little nook – perfect for a cup of tea in the morning!! I want one.

There was dew or rain every day.

Hanging out by the lake, drinking beer around the fire.

The diverse group of people staying a few days after the wedding: Mattias and Anna (they are Finnish, but are part of the 5% of Finns who speak Swedish as their native language); Sven (German); Celia (Kiwi living in England); Andreas (German)

Sweden seemed like the cleanest, most peaceful place on earth compared to China!

When Hanna was in America, she said certain things were “SO American.” Like peanut butter and jelly. Here are some things that I think are SO Swedish.

Summer homes! Swedes get at least 5 weeks of vacation per year, so it seems everyone has a little cabin in the woods by the lake to get away to. Very nice.

Woods. Green things. Nature. Sweden has a law that every person has a right to hike through and put up a tent and camp on ANY land. Technically someone could sleep in your cow pasture or field two nights. However, Swedes are very polite and certainly wouldn’t set up camp anywhere that might bother someone.

Bread and cheese and meat for breakfast. Yum! Swedes have “tube food” which is just like it sounds – many different types of food processed and put in a metal tube. Flavors are things like: cheese and bacon, ham, salmon, and various types of cheese. We can get two kinds at our local IKEA, but they have whole aisles devoted to it in Swedish grocery stores.

Another cute little Swedish house. The majority of houses are red. If it’s not red, it’s yellow. It’s just the rule!

This was taken at 10 PM on the day we arrived in Sweden. We were driving to the cabin and we just had to pull over to take a photo – it was beautiful!

We got into the Amsterdam airport at about 4 AM. We always seems to be at Schiphol at weird hours. The sunrise was nice though! Schiphol is a nice airport – it has a museum, a play area, a casino, a spa, tons of shops… not a bad way to kill a couple hours. I saw that a 10-minute neck and shoulder massage cost 16 Euros. That’s 153 RMB for 10 minutes; well over 10 times more expensive than China. China – 1; the Netherlands – 0.

I bought some nail polish at a shop, and the salesperson was super nice, even bubbly at 4 AM. I was so surprised at how nice she was. I’ve forgotten what customer service is and how nice people can be, even if they don’t know each other. China – 0; the Netherlands – 1.

10:42 PM

11:58 PM

3:44 AM

All of these photos are right out of the camera – no adjusting levels or contrast.

Today we’re leaving for Sweden! Our friends Hanna and Henrik are getting married on the 4th of July… at a castle. OK, maybe not a fairytale castle, but the summer home of Swedish Royalty.

We went to Jönköping University in the Spring of 2003. Six full years since we’ve been there. We’re very excited to go back for a visit. We’ll be traveling around for few days with Hanna, Henrik and a few other international guests.

Henrik, Hanna, me and Jon at the international students good-bye dinner

We lived a couple blocks away from Lake Vättern.

The view over Jönköping.

I’m having some posts publish while we’re gone, so there will be new content while we’re gone.

Sunday we went geocaching at the Longhua Cemetery of Revolutionary Martyrs. We spent a lot of time looking for the cache, due to the fact that I’d downloaded the coordinates several months ago and then they moved the cache to a new location! Good thing for smartphones with internet capibility to confirm coordinates with the website. Because of that, we didn’t get to look around as much as we’d have liked to – maybe another time.

2887 Longhua Xi Lu, Xuhui near Kaixuan Nan Lu
龙华西路2887号 近凯旋南路

I’ve never seen a Chinese guy with such rippling muscles!

One of the things where we shake our heads and say “Only in China.” I’m sure the sign says something like “Don’t be stupid and walk off this ledge.”

All of these buildings are massive, and totally built out of blocks of ice. There are LED lights inside the ice (well, not actually in the ice, between layers of the ice.)

I had no desire to freeze my butt on these slides.

Jon had a meeting in Harbin, so we went up on a Saturday for the weekend. Harbin is very close to Russia – it has a lot of Russian influence and the city looks nothing like other Chinese cities.

It is frigid there. See my really cute hat? Shannon sent it to me along with a scarf and I think I would have died without it. This is the main pedestrian street. (She sent me another hat and scarf set – you can see it here on her blog. I feel a little bad cause the scarf sounds like a real pain in the rear. But it is really cool!!)

We ate Russian food here – a pretty small place but with good food.

The entrance to the Ice Sculpture Park. We went there the first day and I didn’t even have long underwear on. Not a good idea. We decided to really be comfortable, you’d need snow pants or heavy coveralls. And awesome boots – Jon thought he might lose a toe!

On the second day we bought face masks for 10 RMB and that made life a LOT better. The wind is so frigid. We still had to go warm up about every hour. It really is freezing. We thought we were tough South Dakotans, but we were acting more like Floridians!

On Thursday Jon and I rented a motorcycle for the day. The island is pretty small – we kept driving by our turns! Here are a few snapshots from the street.

A tuk-tuk – we never actually took one, but they are common to use to get around. (We really just hung out on the beach most of the time!) Just a local taxi.

The King and Queen are highly respected. I thought it was interesting that they have these monument/shrine things all over.