Summer watermelon

Boxing Day 2012

Hervey Bay

A perfect day in Hervey Bay. Boxing Day 2012.

Presents

Max and Zara received their "big" presents on Saturday morning. New bikes - with trainer wheels. They were very happy to get them - but not much chance to use them yet with the cold wintery days and parents busy packing for Australia. Next year!

Hiding the evidence

Max's eye is much better - but he likes hiding it under a patch. I think I will have to conveniently forget the patch when we fly to Australia tonight!

Christmas card

A gingerbread house Christmas card came home in Max's school bag last week. Turns out the picture inside is of a cute little boy Santa!

Craftsman

Yesterday we visited a paper craftsman who cuts beautiful pictures from pieces of paper. We bought a couple of pieces for the wall, however while we were there the kids got a free sample! The chicken is cut out from a single piece of paper. Amazing work.

Stylish cycler

Be sure to check out her woolen mittens.

Bleak

A particularly grey, wet and bleak day in Shanghai today. This is a view from one of our bedroom windows.

Eye progress

Spider-Man

Max's teacher face-painted him as Spiderman today to cover up his bruise.

Eye update

Looking better today - but no school just in case. Bruise moving from deep purple to warm yellowish green.

Max vs bedside table

Max had a bad run in with his bedside table last night. He was jumping on the bed. Off to the ER we trot this morning. No stitches, but likely a colorful bruise for the next 3 weeks or so. And he will probably have a little "Shanghai" scar on his eyebrow. Everyone in Australia will get a first-hand look at it shortly.

Small shop

Tiny, tiny, small shop on Anfu Rd Shanghai.

Postie

Letters from Grandma and Grandad arrived yesterday and the kids were very excited to get something in the mail!

Our street on a rainy Saturday

This is the street we live on, as proudly modelled by Max. The footpaths and gutters are always spotless thanks to the faithful band if street sweepers. It's a quiet little street compared with most in Shanghai.

How many sticky fingers does it take...?

Parents were invited to participate in biscuit baking with Max's class yesterday. Apparently the dozens and dozens of xmas themed bikkies we created will be sold at this year's Xmas bazaar on the weekend.

Winter

Cold days are here. The days start about 9 degrees and usually top out at 13 or 14. Meaning that when the others leave home at 7am, it's jackets and boots time. Of course it's going to get a lot colder than this in the weeks to come.

Up goes the tree

School photo

Zara's preschool photo 2012.

Asia Christmas

Shop employees wearing big fake wings.

Vending machine

Especially for tissues! Another strange china sight.

Staying in touch

Count the phones this taxi driver has going. Maybe he has six girlfriends on the go. Or maybe he acts as an answering service for his friends. Whatever it is, it was the first time I had seen this many phones at once.

Interested

In fine form, Max was very interested in these workmen fixing a moving walk-way. He even hollered out to them "hey you men what are you fixing?".

Characters

Chinese language uses characters rather than alphabet letters like English.  Number plates on cars use a character to denote the province the car is registered in.  I've seen lot of Shanghai (沪) cars on the roads and plenty from neighbouring Zhejiang (浙) Anhui and Jiangsu (苏) provinces but never this one (below).  I think it looks pretty neat for a Chinese character.  No idea which of China's 33 or so provinces it's from. 

Declaration of love

Nanjing Rd, downtown Shanghai.

Shanghai skyline

This photo, taken after Sunday brunch at the Fairmont Peace Hotel, shows the very modern Shanghai skyline, including the Pearl Tower and the Bottle opener.

Class photo

Max's class photo "Elefantengruppe" (Elephant Group).

Lanterns

Yesterday I spent the morning at school helping Max creates a lantern for the Lantern festival. This is a German tradition that is held every year. He was pretty proud of his result. Zara's class also participates and she made her own dragon lantern.

Tonight we will go to the school again for the parade. A little light is put in the lantern to light it up in the dark.

Puzzles

Zara is quite into jigsaw puzzles at the moment. Here is a picture of the ones she did today.

Big shoes

Under the bonsai tree, Suzhou

Cool security guard

Lap of luxury? This guy works in his glass enclosed guard hut, made all the more comfortable by the wall-mounted split system air conditioner. You can even see the compressor unit at the back. Decadent.

The irony in all this? This was taken outside the State Grid building in Nanjing - the government organisation responsible for electricity distribution.

Craftsman

In Suzhou last week I came across a man selling marble hand-carved stamps. They were essentially polished marble about the size of a medicine bottle and he used a sharp point to etch out on the bottom. I got him to carve a pair for Max and Zara - it has their names in English as well as Chinese characters. Watching him work - digging out the marble bit by bit - was amazing. I should post a photo of the finished product. More amazing was that it was all done for about $8 a stamp.

Smile of the day

Nut feast

Max and Zara pulled out the macadamia cracker on Saturday and chowed down on some of Grandad's macadamias while colouring in.