motherland or bust

shopping in chiner

2011-09-06T10:54:00.007+08:00

so i know i'm the worlds laziest blogger, but i just can't seem to arrive that things to blog about. but as i was cruising the isles of the local grocery store, i stumbled upon some gems that everyone needs to know about.

here's some of the pills found in the vitamin department:

this is called "wine-less (sober up)". so for all you drunks out there, china has figured out a way for you to sober up.here is some "fur seal oil". what does someone want with fur seal oil? will it make their skin shiny?

"essence of kangaroo", now what good is a little kangaroo for?
here's some pig feet in the freezer. delicious!!!

a little chicken complete with his little head.so, warmly welcome you to come shopping in china!

my changing quality standards

2011-04-02T17:52:00.005+08:00

ever since coming to china my standard for food quality and service at restaurants has changed dramatically. maybe because you never tip the waitress and when you want service you just yell at the workers. literally, if we want someone to come to our table we just yell "fu yuan" and someone will yell back acknowledging us and then come to the table. at first it was strange, but now i love it. i sometimes imagine myself sitting at applebees or fridays and yelling for my waitress - i probably wouldn't get any service and someone would spit in my chicken fingers.

anyway, i was thinking about how in america when you get weird flavored food or there is a hair in it, it's standard procedure to get another entree or get your food for free. like one time i went to eat at logan's in holland, mi. and i got a burger where there was mold all over the bottom bun. i was one bite away from eating it (thanks to rach for saving me on that one). the waiter was grossed out and the manager apologized and comped the burger. if that happened here, nothing would be replaced or comped. for my birthday we went to pizza hut and ordered a hawaiian pizza. when we started eating it, we tasted a very strong seafood flavor - yuck!!! i tasted some bits of crab and spicy seaweed junk in my pizza, so i decided to take some action and tell the manager. he was not phased at all by my complaint. in fact he said, "yeah, i know. we use the same knives and pans to cut the pizzas." what the heck? can someone say "cross contamination"? that evening was also spent in the w.c. as my body expelled the crummy pizza. then i went to kfc the next day and there was a hair in my drink and in my french fries. holy cow, a terrible string of dining experiences.

imagine this beauty of a pizza mixed with the pizza you really wanted to eat.

needless to say, if i was in america i would have complained up a storm and expected a refund. but in china, i just kinda roll with it. man, i've gotten lame.

english class

2011-03-22T20:49:00.004+08:00

here's the latest lesson from sam's preschool. rach and i noticed the english lesson on the door to her room last week.

the interesting phrase that they are learning is "get off the bus piggy". who is piggy? i hope they aren't learning to call fat people piggy. that would be a shame. i'm not really sure what they are learning. i was hoping that sam would be going to english class, because i think it would be funny and her english is probably better than the teacher's. but she only goes to school in the morning and english is in the afternoon, so i guess she won't be going. oh well, at least her english is pretty good.

here's also a picture of the cabinet that i successfully opened.

my life as a criminal

2011-02-28T16:00:00.002+08:00

there is a cabinet in our apartment that we inherited from another teammate 6 yrs ago when we first got to china. at the bottom are two doors with a lock on it. the doors have been locked for 6 yrs and no one ever gave us a key. on sunday i decided that i was tired of having a locked cabinet and really needed the space for all the extra stuff we recently inherited from our teammates who went back to america. so i went to our building "handyman" (term used loosely) to ask for a drill to drill out the lock. he wasn't there so i explained to another lady what i needed. this was all in chinese and i didn't know how to say drill, those are vocabulary words that you don't cover in introductory chinese classes. she said she would tell the guy when he got back. so i headed home anxious about getting this stupid lock opened (not sure why it bothered me so much, but after 6 yrs enough was enough of having a locked cabinet). so i started researching online how to pick open a lock with a paperclip. i tried multiple methods and nothing worked. the people online make is seem so easy to be a criminal and pick locks with minimal tools. finally i stumbled across a youtube video of a kid with the metal thing from a pen cap and paper clip. i attempted to pick the lock for the 20th time of the day and to my surprise it totally worked. i know, it was awesome! i'm totally going to break into people's cabinets now. i told sam that there must be some kind of treasure inside the cabinet too. because really, who would lock a cabinet and then take the keys with them? something awesome must be inside. when i opened the doors, there was nothing but an old iron and 2 paper bags. what a disappointment. it was like when geraldo opened up that tomb and there was nothing. man, geraldo, i totally feel your pain. it wasn't even a cool iron. it was like the first iron every made to plug in, it didn't even have the steam function. just a big block of metal with a cord.

i should have been preparing for class, but now i learned a valuable life skill. thanks a lot 13yr old kid from youtube!

back in action

2011-02-19T16:23:00.002+08:00

here i am back in chiner :) we just arrive 3 days ago. i love me some jet lag too. how do you explain to a 3 yr old that even though their tummy says it's time to eat, the clock says it's time to go to bed. the first night here, sam went to sleep at 3 pm and then woke up at 1 am ready to go for the day - ugh! at least things are starting to look up. we're all going to bed around 9 pm now and getting up in the middle of the night, but at least the little sam actually goes back to sleep (without a snack).

so here's what's shakin' in china:

1. pizza hut!!!!!!! seriously, we have a pizza hut now. we don't even have a mcdonalds, but we actually have a pizza hut. we went for lunch today and they wouldn't make us a pepperoni pizza. how lame is that? isn't the pepperoni pizza what all pizza places were started on? it was difficult to explain that we didn't want the seafood toppings and that we only wanted the pepperoni, after the manager put the negatory on it, we were stuck ordering off the menu. but don't order the cheese pizza today, they don't have it. i know you're thinking - is it really pizza hut? according to the logo and prices it is.

2. crappier roads and an increase in taxi fares that's what else is new here.

3. chinese food still jacks up my tummy. i think i put some weight on after living in the states for a few months, but after the last days, i'm pretty sure that i'm back down to my "china weight".

now were are trying to wipe all the dust off our stuff and unpack all our stuff. i'm also realizing that 3 girls in one tiny apartment is going to be a difficult thing. man, those girls have a lot of clothes!

i'm still in shock about the pizza hut. when we first arrived in siping 5 yrs ago we just got snickers, and they were even hard to find. now i'm waiting for the mcdonalds.

austin's animals

2010-11-13T03:42:00.005+08:00

i was born in a city, no farm animals or farms. the closest thing to the farm was the orange groves (which is cool but lacking in big farm animals). so whenever i go to the midwest, i love the cows and farms. i'm also a fan of the small towns in america. that's the reason why i love to go to rach's hometown and read the local newspaper there. it's pretty awesome. one of the things they have in the paper is the local police reports. here is where they chronicle every activity that the police do throughout the day. so today's blog is dedicated to the entries in the police report that relate to the animals of austin.

tuesday:
* deceased cat found (that's it? nothing said about if there was an owner looking for it)
* officer dispatched to a deer that was hit by a car near international paper
* checked the area of 13th street and ninth avenue for loose dog, returned to owner
* report of a dog to be tied to duffle bad on interstate 90 (this is my favorite)
* loose dog in the 500th block of 4th street

wednesday:
* picked up an injured rabbit at 900 block of 23rd ave sw
* report of an animal complaint at the 100 block of 10th st
* checked on a dog that was inside a car for several hours at 600 block of 9th st, dog was fine
* checked the area for a dog that jumped at a mailman at the 1400 block of fifth street

so i came to the conclusion that the police in austin do more for the animals than the people.

on another note, here's a picture of us at austin's most famous museum - the spam museum.

hangin' in NC

2010-10-30T00:28:00.004+08:00

i realize that i'm the world's worst blogger, but i'm okay with that. the last entry was from china and now we are in cary, nc. we've been in the states since july and we're heading back to chiner in feb 2011.

since we've been home, we've been to a ton of place. we're putting miles on my parents mini-van, cuz they don't. here's some highlight so far of our time in america.

sam learned to waterski - this is more of a highlight for her dad.

we went to disney world.

we've carved some pumpkins (my is the one of the right).

we also went to the state fair last weekend and it was quite the experience. i love people watching in china, but the fair is way better. it's like i was in another country. ahh the fair, full of awesomeness!

chinese walmarts

2010-05-30T12:02:00.004+08:00

if you ever wondered what they sell at a chinese walmart, just think chinese stuff all packed into one ginormous store. last month we went to walmart in changchun with my parents and they had pigs hanging from their feet and some butcher cutting slabs off of it for people to buy. this website also had some wonderful images from walmarts across chiner. so if you think your local walmart is kinda trashy, think again ... at least they don't sell this stuff. although walmarts in china are actually pretty nice compared to the local stores.

chinese walmarts

thatched butt?

2010-05-24T16:02:00.005+08:00

today in class, we were talking about different types of homes. the students were supposed to brainstorm as many types of homes as they could. one pair of students wrote down "thatched butt". i politely corrected their mistake and then went on my way to the next group of students. but i'll be honest i did the junior high giggle the whole way up and down the isle of students. i couldn't stop laughing, it was just cracking me up. i'm not sure if it was because she had actually wrote the word "butt" on the paper or the mental image of a "thatched butt", either way i had a good laugh.

just so you know, i was not thinking of this image:

but now i am. i could really use a little time on the beach. we've had some crummy weather this spring and it's raining again. yuck! i hate the rain!

60 bottles of beer on the wall

2010-05-16T10:26:00.006+08:00

where's wu? yes it's been a month since my last blog entry (and i was doing so good). this last month has been so crazy!!!

for the first time in five years, we as teachers had to "supervise" seniors for writing their senior thesis papers. talk about crazy chinglish, 20 pages of pure awesomeness. i want to pull my hair out when reading some of these papers, they didn't make any sense and those that did make sense, i had to bust for plagiarism (i'll save that for another time). so that's been consuming the majority of my time.

also i've been coaching the department soccer team, who decided that practicing at 6:00am was the best thing for the team. when 13,000 kids share one field for the entire school, field availability times can get a little crazy. even though we get there at 6:00am, we are only given a quarter of the field to practice on. if we are lucky we can actually get a goal to practice on. ughhh, the joys of living in a land of 1.3 billion people. but we just played our last game this week and lost in the semifinals. which is where the "60 bottles of beer" came from. we had a celebratory banquet for the team to finish the season, in which the team and i and some department leaders gathered for one big party. basically it was all the boys and leaders toasting until the cows come home and drinking themselves into a drunken stupor. if you know anything about the "asian glow" these boys had the "glow" going on! since our organization has a no alcohol policy and the leaders and students know it, i was saved from being a causality of the asian glow. even those i was saved from the plethora of alcoholic beverages, i still had to drink something every time a toast was given. which was a problem since every single kid had to toast the coach, so i downed an entire 2 liter of pepsi and some during the festivities (i don't even like pepsi). i've also never seen so many grown adult males cry. every one of the seniors weeped as they thanked me for being their coach and said they should have played better to be the champions. to which i told them, "you're right! you made me get up at 6:00am everyday, and you didn't even win, you guys really are losers!" just kidding, what do you say to these kids after that? i just smiled and said that it was okay. but i did learna few cultural lessons that night:
1. chinese people are even formal when they are having a "party". i tried to imagine american college students doing this, but i couldn't even fathom that.
2. there is an extreme respect for those in authority (teachers, coaches, leaders).
3. when you are being toasted you have to drink everything in the cup or else it shows you don't respect the person toasting you. which meant i had to pee the rest of the night.
3. even big boys cry.
4. i hope samantha inherits the "asian glow" so i can bust her for drinking if she ever tries.

so that's the latest scoop from wu's world. sorry it's been so long.

also in case you don't have facebook:

coming around thanksgiving of 2010 :)

please come to siping mcdonalds!

2010-04-03T18:07:00.001+08:00

i read this little article about mcdonalds, i really hope they come to our city. in case you didn't know, our little city doesn't have a mcdonalds, but they do have 3 kfc's. i know what you are thinking - who goes to kfc? i never go while in america, but here in siping, i love it.

McDonald's to double China outlets in 3 years (March 30, 2010, AP)

McDonald's said Tuesday it plans to nearly double its number of outlets in China by the end of 2013 as the US fast-food giant seeks to expand its presence in the world's biggest developing economy. The company aims to boost the number of its outlets in China to 2,000 from around 1,100 in three years, Dow Jones Newswires reported, citing Tim Fenton, the company's president of Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa. McDonald's will open 150-175 outlets in the country this year, its China chief executive Kenneth Chan said.

text message

2010-04-01T20:47:00.004+08:00

here in china, text messaging seems to be the only way to communicate with each other. for one thing it's wicked cheap. so we always get funny text messages from our students who try to explain things to us in english, but clearly have no idea what the english word really means that they just wrote.

for example tonight i got a gem of a text message:
"dear mr. wu, i'm vivian (name changed to protect the identity). sorry to disturb you. there appears herpes simplex virus infection again. it's a great pity to miss your class again. i'll be back next week. thank you!"

ahh classic :) thank you chinese-english dictionary. and yes it is a big pity, but a bigger pity for you and your virus.

some facts about china

2010-03-25T22:00:00.001+08:00

today i got this about some numbers and facts about china. take a look.

Via: Online Schools

the great chiangmai t-shirt exchange

2010-03-20T21:23:00.014+08:00

if you have ever visited chiangmai in thailand you know about the night market. the night market is pure awesomeness. they basically have an entire street lined with little carts that sell everything: t-shirts, purses, wooden games, magic tricks, dvds, wii games, watches, lamps ... and on and on. you name it, it's there. they especially have a ton of t-shirts that range from funny ones to downright crass. in fact, when our teammate jude was 5 and learning to read he really liked the t-shirt with the mcdonald arches on it that said "Mcs@#$". yeah, oops, not a good place for a kid to be learning to read. but they're not all bad. in fact there are so many clever ones that we decided this year at conference to have each team member draw the name of another team member and then have to buy that person a t-shirt from the night market. this is what resulted (we're all acting out our shirts):

my t-shirt said "teamwork" and pictured a silhouette of some guys kicking the poo out of a guy on the ground. very clever.

but the bestest (yes, i used a word that even my chinese students don't use) one went to sonny. kami bought him this gem:

no explanation needed. he was very embarrassed to be seen in this shirt and many people thought he was a really big fan of michael. ahh, poor sonny. everyone thinks he's a big m.j. fan. but hey, who isn't?

the ladies of china basketball association (wcba)

2010-03-13T10:25:00.005+08:00

on thursday we took a road trip to anshan, a city about 4 hours away on the train, to see our friend katie play in the wcba finals. she's an american who is playing for the henan elephants (they are really far away), and the finals just happen to be kinda close to us. so we decided to road trip and take along with us some of our students to watch the game.

here's a few of my observations.

1. riding on a train is even longer when you sit near the door and everyone is blowing smoke on you. ahh, give me more second hand smoke!
2. two of the girls we took hadn't ridden the train longer than 1.5 hours before and had never left the province. so they really had a swell time.
3. sam really likes watching basketball. she was so excited that she was shaking. although, she didn't really understand that we just wanted to cheer for katie's team. we'll work on that.
4. katie is much taller than the rest of the chinese players.
5. during timeouts the fans nearest katie's bench would blow these annoying horns as loud as they could so that the team wouldn't be able to hear the coach. it worked.
6. chinese people need some tutorials on sports watching. they always cheer at the wrong times. whenever the home team had the ball it was dead quiet. why not try and cheer up the team?
7. while it was dead quiet, i was able to yell, "airball" over and over again. no one around me understood what i was saying, but it drew a lot of stares. at which point, sam said, "dad, don't do that!" ahh, sam, this is the start of your dad embarrassing you for the many years to come.
8. this was our second time watching katie play in china. i was surprised at how good some of the girls actually played. when i play basketball with my students, i'm like michael jordan. so my idea of chinese people playing basketball is not high. but these girls were pretty good.
9. in the end the henan elephants lost game 2 of the finals, which puts them down two games. they play today, if they win, they keep playing. which the league hasn't even scheduled yet. ahh, china, you never stop surprising me.
10. if they lose, katie and her husband, todd, can go home. i think they won't be too sad to lose and go home :)

so that's my trip. we took the train back to siping and got home at 4 am. then i had a chinese class at 8. surprise to everyone, i actually went.

saturday is really monday?

2010-03-06T20:51:00.002+08:00

so today is saturday but according to the school it really is monday. sound confusing? welcome to my world. whenever we have a holiday the school gives us some days off, but then we have to make them up. why give us a holiday then? is it really a holiday if we have to make it up when they take away our weekend?

because sunday was the lantern festival, we got monday and tuesday off. not really though, because today we had to make up all our classes like it was monday. then next week saturday we have to make up all the tuesday classes that we missed. it's so crazy, i think we should just have class on monday and tuesday because now i have to work on saturdays. i used to try and figure out why they did that, but now i just do whatever they tell me to do.

i guess they really shouldn't tell me i have a holiday. they should just say that classes are on a holiday delay. oh well, happy monday everyone.

fireworks rock!

2010-03-03T17:41:00.006+08:00

as a pyromaniac, i live for fire and things that go boom. this year was my first time in 5 years to experience the entire length of a chinese new year celebrations. on the eve of chinese new year the fireworks began around 6 AM and continued until 3 AM the next morning. around 10 PM on the eve of the new year, the place got lit up. fireworks were going all around our building. i've never heard or seen anything like it before.

the party didn't stop on new years day. for the next 15 days, fireworks are "legal" for all residents to use, so everyday from 6 or 7 AM till the wee hours of the night, fireworks could be heard. on the 15th day of the new year (according to the lunar calendar) the chinese celebrate the lantern festival. this evening includes setting off even more fireworks to end the festivities. so to celebrate we went to the market and bought a plethora of fireworks. it was awesome!

that's a photo of us shooting off some roman candles at sam and rach in the apartment. as the fireworks came out of our roman candles we were yelling harry potter-isms - "alohomora!"

at the local park, they set up a display of lights to celebrate the lantern festival, very similar to a christmas lights display. apparently they hadn't done this in siping for a few years, so this was the first time in a long time that they had this display. i went and froze my buns off. there is a ice festival display in harbin (5 hours north of here) which is during january and the temps are well below zero there. i figured if i can't handle single digit temps, then there is no way i'll ever be able to go there.

the festivities are finally over and we can get back to life without fireworks all day long.

compare and contrast - zoos

2010-02-24T15:34:00.009+08:00

this semester we are teaching our sophomore english majors how to write comparison and contrast essays. i thought i'd do a little ditty on american zoos versus zoos in asia. so here's my scoop.

1. i'd like to start with the giraffe exhibits. this summer we went to the zoo in nc, which was super cool and very nice - that being said, they just opened an special area to view the giraffes. we got there and the giraffes were a mile away and we could barely see them. here's a picture of mavis and sam, the giraffes were supposed to be behind them, but you can't really see them.

the zoo keeper made us whisper and told us that they may get within 100 feet of us so we could see them. blah, blah, blah. here's the real deal lady. go to thailand where you can pretty much touch those guys and feed them bananas and beans for less than a dollar. and we didn't have to whisper.

point goes to the thailand zoo.

2. hippo exhibit. the zoo in nc had some hippos really far away, i didn't even take picture because they were too far. now let's look at the hippos in thailand. here you see the exhibit featured 3 gi-normous hippos who came right up to the side of the enclosure and we could feed them and touch them. we paid 50 cents to throw sweet potatoes and carrots into their mouths and grab hold of their teeth. i know, awesome!!!!

you can see how jude's little hand can reach over the railing and grab those little guys.

point goes to the thailand zoo.

in conclusion, the zoos in thailand are cheaper, but dirtier, and you may leave feeling a little bit sorry for the animals. in the end you get over it, cuz the awesomeness factor of touching animals is way better. why do americans care so much about safety anyways? asia doesn't and look at the cool things you can do. sure that hippo could rip my arm off or that giraffe could bite my hand, ehhh, but who cares? i got to touch a hippo!

VPNs are swell

2010-02-23T15:00:00.002+08:00

Ni hao internet world, i'm back online. there is probably no one that reads this wonderful blog anymore, but that's okay, i'll try to resume updating. i recently bought a VPN so that i could access my blog, facebook, youtube, and other sites. so now i can surf freely (take that china firewall).

in other news:
1. i'm hanging in siping with sam while rachel is in america for a wedding.
2. while in siping with sam, sam stuck a sunflower seed up her nose and i had to take her to the hospital to get it out. it was the chinese new year's eve, so there were no taxis and the school official had to get a fancy school car to take us. i was slightly embarrassed because those two guys (the official and school car driver) had to be taken away from their families on one night where all you do is spend time with your families. so to wayne and the car driver: "sorry again - 不好意思 ".
3. on chinese new year's eve there were more fireworks all day than i've ever heard in my whole life. 4th of july is so lame now. i've never been in a war, but i can now imagine what constant gun fire sounds like.
4. because of the chinese new year, no restaurants and stores have been open, so i've been eating pb&j and ramen noodles for a week. sure wish they had mac and cheese here.
5. olympics being broadcasted in chinese on chinese tv aren't really that exciting. thank you sling box.

that's all for now.

here's a shot of sam from the pool in thailand.

1 more week

2009-07-27T00:15:00.001+08:00

one more week left of wheaton :)

grip it and rip it sam!

2009-07-13T01:35:00.003+08:00

i took samantha for a little wakeboard ride:

back in usa

2009-07-13T01:29:00.003+08:00

now that i'm back in the usa, i guess i can get back to blogging.

not much to really blog about, except that i'm in my last month of classes at wheaton :) almost done!

yesterday the in-laws were in town and they brought me the local austin, mn. paper. which contains the local police reports. it entertains me for hours, i love it. next to the spam museum, it's my favorite thing to do in austin. the best one was the report from the fourth of july. in it, there was two complaints for loud noise and one fireworks complaint. it's the fourth of july the one day that people are allowed to be loud and light off fireworks?

gender colors

2009-04-17T21:00:00.002+08:00

in china i quickly learned that pink and blue have no special meaning for boys and girls. boys are always wearing pink, purple and pastels. girls wear everything under the sun. when samantha goes out in her pink parade of clothes, it always confuses me when people ask me if she is a girl or boy. i kinda look at them with a stupid face and say, "of course she's a girl, that's why she has all the pink." obviously it's not obvious to them that colors help tell people the gender of the child. but then i realized that the kids all wear split pants, so it kinda takes the guessing out of the picture; with the split pants it's pretty obvious if it's a girl or boy. maybe we're the stupid ones, with all our colors and stuff.

here's a picture of a pink jeep with a robot and a machine gun. now in america, i'd say this was for a girl (just based on the color), but in china, i'm not sure, it could go both ways. either way it's pretty sweet! guess what sam is getting for her birthday?

spring is here!

2009-04-12T20:01:00.006+08:00

spring has arrived earlier than normal in siping, i'm pretty stoked about it. the only thing is that the siping peeps, aren't as excited about it as i am. students are still wearing long underwear and bundling up. old ladies in the park are concerned about our health when we are not wearing enough clothes. so i decided to write a poem and dedicate it to the old ladies in the park:

Dear old lady in the park on this super fine day.
Yes I know it’s not the first of May.
But do you know it’s 80 degrees out today?

What if I told you it was my birthday?
Would that make you stay away?

Stop harassing me.
You’re scaring me.
Great, now I have to pee!

Yes lady, I know my kid is wearing too little
I’m the one that picked out her clothes; really, she’s not very brittle.

What? You’ve never seen flip-flops before?
You can buy them from the blue store.

Yes I know I'm showing my toes.
But did you know in America, anything goes.

Yes, I own more clothes but this is my favorite T.
Besides, it’s 80 degrees, are you kidding me?

So thanks for your concerning,
But my toes are way too happy and you look like you are burning.

b-days in china

2009-04-06T22:18:00.003+08:00

b-day's in china never get old, because it's an endless week of birthday celebrations with students. i think they feel sorry for us or just want to butter us up to get better grades. either way, i don't really mind. i kinda like all the attention.

i had a total of 3 cakes for my birthday. surprisingly the chinese ones were pretty good too. last year my freshman girls threw a party for me instead of having class. this year those same girls forgot, i guess they missed out on an opportunity to not have class.

my cakes (obviously the hot dog one was the best):

the team had a hot dog b-day party for me, it was awesome. you can't get good hot dogs here, only stinky smelly ones, that look like hot dogs, but surely don't taste a thing like it. although samantha and will really seem to enjoy them. we had to go to the big city of changchun to buy some imported dogs. who would of thought that you'd have to travel 2 hours away, just to get good hot dogs, but it was worth it!

thanks villanova

2009-03-29T15:22:00.004+08:00

so last night i was ranked 198,998 in the espn bracket challenge. i was in the 95.7% of 5 million people. not bad. well after today's games, i quickly dropped. now i'm 1,011,868 and in 78.1%. i picked pitt to be in the final four, so my shot at winning is pretty much over. nuts!! i hope i'm still ahead of president obama.

you tube is blocked

2009-03-25T23:04:00.002+08:00

today, you tube is blocked. but blogger is up (for now). who knows how long this will last? i'm still surprised that they haven't blocked this site more. that's really why i stopped blogging. ahhh, just kidding, i haven't blogged because i'm lazy and i like to take naps. plus nothing exciting happens anymore here. well except the earthquake that was pretty cool (only because no one got hurt).

speaking of earthquake ... yesterday in class, we heard a really loud boom (i think it was a cannon going off for a new store), the girls in the front row said earthquake in chinese. so i yelled really loud and made my knees give out. they yelled and said "xia si wo (吓死我)" which means "you scared me to death". i laughed so hard, it was hilarious!!! their faces were awesome.

earthquake in siping?

2009-03-22T22:36:00.004+08:00

on friday we had an earthquake in siping. i know crazy??? i didn't feel it at all, i was making a fort with sam and we were running around the room. rach was taking a nap and she said she felt the bed move, i told her she was crazy. the thought of an earthquake didn't even cross my mind. but we had one.

here's our fort (kids got some static in her hair):

here's a little blurb from the news:

According to China Seismological Network Center, the determination of Beijing at 14:48 on March 20, 2009, Siping City in Jilin Province Yitong Manchu Autonomous County, Gongzhuling City at the junction (43.4 degrees north latitude, 124.9 degrees east longitude) in 4.3 earthquake, epicenter depth of about 19 kilometers. Epicentral distance of about 70 kilometers in Changchun City, Changchun City, there is obviously felt. Changchun City School students evacuated to the playground or after school for students to advance. Xinhua News Agency reporters Shao Shou and Zhi She.

sam's trip to the orphanage

2009-03-21T22:41:00.002+08:00

today we took sam to the orphanage. it was her first time going. we've been planning to take her for a long time, but she likes to nap when we normally go. so we took her, it was pretty funny.

she sat on the potties with all the other little kids. i hope it inspires her to go when we are at home.

there was a ton of students from our university there. the funny thing was that they all thought samantha was an orphan. that was pretty funny. i just let them believe that i was holding another orphan kid.

it's been a while

2009-02-22T13:45:00.003+08:00

i realize that it's been forever since i posted anything remotely interesting, but how do you follow "samantha's tricks"? i figured i'd give it some time before i found something else to post.

we've returned safely from thailand. everyone in china says that samantha and i are black now? is there not a word for "tan" in chinese? they should really have one, because calling people black seems rather odd.

on my way back we had to fly through a few different airports and along the way, i had two thing stolen off my luggage. one of them was my awesome jingjing luggage tag that was ripped off somewhere and another thing was a flip flop key chain that said "samantha" on it, it was attached to her stroller and they totally stole it. jerks! these are things that don't accidently fall off, they have to be purposely taken off.

here's picture of samantha eating bamboo worms in thailand. she kept asking for more, she must have eaten about 50 of those little guys.

sam's tricks

2008-10-10T21:39:00.001+08:00

we tried to capture a few of sam's tricks tonight, here's some of them.

track and field day

2008-10-05T21:46:00.002+08:00

last week the school hosted the annual track and field day for all the freshman students. it's a pretty big deal, usually the students get 2 days off from class to run around and mainly sit in the stands and cheer. last year they started letting the teachers compete in the competitions as well. last year the foreign teachers only competed in one relay event and this year they piled the events on us. which is ironic because last year we had super speedy seth and sarah on the team. we could have used them this year. i was entered in the 100 m, 200m, 4x100m, a really weird relay race (i ran the 200m), and finally the long jump. needless to say it was a long two days and i'm still trying to recover from it. i'm not sure how i got roped into all of those events, but it was fun. the best part was that we got gifts for placing in each event. so for every event that i got 7th place or higher, i got gifts. i think i got something for everything but the 100m dash (apparently i've gotten slow, or because the teachers i raced against all took off before the gun went off, but i'm not bitter). so i got a few sets of hangers, a blanket, and something else.

our 4x100m team (i think we got 3rd or 4th)

the craziest was the long jump, the last time i did the long jump was in the 8th grade (19 years ago). i came in 5th place for the prelims and then 7th in the finals. not sure how that happened but apparently the other people got better. i jumped 5.07m (16.6 ft), not bad for a little guy. but hopefully i'll never have to do that again.

congrats marguerite!

2008-09-21T21:33:00.003+08:00

today we went to our first chinese wedding (not including ours, but i'm not sure that really counts). it was for a student who was a senior our first year in china. the wedding was held in between services at the local 3-self in changchun. the 8 o'clock got out and in went the couple. they exchanged some vows, the choir sang, and then they were out the door. as soon as they were gone the 9 o'clock started up. talk about efficiency!

the only bummer was having to get up at 4:45am, to catch the 5 o'clock train in the morning. i was not a fan of that, either was sam. here's the proof:

here's some pics from today :)

happy birthday jilin normal university!!!

2008-09-21T20:40:00.003+08:00

this week we celebrated the 50th anniversary of our school (jilin normal university). it was a rocking good time. there were performances, speeches (all in chinese), parties, and fireworks! our president tim davis came for the festivities, but he was being catered to by the school, so we didn't see him much. happy birthday jnlu!

nothing says happy birthday like a good bunch of performances by students :)

or a lit up teaching building

and certainly nothing says happy birthday, like a big old firework show!

we're back

2008-09-16T17:58:00.002+08:00

so the olympics were awesome and everything went smoothly. now we are chillin' in siping. i figured that my blog would be shut down, but apparently we're still up and running, so i guess i should throw down a little post.

sunday was the mid-autumn day festival. so happy mid-autumn day to everyone. traditionally you are supposed to eat moon cakes (china's version of the fruit cake) and watch the full moon. i got a box of moon cakes and on the cover of it said: "shane the delicacies mith goun family! he full hnight moonnises in the, all of us dalued ann bequiuafliu-Autumn Bift!" no joke, that's what it says. i'm not sure what that really means, but i was glad to get that autumn bift.

this week the school is having a big 50th year celebration thing. so TD our elic presidente and other big wigs are coming for the party. should be a rocking good time.

we also went to beijing this last weekend to meet up with our dentist and family friend. it was fun :) beijing is still hosting the paralympics so the skies are blue and the traffic is awesome. they should have the olympics year round there.

peace from siping!

my olympic debut :)

2008-08-18T10:01:00.003+08:00

look for us at the olympics! we leave tomorrow morning at 6:00am :) then when i arrive i have to get on a train to go to siping and pick up my tickets and then go back the next day to beijing. long story, but the olympic committee is crazy!

here's our events if you want to look for us (these are the china times):
8/21 - women's beach volleyball finals (gold and bronze metal games)
8/21 - women's handball semifinals (the tickets were really cheap)
8/22 - men's beach volleyball finals (gold and bronze metals)
8/23 - track and field (bunch of events, including 4x400 relay)
8/24 - men's marathon
8/24 - closing ceremonies

that's the skinny. look for us on tv :)

i'm out to china!

poor nini

2008-08-16T11:26:00.002+08:00

the coverage of the olympics has been awesome, except there has been no mention of the fuwa (formerly the friendlies). but i did see this picture of the fuwa in the china daily. poor nini, someone knocked her down and she couldn't get up.

2 down, 1 more to go

2008-07-20T12:51:00.009+08:00

i've officially completed 2 classes so far :) i finished a paper and turned it in today. so only 1 more week of class and i'm done for this summer :)

hooray :)

in other news, i learned today that i've been lied to about tootsie roll pops (my childhood is ruined). yesterday i had a tootsie roll pop and on the wrapper i saw that there was the indian shooting the star and my classmates and i discussed how it was good for collecting so that you could get more free candy (i love candy). everyone had heard the "rumor" before (except the girl that grew up in another country-that doesn't count). so i looked it up on the internet (because the internet never lies) and found that it was never true, or at least endorsed by the tootsie pop peeps. some store owners, at their own costs, used to redeem the wrappers and give kids free candy, but the people at tootsie don't give away free candy if you mail in the wrappers (which is about 30% of the wrappers with the indian shooting the star). the tootsie people got so many requests for free candy from the wrappers, they made up a story about the indian and the star.

here's the story (sorry it's small print, but you can click on the pic):

on another random note, my flickr page gives me stats (like no one likes samantha, thanks naomi for helping), and it said that a picture had been linked. so i clicked and sure enough i found a picture of sam on her birthday on someone's blog. check it out "www.alexiablogs.com" - interesting. i'm not endorsing this girl, but i think it's funny that she has a picture of samantha.

my mean flickr page

2008-07-11T12:01:00.004+08:00

today i was going through my flickr photo page and i was looking up some pictures. next to the pictures there were some notes from the not-so-kind flickr people telling me some statistics about each picture. next to a picture of samantha, was this nice statistic:

"71 views / Nobody counts Samantha Grace as a favorite / 4 comments"

don't worry sam, i'll count you as a favorite.

here's my salute to you sam (don't worry about it, the flickr page has no feelings):

the latest happenings

2008-07-10T03:30:00.002+08:00

so i'm in wheaton taking classes again this summer. right now i'm in the middle of a class called "theological foundations"; i'm still not sure what it's all about, but i still go everyday.

rachel and samantha left this afternoon to head towards minnesota and michigan. so i'm left with an empty apartment in wheaton. that means that i will be taking lots of naps, when i should be working on homework. napping is my hobby :)

in case your not up to date on the flickr photos, last week in north carolina, samantha and i went wakeboarding together. i hope it didn't turn her off to wakeboarding, because like all good fathers, i'm going to live out my dreams through her. so i figured that i should start her off early so she can go "pro" and get sponsorships and lots of free stuff - hopefully stickers are involved, and maybe a boat.

so that's what's been going on, not very exciting.

rach may be the funny one

2008-07-01T03:25:00.002+08:00

we went out on the boat and i told rach i would give her 5 dollars if she would wear her life vest for the rest of the night (as in she wasn't allowed to take it off, even on the boat). for some odd reason she agreed. when we got home, my mom offered to give her 10 dollars to take it off. my aunt lisa was in town and she offered the same. so really rach made 20 bucks for wearing that silly life vest. i think if it were me wearing it, my mom and aunt would have taken money away from me and still made me wear it the rest of the night.

here's a picture of samantha and java.

back in the USA

2008-06-27T19:38:00.003+08:00

we're finally home :) and finally able to access the blog. even though most of the faithful fans of the screaming squirrel have stopped checking on the blog, i'll still drop a little post.

we got home a few days ago after having a flight canceled in DC, which stinks because at that point we'd been traveling for 20 hours and sitting in the DC airport for 5 hours when we could have driven home in that amount of time. we did get to spend 3 hours in a really nice hotel and take a nap at 2:30 am. good thing we were all jacked up on the time, because it didn't matter that is was so early in the morning to us. we had to take a taxi to the hotel, but when finally got to the taxi, the driver said, "i can't take you without a car seat". we were like "what's a car seat?". after standing in the taxi line at 2:30 am for 20 minutes, it never occurred to us that we even needed a car seat, we were just going to hold samantha like we always do. i'd blame it on the 2:30am thing, but it wasn't because we were tired, it's because we've been living in a land of non safety standards for so long, that we forgot that there is a thing called "safety".

on another note, yesterday we went to target, wow! i forgot about how much stuff there is in america. i especially like the clean floors and air conditioning, that was fantastic!

my new video

2008-05-10T23:27:00.001+08:00

everywhere we go, samantha gets a lot of attention. so i decided to do a little experiment.

shafted!

2008-05-08T10:04:00.005+08:00

yesterday ended up being the day when the station resumed power and we could get on tv. when we arrived to the station, we realized that we would not be on a stage, but only sit as audience members on an "oprah-like" tv show. clearly the foreign teachers were only there for their faces. somehow the wu's were placed in a dark corner as part of the studio audience. clearly we were not going to see any air time.

there was a time when i was in college that i was asked to be in every photo ad for the school. you know to promote the school as a diverse student body, even though there was only 10 asians on campus. i didn't mind, i like the attention :) but yesterday, i seem to have been shafted from the camera due to my similar appearance to the rest of the audience. nuts! i did get some air time when we all had to say: "ma ma wo ai ni" (mom, i love you) and look into the camera, but i'll probably end up being cut out.

the studio and studio audience - notice you can't see any wu's. the tv camera didn't see any either.

rach and sam in their dark spot in the audience.

no power?

2008-05-06T16:38:00.002+08:00

yesterday we were supposed to go to the local tv station to sing a chinese song about mothers for mother's day. we got to the meeting place and the bus was ready to take us to the station, when the tv station called and said, "don't come, there is no power". interesting, a tv station with no power? i hope they were still able to broadcast cartoons.

unbelievable

2008-04-23T11:33:00.004+08:00

why unbelievable? well a few things ...

1. we can still get to blogspot, i can't believe it ... except now that i mentioned it, tomorrow it will be blocked again.

2. the last 2 weeks we've had awesome weather (60s and low 70s), the flip flops have been busted out, and the winter coats put away. till today ... it snowed last night :( and it's 30 degrees out now ... nuts!! oh yeah, did i mention the heat was turned off a few weeks ago. i guess i have to get the long underwear out.

before today...(ahh spring)

after last night...(crap!)

3. i unleashed the beast last night, i gave a lecture on american slang, so now there is going to be a bunch of students trying to practice their new use of slang on me. i'm not sure why i did it, but maybe because i love to hear students call me on the phone (in their chinese accents) and say, "mr. wu, what's up? what's the skinny?" it makes me laugh everytime!

as promised here are some pictures from my surprise birthday party. really, how could i not participate, class could definitely wait another week.

my weapons of mass destruction

2008-04-13T22:47:00.002+08:00

a little while ago there were some students on campus that were robbed by some dudes who are working on the construction site here building the new cafeteria. after this happened the school leaders told all the students to be careful when walking back to their dorms at night. if you know anything about chinese students, this means don't go outside at night for some of them. many of them were pretty scared to walk around at night. after the big robbery some of my students, who regularly come to my house every week, called me to inform me that they could no longer come to our house. i told them to not worry and that i would walk them home so they could keep coming. so the first night that i walked them home they told me i should bring a weapon, "something sharp" was their exact words. i told them "no worries", i have my own weapons that i bring everywhere. they said, "oh really, what?", i quickly pulled my fists out, put up my best rocky pose, and said, "these weapons". they were not amused, with a straight face they said, "no really mr. wu, you need something sharp." i was very disappointed that they didn't think i could take on a bunch of construction guys, i proceeded informed them that i was also a really fast runner (they seemed to think that was going to be my best way to avoid harm). so for the last 3 weeks, i've been walking these girls home and every time i get home i have to "text message" one of them to tell them that i got home okay, or else they will be worried. funny girls.

it's up :)

2008-04-03T14:09:00.002+08:00

for a short time the firewall on blogger is not on, so i can put a little ditty in.

here's the skinny:
our little mac got a bad cold and the hard drive is no longer :( this is the second time in the last 6 months that this happened, so i'm pretty sad. i think the good people that fix apples in china are not so good at fixing the problem. so now we are without our little mac for a few days. bummer.

on another note:
i always knew that the elementary education majors knew how to have fun (they never had homework in college), and it was validated even here in china. i started teaching freshman education majors this semester. i haven't taught freshmen in a year and a half, so it has been fun to teach them again (they still think having a foreign teacher is cool). the first day of class i mentioned to them when my birthday was and apparently they remembered. on monday i walked into a classroom completely decorated and filled with 41 students (all girls) ready to party. they had streamers and balloons all over the room and the desks were all pushed to the side. the girls had purchased two ginormous cakes and enough sunflower seed to feed an army, along with tons of soda. they were ready to party! i realized that there was no way that my family tree lesson was going to take place. so we partied it up! the girls had even organized singers and dancers to perform for the birthday bash. we were so loud that the teacher in the room next store had to come over and tell us to be quiet. so i now know that el. ed. majors are the ones that know how to party all across the world.

i'll try to put pictures up when the computer comes back.

guess who's walking?

2008-02-29T00:07:00.003+08:00

samantha started walking this week, so i put the first few steps into a little video.

enjoy :)

if it doesn't work, sorry :( i still can't see my blog, thanks china firewall!

in case you were worried . . .

2008-02-12T23:04:00.000+08:00

in our pursuit (samantha and i) of the stray dogs, no one got injured. not even the dogs.

thailand :)

2008-01-20T17:49:00.000+08:00

so we're hanging in thailand now. it's nice to be out of the cold. all our china friends think that samantha has lost weight because she's not in her snow suit.

rachel has been in classes for the last week, so i've been on baby duty. there are a bunch of other moms here watching their kids for the week, so they keep inviting me to their mom activities. i ain't hanging out with a bunch of moms, that's too much for me. so samantha and i have just been cruising about eating donuts and chasing stray dogs around chiangmai.

next week i've got class so no more dog chasing.

foreigners beware

2007-12-01T13:32:00.001+08:00

yes, it's been a while since i've updated my blog, but it's a little annoying when you can't see it after you're done typing it up. but i have to share a good story with the internet world.

this week we met my cousin michelle and her husband dan in beijing. it was a good time with them :) we decided to eat some chinese food in a little alleyway off of wangfujing (which is a major tourist area). we figured if we went off the main drag, we could find a little restaurant to eat at that would be cheaper. i walked into a hole in the wall restaurant to look at the food that people were eating and it looked pretty good, and i figured it would be pretty cheap too. so we asked for a menu and started to order. the lady was telling us some outrageous prices for food, so we walked out. 28 yuan for tomatoes and eggs? really people, that's ridiculous.

so we went to the restaurant next door. we walked in and they handed rach an english menu. so then i asked for a chinese one. you know the look when people get when they know they've done something wrong, the deer in the headlights look? well, she had it. so i pressed the issue more and insisted on the chinese menu, finally she caved and gave it to me. we quickly compared the two and noticed a price difference between the menus. hmmmmmm, some shady business going on here. we were hungry so we stayed. they still tried to give us the english menu, even after we knew they were different. so i had to tell them again that we wanted the chinese menu with the chinese prices.

oh, they are going to have a heyday when the olympics come! watch out white faces :)

here's some picts from our latest trip to beijing.

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chirp chirp chirp

2007-10-19T22:00:00.000+08:00

this morning i awoke to the wonderful sound of a bird chirping loudly. it was so loud and real sounding that i thought rach had bought one of those fancy alarm clocks from sharper image. you know the ones with all the sounds of nature, the birds chirping, and even the water flowing noise (the one that makes you have to pee). well, i realized that the sound of the chirping and fluttering was too loud and real to be coming from the outside. so i ventured into the living room and behold, i saw a tiny bird flying around the window. what the heck? how did this bird get in our house? i still don't know. but i trapped it behind the curtains to contain in the window, but it didn't fly outside. instead it flew behind the slats that encase the radiator. so i called seth and had him come down to help me. we took off the wooden slats that covered the radiator and poked around with sticks and the bird finally flew out and then out the window. he was a creepy little guy. i was scared he was going to peck my eyes out.

"good thing you can't get diseases from birds" (quote from michael scott on "the office")

unblocked :)

2007-10-17T22:29:00.000+08:00

fantastic news from the motherland! currently blogspot is unblocked :) don't know how long this will last, so i'll have to squeeze a post in.

every day (mon-friday) the sophomores are required to write 6 english words on a tiny chalkboard. everyday the words are different, so they have to change them every night. in the morning, someone checks all of them and corrects them if there are any mistakes. last week i asked one student if i could write his words for him, just as a joke. he decided to leave my words up on the chalkboard so that they could be reviewed. good news, i passed :) i was a little nervous because i definitely do not possess the chinese style of written english. yes, even though i'm chinese, i just don't got it. but i did get a nice check mark (i think the checker knew that i wrote the words and didn't want the foreign teacher to lose face).

back on the attack

2007-10-07T22:30:00.000+08:00

here's the skinny, i'm still being blocked by my friends being the great internet firewall, so it keeps me from updating so frequently. also, our computer, took a pooper and decided to crash 3 weeks ago. we just got it back and we have a brand new hard drive :) oh yeah, which means all the stuff on the old hard drive is gone :( so sad.

every year the freshman have to go through military training on all the campuses across china. they learn to march around, it pretty exciting stuff (not really, but if there is a person behind the firewall reading this, i want them to know that i endorse the training). so for 3 weeks the freshman learn how to march around and they get pretty good at it. this year the teachers got to join them and march around the track with the students from their department. i learned that i can't march worth beans. i have my own beat that goes on in my melon and it's not the same as everyone else. the teachers around me tried to help me and tell me what foot step when, but it didn't help (it also didn't help that they told me in chinese). so that was our latest great adventure here. i'm going to stick to napping, that's what i'm a professional at, so why mess with it.

on another note, the weather has taken a turn for the cold, what a bummer!

this is a video that sonny made, it's pretty funny:

Star in Your Own JibJab! It's Free!

up and running (kinda)

2007-09-06T11:58:00.000+08:00

we've arrived back in siping and classes have begun. it's good to be home :) although our bags are still unpacked and things are everywhere. we just got internet hooked up last night.

the great china firewall has blocked half of this blog, i can post stuff, but i can't see it. so if things look shady, sorry. i can't see it, so too bad.

for class this week, i gave them a quiz on me (i know, pretty humble). one question asked them what happened to my chin this summer. one girl wrote that my chin is "more beautiful than before". what? was my chin not beautiful before? i'm so sad :(

we made it :)

2007-08-23T10:02:00.000+08:00

made it to china, sitting in the stinkin' hot and humid weather of beijing and trying to stay awake from jet-lag. i forgot to start smoking in the states before i got back to beijing, so that my lungs would be ready for the pollution.

samantha has her day and night all jacked up. why can't she sleep when i want to sleep?

peace out from the motherland!

hanging in grand rapids

2007-08-10T00:38:00.000+08:00

we're hanging in grand rapids, mi. now. it's been a good time to see a lot of old friends. it's too bad we only see them once a year now :(

austin was sweet, we took samantha to the sweet SPAM museum, rach had some spam, so that means samantha had some too. mmmmm, delicious spam, so good in your tummy!

here's a salute to my buddy greg walker: my friend greg is a big city lawyer that likes to talk it up all the time, we call him "all talk walk". well lets just say he likes to jibber jabber about everything. he went on a trip to portugal in college with our friend sherri, while they were there he bought this metal ship. ever since the trip to portugal, greg makes it known to sherri that he has this ship that sherri will never be able to have. 9 years ago, sherri and i were at greg's parent's house and i stole the ship and gave it to sherri. sherri has had the ship for 9 years, everytime we see greg, we bring up the ship and he yaps about how he has the ship and sherri didn't get it. the whole time we know the ship is collecting dust at sherri's house, but "all talk" keeps yapping away about how he was the winner of the ship. so when we were in chicago, sherri gave greg the ship back. poor guy ... too bad this won't stop him from talking. too bad he also doesn't know that i stole something from his house this time and i'm going to wait another 9 years to give it back to him. sucker!!!!

here's greg, sherri, me and the ship:

it's been a long time ...

2007-08-01T00:24:00.000+08:00

yes, faithful blog readers (the 3 of you), it's been quite a while. but now i'm free and can blog away.

my classes are finished (finally), so i can stop reading for the summer (except for harry potter). now we are hanging out in spam land usa. we'll get to the museum one day and take some pictures with the spam cans :) i'll also get some updates on the police reports for austin, mn (i'm sure there's lots of crime happening).

we are heading to grand rapids next week (around the 4th) and then we will make a stop in cedarville on the 12th and then head back to north carolina on the 13th and leave for china on the 20th.

so far the summer has been good (except for the plethora of reading, not the harry potter), samantha is getting fatter and fatter (she's moved from the 15% to the 80% in weight). she's just bulking up for china, if she's like her dad she'll drop 10% of that weight in the first week back in china.

here's a few picts of samantha:

here's my salute to creepy uncle seth (watch out kids, he drives a segway and a van!)

hangin' in wheaton

2007-07-09T11:26:00.000+08:00

here i am chillin' in wheaton. not sure what to do here, but i do know that i really hate reading. as ben watson said to me: "wu, reading is the bane of your existence"; i think i would agree with him on that one. who knew that getting a master's degree would require more reading and reflecting (i hate reflecting just as much).

i did get a chance to take a break from the reading and cruise the wheaton suburbs on a segway. our good family friends, have 2 of them, so one night rach and i cruised the neighborhood on the segways. too bad samantha was sleeping, i think she would have liked the ride.

other than that not much else. samantha and rachel are in minnesota now, eating spam and shopping at target. i'm still in wheaton - reading.

here's a few updated picts of samantha:

go big or go home! (i didn't go home)

2007-07-01T06:44:00.000+08:00

grip it and rip it, i say! and i ripped it really good.

this morning i went wakeboarding and split my chin with my knee :) 7 stitches on the outside and 3 on the inside! chicks dig scars, so i'm set with the ladies (at least the two in my house). i'll post some nice pictures when i get them, but now i'm off to drive to wheaton with the rents. we're pulling an all-nighter, this was so i could wakeboard this morning, and now look what happened. bummer!

rach and samantha are flying - lucky!!!

home sweet home

2007-06-27T08:25:00.000+08:00

we finally made it home :) samanatha showed her true wu colors and slept the entire flight home (only woke up to eat-true wu fashion). now we are hanging in n.c. eating and sleeping, the good life.

1 week away - maybe?

2007-06-16T10:06:00.000+08:00

we are scheduled to leave for the states next week saturday. when i say scheduled, i mean that is the day that we requested from our school to get our tickets for. but it's now one week away and we still have no tickets. what a dilemma! so maybe we'll be home in a week, maybe not.

we've had a lot of things going on here the past week. josiah and sarah (the little one) both had birthdays, and they had super awesome birthday parties! josiah's party was a super hero theme, i was super fro man and rach was "the ruler" (her super power was measuring things). sarah's birthday party was a color theme (purple, pink, and yellow). i own nothing in that color. but luckily samantha is taking this purple medicine for an infection she has. this medicine stains everything it touches, so i decided to use it to tie dye a shirt (pretty fancy). i hope you are impressed.

so hopefully the wu's will be home in a week, if not, we'll see you cats when we see you!

we're back!

2007-06-04T12:40:00.001+08:00

we're back home in siping :) we've been here almost 2 weeks now! a lot has happened, grandma and grandpa soderstrom came and left, aunt lauren also appeared for a little visit. we also used them to haul all our stuff back from beijing to siping on the train. between the 5 of us and one baby, we had 10 huge bags, full of stuff, mostly for the baby. and one pack and play, which by the way is not very light. you'd think they would be easy to drag around, but not the case senor, it was quite the pain to drag around the train stations. but everything made it and we got off the train in time too!

we've taken samantha out on the town a few times now and everyone wants to see her and poke her. the big shocker is that she is less than a month old and we are taking her outside. all the old people are in shock when we tell them how old she is. they say that the baby and the mother shouldn't leave the house until a month. and then i say in america, we don't do that, and then they are even more confused. you see, the month after a woman has a baby, they should stay at home and rest in bed the whole time. during this time, they are not supposed to leave the bed/house, they can't take a bath, brush their teeth or hair, they are pretty much under house arrest (without the tether on their ankle). how crazy is that? good thing rachel didn't follow that.

our plan is to leave china on the 23rd of june and head to north carolina first. so see you all soon!!! (i know nobody wants to see rach and i, but you have to if you want to see the baby)

passport day

2007-05-17T13:15:00.000+08:00

on tuesday we took samantha to the embassy to get her passport and register her. it was her first day to breathe the fresh smoggy beijing air. i hope she's not addicted to the air and doesn't turn out to be a smoker someday.

a few people have asked if she will be a dual citizen, but china doesn't grant that so, she'll just be an ordinary american citizen. i guess when you already have 1.3 billion people to worry about, why should they throw in a few foreigners?

typically when a chinese lady has a baby they stay at home for a month afterwards and don't get out of bed (they don't brush their teeth, take showers, comb their hair, etc...). apparently it's good for recovery and the baby. so for us to take samantha out on the town after 3.5 days, it turned some heads. not to mention that we don't have anything to carry her in, because she's too small for the baby bjorn thing. so we just carried her around, oh well my guns are getting bigger from carrying a 6 pound weight everywhere.

Samantha Grace Wu

2007-05-11T23:29:00.000+08:00

here she is world!!!!!

she's finally arrived!!! samantha grace wu came on may 11th at 8:12 pm here in beijing (oooh an international baby).

her stats for the back of her baseball card is:
weight - 6lbs 8 oz
height - 19 inches

here's some shots of her big day.

tribute to the loser

2007-05-09T19:48:00.000+08:00

here's my offcial salute to the first loser of the baby pool. sonny chose 5/5 (wu yue, wu hao-since my last name is the number 5-wu) at 5:55 pm for the baby to be born. unfortunately it didn't happen, it would have been cool. sorry sonny :( but we did enjoy a delicious gi-normous pizza on 5/5 to try and get the baby out.

in case there are others that want to participate in the baby pool, it's not too late to enter, since baby lilo hasn't come yet.

going to the zoo

2007-05-08T21:07:00.000+08:00

still no baby, so we decided to hit the zoo today (i thought the walking might get lilo out). stuart, who teaches in beijing, joined us for the adventure. it's been almost 10 years since i last went to the beijing zoo, so i was excited to see if anything really changed. there were some really nice parts to the zoo and some really not so nice parts (those parts didn't change since 1997). at one point, stuart and i named a goat michael scofield (from prison break, the tv show) and tried to scheme a way for him to break free.

one cool part was feeding the giraffes, they were kinda slobbery - yuck!

everywhere you go in china, people are always posing and taking pictures with their cell phones. so here i am taking a picture of stuart by some beautiful trees with my cell phone. except that i didn't splurge for a phone with a camera. too bad i couldn't really capture the kodak moment for stuart.

part of the fun of the zoo is seeing all the chinese people and how they react to all the animals. for that, it's worth the admission price.

here's a picture of the puzzle that rachel has been working so very hard on for the last few days. she finally finished! aparently when you are waiting for a baby, a puzzle is a good thing to do. i hate puzzles, i officially named myself a "puzzle-tard", with some of the youth back in michigan.

mr. and mrs. smith hit beijing

2007-05-04T19:57:00.000+08:00

this morning we met up with some friends (who we really had never met in person). eric and heather are here in beijing, because they are on their way to changchun to pick up a baby from the orphanage in siping. it's a long crazy story how we got connect with them, but we had a good time hanging out with them and sharing stories about their daughter and the other babies at the orphanage. we are so excited to be able to know where one of the babies is going! we are more stoked to know that little han xue will have a new family! here's a picture from breakfast/brunch and a picture of their daughter :)

and here's a shot for seth. seth always tells this joke (that's not even his own orignal joke), but it goes something like this: did you know an escalator can never be broken? to which he responds: it can only be stairs! it's funny the first time, and not when seth tells it, but he still tells it to every girl he meets. so here is my picture tribute to the lame joke and an apology to all the ladies who have had to hear it. but he does look good in a moustache, that's one thing going his way.

waiting in beijing

2007-05-02T23:12:00.000+08:00

so i arrived in beijing yesterday, and now it's just sitting around and waiting until lilo comes. the famous mavis davis was here hanging out with rach for the week that i was still teaching in siping. today we put her on the plane and said "adios". while she was here, her and rach didn't do very much, they pretty much took it easy and lounged around. so when i arrived yesterday, we took mavis around the town. i wanted to bargain for junk for her to bring home, so we headed out and did some mad shopping. i love bargaining, some people hate it, but i love it! it's like a game, and i'm all about finding the treasures and getting the deals.

this morning rach had a doctor's appointment, so we got to see baby lilo on the ultrasound for the final time before she comes popping out. she's on the low end of size and weight, so i guess that's good for rach. it appears that all her limbs are there and she has five fingers (at least on the hand we could see). we also had the doctor make sure she's still a she, and it looks like the girly clothes still have a good chance of sticking around.

here's also a friendly reminder from the good folks in beijing; remember: "do not drive tiredly". we could all learn a good leason from this road sign.

exam time

2007-04-24T22:35:00.000+08:00

today i gave a midterm exam for my oral english class. during the easter holiday, we learned about the easter story and some different aspects of it. so for the exam, i thought i would help out their grade and give them an easy question about easter:

who is the disciple/student who betrayed jesus?

a student answered: yoda

i couldn't grade any more exams after that, all i could do is giggle and think about jesus talking to yoda. i knew that little green guy was evil.

christmas in may? and more ...

2007-04-23T12:13:00.000+08:00

today the mail arrived and we received 5 christmas cards, i realize that mail in china can be slow, but wow!! they must have arrived via the donkey cart. this is a new kind of slow, it will be hard for me to complain about the US post office ever again. rachel even received some birthday cards. what an exciting day!!! (the postmark on one card was from december 3rd, 2006)

here i am trying to hear lilo, but all i heard was rach's stomach gurgle.

i just returned from dropping rach off in beijing, so she's a local beijing peep, until lilo comes. i have to teach this week and then i'll move there next week until lilo makes here grand entrance. so here's some subway pictures from the weekend in beijing. it was a little bit crowded!

and this is why i love queuing day!! there's a poster to promote standing in line on the 11th of every month. here seth and i are demonstrating the proper way to "queue it up!" (the people in the picture have their mouths open, in case you are wondering why we chose the "pac-man" look)

spring is also in the air!!! beijing was already green and warm, where siping is still chilly and brown. but i did spot some signs of spring coming very quickly. if you look really close you can see a little green bud coming out.

new home for the screaming squirrel

2007-04-15T21:08:00.000+08:00

welcome to the new home for the screaming squirrel. i had to relocate to a new blog, since china was so kind to block xanga. i thought it was temporary thing, kinda like the whole "beanie baby" phase in the late 90s, just a passing phase. but i guess i was wrong. although this good old blogspot place seems to be blocked every now and then too, but at least on a good day, i can still get to it.

a lot has happened since my last screaming squirrel post. we've celebrated easter, gone to beijing, ate some pie, i turned 31, had some parties, and went to beijing some more. our last trip to beijing was for a "birthing class". oh my goodness!!!! the whole time i just thanked the man upstairs for making me a boy. sorry ladies! the whole birth thing looks more painful than getting kicked in the boys a billion times. i told rach she should get a c-section and avoid all that pain.

rach moves to beijing this weekend to live until the baby gets here. my sister, the famous mavis davis, will be coming to beijing to be with rach while i'm still in siping teaching. the first week of may i will move to beijing and we will wait for "lilo" to enter the world :)

so that's the update on the new home for the screaming squirrel!

here's a picture of brooke and rach on our last stop in beijing. brooke is due about 3 weeks before rach.

and here are the taxis at the train station in beijing. i just want to note that's its not even the olympics yet and look at all the cars, at least they are in lines (must have been the 11th-queuing day).