A Juicy Tidbit of Advice

Okay so I thought my post yesterday would be my last from China for a while but I just couldn't help myself...

If you're at all familiar with Chinese medicine you will know that they find a remedy in pretty much anything.  You go into a pharmacy and you will see glass jars full of dried seahorses and caterpillars and all sorts of other things.  Personally I prefer natural remedies over Western Medicine when I can get away with it but you know, I draw the line at eating slimy gooey sea cucumbers as a health tonic...

Yesterday the kids and I were on our way back from one of the grocery stores when the kids asked our driver if he ate chicken feet.  He said, yes sometimes.  "They are wery goot," he says.  So this of course led to a round of questions... "do you eat chicken heads?  Do you eat rabbit heads?  Do you eat rabbit brains?"  etc etc.  He doesn't like chicken heads because they are gross but he likes rabbit brains!  Go figure!

Anyway...after K got home from work last night we picked up Subway for dinner and the kids brought up the conversation again.  "Do you eat pig feet?"  F asked.  He said that they are good in soup.  K asked if he were to put his feet in a bowl of soup would the driver eat it?  He thought that was "wery humor."  You may be wondering at this point where the 'Juicy Tidbit of Advice' comes in...wait for it...

The driver proceeded to tell us, "many Chinese people say eating pig feet will make you beautiful."  Really?

So, if you're feeling a bit ugly and need to be beautiful go on down to the butcher and get yourself some pig feet.  It's a surefire way to beauty according to our driver.

Okay... China...over and out for real this time!

Homeward Bound

June 22 is fast approaching!  We are headed back to Canada for the summer.  I am looking forward to every part of this trip that comes after the 14 hour flight with two kids!  Oh and the six hour lay over in Vancouver...I could do without that as well!  We have a busy schedule ahead of us with the first weekend booked solid and my husband K is only with us until the 6th before he comes back this way to spend the summer living the bachelor life with the dog.  On the 7th the kids and I fly out to Alberta to spend 10 days dealing with the houses, visiting with friends and giving our dogs some love!

I'm sending a prayer out to the weather gods asking for nice weather while we are on holiday!  The weather here has been crap and we need a reprieve!  Speaking of reprieves, as I was cleaning the kitchen and bathrooms earlier I couldn't help making a list in my head of all the things I am looking forward to not seeing on a daily basis for the next month and a half!(Yes, I should have been making a list of things to pack but I wasn't.)  Would you like to hear my list? Yes?  Do you have a choice?  No. 

• Nose picking
• Hocking loogies
• Traffic
• Pollution
• Stinky air...like the kind that smells like an outhouse in 40 degree weather- yeah that kind of stinky.
• Cigarette smoke
• Staring
• Pointing
• Cockroaches in the grocery store
• Noise
• Chinese music in the dancing square at 6 am
• Chinese music in the dancing square at 10 pm

And last but not least...I look forward to not hearing my boy whining about how much he wants to go back to Canada...because we will be there! 

So hopefully I make time to blog while I'm there...if you want to hear about it, that is.

China...over and out.

A quick trip to Chongqing

A couple weekends ago we took the high speed train to Chongqing to celebrate my boy S's 5th birthday.  We wanted to get out of Chengdu and see something new so we hopped on the train at 8:00am and were on our way.  The trip was two and a half hours each way and round trip cost about $30 each for 'First Class' tickets.

Up to speed!

If I could live in the Chinese countryside rather than the city I would.  Its beautiful!

No trip to another city is complete without a trip to the zoo.  The Chongqing zoo is much better than the Chengdu zoo.  Less crowded and for the most part the animals look healthy and taken care of.  Including this monkey riding an ostrich ;)

 

We got to know the Chongqing Metro while we were there.  Its the quickest and easiest way to get around an unfamiliar city.  The nice thing about the Metro in Chongqing was that it wasn't all below ground like Chengdu's so we were able to see a bit of the cityscape.  This is possibly the Yangtze River but I'm not sure as there are three rivers running through the city.

All in all I quite liked Chongqing.  Although it has approximately 30 million people I thought the city was nicer.  It seemed less crowded and it had more character.  And the people at Starbucks even got my drink right...which doesn't happen all that often!

Going Cuckoo

A Cuckoo bird has taken up residence near our apartment.  Three days ago I was at home doing things and kept hearing  cuckoo cuckoo.  I was thinking that perhaps someones cuckoo clock was on the fritz but it didn't let up cuckoo cuckoo.  So I listened to it all day...cuckoo cuckoo. 

The following day at 6:00 am cuckoo cuckoo...and again all day long...
Yesterday it allowed me to sleep in but harassed me all day with its cuckoo cuckoo.
Today cuckoo cuckoo at 6:00 am again and its still going strong cuckoo cuckoo...

Are you going cuckoo cuckoo yet?  I sure am!  Someone make it stop!

A 5th Birthday!

Jinsha Site Museum

While my husband K was out of the country for business, the kids and I had to fill our days with adventure to stave off boredom!  We decided to go check out the Jinsha Site Museum.  It was a great little afternoon trip that didn't take more than a couple of hours. (S has a short attention span!)  You can read more about the Jinsha Site here.

The dig site is inside a huge building and you can wander through the walkways to get a good look at everything.

We were a little disappointed when we started seeing all these lumps of dirt with pictures next to them.  The sign explained that everything under the mounds of dirt were too delicate to be left above ground.(At this point we were hoping that this wasn't how the whole museum was going to go!)

Rows and rows of pottery ware that was unearthed in the site.

Gold, bronze and jade were three materials that they found a lot of.  This is a gold mask.  There were blades made from jade, arrowheads of bronze, and plenty of gold leaf decorations.

Outside the museum are beautiful grounds with paths and greenery.  This is called the Ebony Forest where all of these preserved tree trunks were erected to make a forest. 

The National Defense Park

Its a miserable, rainy Sunday here; a perfect day to catch up on my blog posts.  Last weekend we visited Chengdu's National Defense Park.  This is a park that someone put their own money into to display all sorts of war time machinery.  The only problem was that they didn't charge an admission so now years later the place is falling to pieces.  Besides the fact that it was a death trap full of rusty machinery, dark holes into the earth, places to fall off of and rebar to impale on, it was a pretty neat place and the kids had fun climbing on everything.

 Our ride back to Canada ;)

  

 

The park was full of all sorts of trails, stairs and hills to climb so it was a great outing even if a little on the dangerous side.  But we laugh in the face of danger!  Ha ha ha!