Hard Boiled Suzhou

During Passover, Haga made great chocolate pancakes using matzoh-meal. And of course substituting tofu for butter. And it worked!

The weather is warming up. Chinese people are still wearing sweaters, but we are ready for warmer weather.

The pirates were tired.

Why didn’t the ducks come back?

Yesterday was Akiva’s Birthday. He is now a big seven year old boy.

Its Chinese Newyears, So all his classmates/friends are on vacation and most left the country. So we had a small party among our nation of four. We made Akiva’s ice-cream cake together.

One good thing about Winter here… strawberry season.

Before the cake, we had home-made hand-made Sushi. Haga bought the sashimi in the JiuGuang department store in Times Square. She said it was packed, in part because its actually open during the Chinese New Years holiday, and in part because people like to buy high-end presents. But the sashimi was half price because she bought it at night. So she bought a lot. They could not finish eating it and we could not let this go to waste, so I had to help out a lot.

We didn’t get anything for Akiva for his birthday. We want to get him a new bike, but its too cold now to really ride it. Akiva didn’t see any toys he likes. Also lately he is concerned about money…because his dad is concerned… so he said we didn’t need to get him anything now. We wrote him a birthday certificate which he can redeem when we go to San Diego and see more selection. His brother, however, wanted some toys. So we got a another little Lego set and we spend hours playing with Lego Ninjas.

I borrowed my friends X-Box and we have been playing games and watching movies on it. It’s pretty awesome. The kids like Naruto fighting game. I like Deus Ex. We all played Batman: Arkham City together. We play while laying on the heated carpet, which, I swear, is the best sleep aid ever invented. Nothing can make me want to sleep more than a nice heated carpet or heated bed pad (only problem is that if I fall asleep, I will wake up in 2 hours with my back all hot and sweaty, but my top sort of cold).

This is a one-day garbage haul of spend fire-works from part of our complex. Fireworks often go off at 3AM.

We also went for a walk on Akiva’s birthday. We kicked a soccer ball on the sidewalk. On the way back Akiva accidentally kicked it into a pond. Then we waited around until the wind pushed the ball to the side of the pond. Then Akiva picked it up and passed it to Kenaz, who didn’t block it and it went back in the pond. The kids had great fun doing this.

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We took a family vacation to Sanya town, on the Southern tip of Hainan Island between 12/26 and 1/1. This was a budget vacation (we spent about $1100 including round-trip air-fair). The kids had a week off from school during the Christmas holiday because they go to International School. Most Chinese have no holiday during Christmas. So, we found out that its easiest and cheapest for us to travel within China during this time.

Our goal was to get somewhere warmer than Suzhou, where we could warm-up and play. We spend the first 3 nights in a Youth Hostel, then later upgraded to an economy hotel room. We spend our days either on the beach, or watching movies. We had 4 pretty sunny days with temperature around 27C.

Sorry, but not a lot of pics of food in this post. Kenaz and Akiva tried Coconut milk. We ate street food every night. This included boiled clams, stir-fried veggies, BBQ Chicken. And rice. I also tried a donkey meat sandwich. On one night we had some really good Guilin Rice Noodles. Every breakfast we went to a good Western cafe and had eggs and coffee. Pretty good breakfast. Unfortunately, that place had the cheapest coffee, and it was 20RMB.

The beach in Hainan Island is rather over-developed in parts, and Ghetto in others. At the beginning we stayed at the hostel. Not so great a beach, but its good to start off at a hostel where people can help us find out what’s going on.

Although the beach by the hostel was not really good, it was about a 15 minute walk to the Hotel Intercontinental beach. And because I’m white, I can pretend that I’m staying there and they provided free bottled water and let us use their beach parasols.

Around the hostel was a “locals” neighborhood. Lots of chickens walking around. Kenaz wanted to find and kill one (to eat). I met several Chinese senior citizens who were quite friendly. Apparently there are a lot of retirement housing in Sanya geared towards Chinese from the cold North, who spend their Winters on the island.

We rented a small inflatable row boat and went into the waters around the hostel. I was the Captain, of course. However, my crew didn’t cooperate with me very much. And our oars were of different sizes and didn’t fit into the oar locks. So we didn’t get far.

On the third day we moved to a hotel near DaDongHai (Great Eastern Sea). There was a street food fair there. We ate “California Churros” with icecream. But it wasn’t that good. In that same area all the shops had signs and menus in Russian. Sanya has become a big tourist destination for Russians (maybe coming from Siberia).

Near the food street was a small amusement park. We did bumper cars. Kids played on an inflatable castle. They had Micky and Minnie walking around posing for pictures. And one of the most spectacular things (according to the kids) were the Coy fish who were addicted to coconut milk. People were fishing them out of the pond using a baby-bottle filled with coconut milk.

In the mornings we ate breakfast and played Foozbal.

We saw two fires while in Sanya. The first fire happened while eating at night on the food street. A Christmas tree caught on fire in the parking lot. Second fire occurred the next day at a construction site near the hotel we were staying at.

I’m wondering if the fires had anything to do with us. Two fires in two days. Coincidence?

Of course, lots of sand-castle building.

We spend New Years on the beach. On New Years eve, before the ball dropped, we all said our resolutions. Haga’s resolution was to eat less sweets and also spend more time teaching the kids. Akiva made a resolution to help Mommy and Daddy more and learn more in school. Kenaz made a resolution to always be with Mommy and Daddy. My resolution was to have more faith in myself, other people, and God. And also increase the strength in my legs so that if everything fails we can live cheaply in a mountainous area were I will have to walk up and down hills all day. Then the ball went down and we said happy New Years. When we got back to the hotel, the kids crashed into the beds and went immediately to sleep.

So that’s it. We’re happy to get back to Suzhou, even though its really cold here. All in all, we had a very good, stress-free time. I’m definitely up for going back to Sanya. It was a nice, warm, easy, cheap vacation.