Everything updated

I added pictures to a bunch of posts and posted some of the kids stuff which was in draft status and put everything as close as I can to chronologic order so you might want to scroll through it again

First days of school

The kids have had two days of school so far. Nick is in 7th grade and seems to be fitting in just fine. They are going to move him to a more advanced English class since he is a native speaker. He says math is similar to stuff he has already done so OK so far.  The only thing he will really struggle with is reading traditional Chinese characters instead of the simplified ones used on the mainland. He says he understands most of what the teachers and students say. He has already made one friend that he plays video games with and seems quite comfortable. Sydney and Piper will find the Chinese much more challenging as they are in harder 10th grade classes and its been a few years since they were in immersion. They have been assigned some kids who have better English skills who help translate and they are trying to do as much as they can. Physics is likely to be a lost cause. I'm fine with high school level physics but neither the kids, nor I, nor google translate can make much progress with books and assignments that are all in Chinese written with traditional characters. Syd says the math is stuff she has seen before and the rest doesn't seem to be bothering them much. They are enjoying many of their other classes. PE, English, IT and maybe a few other little things are in English.  The rest are in Chinese. They even have to take a mandatory military preparedness course which is required of all students in Taiwan and taught by a Colonel in the Taiwanese Army. This course apparently includes learning to shoot a military rifle. I expect Piper will excel at that one! Yesterday we rode the city bus out with them to school which meant leaving at 6:20 so we could catching the bus at 6:40 so we could be there by 7:40 with school starting at 7:50.  They didn't get out until 4:45 which meant catching the 5:30 bus back which put us back home about 6:45.  A really long day. Today they got a ride from our landlord who is also a teacher there. That meant meeting her about 2 blocks from the house at 7 and getting back around 5:45. So, a bit better.

I should say a bit about the school. Its located about 15miles outside of Kaohsiung and it really is like going to school at Disney World. After we dropped the kids off we walked across the street to the driving range and hit a bucket of balls. We toured one of the local luxury hotels and talked to them about day passes for the pool. Then we went over to the mall and rode the giant ferris wheel that gave us a view of the whole area. We had some dumplings at a restaurant in the mall. Then we went to the batting cages and swung at about 40 pitches each. Finally we went to a showing of the new movie "Black Panther" in English with Chinese subtitles.  Then it was time to pick up the kids! Should be a good 4 months for the parents.

Front entrance. First Day

First arrow shows school. Second arrow shows dorms. Athletic fields in between. We are on giant ferris wheel. Below us is huge 7 story mall. To the lower right is E-Da Royal Hotel. To the upper left is the amusement park

That's just how Nick looks even when happy

After we dropped kids off

Last day in Harbin and first days in Kaohsiung

Now that we are settled down in Kaohsiung, Taiwan and waiting for the kids to start school I'll probably post less frequently but I thought I would talk about our last days in Harbin and our arrival in Kaohsiung first.

Our last full day in Harbin was one of those days that restored your faith a bit in taxi drivers and the people who sell entry tickets for all the tourist sites in China. Typically when buying tickets for any sort of tourist attractions in China we had given up and just asked for 4 adult tickets. Inevitably when we asked for children's tickets or student tickets for Syd and Nick we were told that they had to have student ID's. Although Syd actually had her student ID and even I had since I had been registered at CU for the last 2 years for Chinese classes they typically said those ID's were not valid for the discounted tickets. So 4 adult tickets for us every where we went. The taxi drivers in Harbin typically didn't want to use the meter when taking us to places like the various ice festival location. They would always quote a price between 50 and 100 RMB and then the bargaining would begin. Today almost the first taxi driver we saw pulled over, let us in, and started his meter. Just like they were supposed to. Turns out a metered ride out to Sun Island for the ice festival is about 30 RMB and that is all he charged. Then he refused a tip. Then when we got to the ticket desk at the ice festival Sydney asked for her usual 4 adult tickets. The lady at the desk looked at Nick and asked, "How old is he?" Syd said, "13" and then she asked how old Syd was and sold us 2 adult and 2 kid tickets! First time ever in China!

The last ice festival we went to was the best. Its the original festival and its like a giant city made of ice with all sorts of activities. This year's theme seemed to have something to do with religions of the world. There were recreations of famous churches, temples, and synagogues in ice along with a gigantic carving of Buddha done in snow. There were bars and restaurants scattered through out the ice city along with all sorts of activities. Kids loved all the giant ice and snow slides. The best slides though were age restricted to people older than 16 and younger than 50. Which ruled all of us out. We found one slide that used 4 inner tubes for 4 people tied together in a square. We got in line for that one and when we go to the top of that one Syd heard the guy say while looking at Nick, "That one is clearly just a kid but they're foreigners so I don't care I'll just let them go."  Little did he know we were all illegal. They also had a small ski hill with a single poma lift and an ice skating rink. Both kids skated for a while, Nick on his hockey skates.  More unusual were the areas for swimming in ice water and all the weird vehicles for sliding on the ice. They even had dragon boat races on the ice. You could take sled rides in sleighs pulled by dogs, horses, or reindeer. We got roped in to paying $10 so the kids could get their pictures taken holding an arctic fox.  Pretty sure it was heavily medicated as it barely moved even when being handed from one person to the next for pictures. We stayed for about 4 hours until we were totally frozen and then headed home. Taxi driver for the ride home asked for 100RMB and settled for 80RMB so things were back to normal.

Not one of the more popular activities!

None of us are between 16 and 50 so we officially weren't allowed on this slide!

At 5AM the next  morning we left for the airport to catch an 8AM flight. I wanted us there as early as possible since I was pretty sure something would go wrong and I didn't want us to miss our flight to Taiwan. We dressed for the 70 degree weather we would be getting in Taiwan and not the -10 degree weather we were experiencing in Harbin The Harbin International terminal is very small as they only support a few flights per day. On our day there were flights to Korea, Taiwan, Russian and Japan and that was it. When we got to the check in desk as soon as it opened at 6:30 the trouble started. The lady at the desk seemed to be having all kinds of trouble printing out our boarding pass. She called multiple people over and kept getting higher and higher level supervisors involved. They kept dragging us to different computers to try different things. We were there an hour and during that time everyone on our flight was able to check in and they had already started on the second flight which was to Korea. I was starting to worry. I had made our reservations many months ago on Travelocity and it turns out that although their software would allow them to see the reservations it wouldn't let them print our tickets unless every field on the reservation matched our passports exactly. Although I had put our full names into Travelocity the Chinese software had removed the hyphens in the kids middle names and mashed all our first and middle names into one giant name. They were trying to edit the entries so that the software would agree that the entry matched the scan of the passports but between their lack of familiarity with western names and the difficult software they were really struggling.  At one point I looked over their shoulder and they were actually trying to edit Sydney's reservation so that it matched Nick's middle name.  Finally after an hour they got it figured out and we were rushed through multiple security checks and were the last ones on to the shuttle bus out to our flight. Then it was out the door into the -10 air in our Taiwan clothes and up the stairs to our flight.

Upon landing in Taiwan we waited for the Miller's to arrive from Vietnam. Then we all went to the station for the high speed train to Kaohsiung. Since it was Chinese New Year they were all sold out but unlike in China they sell standing room only tickets for the hight speed and then they cram as many people in as they can. There is a bullet train about every 30 minutes or so leaving for Kaohsiung. The lines for standing room were actually quite long and we didn't get on the first train but when it left the lines were almost gone. We spread ourselves out so that the 7 of us were in 4 separate lines so we would all be in the front of the line. We all go on the next train and after only 2 stops we all had seats for the rest of the way to Kaohsiung which is the end of the line. We got to Kaohsiung and were met by our host/landlord Shereen. We caught the last subway of the night to her house. We have rented her house for the next 4.5 months. Its a beautiful 4 story row house that sits on a little lane. It looks out over a canal or river and there is a park on the other side of the river. We are only about 0.25 miles from the nearest subway stop and only a few stops from downtown but the neighborhood is very residential. It should be a great place to live for our 4.5 months in Kaohsiung. Shereen originally rented us the house because she was planning on going back to South Africa to care for her father. Her father's health improved but she honored her original agreement with us and has rented herself a smaller place nearby. We are all very grateful.

The next morning we took a taxi out to the kids new school. The plan is to spend 4.5 months in Kaohsiung while Syd, Nick, and Piper Miller go to I-Shou international school. I had spent the last 5 years reaching out to schools all over China and Taiwan looking for a school where the students were all Chinese and most of the curriculum was in Chinese. We didn't want the kids to go to an international school since then all of their interactions with classmates and almost all their classes would be in English. The whole point of this trip was to force them to use as much Chinese as possible and push them out of their comfort zone. I struck out so many times that I was actually looking at Chinese schools in Malaysia and Singapore as another option. Then we found I-Shou. Its an international school but almost all of its student's are Taiwanese. It has two educational tracks. A predominately English immersion IB track and a predominately Chinese track. Our kids are joining the Chinese track.  Its going to be sort of like going to school at Disney World. The school is next door to E-Da world, a giant amusement park, and also the giant E-Da mall. The area is full of vacation homes and hotels. The school itself has absolutely beautiful facilities. The classrooms, labs, sports fields, music rooms, and other stuff are unlike anything our kids have ever had. Kent, Colorado Academy, or Graland might compete but our kids haven't seen anything like it. Its about half the price of ISD and about a third of the price of somewhere like Colorado Academy.  Syd and Piper will be in the same 10th grade class. Apparently their classmates have been told they will be getting some new girls but they have no idea that one will be blonde and the other will likely be the tallest girl if not the tallest kid in the school. We don't know as much about Nick's 7th grade class and we don't know what they have been told. School starts this Wednesday so we'll see how it goes. They have to buy uniforms that morning and then they get thrown into class.

A few days after visiting the school we went to ShouShan national park. Its a mountain park a bit north and west of Kaohsiung. We spent some time hiking through the park and also through Sun Yat Sen University. Its a very beautiful mountain right on the coast and covered in jungle. The whole area was once a big military base which helped preserve the jungle. Lots of monkeys there. Most are quite mellow but a few are very aggressive. Syd made the mistake of putting her back pack down and one started going through it. Then it wouldn't back down when we tried to chase it away. It wasn't afraid of sticks but when we threatened to throw stones at it it ran away.  As we were leaving the park we saw a group of monkey ransacking people's scooters. They knew how to open all the storage compartments and baskets on the scooters and they were throwing everything they found on the ground. One monkey found a bottle of Pepsi which he tried to bite open. When it started spraying they all ran away.

Turns out there are 4 venues for the ice festival

The high today was something like 1 degree above zero (Farenheit)! Our plan today was to go to the last and biggest venue for the ice festival. We had already been to the ice lantern park and the snow sculpture park. Our plan was to save the biggest and oldest for last. We were going to the Harbin Ice and Snow world today.  Our taxi driver had other ideas. He told us he would take us to where we could take the free bus. Turns out he actually took us to a tour agency where they sold us tickets( and gave him a kick back) and then took us in van to the park. Except they took us to Wanda World for what turns out to be a 4th venue for the ice festival. Wanda is kind of like a Chinese Disneyland owned by one of the richest men in China. He owns ski resorts, and hotels, and amusement parks and god knows what else all over China. In Harbin he has decided to turn his amusement park into another ice festival and we ended up there. It had some big buildings built of ice, some smaller ice sculptures and the usual ice based activities; slides, ice go carts, bumper cars, ice bikes, dogs and ponys hooked to sleds, one sad looking reindeer hooked to a sled, and a few weird things. There were some little sleds on the ice that had levers that moved spiky arms behind the sled to push you along. They looked for all the world like some sort of steampunk ice insect. Also there was a carnival ride that drug you around the ice on an inner tube. Finally there were two little army tanks, one broken and one you could drive around on the ice. All of this was scattered amongst the closed rides, stores and restaurants of the amusement park. A few restaurants and stores were open and they had even hired a blond girl to stand in front of the Russian restaurant and greet everyone who walked in with "Dasvidaniya"
There was a 20 minute ice capades like skating show with skating penguins and people skating on stilts. It was only 20 minutes long because at 5 below you can't stand still and watch for much longer.  Finally there was an hour long indoor stage show that everyone went to if nothing else to get warm. The stage show was sort of like Cirque du Soleil but with a few ice skaters and some indoor ski jumpers. I think it was supposed to be sort of a world tour but like most Cirque du Soleil shows a bit hard to follow a plot and then you add in the Chinese weirdness. As Nick said, it was also more than a bit racist. The USA was represented by a brief bit of break dancing done by a white guy in an afro wig and actual black face. Which I don't fully understand because they had real black people in the Rio-Carnaval piece and the African piece which also included a giraffe that looked like it had been stolen from Lion King. France was represented by a BMX bike performance because when I think of France I think BMX. However, Netherlands was represented by French girls doing the Can Can in front of Dutch windmills while little Dutch boys jumped out of the windmills on to trampolines. Russia was represented by some women dressed up like weebles and some acrobats on a giant swingset. After that either I lost track or the LSD wore off.
Tomorrow we try again to go to the big ice festival.

Dragon boat racing on ice

Not really all that fun

Drive a toy tank on the ice

Steampunk Ice Spider?

Ice Slides at Wanda Ice Festival

We make it back to Harbin

The next morning we got up and the skies were clear even if the roads were packed with snow. We had a quick breakfast of steamed bread, scrambled eggs and rice porridge. I paid for our rooms and food. Dinner and breakfast for the 5 of us plus 3 rooms for one night(I paid for the driver) came to about $200. Pretty expensive by Chinese standards but pretty good for the experience and the fact that we could have just been homeless.  Then we headed out. At one point we stopped at a rest stop that was also an open air market for nuts, dry fruit, rabbits, and pheasants. The highway was open but it was bit sketchy in spots. We saw evidence of several accidents from the night before and passed at least two more fresh ones including one where the car was completely totalled. Our driver was surprisingly careful as I was expecting the usual aggressive Chinese taxi driver style. However it seems they are only reckless when it comes to scooters, pedestrians and oncoming trucks but not when it comes to snow and ice.  We made it back to Harbin in one piece and thanked our driver. The original deal was for 1000RMB for the day trip. Since we didn't make it back until noon the next day he asked to up it to 1500RMB. I was so grateful for his company at dinner the night before and his careful driving that day that I upped it to 2000RMB.

After we all got cleaned up we headed out for the day. We walked over to St Sophia cathedral. It was the original Russian Orthodox church for Harbin when it had a huge Russian population. Its no longer a church and all signs of it being a church are long gone but the architecture is still quite pretty. The inside is a museum with pictures from the history of Harbin. It was great to see all these pictures from the early days of the city. The city was at first just a very cold looking little village on the shores of the river. Then the Russians came with a branch of the trans-Siberian railroad and the river port opened and it boomed. The pictures of the early days with all these Russian families walking in the streets or picnicking by the river were weird to see in a city where everyone is now Chinese. Strangely, although St. Sophia's is no longer a church and was never a catholic church someone decided to hang a giant copy of  DaVinci's last supper in the sanctuary.  Probably looked like it made sense to the Chinese but it looked really weird to me.

After we left St. Sophia's we dropped down below ground. Turns out that in addition to all the 4 and 6 story malls all over the downtown area all the downtown area is riddled with interconnected tunnels lined with little shops and restaurants. Makes sense when the high temp for the day could be 10 below zero. Margaret even found a subterranean McDonalds. She ordered some weird ass sandwich that had a white bun with a shrimp patty and chicken patty on the same sandwich. Syd had curly fries. We wandered through a few malls and tried a few food courts. Just like in Shanghai it seems all the street food has moved into the food courts. Makes sense when it is this cold out. We had a great dish where you pick out whatever you want from a salad bar like set up with meat, seafood, tofu, noodles, and veggies. Then they throw it all in a wok with garlic, peppers, onions, and spices. We also found a restaurant that just did deserts and tried 4 of them.

Yabuli. More travel adventures

The man who rented us our apartment had found a taxi driver willing to take us 200 kilometers to Yabuli and wait while we skied and then drive us all the way back for  1000RMB, about $150. Pretty good deal since the best I had been able to find otherwise was about 2500RMB. You can also take a train followed by a bus for about 100RMB per person but that only leaves you a few hours to ski. So, we hopped in the cab at about 6:30 in the morning and headed out. Took forever to get out of the city but once we were on the highway we made good time. Kind of reminded me of trying to get to Hunter Mountain from NYC. Once we got there the driver drove us to a little guest house apparently owned by a friend of a friend of his. We called the owner "Rocking Man Bun" for his hairstyle. We changed in his guest house and he rented us helmets. He took us over to the ski resort and got us set up with lift tickets and rentals. My guess is he got some sort of kickback but we paid the listed rate.  Full day lifts and rentals was about $110. The terrain itself reminded me of a mid sized east coast resort. About 1500 vertical feet. 10 or 12 runs. 2 lifts (Gondola, and high speed 6 chair).  The snow was mostly hard packed or groomed machine made snow. The 2 or 3 beginner runs were absolutely packed with Chinese learning to ski and their instructors and photographers documenting it all. The regular lifts had no lines and the black runs were completely empty, no moguls. The blue runs were nearly empty.  Overall we had a good time. I will say that Chinese slope etiquette is similar to Shanghai driving etiquette. I saw behavior from several skiers or boarders that would have resulted in a fist fight in Colorado and the few times there was any sort of wait for a chair it was a free for all. We left about 3:30. It was just starting to snow as we left. We stopped at Rocking Man Bun's place to return the helmets and change clothes. We headed down the road. About 10 miles later we got to the on ramp for the highway and it was closed. Apparently ice and blowing snow had caused several accidents. There was a way back to Harbin using country roads but in those conditions it would have taken all night. Our driver called Rocking Man Bun to see if there was any room at the inn and then we headed back to his place to spend the night. Kids were pretty stressed about not getting home but it turned out to be a good experience for them.

Rocking Man Bun's guest house had three kinds of rooms. The most traditional for North China has what is called a Kang bed. Think of a platform made of bricks about 50% larger than a king sized bed. Could probably put a dozen people on it if you wanted to.  There is a coal oven under the bricks where you build a fire which heats all the bricks and then you sleep on a nest of quilts on top of the Kang. There is also another version with an electric heater instead of the coal oven. Finally there were rooms with regular beds. The kids got the last room with regular beds. Margaret and I took one with an electric Kang. It was very warm but the quilts don't do much to soften the bricks.

That evening was a great experience. Before dinner we sat around a table with the taxi driver, Rocking Man Bun, and the older couple he had hired to cook and help run the guest house. We talked about life and politics and healthcare and all sorts of things. We used a mix of translation apps on our phones and relied on Syd and Nick for a lot of translation. At one point Margaret got a huge laugh when we were discussing US presidents and she called Trump a "Si Gui"  Its apparently an epithet she learned as a child from her parents and literally means dead ghost but I think the word may be a bit more spicy or profane than that. Anyway all our hosts laughed at that one. It was interesting watching Syd and Nick get involved in the conversations. They were both listening intently and Syd was very active in the conversation. Nick was his usual quiet self but whenever Syd didn't know how to say something Nick was usually right there with the correct word or phrase. They actually made a very good team and I was very proud of them.  For dinner that night they brought out a huge iron wok with chopped up chicken and mushrooms. You ate the chicken and mushrooms and then threw in noodles and vegetables like a hot pot. There were also some very good homemade dumplings. Our driver ate with us and taught us how to do it all.

Top of Yabuli

Padded, heated, 6 person chair with a bubble. But you take off your board to ride!

Bottom of Yabuli

Syd in an empty unused terrain park

The bunny hill

Harbin Day 2

Second day was a tiny bit warmer I think the low was only zero and the high was 18. We had lunch at another dumpling and bun place on the 4th floor of a mall overlooking Center street. Then once it had warmed up a bit we headed over to the Snow carving festival on Sun Island. This is best done in the day time as the sculptures are made of man made compressed snow and not ice. Therefore they aren't lit from the inside. This is across the river on Sun Island. Some of the sculptures are only 10 feet high and others are the size of a good sized strip mall and 3 or 4 stories tall. In front of the largest snow sculpture is a large frozen pond for activities. This included some ice skaters as well as a bunch of other weird ways to get around; ice bumper cars, ice bicycles, or just sitting on a little seat and shoving yourself around with little ski poles. The also had a track for some little dune buggy like things and several ice and snow slides. Nick skated for a while. We played around with the ice bikes and drove the dune buggies. We went down a bunch of slides. We toured all the hundreds of snow sculptures. Margaret noted that they seemed to have a fascination with bare breasted women, including some that were anatomically pretty improbable.

We went back to our street for dinner as its actually a pretty good location. There is a dumpling shop that makes all its dumplings and then just leaves them out on tables on the side walk. They are flash frozen with in minutes. There is also a beef noodle shop  where they stretch the noodles right in front of you. As we were having dinner that night at the beef noodle place under our apartment building we got the word that we were all set for a trip to Yabuli the next day.

Outdoor deep freeze for dumpling restaurant

Stretching noodles at beef noodle place