Community

At a local beach

First, sorry about the month-long delay – we’ll try to update the blog about every week.   If you use Microsoft Outlook, then you can scroll to the (almost) bottom of this blog and click the “Subscribe to: Posts” – this will then send all of the blog entries to your RSS feeds in outlook.  Or, you can set up this blog to go to whatever RSS reader you use.

A morning view from
the shore road

We mentioned previously that living here on site is a lot like being in college again – living in close proximity to people and having a relatively small population of people that you see over and over again.  Another way it is like our Geneva College experience is the existence of community.  We are surrounded by close friends.

The kids at the Spouse Group tea

While “site guys” have largely been characterized as single or unaccompanied (family is back in the U.S.), a lot of the engineers on this project have come with families and a lot of the younger ones are also planning on growing their families (two babies are already on their way: one due in January and one in February).  There is a Spouse Club here, which Vicki is active in.  They get together for tea and conversation every Wednesday afternoon and plan organized trips and activities.  They also do a lot of informal activities together like bike rides, shopping trips, and recreational activities.  Vicki is putting together a website for the group to make communication easier.

Elli likes to visit the fish and Sky
at the building management
office on site.

In addition to organized community we’ve also cultivated some more intimate relationships. We’ve had some friends over for dinner and have utilized others for free babysitting while we have Mandarin lessons or go for a long bike ride.  Elli even slept over at someone’s house one evening so we could get an early start on a bike ride.  Elli is the surrogate grand kid for several couples here!

Another important part of our community is the weekly barbeque.  Every Friday night there is a barbeque at the American Restaurant which was started by an entrepreneurial Chinese man (Brian) a short walk outside the nuclear power plant gate.  It is 50RMB ($7.50) per person (plus drinks) for an all you can eat family style dinner (i.e. long table and you pass the food).  There are about 30-40 people there every Friday night for the excellent food and social time.  Some of the neighbors to this restaurant usually take Elli from us.  They have chickens and ducks, so Elli likes to visit them!  We actually just hired the neighbor to work as a part-time ayi (ah-ee) (“auntie”) for Elli, so she can learn some Mandarin!  

Ferry ride to She Pan Dao
during a weekly group ride

Eating breakfast on the beach
after riding there with friends.
Eight of us ate for $9.

Group photo on the beach 

community through cycling.  There is a group we often ride with on the weekends who do ~50km rides.  The pace of that group is good for pedaling with a baby (Mark thinks it’s a little slow – but slower is MUCH better than too fast) and it is nice to just ride without having to worry about navigating since the group leader has already planned the route.  On Friday we also did a 5:15AM ride with some friends who are just getting into riding.  We rode to a reservoir and back for a total distance of 27km.  While not very far or long (for us), the community is important and it gets us out of bed and pedaling early.  They enjoyed Friday so much that a Saturday ride was also planned.  We rode to a beach that is 21km away, ate breakfast there, and rode home.  It was a nice morning.

While we’ve only been here a couple of months, our new friends seem like they are going to be a great bunch to have along on this Asian adventure.

Recent Highlights:

Buddha in a mountain

During W101 we can't take
photos like this!



A beautiful road for a ride

• Missing our first Wilderness 101 (ultra mountain bike race in central PA) in 6 years (for Vicki) and 8 years (for Mark) was a sad occasion.  So in lieu of the Wilderness 101 (which was July 30^th) we went for a long road ride. Elli slept over and then spent the next day with her surrogate grandparents (the lead electrical startup engineer and his wife) so we could do this long ride.  It was our first long ride in a very long time so it went as well as a first long ride in a long time goes… not as good as we might like but satisfying.  We did 180km in 9 hours.  We rode past some pretty awesome scenery and even came across a giant Buddha carved into the side of a mountain.

Elli with her friends

Group photo at She Pan Dao



Sitting in an elephant's trunk

• The Spouse Club recently went on a day trip to She Pan Dao (shah pahn dow) (Snake Coil Island), a local island about 10 kilometers from the nuclear power plant that has a couple of tourist caves that were old quarries/pirate coves/contemplation resorts (they date from the Song Dynasty (960-1269)).  We had actually done our own family trip here 10 days before.  Anyway, seven of us spouses/kids rode bicycles to the ferry and the rest of the group (another 10 people) were dropped off by a bus.  Two Chinese boys (ages 10 and 11) joined us for the trip (their parents are engineers here and they are visiting during their summer break) and they took a particular interest in Elli.  I didn’t have to carry her at all – they were her personal guides.  The 10 year-old has stopped by a few times now to play with Elli.  She really likes when her big kid friends come to play.

  

  L-R: Sienna (13 months),
  Elli (16 months), and Greg
  (22 months)

   

   

  
  

  
  

• They are putting in a playground right outside our apartment building.  Itwill be nice to have a structured environment for Elli to play.
  
• Elli went to her first swim party.  She was the first in the water and the last one out.  She really likes to swim.