Heading on Vacation...

We're almost ready to head out the door on vacation to Anshun in Guizhou Province. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anshun)  It is the National Day holiday Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and then they switch the Thursday and Friday workday to Saturday and Sunday so everyone can have a full week vacation.  It sure is a clever idea.  We are taking two vacation days on top of it so we will have 9 days away.

Our pretty Chinese baby

Since we last posted an update Mark has been to the States and back.  He was selected for an "Emerging Leaders" program through his company.  It is a select group of young employees who will be prepped for management positions.  It is a two year program and he is supposed to have three to six in class trainings.  While the training was in Charlotte, NC, his boss was gracious enough to also send him to the Stoughton, MA office so he could visit family and friends.  The weekend he was home also happened to overlap with the Friends of Wompatuck's Landmine Mountain Bike Classic, so it was nice he got to attend that too.  We were the race directors for it last year so that race is close to our hearts.  In Charlotte, NC he got to spend a bunch of time with our good friends Paul and Sarah Priest, so going to Charlotte isn't down time anyway.


The other night the "Owner" (i.e. the guy who is buying the nuclear power plant) held a Spouse Appreciation Dinner for all of the expat employees with spouses.  It was a fun time of games and conversation.  And it was very Chinese.  Hard to explain... but just very culturally different than any party you would go to in the States!  The "owner" is apparently a bit stressed that some expats are not happy and will (or have) left, so they are trying to make us happy with funny things like this.  Mark, LiLi, and I are very happy here though, so this is all bonus!  We love living in rural China and experiencing a culture so different from what we are used to.


We wanted to throw this update up quickly before our vacation so as not to 1) feel guilty, and 2) have too much to update later.  We might even post while vacationing.  We'll see...

Riding

Sunrise

Now that the weather has cooled off by a couple of degrees, we’re already riding more.  We’re really looking forward to the cooler weather this fall.

On Friday we left with a group of friends at 5:30am and saw a blazing red sun and cool temperatures.  It was a great way to wake up.  It was a short ride at a casual pace.  We did the normal loop along the shore road by the entrance to the power plant and

Puppies!

then showed the group a fun way to weave through some villages on the way home instead of riding a main road.

On Saturday we slept in until 7am, had pancakes for breakfast and then went out for a ride.  Neither of us felt great and it was hot, so we spent the 90 minute ride exploring some largely dead-end roads and different ways through Liu’ao, which is the closest town to us. 

These vehicles are so loud

On Sunday we left with a fairly big group (8 people total) and spent a couple of hours riding at a very casual pace, taking photos and stopping to ask the locals questions, like what plants they were drying (sesame seeds) and the process for harvesting the razor clam.  Lili likes this kind of riding because she

A temple we found at
the top of a hill
when exploring Liu'ao

gets to walk around while we chat.  There are always dogs for her to point at too.

Once we hit 40 km there was a split in the road where we

could head home with the group or head away to a mountain climb.  Our friend David joined us and we rode upstream to the climb.  At 1200ft of vertical it’s three times the height of Blue Hills.  It is less steep, but you

An old wall

know you’re climbing a mountain.  At about 30 minutes for us to climb it’s a solid workout.  At the top we waited 15 minutes for David to catch us and then we hung out at the top (looking at spiders and frogs) for another 20 minutes.  After the fun descent David said he wanted to take some pictures of the village so we were on our own.  

Enjoying a sto

At this point we were out of food, hungry, and thinking that we still had an hour ride back to the house.  However, we found a small store, and for $1.20 we bought cold water, iced tea, and a package of sweet rice crackers (Mark thinks it’s not a cracker, not a cookie, it’s

Harvesting razor clams

in the middle).  That hit the spot and we had a great finish to the ride.  4:30 pedal time and 6:07 start to finish – 85 km total.  The best part was that LiLi never cried, and when we were walking inside she started pointing at the bike and calling out “what’s that! What’s that!”  Apparently six hours on the bike was not enough for her.