Graduation Day

MF graduated from Loyola College in Baltimore, MD. He graduated in four years with a BS in Finance. We spent the weekend with him in Baltimore for the Baccalaureate Mass at the Reitz Arena on Friday the 16th and Commencement Ceremony at the 1st Mariner Arena on May 17th. Lesley Stahl from 60 Minutes was the guest speaker.

BF and Calligraphy

I want to share with you something that I am doing that is so very interesting to me (BF).

Today was my 4th calligraphy class. I take class with a girlfriend of mine. Our classroom is located in the park that houses the ancestral temple. It is at the south east corner of the Forbidden City (Imperial Palace). The school is for those sitting for entrance exams into Art School at the undergraduate, graduate, and doctorate levels. I have a card with the schools name on it and my own name Fei Pu Lan that lets me into the east side of the Palace grounds. It is beautiful and our door faces a rock mountain that has stairs to climb up high to see. How cool is that? Way cool.

We attend class once or twice a week and are learning the most recognised style of calligraphy, the Cai style. We copy the work of a master from a book. The book is of rubbings taken off steles. That is how work is immortalized.

Our teacher is a famous calligrapher, painter, and carver in his own right. He tells us that to be a good painter we must have the firm grounding of well done calligraphy. From this our own style will emerge and then we can move onto painting (or, writing a picture).
This is one of his works of calligraphy. He likened it to being in the perfect state of mind to create and this is the work that resulted. He could not duplicated the emotion and feeling of this work. He dips his brush only once in a while, unlike us, who want perfect characters.

He is the son of an artistic family. His mother created beautiful embroidery. She embroidered with silk on silk. She created birds with eyes that looked alive and beaks that looked as though in song. His father was a very skilled caligrapher.

He began practicing calligraphy in school at the age of 6. By the age of 10 he was a very popular choice with the people in his village to paint the new year greetings the are hung by the front door.

To be considered a master painter, one must write the picture, create a poem and have beautiful calligraphy to apply it to the painting, and to create and carve your own chop (the red stamp).

Our teacher was interested in learning how to carve chops when he was young. The stone is expensive so he would fashion a block suitable for carving from clay to practice on. He went on to study this form of art at university. He has won many awards for his chops. His chops are small works of art.

Here is a sample of my work. Our teacher is a very simple and humble man. He will circle the characters that are good and paint over the incorrect strokes.

I think his technique for teaching us is to start us on this style of writing and sit back and see what we do with it. He waits for questions from us.

We spend 4 hours each class painting. We stand to practice the calligraphy. We will be studying this same style painted by the same master when he was much older and more mature. We also hope to learn one other style.

I hope to supplement my painting with understanding of what the character means and how it fits into the poems we are copying. I understand from my friend that this is not the traditional way that she learned. This is a much nicer way. I will take her word for it. Our teacher has work displayed in this 300 page book. He graciously offered to sign a book to each of us. The inscription is read from right to left and top to bottom. The first line says to student Fei Pu Lan and some sort of courtesy. The second line is the date. The third line is the name of the school we attend. The last line is two characters and is our teachers name.

He has incorporated 5 chops onto the dedication. Two are his last name. One is an art piece. One is the town he is from and the last is his first name. They are really interesting.This is a piece that my teacher is helping me to learn. These four characters together mean family and all of the best things that family life brings. This is his writing. My task is to copy it, and learn it.

I am off to practice my calligraphy for today. I am asked to practice one to two hours a day. I like to do it when it is quiet.

St Andrews

On Friday morning we started the day with a nice Scottish breakfast at the hotel. We then embarked to get AF a bank account, mobile phone and some dorm room necessities. BF had the bright idea to take a quick little stroll over to the Student Administration Building. It was prior to their opening and nothing is really going on at the University until Saturday. We had the good fortune of running into the head of the international students. She saw us in her office and gave us lots of good information. She directed us to Younger Hall to get a document which proved her address here for St Andrews for the bank. We got a big run around but finally someone was able to log onto the system to pull up AF's accommodation contract. We ran into a mother who was having the same difficulty for her international (Italian) student which was reassuring that it was not just us having the same problems.

We then went to the bank (RBS) just in time. As we got there the lines for student accounts really began to fill up. We ran into the same Mother and her son at the bank (they had tried to get a bank account yesterday but did not have the accommodation contract so could not open the account). We had all the necessary information but it turns out that the account is really only a savings account with an ATM card for withdrawals but no debit card. It is going to take a few days before AF will actually have an account to use and even longer for the ATM card.

Next was the mobile phone. We decided the best route was for AF to get a prepaid phone since she really does not know how much she will use the phone in the UK. The Italian family came in right after us again. Seems like every family is trying to get the same think done for their international students.

AF picked out a black phone that has a really nice plan for international calls. It is only 6p a minute to the US and 5p to China. We loaded up her SIM card and she now has a mobile number, yeahhhh. I loaded in some numbers for her and I tried EF's phone. It rang and I handed it over to AF. She talked for what seemed like a long time. I guess they had a lot to say to each other.

We went to "Wooly's" (Woolworths) to get dorm room necessities. We then went to a pub we had eaten at the last year while visiting St Andrews for a bite to eat and some cider and beer. The rest of the time we wandered around including visting St. James Catholic church to get service hours for AF. We took some pictures of AF outside her dorm building and English department building.

Empty Nest Again

AF is off to Scotland and on to the next chapter in her life. This will be a new chapter for us as well (we had a little rehearsal this summer). The three of us left for St. Andrews to get her settled in to school and UK life with dorm, registering for classes, banking, phones, and all that fun stuff. She has "Freshers week" starting on September 22 and the official start of school is October 1.
She has been getting prepared for her move to Scotland by watching the 2007 Rugby World Cup. I have never seen her so interested in watching a sport on TV before. We even went to an Expat Pub in Beijing (the Pavilion) for dinner and drinks a couple of times to watch the games. It has been interesting.

The trip to Scotland was filled with adventure. First we went to check in at KLM with 4 large heavy bags which will be AF's belongings at St. Andrews. We presented our itinerary to the ticketing agent who then asked us for our paper tickets. Ooooops. We were pulled aside for some special processing until BF realized she had the paper tickets. We got back in line to discover a weight restriction on bags of 20Kg per passenger. I won't even tell you how much the overage cost was, ouch.

Next we got on the plane and were seated in a row that backed restricted our seats from reclining normally and it looked like they had crammed this seating in on the 747. We had very little space between the seats in front of us. I should have taken a picture. At least it was only a 9.5 hour ride.

We arrived at Amsterdam on time and lounged around for the next 3 hours while we waited to get on a short 1.5 hour ride to Edinburgh. We presented our boarding passes to get on the shuttle bus out to the plane. A ticketing agent got on the bus asking for passengers with our last name. "we need your paper tickets". BF fished out the paper tickets again for the agent.

We arrived at Edinburgh on time and had difficulty locating our driver to St. Andrews. We hunted and paged the driver but nothing. We had a reservation with contact information. I called on a pay phone but did not have any coins for the phone so I used the debit card (big $10/call mistake). I called the mobile phone number but it rang once and hung up. I tried the office number and it referred me to the mobile number. BF went to the information center and they placed the call for her. Turns out you have to call them as they are sitting in the parking lot. Uggh. We arrived at the hotel around 15 hours after the trip started from our apartment in Beijing.

Happy 4th of July and 400 Days to Go

It is Independence Day in the US and just another normal day in China. SL brought in an American-made US flag. We just had to hang it and take a picture.

We did have a nice hamburger at Friday's during their "I Love NY promotion". Not quite a picnic on the 4th of July, but a good substitute.

We also stopped at DQ for a Blizzard (wanted to expose our Chinese co-workers to some more American "culture"). We talked about all the different kinds of candies and cookies you could get mixed into the ice cream. Good idea but JLo went with the Green Tea flavor (mixed in "green" powder).

It has also been 50 days since I reported on "the Countdown". The Beijing Olympic countdown clock is now at 400 days. Another counter we are keeping from the local paper is the number of week (57 more weeks). So what has happened over the last 50 days?.................... There are so many things:

• We enjoyed the graduation of our last child, albeit in China (fabulous ceremony including fireworks...can you imagine that in China).


• Both of our current college students were able to visit us in Beijing. We really enjoyed sharing our temporary home with them.


• We visited Tibet which was a once in a life experience that we will never forget in our lifetime.


• BF, AF and MF were able to go back to the US to enjoy a wedding for BF's niece in Milwaukee.


• AF went on a great school trip to Guilin, PRC (BF and I hope to visit sometime while in China.


• We have become empty-nesters (this is a big change and is especially hard being in a foreign country, sorry BF).


• From a work perspective, there have been many changes to the organization back in the US.

Another HS Graduate

AF graduated from International School of Beijing Saturday night in a very nice outdoor ceremony. She is so excited to have this behind her and very much looking forward to her Scotland experience. AF has had an interesting road through her pre-college education and she will have lots of memories (her Mom and Dad hope mostly good).

It was also nice to have her sister here to celebrate the graduation with.

A New Visitor

EF flew with her Mother visit to Beijing to visit us after her first year of college. They just attended a family wedding in Milwaukee. She will be with us until the middle of June. Then she will fly to AF to the US for a month-long outdoor leadership adventure in the Great Pacific.

Travel, Travel, Busy, Busy

MF and BF left for the US this week to be with EF. They are all traveling to a family wedding in Milwaukee. AF is traveling on a senior school trip to Guilin and Yangshuo on Sunday for a few days. The only traveling I will be doing is by bike or taxi. BF and EF are coming to Beijing on Memorial Day. I'm looking forward to seeing EF for a couple of weeks.

AF's high school activities are quickly coming to an end. She has the senior prom tonight. She is meeting a friend out in Shunyi to get dressed and coming back into the city for the prom at the China World Hotel. Hopefully she takes some nice pictures since I won't see her dressed up. After her school trip she has graduation rehearsals, pictures, and the graduation ceremony coming up. Should be a nice busy time for her.

Alma Mater

Loyola in Beijing.

Education Update

AF has decided that she is going to be a Scots(wo)man and live in Fife for the next four years studying English.

EF is waiting to hear from schools she recently visited and then needs to decide whether a transfer is best for her.

MF has already begun the registration process for his senior year at Loyola. An audit of his graduation requirements shows he needs to do a Loyola sponsored internship at a company for 100 unpaid hours or an international experience. Which do you think he picked? He is going to spend his winter break (2 weeks) in warm sunny Chile and Argentina.

In a call the other day he mentioned he had such a great news day. He ended up with what he calls the best dorm on campus at Loyola for his senior year. In addition, he was offered a summer internship at CCS in Wilmington as a Fraud Analyst. Good things come in three just like bad things, right? Not sure if the third good thing ever happened.........

US Road Trip

BF and AF left me in Beijing to fend for myself. They are on a spring break college road trip. The entire family (with exception of me) is driving through Maine, RI, NY and OH to look at potential new schools for EF. Perhaps this will help AF to make a decision on her college.

It sounds like they are having an adventure with lots of cold, snowy NE weather. The car did not like starting in -26 wind chill. They are taking turns driving and catching up on some sleep when they can.

St Andrews News

On Friday, AF got word from St. Andrews that she has an unconditional offer to attend school . This has been her number one choice but still needs to contemplate her choices. Needless to say she was in a good mood over the weekend and was soliciting advice. Choices, choices, choices (at least there are good ones) . . . . . . . . .

The Digital Life in China

The Digital life in Beijing has deteriorated since returning from the Holidays. I doubt there was much press in the US about the situation. An earthquake near Taiwan on December 26th disrupted the communication lines between the US and China. As a result, we have to do things differently in our digital life. One example of this............. I would like to add pictures to my blog but that does not seem to be possible right now. I have been able to post some new pictures including Hong Kong on ourWebshots site but for some reason not on this blog.

Vonage still seems to work okay as does Slingbox. Getting to our Hotmail is a real challenge and so is getting to some US websites. Lots of pages get time-out messages. You have to very patient. We understand that their are delays to repairing the communication lines. Hopefully, the repairs will be made soon.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-01/19/content_788005.htm
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-01/16/content_784152.htm

The other challenge we have in China is censorship. Often there are pages that do not come back on the Internet. One example is Wikepedia. We cannot get to this website, their must be some article in there that is critical of the Chinese government. Some expats have told us about some software that we could download and would disguise our proxy settings (we have not resorted to this yet).

AF has been accepted into another University---Trinity in Dublin. She is still waiting to hear from her first choice, St. Andrews.

Good News

I came home late from focus groups last week and was welcomed with a surprise note on the door of the apartment from AF. It was late but I knocked on her bedroom door to see if she was still up. Fortunately she was and told me she was notified by an email from UCAS that she was accepted to University of Edinburgh for the college of English studies. This was one of her top picks besides St. Andrews and Durham. Here is a picture of AF during our visit to Scotland in October to Edinburgh. She sure has been in a good mood this week. I think she is somewhat relieved that one of her choice schools has accepted her. Now the waiting game continues until the end of March to receive other offers (she hopes). Then the real hard decision of where to go for the next four years.

Learning Mandarin

So the family is now engaged in mandarin lessons. It is going slow for the Mom and Dad and we are slowing AF down. She is being patient with us and helps with our tones and vocabulary. We have lessons for an hour on Monday and Wednesday nights by a Chinese university student (Annie) who comes to our home. She is being patient with us. We have had 3 lessons so far.

I think the real frustrating part is even if you get the word right, the pronunciation of the tone could change the whole meaning of the word. For example, at work I was asking a person who only speaks Chinese if they wanted some "cha" which is tea. One of my Chinese co-workers chuckled and said it sounded like I was saying "to strangle or choke". There are 5 tones in Mandarin you need to remember.

Trying to pick out words we have learned in a Chinese conversation is also difficult. The only words I seem to pick out are numbers. Another oddity is that people rarely ever use the word "please or excuse me". Thank you and you are welcome are often used.

Maybe one reason for this is the Chinese people don't believe in queuing in a line. There seems to be no sense of order. I have never seen so many people just try and get in front of you in a bank line, a ticket line, or getting on public transportation. Driving on the roads is a whole other experience. Good thing that there is very little road rage in Beijing because the way people drive here certainly would set people off in any US town or city.

Fresh Air

So we left Beijing to get some fresh air in Scotland. With everyone in China celebrating the entire week "Golden Week" for the National Holiday and Mid-Autumn Moon Festival October 2-6, we took the opportunity to do some college searching with AF in Scotland. We went to Edinburgh and St. Andrews from September 29th to October 5th.

We took what we thought was going to be a KLM flight from Beijing to Amsterdam but was really a China Southern airplane. The flight was around 9 hours in some really uncomfortable seats. We got to Amsterdam and thought we might not have seat on the connecting flight, it all worked out. We stayed at a nice apartment/hotel at the east end of the old city of Edinburgh "Holyrood Aparthotel".

We walked everywhere in the cental part of Edinburgh. It was scenic hilly in the old city area. We visited the University of Edinburgh which was beautiful and large. They had a nice open day program that was modularized and could be customized. It was very informative. It is a very large university with a prestigious English program that Abby is interested in.













We then went to St. Andrews which was a much smaller town (3 main streets) that took no more than 10 minutes to walk from end-to-end. We stayed at a very comfortable inn called Ardgowan Hotel. We visited the St Andrews Cathedral which was really just a shell of the old cathedral from the 1500's.

Here is a good reference site for more information: http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/standrews/cathedral/index.html

While in St. Andrews the Dunhill Links Championship was being played. We stopped by on Thursday for a Pro-Am round but lesser pros were playing on the St. Andrews Old Course. All the big Ryder Cup names were playing at Kingsbarns Golf Course. Often celebrities are at these events although we did not see Michael Douglas, Hugh Grant, Samuel L. Jackson, etc. http://www.alfreddunhilllinks.com/

together at last

BF arrived yesterday. I met her at the airport with one of our drivers. It sure was good to see her after a month. She showed up in a new pair of cowgirl boots that her friends bought her for her birthday in the US. I took her to the apartment and showed her some of the ropes. I then needed to attend a special dinner in a very nice place in South Beijing, I should have brought my camera. It was a beautiful night in a spectacular park Dingge on Zuanmennei Ave. It was a clear night with a full moon. There was lots of toasting by everyone and beautiful food.

Today BF let AF take the day off from school because there was not much going on with some IB program (AF is not in IB). They did some shopping while I went to work in a new V6 Ford sedan that was provided to us. I met the driver at 7am for the first time, Liu Bin. We made good time driving to work in 35 minutes. There was little conversation since he know virtually no English and I am constrained to right, left, hello, thank you, and goodbye.

My co-workers were talking about what a great restaurant they found yesterday on some side street fro 25 RMB per. They wanted to go out to lunch today and I thought we were going back to the same place or some other Chinese restaurant. I was surprised when everyone headed into a KFC.............. Yuck, I will ask where are we going next time.

The best thing that happened today was AF agreed to go out to dinner. I took AF and BF to Mare a Tapas place that a co-worker took me to on my first day in town, It was really good but a little expensive.

Saturday Volleyball

Last week we were a couple of minutes late for practice so this caused the rest of the team to do an extra suicide sprint. AF mentioned that 7 girls were late to practice and they had to do 7 more but they have not done them yet. Needless to say AF did not want this to happen today. She needed to be at the school suited up for a scrimmage game by 8:20am. We left an hour early and of course we got there just before 8am. It is really hit or miss with the taxis. All the girls were there on time..........














The ISB Dragons played against a 14 year old Chinese Sports School team. The first couple of games the Dragons did not play well but the last 3 were very close but still the ISB team could not get it together and lost close games. It was hard for me to believe these girls were 14 when you saw their size. Here is a team photo:
I met a really nice couple who are parents of one of the girls on the team. They are from Portland and have been here about 18 months. They have gotten to know the area rather well and have actually purchased a place in Chaoyang Park which is not too far from us. The wife has even acquired a Chinese drivers license and owns a car. We talked about all the fun transportation issues in Beijing including when you drive and get in accident (it is a big headache to get resolved). They were kind enough to give us a ride back into the city. I know AF really appreciated that.

Embassy House BBQ

The weather started out poorly on Saturday. AF and I went to her volleyball practice at school. The taxi driver went a long way so we were late. That was not good because that caused all the girls to do extra running. This taxi stuff is a little frustrating because you don't know what kind of a driver you are going to get. The practice went for a couple of hours. We found a taxi inside the school compound. This driver knew all the short cuts, yeah!!

AF and I attended an annual summer BBQ for the Embassy house residents from 6 till late. We met a lot of interesting people. Most people who speak English are Europeans, Australians. I met a couple of Americans, but it appears that most Americans live out in Shunyi where there is housing similar to California communities. Europeans are much more comfortable living in the city.

The food and drink was good. They roasted a calf on a spit and had sausages, salads, etc. AF asked what would happen if she ordered a Bailey's from the bar. I told her they would serve her but her Dad needed to approve. She had one.............. She talked with a couple of girls in college in China from Tonga. There is a whole floor of people from Tonga above us. One of them is the Ambassador to China.

People explained to me why it is hard to get a taxi to recognize directions to our building. The building is only 4 years old with little advertising for a reason and many people have drivers and cars. So now I ask for the Pizza Hut on Dongzhimenwai and they know where to go, so far.

I mentioned to one resident that I needed to get back to the room so we could get up to go to church in the morning. He asked where I went. It turns out he is Catholic and told me about the British Embassy Church. Earlier in the week I was told that it did not exist anymore. It turns out they had moved it to the Kerry Center office on the 21st floor.

AF and I got up for church today and tried to go to mass at the new location I discovered. We found it after going up the wrong office tower. We got there early so we had time to find it. It is in the Visa section of the British Embassy. We met the priest and he said there was a procedure that they needed to follow to be legal. You have to register and show passports to show you are a foreign citizen. There is still a political riff between Vatican and China that hopefully will close one day. This church is actually a roman catholic church "Our Lady of China" as opposed to the other church we went to.

The mass was said in a waiting room for people to get visas processed. The seating was made of metal benches which hold about 150+ people. The alter was a table set in front of the glass windows for administrators to process visas. Off the side were what looked like confessional doors but were long skinny doors to interview rooms. The mass did not have any music so it was short.

As we left the mass another mass was to start at 11:00. So there were people leaving and people waiting in the elevator bank. There were probably 125+ at the 10am mass today. AF and I decided it was best to catch a taxi from the Kerry Hotel.

I met co-workers at the Grand Hyatt for a brunch at the Noble Court. It was a nice meal and nice to see SL who just arrived this weekend. It took over 3 hours for the brunch which was a little much. I'm glad AF did not join us as she would not have enjoyed that. I went back to my apartment while CB decided to rent a bike and tour the city. He even came out to my apartment where I took a picture of him on his bike. What a sight>

A Good Friday

Today the movers delivered our personal belongings from the US. There were about 17 boxes in all mostly clothing. We have had to check our electonics a little closer before we plug them in. Many can handle 110-240V but we have found out the hard way that there are a lot of small appliances that cannot like AF's clock radio and pencil sharpener. We shipped 3 more electronic dvices that will require a transformer since China operates on 220V. I spent a good part of the morning unpacking our belongings. It was weird opening the boxes with BF's clothes and no BF until the first week of Sept.

Today was also AF's first volleyball game, if that is what you call it. The game was not on the calendar because it was a scrimmage with a top university team, Beijing Jiaotong University. The girsl were huge, not just tall. There was one girl that just towered over everyone. It was interesting to watch and awas a good lesson for the girls. It can only get better from here. We had to also stay after to watch the boy's game. That was also interesting to watch. The University team had some powerful men on the team that could really put away the ball with some powere and speed. They could really get up over the net.

We were lucky and one of the vans were available to go out to the school and back. The last time we took a taxi out to the school but was not sure how to get one coming back. I thought we were lucky when a taxi came by outside of the gates of the school. So I sent an email to a school administrator to find out what the best way was to get a taxi back to the city. She said that taxis were regularly scheduled to be on campus and we were taking a risk by taking an unauthorized "black" taxi outside the school property.

Here is AF in her volleyball jersey she had to wear to school today.