Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from Ava!  No trick or treating this year (we wouldn't have gone at home anyway), but we still had to dress up a little! 

Ava had so much fun painting pumpkins over the weekend! 

Pumpkins!

My coworkers are too sweet!  I told them that Halloween was coming up and I really wanted to carve pumpkins with Ava!  Ryan was only able to find small pumpkins at the supermarket, so I was a little sad.  My coworkers were on a mission then to find me the perfect pumpkin!  One found the 2 bright orange ones.  Still a little small for carving :(  So another coworker did some research and found a bigger one, however I am not sure that it's big enough for carving either.  Oh well, this just reminds me of how lucky we are to have such caring coworkers who are willing to go over and beyond to help us carry on an American tradition!  Feeling very blessed ...

The biggest pumpkins we can find in Wuxi!

Loving the weather right now!

As we scanned Facebook last night we saw pictures of snow back home!!!!  Hope everyone has warm Halloween costumes this year! 

Here in Wuxi, the weather has been fantastic (thank goodness after the summer we had)!  We have been enjoying 70-80 degree weather for the past month or two and it is just now starting to dip into the 60s! 

We never posted about the heat we experienced our first 2-2.5 months here, so we thought we would share! 

Shanghai saw its hottest July in 140 years as temperatures soared to 100ºF or higher for 10 straight days between July 23 and August 1. The coastal city reached 95ºF (35ºC) or higher on 25 days last month, 14 of which exceeded 100ºF (37.8ºC).

The Shanghai Daily reports that the city’s meteorological bureau recorded a temperature of 105.4ºF (40.8ºC) on August 7, which breaks the previous record of 105.1º (40.6ºC) from both July 26 and August 6, 2013.  Prior to this year, the all-time high at Shanghai’s Xujiahui weather observatory was 104.4ºF set in 1934.  High humidity and trapped urban heat have also kept overnight temperatures several degrees above normal. On July 29, Shanghai only dropped to 88ºF (31ºC).

If anybody is planning a trip to China in the future, I would avoid July and August (probably June too)!

Diversity

A typical day out and about in China ...

We've got crabs!

We had been told that this region of China - Shanghai and Suzhou - is known for it's Hairy Crab around October!  When we saw it for sale at the store where we recently started buying most of our meat (it's located in Shanghai, but they deliver to Wuxi twice/week!), we thought it would be a fun experience to cook some up!  So, we purchased enough for us and the other Parker expats that live in Wuxi! 

As we started doing some research on how to cook them, we realized that the cooking part was fairly easy - the eating part was going to be tricky though!  Therefore, we luckily enlisted one of Bethany's coworkers, Henry, to come over and give us a lesson!  It was definitely an interesting experience and we were so glad Henry was available to be our teacher!  Otherwise, the crabs would have been steamed and we would have been sitting there dumbfounded trying to figure out how to find any meat!

Anyway, they were delicious and we definitely recommend them to anyone that finds themselves in the Wuxi/Shanghai area this fall!  Don't be surprised when you aren't offered butter though; instead, dip the crab meat in vinegar and ginger! It's excellent!

A female and male crab waiting to be cleaned and then steamed!

Almost ready to eat!

Our cooked Hairy Crabs!

Yum!  Notice the hair on the claw? Hence the name ;)

Working Weekends

One thing I do not fully understand here in China is working weekends.  Now yes, of course there is a need for overtime every once in a while and working a Saturday or a Sunday may be necessary.  However, here in China, the government mandates certain Saturdays and Sundays as working days to make up for days they get off during the week as Holiday.  For instance, we have recently had 2 holidays: Mid-Autumn Festival and China National Holiday.  The first was technically a 3 day holiday - Thursday, Friday and Saturday - as Sunday was then a working day.  I realize that this holiday is very much linked to the moon, so perhaps they cannot help when the holiday falls.  Then, the National Holiday was Oct 1 - Oct 7 (started on a Tuesday, ended on a Monday).  In order to make up for the 5 working days we had off, everyone was required to work the Sunday prior to the start of the holiday and then the Saturday after the holiday.  Even though the government does this so people have time to travel to their hometowns to see their families (and some families live quite far away), it is still hard to understand why the holiday wasn't just a few days shorter so we could still have our weekend ...

 

Oh well, in order to make up for me working this Saturday, Ryan & Ava went to a park and then visited me at work for lunch!  It was so good to see them and I think all of my coworkers enjoyed having Ava run around the cafeteria!  We even found some balloons for her!

Australia Day 7 - International Fleet Review

Finally, our last post about Australia! 

When we booked our trip to Sydney, we had no idea we would be there during the International Fleet Review - a grand event to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Australian Navy!  Quite a celebration was planned and we were right there in the middle of all the excitement!  At least 20 countries sent warships or tall ships to participate - even Prince Harry came for the review (unfortunately we did not see him)!   

After enjoying the morning festivities, we went back to our room to have a quick lunch and found a lovely surprise from the hotel's restaurant supervisor!  He thanked us for letting his team serve us breakfast each morning and gave us a bottle of sparkling wine and Ava a Koala!  What a delightful surprise it was! 

Enjoying our afternoon with beer and playtime!



Are you sure about this?!



I LOVE to run!!!

We had a picnic for dinner as we waited for the fireworks to start!  It was a magnificent show, especially with the Opera House as the backdrop!  We loved how they used it as a projector to tell their story!  Definitely one of the best firework displays we've ever seen!