Madness In The Middle Kingdom

The latest creation in our nightly pumpkin carving ritual is none other than that batty superhero .. The Batman. Although my carving technique is refined and honed with each now pumpkin I have to say the batman symbol was almost biting off more than I could chew. It looked simple enough but a 2-D logo on a 3-D lumpy sphere is a hard one to pull off. Without further adieu … The Dark Knight

Our motley collection ..

The wee little one barely alight is Alice’s first ever Jack-O-Lantern

Tonight we stepped up the creativity a bit and tried a few different designs. I found that carving triangles with straight edges is a lot more simple than carving curves and circles but slowly I am learning the tricks of the fatherly trade.

Alice hired an inline skating teacher for Carter because in my current predicament I am unable to fulfill my fatherly duties. Alice hired him because he had taught some kids at Carter’s school last year and he came highly recommended. When Alice told me his name was Mr. Li (Li Xiansheng) I said “His name isn’t Li Wei is it?” which of course it is. Li Wei has been playing roller hockey with us for about a year (well when I could play) and he also plays for the Chinese National Roller Hockey team. He owns a hockey equipment store (mostly inline stuff but he can get ice hockey stuff too) right here in Kai Fa Qu.

Anyway Carter thinks he is a good teacher and seems to really respond well to him. This Sunday I went out with Alice and Carter to snap a few shots and some vids. The weather was great and Carter is really improving with each lesson.

Pics here .. will post vids after uploading to YouTube.

Gearing up

Let’s Roll!

Mr. Li and Xiaolong in action

This is easy!

Ai ya!

We carved one of the previously mentioned pumpkins on Saturday night. Carter picked a small one as we are saving this week to carve the big ones. Both the boys loved scooping the guts out of the pumpkin. Carter can’t wait to do another! Soon Carter soon.

Death Row

The first execution

On Friday night we watched Charlie Brown’s The Great Pumpkin in preparation for our day of pumpkin picking on Saturday. The Defieux and Engleson clans were kind enough to invite us on their annual pumpkin picking foray in the JinZhou countryside. Although I had to negotiate some tricky mountain trails on crutches we had a great time. The weather was perfect (Avg. Temp 14 °C Max 18 °C ) and with clear skies. Always a good time in the JinZhou countryside. The kids were kept busy hunting for pumpkins and there were plenty of areas to play along the way. Nathan got his quota of animals (he looooves animals) as he saw many dogs, chickens, roosters, cats, fish and turtles. The only downside might have been when we stopped for lunch and we ordered fish .. they pulled a fish out of a pond and Alice told Nathan to come see it. As he arrived the cook started to club the fish to death with a stick. He seemed unfazed however and it was pretty tasty too.

Chinese children grow up singing many of the popular tunes we have all sang as kids. Most of the time the songs are just plain old translations of English songs but once in a while the words of the song are changed to adapt to the Chinese culture. Frere Jacques is one such song. Keep in mind that when I say English song we really are singing a French song but the English version of Brother Jack has at least tried to retain the meaning.

Frere Jacques in China is actually a song of two tigers who run really fast and are missing either ears, hair, noses or tails. Below is the video that Nathan clamors for daily .. follow along and see if you can learn/brush up on your Mandarin Chinese.

Today we spent Thanksgiving Saturday (no holiday Monday at our school) at the Kingdom of Discovery which is a Disney styled theme park near our school in Jin Shi Tan. We spent the afternoon wandering through the park and getting the kids on a few rides. For dinner we went to a 13th century English style restaurant where we were treated to an amazing buffet. A big thanks goes out to Mr. O’Neil and his wife Fairy for organizing the event and dinner for us.

The park doesn’t offer much for the wee little ones as you had to be 1.4 m or over to go on most of the rides and the kid rides all closed at 3 pm which we didn’t know prior to going. Despite that we had a blast watching a live stunt show a la Keystone Cops.

Convicts escaping the jail

Ireland, Magnus, Carter and Nathan (before he got scared and asked Mama to take him away).

A little more Nathan’s style

I love my Mama!

The dinner was complete with Russian entertainers .. here are the can-can girls

The kids then hit the dance floor after the entertainers moved on and treated us all to some quality dancing that eventually degraded into a dog-pile mosh pit.

Carter trying to impress the ladies with his moves

How about a little Micheal Jackson crotch grab for ya?

Undeniably for the Brown family (and many in attendance too) the highlight was Nathan on the dance floor busting some moves. Check out his vid.

Below is a hilarious rendition of “Hey There Delilah” with Sarah Palin as the subject.

DISCLAIMER —- THIS VID HAS SOME FOUL LANGUAGE IN IT SO IT’S NOT FOR THE KIDS OK?

Seriously if there are ANY Americans reading this … vote Democrat. I don’t care if you are a Republican or not … vote Democrat just this once. Ride it out for 4 years and then she’ll be gone. This woman is the scariest woman on the planet. Think about how bad racism must be in the U.S. for her and John McCain to actually be taken seriously.

For the Canadians reading this blog .. contact all of your American friends and tell them what I said. STOP HER!!!!

“Ting Jin Yalu Jiang” is the Chinese name given to our Tour De Dandong motorized bike tour set to take place next May. This is of course the brainchild of none other than Craig E. over at The Engleson Files. The basic premise is 4 (or 5 teams) of 4 to 5 guys will compete against each other in a race from Dalian to Dandong on the North Korean border.

Outline of the journey

The tour is set to take place over 3 days and the bikes we will be riding are all derivatives of this bike

Craig E’s motorized Flying Pigeon

On Tuesday myself, Craig and Adrian did a reconnaissance mission to map out the course. It was a beautiful day of male camaraderie that can only be had while cruising down the road. A mixed selection of Johnny Cash, The Clash, ZZTop and John Lee Hooker guided our rented Volkswagen Passat down the G201 highway through the cornfields of the DongBei region.

Unfortunately our exploration took longer than we thought and we really only basically mapped out the 1st day as the plan for our 2nd day has been put into jeopardy by geographical logistics. Without giving away too much about the proposed route all I can say is that the motto for Day 1 is “Get thee to a nunnery”

Some shots of the day

The intrepid Mr. E ready to roll

Adrian surveying the scene in the village of HuaJia

One of the many Jin Ma (Golden Horse) markets we saw that day. Buy stock in THIS company folks .. they are everywhere.

Searching for Day 1 accomodations

Welcome to the Hotel California

Where’s the desk clerk?

If our bikes hold up .. this scene awaits at the end of Day 1