One full week of Shanghai

Today marks one full week in Shanghai. A few pictures to document our adventure...

Nicole has been collecting pictures of interesting bikes & motorcycles (we'll post later). But, we decided to give you a sneak preview with this fun shot of the bicycle parking lot at McDonald's near our room on campus.

Earlier this week, Nicole and Scottie went to the Shanghai Botanical Garden. Among the many attractions were dozens of sculptured shrubs and trees. Perhaps the most interesting was the little group of trees shown below. Also inside the garden was a place for Scottie to ride with Mommy on a "lu-lu-lu". That's not Chinese...at least we don't think. It's actually the word that Scottie has assigned to motorcycles. Since we've arrived, he's really become very verbal in his own little language. Then again, maybe he's just learning Mandarin faster than we are.

Just when we thought it couldn't get any better, we found out that our favorite apartment monkey has a windshield attachment device. We had a good laugh trying to imagine this 3 foot stuffed animal hanging in the back seat of our little green Honda at home.

Scottie has become such a little boy recently. Sadly, with that comes more scrapes and bruises. He took a nasty spill on some cement steps that required some special care from Mommy, and a heavy application of Neosporin. It broke my heart to come home from work and see his scraped little face! If you take a close look at the last picture (click to enlarge), you can see the remnants of the wound. That pic was taken in the "underground children's market" that also includes an underground playground. Scottie is playing on a sort-of trampoline.

We can't begin to describe how fun it has been to have Scottie be a part of this adventure in Shanghai.

Interesting things we've seen along the way

	Buried fire hydrants. We actually saw a number of these. It lead us to wonder why we don't bury them in the US.
	Big Chinese beetle. 600 mL water bottle shown for scale.
	On a sunny day, there were many who brought out their umbrellas...and clung to them as they were riding on the back of scooters and bicycles.
	The enourmous flower tree sculpture looks like something from Alice in Wonderland. It looks like it's made out of candy or plastic, but we think it's probably a painted & polished concrete structure.

Shanghai Puxi Branch & Our Celebrity Son

What a great branch! And what a church building! The two Shanghai branches meet in this leased mansion. Our branch (and the also the Pudong branch, I imagine) are very international, and bigger than I expected. We're told that during the summer months, the numbers dwindle, since the expats often take family leave, including the branch and district presidencies. Today, however, there were quite a few people stuffed into the sacrament meeting room (main floor), with the service televised in the overflows in two basement rooms. Today, there were about 10 BYU students from Civil Engineering who had come to study Chinese superstructures (buidlings & bridges). I even ran into an old friend, Elder Gary Ng from Hong Kong, who was a missionary in Provo when I was a ward mission leader. He's now a BYU Civil Engineering student.

For the first time (finally) Scottie cried when we left him in nursery. He typically has shown no remorse that his parents were leaving him with strangers for 2 hours. But the jetlag, culture shock, and 5am morning schedule were enough for him to express his concern, and remind us that he does need us for comfort.

Scottie has been an angel the entire trip. He barely made a peep on the long 12 hour flight from Vancouver to Shanghai--mostly played with his cars and trains. Starting with this trip, he's begun to show a really silly side--a kind of slap-stick humor--that we haven't seen before. It's fun. And although he misses Grandma Colleen deeply, so far, he's had both Mom and Dad around at all times to give him attention. And wherever he goes, he draws a crowd of onlookers. Our toe-head son is a celebrity around here! On our cab ride home from church, Scottie was poking his head out of the window, waving and pointing. He nearly caused an accident! A scooter-driver took her eye off the road to smile and stare at Scottie, and nearly hit the car next to her.


Several things to notice about this picture of Scottie with a local boy near our home. (Aside: The foreign guesthouse overlooks this track & field complex...Nicole took advantage of the track yesterday morning, and drew some attention to her speed.)

(1) Scottie is eating a Chinese icecream cone and loving it.
(2) The little Chinese boy has a leash on. Nicole and I speculate that it's to help him walk.
(3) Notice the open flap on his pants? He's being potty-trained. We had heard of these, but got to see one with our own eyes.

First day in Shanghai: more photos

Kaipo the supermonkey. Do all the rooms have one of these? Or is this just because Scottie is with us?

Our makeshift crib. Actually, it's quite a bit more comfy than our bed. (Despite the torn wallpaper, our room is quite comfy.)

Shanghai!

Our first full day in Shanghai! Yesterday afternoon, our administrative assistant, Yiming, picked us up from the airport and drove us to our home away from home--the foreign guest house at Shanghai Normal University. Our favorite parts about our living quarters:
(1) Kaipo the super monkey: he was the first to greet us, sitting on the sofa when we entered. He's still there watching over Scottie as he sleeps.
(2) The innovative crib.
(3) Our therepeutic hard-board beds...think box springs covered with comfy blankets.

Last night, we took a campus tour. We were exhausted, but surprisingly, we remembered how to get around this morning. Our adventures today:
(1) Early morning shopping at "Trust-Mart". Our favorite section was the seafood section, complete with a bucket full of wriggling LIVE EELS. (Shudder.)
(2) In the afternoon, we met up with two other professors from St. Martin's in Olympia and went to Yuyuan Garden---the oldest part of Shanghai. Our visit included a scrumptious meal of Chinese dumplings filled with vegetables, shrimp, and a yummy mystery meat. We're getting good at chopsticks. Some pics of this adventure are included for your viewing pleasure.

Nicole outside the gates of Yuyuan Garden. By "garden", it really means a ton of shops...we think there was a garden in there somewhere.

Where we live in Shanghai, most buildings don't look like what Disneyland leads you imagine. But on our way to Yuyuan, we saw the glimpses of the Disneyland portrayal.

Scottie is checking out the goldfish in the actual "garden" part of Yuyuan garden. Really cool place.

Twin Lakes with the Boyz

Matt, Joel, Sam and me at Twin Lakes. Matt decided to brave the cold water without a wetsuit. Show off.

We haven't really spent any time like this together since high school...with the exception of a few low key get-togethers at BYU. Funny how we've all changed and pursued careers, but the core elements of personality never seem to change. That's mostly a good thing.

As a sequel to the dive-poses at last year's family reunion, I'm posting some pics of a bunch of 30 year olds giving it a shot.

Twin Lakes

We have been going to Twin Lakes on the Colville Indian Reservation in eastern Washington since my Dad was in "the hopper," ie... forever. Hyrum and his buddies are up there right now and I am sort of jealous. Just for fun, here are some pictures of all of us last summer. I will make him post about it when he gets back.


We had a fun time taking action shots of the whole fam. Here is me.
















Beautiful form Hyrum!













Shannon getting soaked by Rachel.















Nice diaper Analee.

Uncle Jimmy in the hammock with Scottie, Eli, and Analee.

Hmmm... what's cooking?














Enjoying the Lake.














Hubba hubba muscle men. Bennett, Hyrum, and Eli showing their muscles.

Scottie learning to walk. Pretty good for 9 months.

entering the blogging world

We're starting a blog.

Here are our top 5 reasons why:

(1) Narcissism -- YOU get to read about US
(2) All of our techy friends are doing it
(3) We're not good journal writers
(4) If you don't hear news from us, it's YOUR fault
(5) We're mobile: in the next few months we'll be in Seattle, China, Boise, etc...and we want to save you from the boring family video party later.

So, please read our blog!

We're leaving for China in 10 days. And we're sure to post some fun pictures.

We've recently read a blog from somebody in China, and really wanted to know why they were there. After hours of scouring the blog, we never found out. To save you some effort, here are the pertinent details on our trip to China.

(1) Hyrum heard about a lecturing opportunity in China. He was curious, but not interested since this quarter promised to be very busy with a PhD General Exam, other summer internship possibilities, etc. But, he requested for more information just to appease his curiosity.
(2) Apparently, the folks at Shanghai Normal University (hereafter referred to as "the university") are desperate for people who speak English that can also teach undergraduate Electrical Engineering classes. Instead of sending more information about the position, they sent an email that said "when can you start?"
(3) The schedule and classes they offered didn't work, so Hyrum said no.
(4) The folks at the university wouldn't take no for an answer. After each "no", they'd scramble schedules and classes around to try to make things work.
(5) After almost 2 months of negotiating classes, schedules, and working out commitments at school, we finally found arrangement that could work, if we so desired. So...we said, "why not?" and accepted.

We leave May 28th. Hyrum will be teaching in Shanghai for a month. Two classes, each class meets NINE TIMES A WEEK! So, it should be a busy schedule. Room (a foreign guest house on campus) and board (something like $5 a day) are provided. Hyrum's airfare is also provided for, and he'll get a small stipend that should cover the cost of tickets for Nicole & Scottie plus a little vacation after the teaching commitments. We're scheduled to come back to the U.S. of A. on July 9th, after which we'll work (meaning Hyrum will do research at his Dad's company, and Hyrum, Nicole & Scott will help out on the Anderson farm) out the summer in Boise.

In the meantime, while Hyrum is lecturing at the university in Shanghai, Scottie and Nicole will search the city for nice photo material for this blog. So every now and again, check out our burgeoning blog.