Photos: Oct 2007 China Trip - Beijing

In Jakarta getting ready to board the first of many flights on this 10 day trip to China.

We stayed overnight in Singapore at the airport hotel, then got up early for the flight from Singapore to Beijing. Here's Nash & Luke reading in the airport. Nash is reading the 5th Harry Potter book - as you can see he is at the beginning of this 950+ page book. He finished the book by the end of the trip. Luke also finished his Magic Tree House book half-way through our trip and kept asking us to go to bookstores to look for another one.

On Saturday morning we went to the Great Wall at Simatai. Luke and I are in the cable car to take us near the top of the mountain - as you can see from the background - it was cloudy/foggy, rainy, and cold.

Here's Grant at the end of restored section - big warning signs about fines or other penalties if you go further.

I included this photo, which we took on the way back down when it was sunny, so you can see the Great Wall in the distance on the top of the mountain.

Photos: Oct 2007 China Trip - Beijing

Some photos of the Forbidden City.

Nash is wondering why there is a place called the "Right Arm-Pit Gate." We were constantly amused by the English translations everywhere we went.

The Forbidden City is big. We sat down to take a Pringles and Snickers break about half-way through it.

We went to China to see the Forbidden City. Apparently the Chinese go to the Forbidden City to see cute 2 year old western girls with curly blond hair.

On our walk back to the hotel from the Forbidden City.

Photos: Oct 2007 China Trip - Beijing

In Beijing at the park surrounding the Temple of Heaven, there were lots of people out walking, playing musical instruments, playing hacky sack, and playing with these sticks. They let Luke give it a try.

One of Mallory's many photo sessions.

Temple of Heaven.

The boys are trying out the Echo Wall, at the Temple of Heaven. It didn't work.

Grant and Luke with a Buddhist monk on Tiananmen Square.

She hates it when they touch her face.

The view of the front gates of the Forbidden City from Tiananmen Square.

In the Beijing airport, waiting to check in for the flight to Xi'an (apparently we arrived too early, so they told us to wait).

Photos: Oct 2007 China Trip - Xi'an

The visit to the Terra Cotta Warriors was amazing - it was really interesting to see all of the soldiers, archers, and horses buried.

The next day we had a few hours in the morning so we went to downtown Xian and walked around the Ming City Walls. The walls are in a 14 km rectangle around the city.

We hired two pedicabs and went for a ride on the walls.

Photos: Oct 2007 China Trip - Yangshuo & Guilin

Yanghsuo was absolutely beautiful. We borrowed some bikes from the hotel and rode around the farms and orchards one day.

Mallory is sitting in a wicker chair strapped to the back of Heidi's bike. She is clapping her hands in this photo - she loved most of the ride, but ended up falling asleep in that little chair later that morning.

It was interesting to see the farming tools and methods they used. This man is harvesting his rice field using some kind of contraption that has a foot-powered machine inside a box. Every few minutes he'd step on a lever a dozen times to get the thing working again.

We passed several old, dilapitated outhouses (small shacks with a hole in the ground), yet we found two discarded toilets by the side of the road. Luke wonders why - they are perfectly good toilets, so why aren't they using them?

Nash, Grant, Luke, and I road our bikes in the afternoon to the Dragon Cave. At the entrance, while waiting for the tour to start, the boys (and I this time) were asked to take pictures with several of the Chinese people on the tour. Luke was embarrassed that he had to sit on this lady's lap.

One popular thing to do in Yangshuo is to take a ride on a raft.

We found a somewhat secluded valley with tall karst peaks all around us - the boys called it "Cracked Bowl."

Graves on the way to the"Cracked Bowl."

Nash posing after he and I hiked up a ways on one of the sides of "Cracked Bowl."

Above - Heidi, Mallory, and Nash sitting in front of our hotel, the Yangshuo Mountain Retreat, and below - here's the view they had. The hotel is right between the mountains and the river.

The hotel had several chickens that Mallory liked to follow around. She called them "bawk bawks."

Here's one of the only shots we took in Guilin, at a lake in front of our hotel in downtown Guilin.

After 7 plane rides in 10 days, the kids had to get creative with their in-flight entertainment. Grant resorted to ripping up his napkin and making ear muffs.

Photos: September 2007

Celebrating Nash's 12th birthday.

Mallory found Luke's shorts and put them on (backwards) and wandered around the house for a while. She thought she was so funny.

Nash, posing with the baton before the start of the 4x100 meter relay.

Nash at the start of the 4x100 meter relay race, with Luke and Mallory at the bottom of the picture, somewhat paying attention to the race.

Here's Nash in the final leg (400 meter) of the medley relay, with Luke sitting down in the background cheering him on.

Letter: 1 October 2007

We are already in October! The boys are almost finished with their first quarter of school and Halloween is fast approaching, which means Thanksgiving and Christmas are right around the corner. My favorite time of year. I sure wish we had the apple orchards and the colorful leaves and crisp air to go with it.

Nash turned 12 on 11 September. He’s had a lot of ‘firsts’ this last month. His first iPod (birthday gift), first passing of the sacrament…he was a bit nervous
…first time as the Deacon’s president, since he’s the one and only Deacon in our branch, first time he went home teaching with Creed, and first talk in Sacrament meeting yesterday. When you live in such a small branch, I guess you get to do all that stuff that comes with turning 12 really fast. He has done a great job on all of it.

Nash also ran in the track and field meet on Friday night. Nash ran in a couple of medleys and also the 1500m. He did pretty well and was very pleased to get his final time in the 1500m as 6 min. 18 seconds. Creed tried to run it that fast on Saturday and came home saying he had a greater appreciation for Nash’s time after only being able to get over 7 min. Nash did well in the other events also. He has another track meet this Saturday at BIS (the British International School).

Luke and Grant have been busy with violin, cello and soccer. With games every Saturday for both of them and also practices during the week, we spend a lot of time up at the soccer fields. It’s good for them to get running around and let out some energy. We had parent/teacher conferences for both of them last Friday and were very happy with how things are going. Grant surprised us with a beautiful paragraph he wrote about the pond in the back of the school. His teacher emailed it to me and said he is a fantastic writer and brings tears to her eyes. I was shocked when I read it and wasn’t sure it was Grant. Last year the environment he was in for class wasn’t a very positive one and he seemed to lose his spirit rather quickly. His teacher this year is completely opposite and praises him and she encourages and challenges him. He is blossoming.

Luke is doing equally as well. His teacher said, “If only I had an entire class full of Lukes.” She is a great teacher. Luke has been very lucky to have wonderful teachers the entire time we’ve been here.

Mallory is a total performer (as if that should surprise any of you). She has made a habit of going outside in front of the house to the end of the driveway and putting on a show for anyone who will watch. My driver told me yesterday that there were several people gathered at our gate last week watching her and laughing as she sang (using our gardener’s broom handle as a microphone) and danced. She doesn’t seem to be shy about it at all. She also goes by “Cinderella” most mornings and won’t answer you if you call her Mallory. She keeps us all in stitches.

We are excited for our trip to China next week. We will leave on the 11th and be gone for 11 days. We will be in Beijing, Xi’an and Guilin. We are all excited for this adventure.

We hope you are all doing well. Happy Birthday to Ian, Lucy, Rosemary, Adam, Bret, Loralee, and Grandma Miller this month. I hope I didn’t forget someone.

Letter: 9 September 2007

Well it has been a few weeks since we have written. Nothing too unusual has happened in the last while. We had back to school nights a week ago for middle school and elementary school. For the most part, we are impressed with the boys’ teachers this year. Heidi is the schedule coordinator for volunteers at the Cicak Corner (the student store at the elementary school). In addition to working there herself once or twice a week, Heidi spent a couple of weeks getting the schedule for all of the volunteers organized and now has things under control.

Heidi and the boys are now well into their usual routines for all of the activities they are involved in after school. Nash’s after-school activities are: track (3 days a week), drama club, model UN, and violin lessons. Grant is doing footie club (Australian rules football), violin lessons, piano lessons, and soccer (he is on Team Indonesia). Luke’s activities are magic club, cello lessons, piano lessons, and soccer (he is on Team Netherlands).

On Friday the boys had the day off school – it was a teacher development day. I heard they went to the water park by the mall, which wasn’t too crowded because the local Indonesian schools didn’t have a holiday. That afternoon/evening we were invited over to a friend’s home for dinner. The kids had a good time playing with their kids and enjoyed swimming in a different pool.

Both Grant and Luke had soccer games yesterday morning at 8:00 (they were happy that both of their teams won), then we came home for a swim to cool off. We then took the boys to get hair cuts then out to lunch at Anatolia’s, the Turkish restaurant. Grant went over to his friend Leonard’s house for a few hours that afternoon while Heidi, Nash, Luke, and I took care of a few errands

A couple of days ago Arti (our maid/nanny) came to Heidi with a frightened look on her face. She apologized profusely and then said that she had accidentally washed Nash’s mobile phone – she didn’t check Nash’s pockets before she put his shorts into the washing machine. Well, Nash’s phone is totally ruined. When she told Heidi, Heidi started to laugh. That made things worse, though, to Arti. She told Heidi that she should probably be fired. Heidi’s attitude was (and I agree) – it is not 100% Arti’s fault that it happened. Nash should take some responsibility for it because he is the one who left it in his pocket. Also, it could just as easily have happened to Heidi or me, had we been the ones doing the laundry instead of Arti. She insisted that we punish her for it, so we told Arti we’ll have to dock her pay by Rp 200,000 (about US $20) one month.

Things are going OK at work. I went to Pekanbaru last week for just an overnight trip – I went to present an award to our dealer in Pekanbaru for achieving a certain level of standard for service quality. Also, I have been spending some time with realtors looking at potential new office locations (the landlord at our current building told us they aren’t going to renew our lease when it expires at the end of the year). The market for office space in Jakarta is pretty tight right now and there isn’t much available, but luckily a couple of the spots on our short list are pretty close to our house. I would love it if I could reduce my daily commute time.

Photos: September 2007

Here are a few photos of Mallory posing in her wild after-nap hair style.