Schumaker Holiday Letter 2009

Quite a few of my friends and family will be receiving their holiday cards from me very shortly. Inside the card is the annual letter that is becoming more common in most holiday cards. I thought I would post the letter here for people to see as well. That way, if you do not receive a holiday card from me...you will know what Rob and I have been up to this past year. I hope that everyone who reads this has a safe and happy holiday season!

Holiday Season 2009

Happy Holidays! It looks like I missed my personal deadline to get the cards and newsletter out before Thanksgiving this year. Rob and I have been pretty busy, so finding time to sit down and type something out has been sparse. Rob and I hope that you all had a wonderful year. Here is what Rob and I were up to this past year.

We spent most of January at home. Rob received a Sports Data Mining Book proposal with a deadline of November 2009. He is writing the book with his academic advisor from Arizona. I kept busy with work and school. We had quite a bit of snow in the month of January and counted down the days until Spring!

In February, I finished a difficult Winter Trimester at school. I could not wait to be done with Economics and a Developmental Psychology course. I am happy to say that I did pass both classes and excited that I do not have to take any more classes from the economics department at school.

March brought the Spring Trimester for me, which consisted of Math and 20th Century World History. Rob was invited to a conference in China during the month of June.

April was an interesting month for me at work. AMC decided that all of the administrative assistant’s theatre wide would be no more. I had the choice of either stepping down back to the basic Film Crew level or have no job. I opted in keeping a job at the movie theatre due to not wanting to change companies. Rob and I hosted a neighborhood party to help get the baseball season back in motion.

In May, Rob and I celebrated our second wedding anniversary. We spent a quiet day at the house and just went to dinner. We planned to do a big celebration in June when we went to China.

June was the month of travel, travel, travel. The first weekend of June, I took a trip out to Oregon to help celebrate my grandparent’s 50 years of marriage. The following weekend, I turned 29 years old and Rob surprised me with a last minute birthday trip down to Eastern Tennessee. I had not yet been to TN and was very excited. We spent the weekend in Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg area of TN. A day spent at Dollywood was the favorite for me. Rob had fun showing me the sites and places that he had been to several times, which included a hike up to Clingman’s Dome. At the end of the trip, I concluded that I loved the Smokey Mountain area and could possibly live there. The end of June brought a ten-day trip to China. Rob was invited to present a paper at the China Summer Workshop of Information Management (CSWIM) Conference, which was held in Guangzhou, China. Guangzhou is southern China not too far from Hong Kong. We spent three days in Guangzhou for the conference and then flew up to Beijing exploring the city for the remainder of our trip. Since it was so hot, we did only a few things, but did experience the Forbidden City. We had hoped to get up to the Great Wall of China, but just ran out of time. Rob and I both agreed that we would like to go back to Beijing, and would go in early spring or fall when it is not so hot.

The first part of July, we spent re-cooperating from our China Trip. It took us about twelve days to get our sleeping pattern fully back to normal. This consisted of going to bed around 4pm, waking up around 1am and heading over to Denny’s for lunch since nothing was open. Near the end of July, Rob's sister, Carol, visited from Tucson for 9 days. I met Carol down in NYC the first couple of days of her trip. I showed her around the city by going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the first day and the second day was spent shopping at the world’s largest Macy’s down at Herald Square. During her visit, Rob took her up to Yankee Candle Village up in Massachusetts.

August brought an Ohio trip for Rob to help clean out his parent’s attic. August also brought one last trip for Paul and Sharon up to our house for the summer. Since Rob enjoyed the Yankee Candle Village so much, we took his parents up as well. The end of August school started again for both Rob and I. I am now a junior at Iona with just a year and a half left before I receive a bachelor’s in Social Work.

In September, Rob and I went up to The Big Exposition, which is located in Springfield, Massachusetts. One who does not live in the New England states may ask what the Big E is. Think of one large state fair for all of the New England states. Each New England state owns a state house and hosts local food vendors and exhibits. The fair lasts three weeks and thousands of people go every year. This year was the first year for us, and we will definitely be going back next year.

October brought a trip to San Antonio & Houston, Texas. We spent a weekend in San Antonio with my sister’s family and my parents. My nephew turned two this year and this was the first big birthday party for him with family and friends. While in San Antonio we went to the Riverwalk and also spent the morning over at the Alamo. Sadly enough, I was not able to find the basement of the Alamo. Part two of our trip was in Houston for the IIMA Conference. Rob and fellow Iona colleagues presented at this conference. As part of the conference, we spent about three hours over at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. That had to be one of the coolest things. Since there was a moon mission going on at the time, we were unable to view mission control. That would have been awesome to see, but we did have the opportunity to view the Saturn V Rocket. Halloween, Rob and I went to Ohio to celebrate an early Thanksgiving with his parents.

November is low key here at the Schumaker household. I am busy with working at the movie theatre, due to some of the larger holiday films out in theatres. Between work and school I do not have a lot going on. Rob’s book deadline is the end of this month. I know he is looking forward to being done with that for a month before it is handed back to him for any revisions that are needed. My Aunt Lori and two cousins stopped by for a visit this month. It was a great visit and I look forward to spending more time with her and the boys.

December will end the year with more work and school. Most colleges close for the month of December, but since I am on a trimester schedule, I will have class in December. Winter Trimester consists of another psychology course and then a required social work human behavior course. In December, I will also learn where my internship for the spring will be. Social Work majors spend fifty hours in two separate internships junior year in the spring.

I hope you have enjoyed catching up with the Schumaker family and that you have a very Happy New Year. Before you know it, we will be sitting down next year typing out the year events again. Estimated 2010 trips for us will consist of Oregon for my 30th birthday in June, Rob may possibly have a conference in Stockholm, Sweden also during the month of June. Mid October, we will be heading off to Amsterdam, Netherlands for the annual IIMA Conference.

Peace, Love, & Happiness,
Amy & Rob Schumaker

Days and Nights mixed up

So it has now been a week since Rob and I arrived home from China. I knew coming home my sleep would be messed up and that it may take a few days to get switched back. Well 7 days later, Rob and I are still messed up. If I go to bed around 11pm or midnight, I am wide awake by 4am. I have tried laying in bed hoping to go back to sleep, but that almost never works. So I have had many early mornings. Tuesday I went down to school with Rob, as he had to deal with some Freshman Orientation at Iona College. When he and I got home, I was feeling tired and thought I would go upstairs and take a nap. Normally I will only sleep for a couple hours. Well, the next thing I knew it was 10pm and I was waking up to put my pajamas on to go back to sleep. Rob had decided to go ahead and get up for the "day". I opted to stay in bed and dozed on and off until about 4am. Oh goody...my lucky 4am again. I then took a nap around 1pm. Big mistake to take that nap. I ended up sleeping until 5pm. So then by midnight when i should have been tired, I was once again wide awake. Rob was awake as well, and we ended up going to "breakfast" I guess you could call it.

When we got back we broke out the scrapbooking items. Decided it was time to work on the wedding scrapbook since it has already been two years. Monday I spent time picking out the pictures and sending them to walgreens.com to have them printed. We got everything out and said, "We are going to need a lot more pages!" So as of right now nothing has been done with the scrapbook. We have things sorted, but that is about it. I am hoping this weekend we will be able to get some of it done.

I am hoping that my sleeping pattern will get switched back...but my work schedule does not help with that at all. I am scheduled all really late hours all week. So maybe soon I will be a day-bird again rather than the night-owl.

China - Days 6 & 7

Day 6 -
Tuesday was our first full day in Beijing. Rob and I woke up early and got ready for the day. Harry had told us that he would meet us at our hotel around 9am to go to the Forbidden City. So we left the hotel shortly after getting ready and went to find some breakfast. Since it was early...the only thing that we could find open outside of the hotel for breakfast was a McDonald's. Rob was happy that he got this for breakfast...where as I really wanted to have something substantial like pancakes or something. But only place that sells American pancakes for breakfast would have been the hotel restaurant. Rob didn't want to pay $30 (US dollar) for one plate of pancakes. I on the other hand thought it would be worth it...only to be able to enjoy some comfort food. lol I like Asian food...but I am just getting sick of it. After breakfast we went back to the hotel and waited for Harry. Harry called to say that his Taxi was stuck in traffic and that he should be there soon. He finally arrived around 10am. We then left and walked down to the Forbidden City. All the tour guides in the hotel said that it was only a 15 minute walk. Well it must have been a fast walker because it was a much longer walk than just 15 minutes. Oh well. The Forbidden City was really cool. After awhile though, I kept thinking, "Oh look another old building that was either a Hall or a Palace." Harry tried to explain some of the items to us...but he did not know too much as he had not been there in a very long time. It was a very very hot day yesterday. Probably around 95-97 F. degrees. Not a good day to be walking around old buildings...and 90% of everything was outside. Harry did tell us that when the Emperors did live in the Forbidden City they stayed with in the "city walls" the entire time. The only time they would leave the Forbidden City was when they would live at the Summer Palace during the summer time. After the "must see" items within the City Harry asked us what we wanted to do. I voted on heading back to the hotel. I was extremely hot and felt like I was going to die. lol well maybe not die...but I was really in no shape to be walking around anymore. Harry thought it would be cool to show us the new Beijing Subway system. It was built for the Summer Olympic Games last year...and so it is all very new. I found it as if I was in Manhattan riding the subway...but the only difference was that the place was clean and it didn't smell. Plus we only rode the subway for one stop, so it was not too much for me to notice.

Once we got back to the hotel room we just hung out and relaxed. I really had no desire to go back outside until it started to cool off. Harry told us a couple of other places that we may like to go to. He wrote the places down in Mandarin so that the taxi drivers would know where to go. Around 5:30pm or so Rob and I headed out to dinner. Harry recommended us to go eat at Peking Duck. So we went and found the place he was talking about. First off...there is no restaurant called Peking Duck. Peking Duck is only a special dish that you can order. The food though was very good. Rob and I ordered a half of a duck to share as Harry said that would be plenty for the two of us. The duck came with chinese pancakes, onions, and some type of Molasses BBQ sauce. When the duck was ready to be served...someone would bring the whole duck out on a tray and carve the duck right by your table. You were first given the duck skin to eat. You would take the duck skin and dip it into sugar to eat it. I did try it...but it tasted very weird. I do not think I would eat that again. Once the duck was carved the meat was served to the table. The server showed us how we were suppose to eat it. You took a chinese pancake, opened it up, took the duck and dipped it into the Molasses BBQ stuff, add an onion, then wrap up everything with the pancake and eat it as if it was a burrito. I preferred mine though with just the duck meat and the pancake. Skip the other steps...just plain and simple. After dinner we walked through another large mall. I do not know how many floors this one was...but it was huge. it is about 2 blocks long...and i have no idea how wide. after that we headed back to the hotel.

Day 7 -
Today was our last full day in Beijing. We slept a little bit later today. I woke up once again just craving american pancakes...and once again...i did not get them. We ended up at Starbucks and I had to pretend that my croissant was a big fluffy pancake. **didn't work out too well, btw** after breakfast we walked through the big APM mall and found a little shopping market that had all types of food. We were able to get some snack items for the day. we both said that we would come back to this store before it closed so that we could pick up items to take on the plane tomorrow. We then went and exchanged the last of our US money into Chinese RMB. We walked through an open air market and also part of what would have been the "old time beijing" where you can get the weird types of food, like scorpions on a stick or starfish or who knows what else. I have pictures of it in my picture folder labeled CHINA PART 3. We then went back down to the little gift type shop and picked up a few more things before heading back into the mall to find some lunch. I had told Rob that I wanted all American type of food today. I know that is probably bad for me to say...but I guess I am ready to be back home. We ended up eating at Pizza Hut over in the mall. I like to eat at some of the American places when I am traveling internationally so that I can see if there are different items being offered as well as the items that i am use to seeing in the states. Well Pizza Hut had tons of different things to get. You could get seafood on your pizza (i know that is not weird for most east coasters...but for a Pizza Hut...it is wierd). You could get lots of different dishes...like deep fried shrimp and some more Asian types of dishes. I know that in Germany at Pizza Hut...as a dessert item...you can get these little fried dough things that come with chocolate dipping sauce. I wish that dessert item would come to the states for PH!! After lunch we went and rested back at the hotel.

In the evening we took another crazy taxi ride over to a place to see a Peking Opera. Peking Opera is an old tradition in chinese history. the theatre that we went to has been around for 200 years and was a key place for Dr. Sun Yat-Sen for political items in the 1910s. The opera was very cool. I could not understand any of the words...but i could understand the actors. It was awesome and I am glad that I was able to see it.

Now we are back at the hotel and my dear husband is snoring away in bed. I should head that way as well...since we have to leave for the airport around 9am. Our plane leaves around 1pm and we get back into JFK around 2pm. So to us...since we have adjusted to China time...it will feel like 2am. I have a feeling that we will sleep very good tomorrow night. at least i hope we will!!

All in all it has been a good trip. It was definitely an experience that I will be able to tell my children. I would definitely come back to China only if I knew that I was coming back to a world city like Beijing. The next time we come back to BJ...I hope that we will be able to spend a week just here. I would also not recommend coming in the summer. The hotel book said the best time to come would be early spring or fall. So that is what we will do next time. :)

China - Day 8

Yesterday was day eight which was the conclusion of our trip to China. We woke up thinking, "we are going back home to the US today!" While I took a shower and got ready for the day, Rob was able to get all the bags up on the bed and sorted which clothes were clean and dirty. He then started placing all of the items that we had purchased with in the different bags. That way the clothes would go on top to help protect anything from getting broke. About 8am we went downstairs to check out and got into a taxi and headed to the airport. One last crazy nerve-wrecking taxi ride. We were able to see Beijing at "rush-hour". Definitely not something that i would want to see on an everyday basis. Once on the motorway we got into a traffic jam. I noticed that the Chinese think that the Emergency Lane is a good and valid lane to use where there is a backup. So crazy!!! We made it to the airport all in one piece. I was happy to be getting out of the taxi though. I think it will be awhile before I ever get back into any type of taxi!!

Once at the airport and all checked in, we headed towards security. In Europe and Asia people do not have to take off their shoes while going through security. Once through security...we headed over to find food...for an early lunch. We ended up eating at another Pizza Hut only because it was that or some type of chinese place. After lunch we headed clear down to our gate. It must have been on the opposite side from where lunch was. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 1:05 and so you would think that we would be boarding around noon since it was an international flight. well noon came and went and no boarding information announced. Rob and I went ahead and got in line for the shuttle bus as the plane was not there at the gate. finally around 1240pm they started the boarding process. In China, they do not board by rows or zones like the US. Instead everyone lines up in one large line and then pushes each other to get onto the shuttle bus to head out to the plane. after cramming close to 100 people onto this shuttle bus we headed out to the airplane. We got off the bus and then were ordered by officials to get back onto the bus. Rob and I looked at each other and said, "now what is going on?" I kept seeing a ticket agent talk to the flight crew along with a couple other people, plus talk on a cell phone. After probably 10 minutes I looked at Rob and said, "this is taking too long...i have a feeling they are going to take us back to the gate." sure enough i was correct. I noticed that there some technicians working on one area of the wing. Once back at the gate, rob went and got a couple of seats for us as there were not too many available. We were not told why we were back at the gate but the new departure time was 2:30pm. so about 2:15 or so people once again started to line up. rob and i sat tight as there were no shuttle buses arriving yet. 2:30 came and went as well with no shuttle buses. finally around 245 the buses started to appear. we didn't jump up too soon as the line was not moving very fast. why give up comfertable seats if the ticket agents were going to change their minds again. finally we decided that the line was moving fast enough that we probably should get in line. once again on the bus and we were hoping that things were fixed and that we would be leaving. we ended up leaving around 4:30pm. rob did the calculations in his head...and said that we would be arriving at JFK around 5:30pm. For those of you who know JFK...trying to leave the airport at this time is foolish as it is smack dab in the middle if Manhattan/Long Island Rush hour. So we planned to take our time getting off the plane and through customs.

The flight seemed as if it was never going to end. taking off...the cabin had a pretty good vibration which did go away after a couple of minutes. this didn't make me feel any better. i already have some flight anxiety....and this just added to it. i made myself eat both meals that were served on the flight and did sleep for awhile. our flight was 13 hours long. we flew over the north pole. i took a few pictures. hard to see though as we sat on the wing. Getting through Customs was pretty much a breeze. there was a little bit of a wait...but it maybe took us a total of 30 minutes to get through which includes getting our bags. We decided that it was still too early to leave the airport due to traffic and so we found dinner at the terminal food court. not that i really wanted mcdonald's...but it was either that or a place that thought they could make chinese food. so we picked the lesser of the two evils. haha. when we left we did hit some traffic...but not as much as if we would have left at 530 or so. we made it home at about 6pm.

it was nice to be home. all i wanted to do was just sit and do absolutely nothing. i called my mom and sister-in-law once i was home to tell them that i was home and did not die on the airplane even though i thought i was going to die at times. When people ask me if i had fun...i tell them that it was an experience that I will never forget!!

China Day 5

**My blogs for China days 1-5 were posted by my sister who was able to access Blogger.com. China for some reason blocks that site, and so the blogs were copied and pasted from my Facebook Notes.**

Yesterday was our fifth day here in China. We left Guangzhou yesterday morning and flew up to Beijing. We were so happy to just get out of Guangzhou. The minute we got into Beijing our spirits lifted. Our friend Harry helped us get a cab and he told the cab driver where our hotel was, and then we were on our way. Rob and I were just blown away at the architecture here in Beijing. Modern and historical buildings all smashed in together.

Our hotel is directly downtown in the center of everything!! We are staying at a Hilton Hotel that was built for the 2008 Summer Games. The hotel is super super nice...and people speak very good English here. We got checked in and hung out at the hotel for about an hour just to relax.

We then walked over to a mall which happens to be 6 stories!! I was hungry and we found a McDonald's to eat at. Yes...you may all laugh but it is kind of a tradition for us to eat at McDonald's when we are traveling abroad. I have ate at McDonald's in Ireland, Germany, and now China. Each place has a little bit different stuff. So it is kind of cool.

After eating...we walked through the mall to an outside mall which is right next door. well it is more of a pedestrian walkway that is lined with tons and tons of shopping. we walked through a Foreign Language Bookstore, and so they had all types of books in English and other languages. We were trying to find the exit and the exit happen to place us into another store next door. Well that store was kind of a trap...but we found some amazing items in there to bring back to the states for us. it was hard to get out of there only due to buying one thing then they wanted us to come look at something else...and so on. plus every 100RMB that you spent you got 9RMB for free. So with our first purchase we got 36RMB for free. We were able to find another item...and then they wanted us to look at something else. Rob and I were both just wanting to get out of there...and so we told the person that we would come back tomorrow. Well then they stepped up their sales pitch...but we were able to get out of the store. We got out and looked at each other and said, "what the heck did we get into?!" we looked up at the store name and it said something about a Supermarket. well from what an American thinks of what a supermarket is...this was not one of those that had food. it was a supermarket that had anything you can think of for chinese clothing, table cloths, and so on. it was crazy! we then went and found a couple cokes to drink as it is very very warm up here in Beijing. we walked down more of the shopping area...just to see what was there. we then went back to the hotel and just relaxed for the rest of the evening.

Day 6 will consist of The Forbidden City and more site seeing. Day 7 will be more site seeing and an evening spent at the famous Peking Opera. I am very excited. Day 8 will be our travel home back to the states. I am hoping to type out a note later tonight about day 6.

China Day 4

Sunday was a pretty boring day in most people's eyes. Rob and I didn't do a whole lot. We slept late and just hung out in the hotel room. around 2pm we went downstairs to find some lunch. ended up having some more of the nothern boiled dumplings. they were pretty good again. we then went and looked through a few of the clothing shops. rob had thought about getting a new polo but decided against it as when we did the conversion rate....the little store wanted close to $300 for a cotton polo!!! so we just went back up to the hotel room and hung out. i spent part of the day uploading pictures from the camera and getting them all labeled and placed in my picasa album. if you have not seen the pictures, go to http://picasaweb.google.com/lilmomma13104/ChinaTrip?feat=directlink. those are the pictures so far from our trip.

i ended up falling asleep around probably 4pm-5pm. rob asked if i was jet lagged...and i said that i just felt tired. didn't think it was jet lagg. well now i look at the clock and i am wide awake here at almost 5am. haha. well i may be awake because i fell asleep so early, too. so we will see. we leave for beijing in just six short hours. i am very excited. in beijing we will be staying at the hilton hotel that is located about a 10 minute walk from Tienanmen Square. I looked on tripadvisor.com and this hotel is very highly rated as it was built just in time for the summer games last summer. everyone says that all of the staff speaks very good english and there is lots of shopping and places to eat near by. so that will be nice. we are just looking forward to leaving guangzhou.

rob and i were talking about if we would come back to this conference next year...and right now the answer is "probably not". we both have said that if the conference would have set up the non-chinese guests up in a hotel that had staff that spoke english...this trip would have been alot more enjoyable. we did meet a couple other people who were not chinese on this trip. a few of the guys were from india. i told rob that i miss hearing the indian accent up in the area of CT that we live. It makes me miss our friend Sidd who is a professor down in in Baltimore area.

well off to start the day...as I can not sleep and we have to leave for the airport in about 3 hours. My next note will hopefully be sent from Beijing. :)

China - Day 3

**My blogs for China days 1-5 were posted by my sister who was able to access Blogger.com. China for some reason blocks that site, and so the blogs were copied and pasted from my Facebook Notes.**

Today was a very long day. I felt as if it was never going to end. we woke up early and headed down to breakfast before we were suppose to leave for the conference. Today the conference was being held at Sun-Yat Sen University. We all boarded a bus which took us over to the university, with of course getting lost along the way. Rob and I laughed and said, 'is this really happening?'.

The conference was pretty much all day. There was a keynote speaker from Southern Florida who spoke on Design Science for Information Systems. Basically it is a way how to organize your research into a paper. Rob told me that his advisor at Arizona thinks that Design Science is a load of crap, so Rob was not too interested in the speaker. He knew who the guy was though as he has had to send emails to him when he was at Arizona.

Let me tell you that there are two different types of research in the Information Systems field. 1) Behavioral, 2) Technical. Rob's type of research and way of thinking is on the technical side due to the fact that he actually does the experiments to prove that the hypothesis works. Where as the Behavioral side is more of the way of "well i think x+y=z" but yet never proves that it actually works. Rob gets frustrated because the two are very different and that the top tiered journals that Rob would love to publish in are all Behavioral. He said that his papers get rejected every time due to them not understanding what Rob is talking about.

The first session of presentations was after the keynote speaker. Rob presented in the first session. He was the second one out of his group (the conference broke up into two different rooms). The first guy who presented had very poor English and was very hard to understand. he read straight from the slide and read every formula that was presented on the PowerPoint slide. It was brutal.


Rob then got up there and pretty much blew everyone out of way. He, of course, had one of the expert type of facilitator for his presentation and was asked some pretty hard questions. The presentation on his stock analysis was pretty good. Interesting...even though it was a bit over my head. The third presentation was on websites and the different websites that different classes of people go to. for example the older generation tended to use pogo.com for a longer time compared to people who were btwn 18-29 years old. I asked where Myspace or even Facebook would fit into their research as both old and young people use Facebook. the answer i got from the presenter was, "well this paper was written back in 2004 when Facebook and Myspace were not widely used." They never really answered the question completely.

After that we took a short walk over to lunch at a very good seafood place. It was traditional Chinese style where all dishes were placed on a Lazy Susan and you just picked what you wanted for your own plate. I tried deep friend oysters, duck, some type of beef meal, a steamed bun which had a pork onion filling, some type of fish, and something else. No rice served at lunch.

Then it was back to the university for the second half of the sessions. One of the presentations we sat in on was spoken all in mandarin. I was pretty bored as both presentations were not that good to listen to.

Around 6pm we headed over take a river boat cruise. once again the bus driver got lost and had started out going the wrong way. the dinner cruise was OK, i guess. i think i was more tired than anything and just wanted to be back at the hotel room. it was another Chinese buffet.

On the way back to the hotel the bus driver really got lost and about 5 other Chinese people were helping the bus driver to get back to the hotel. rob and i both looked at each other and said, "i am so done with Asia!! i have no desire to come back anytime soon." We are both hoping that Beijing will be a lot nicer. i am looking forward to leaving this place on Monday and head to Beijing.

tomorrow...we are not too sure what we will do. we may just hang out here at the hotel. guangzhou is not very friendly for foreigners, like beijing is. rob calls this down here "backwoods china" where not a whole lot of people will help you understand the language. their mentality is, "why are you here? you are different compared to me." tomorrow is the second day of the conference but Rob said that there are no presentations that sound interesting for him. so we will see what tomorrow holds.

China - Day 2

**My blogs for China days 1-5 were posted by my sister who was able to access Blogger.com. China for some reason blocks that site, and so the blogs were copied and pasted from my Facebook Notes.**

Yesterday was pretty uneventful...which was good, since we had a hectic day before. We pretty much stayed at the hotel for most of the day. Didn't want to venture out too far and end up getting lost.

We found lunch downstairs at one of the restaurants. The menu was mainly in Mandarin (one of the main languages in china), but had pictures and some English to say what was what. I saw some different types of chicken, goat, eel, snake, shark, goose liver, shrimp, to name a few. Rob and I decided on pork dumplings, white rice, and some type of vegetable that looked like either Chinese Broccoli or Kale. The meal also came with tea. The dumplings were very good.

We did venture out of the hotel hoping to find a bank...but had no luck. We had wanted to change money over to Chinese RMB, but could not find where the bank was located. One of the girls in the hotel said it was close by.

The weather is very hot and muggy. Think summertime in Florida...and you will get the idea on what it feels like here.

Dinner was at the conference reception located up on top of the hotel in a French restaurant. Dinner was more of a Chinese buffet. Rob and I did manage to find a few things to eat, as nothing was labeled in English.

Yesterday afternoon we figured out how to turn the tv on (it had a cable box which would turn on but the actual TV would not at first). We were able to find a few channels that were in English...but it was pretty funny to watch.

Our friend Harry stopped by our hotel room last night to check in on us. He had just arrived from Hong Kong. He was in Hong Kong for a couple of days before the conference, as he was visiting friends who live there now.

China - Day 1

**My blogs for China days 1-5 were posted by my sister who was able to access Blogger.com. China for some reason blocks that site, and so the blogs were copied and pasted from my Facebook Notes.**

Our Flights yesterday were pretty uneventful...which is a good thing. Rob and I were close to the front of the plane well in the economy section that is. Our flight from JFK to Beijing (PEK) was 14 hours!! I have been on a 7 or 8 hour flight...so this was quite a bit longer. We were served a dinner about an hour after we got up to cruising altitude. We had the choice of Kung Pow Chicken or Eggplant Chicken. Rob and I both chose the Kung Pow Chicken. It did have a little bit of a kick to it. It came with a little bit of white rice along with steamed broccoli and carrots. Plus we were offered a fruit plate which had watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew mellon. Then there was a roll with butter, a small salad with 1000 island dressing. We were served a drink as well. After dinner they cleared items away and left us alone for awhile. We had Satan's child sitting behind us who kept kicking the back of our seats, and throwing tantrums through out the flight. I was ready to strangle him by the time we landed. We had someone sit next to us by the window. Rob called him 'Ted'. He was nice and was going back to Tibet for a visit. He grew up in a small village and has lived in the US for about 4 or 5 years. His english was hard to understand, but I was able to get most of it. The flight did get a little bumpy...but I tried not to think about it. Body of Lies, Hancock, and Tinkerbell were the three movies shown on the 747 airplane. Halfway through the flight the flight attendants passed out a ham sandwich. Rob said that they were very good. I was too tired to eat and so I think he ended up eating my sandwich as well. then towards the end of the flight we were served yet another dinner. This time we had the choice of Beef & Noodles or Seafood and Rice. I chose the seafood...only so that i could eat the rice. i was not super hungry but needed to eat something. the seafood was shrimp with some type of dark sauce. This also came with a buttered roll, pineapple shortcake, and some type of cole slaw. Rob didn't eat this meal as he was not hungry.

Once we landed in China we were not allowed to get off the plane right away, like in Europe or the United States. They had government officials come on wearing goggles and face masks, and took everyone's temperature. if they suspected you to be running a fever they would have called an ambulance to inspect if you had a flu. in the meantime the other passengers of the plane would have been quarantined at a near by hotel. We were fortunate enough to not have anyone on the flight who was running a fever, so they made an announcement that we were able to disembark the aircraft. Rob and I had a very tight connection there in Beijing. How tight? 2 hours! 2 hours in the US is plenty of time...but not on an international flight. We walked through to the customs checkpoint where they examined our health inspection paperwork and handed it back to us. they also had a device that checked one's temperature as they were walking up to the checkpoint. Note...this building did not have A/C on...so it was already hot inside the building. After going through 3 or 4 checkpoints, we were told to go pick up our luggage. This took forever only because our bags were one of the last to be unloaded from the aircraft. once we got our bags we went over and dropped them off to be transferred over to the domestic flight. We once again had to go through another security checkpoint. In Beijing they did not make us take off our shoes like we do in the US. They checked our bags a couple of times though. After this we walked pretty fast over to our gate. When we got to the gate, they were already boarding. Rob and I looked at each other and said, "ya...you can make it in 2 hours...but it is not fun!" our second flight was another 3 hours long. by the time we touched down in Guangzhou it was 11pm (china time) but it felt like 11am NYC time. We went and picked up our bags once again and went to find the arranged taxi service that rob had picked out. well we looked and looked and could not find the person. rob called the phone number and they said they had a confirmation for july 25th, not june 25th. So we had to go and find a different taxi service to take us over to our hotel.

the taxi ride to the hotel was another experience. i was fearing for my life the whole time. this guy was driving nuts!! cutting people off with very little space...going super fast on sharp corners. it was nuts! he dropped us off...and realized it was not the correct place, but only to find out that we were at the backdoor of the hotel. so he drove us around to the front. by now it is 12:30am. Rob and i walked up to the check-in desk and the attendants could not find our reservation. they kept saying, "sorry we do not have any rooms." now rob and i had joked that something like this would happen. not funny when it is really happening. the clerks made several different phone numbers and FINALLY was able to get a hold of someone who knew what was going on. what we think happened was that the organizer had place a block of rooms just for the CSWIM Conference under his name rather than the conference name. Finally at 1:30am or so we were finally making our way up to the 13th floor to our hotel room. the beds are super hard...but i didn't really care as I was just glad to be in the room. If I had been 9 months pregnant...i would have really felt like Joseph and Mary in bethleham. lol oye!!! rob and i were on the verge of tears by the end of everything. the clerks kept trying to tell us to walk down to this other hotel, but we were not about to leave this hotel at 1am! no way!!

we woke up this morning feeling a bit refreshed. we ate lunch here at the hotel restaurant. We had dumplings. I think they were pork dumplings. along with it we had white rice, and i think kale. for the two of us lunch came out to be 85 RMB which is about $11 for the two of us. not bad at all! Tonight is dinner with the other conference people. tomorrow will be spent at Sun Yat-Sen University which is where the conference is being held for tomorrow. Tomorrow evening will be a river dinner cruise down the Pearl River. I am looking forward to that. :)