Snow

I stole this picture from my husband's blog, re-posting it here in case anyone missed it. Because it is SO CUTE.

Tonight at dinner, Gioia was acting up. I took her away from the table and we had a talk about: No hitting, no screaming, no grabbing. When we were back at dinner later, she started again. So I asked - Hey Gioia, do you want to go back outside (meaning - to have another talk). And she said - Yes. Outside please.

She loves the snow. Loves it.

Niseko

We made it to Niseko last night, and we had a lovely first day. We took it easy, playing with Gioia in the snow. She was too little for her own skis, so we winged it a bit. She took a few toboggan rides with me and with Chris (which we may have enjoyed more than she did). The petting zoo was her favorite, though. We went twice. Yes, that's a penguin. Poor little guy.


Chris skied with her on a couple of runs on the "Family slope." As she didn't have little skis of her own, he held her in his arms instead. It worked fine, and she certainly didn't hate the experience. We had a really nice day. Tomorrow it's day care for Gioia and grownup skiing for us, but this was a lovely way to start off.


More pictures of the trip so far are here. If you look at all of these, you can see some shots of the Cool Star coach, which we hired for the 2.5 hour trip from Sapporo. It came complete with our own beer attendant. Very nice.

I Hardly Ever Win

Hey, whaddya know? I won a prize in the Holiday Knit-a-long. A subscription to Verena Knitting Magazine. Never heard of it, but probably it is great.

I am having a bit of a lucky streak. I also won an Ipod Nano at my job's annual dinner in December. That's a lot of luck for one person in two months, me thinks.

Kuai Le!

It is that time of year again - another Spring Festival is upon us. Which means that it has been just exactly one year since we first met Baby G. Last year at this time we were frantically waiting for the one piece of paper that would give us permission to pick her up from the orphanage. I went a little crazy with the waiting. But we were allowed to go get her just before everything shut down for Chinese New Year. What a crazy time that was.

This year, we are all headed to Hokkaido for a few days of skiing. Not a big trip, just a little getaway while things go quiet in Taiwan. Apparently the snow is coming down hard, so we should have some good powder skiing. Not that I know anything about that, having skied on ice most of my days. So it will be interesting.

Tonight at dinner, Chris prayed that we arrive in Niseko safe and "sane" tomorrow. Which is a good thing to pray for after our crazy round-the-world trip of a few weeks ago. The trip which left me questioning any future travels to the US or Europe until after kiddo leaves for college. Chris says I will change my mind in a month, but I don't think so. We have been in recovery mode for two full weeks now. Gioia is mighty cranky when she hasn't had enough sleep. Mighty. Cranky.

Since we missed all of the Spring Festival preparations last year, we were pleasantly surprised to see the lobby of our apartment complex fill up with fruit, flowers and lanterns. All day Gioia has been handing out hong bao - to the guards, to our neighbor kids, to the dry cleaners' kids. People probably think we are a bit odd, but we are trying.

See you on the slopes!

Re: College (again)

Chris keeps saying that there is no way he will allow Gioia to go to Georgia Tech. Because it is a crazy difficult school. Unnecessarily hard, he says. Better to go to a silly party school, like...well... (perhaps better to keep quiet on that one).

So even though Mom, Dad, Uncle Hugh, Aunt Mary Beth and Pappy all went to Tech, she is not allowed.

Even though Smart Money magazine just said GT has the #3 best payback ratio (tuition cost relative to future earning power) of all US public colleges.*

Something tells me she may not listen.

*I went to the website to see if this Smart Money article was referenced in the top GT news stories of 2008. Umm, nope. It didn't make the cut. Apparently the news that three GT alumni are going to be on the next space shuttle was more important. So while we can't win a football game to save our lives (except the UGA game - heh), apparently we GT peeps kick ass in all other aspects of human interaction.

First Day of School

Miss G starts Montessouri school this week. She is easing into it. Yesterday she went for an hour; today will be two hours. By the end of the week, she will be there for the full half day. The school is closed for Chinese New Year for the next two weeks, though, so this truly is a starter week.

Poor little kiddo. So jet lagged. Poor mommy and daddy who are up at 2, 4 am to play and entertain said kiddo. Rough times. At least there is school.

Baby Shower

My sister-in-law's baby shower is today in Atlanta. Unfortunately, we had to miss it because we are on a plane back to Taipei. Even though we couldn't be there in person, Gioia and I put together a little present basket. Two of the handmade items in the basket are pictured here: a little Waldorf baby from this book and a patchwork ball made from Tiny Happy's tutorial.

Both the ball and the dolly jingle a little bit; they have tiny bells embedded inside. Gioia actually helped to make the ball. She pushed the thread cutting button on the machine after every row was sewn. It was challenging for her to wait until the right moment to push the button, but she did well.

Sorry we couldn't be at your shower, Mary Beth! We cannot wait to meet our new nephew/ cousin.

Missing My Family

I am in New York for meetings at the moment. After two weeks of travelling with my peeps, I am finding myself remiss without them. So I am posting this picture as a reminder that Miss G is having a fabulous time at her grandparents' house, running around with the dog and begging to go outside to see the fish in the backyard. Chris said that she prayed for me twice last night, which makes me feel loved indeed.

We made it to Atlanta a day late after missing our connecting flight in Frankfurt. Turkish Airlines says it was a voluntary act on our part. Which makes total sense. We volunteered to arrive 35 minutes late, take a bus from the first plane, run though the airport like crazy people with three backpacks and a car seat, take a train to another terminal, stand in security AGAIN only to find that the plane to Atlanta was oversold so they had given up our seats 15 minutes before departure. Yes. We voluntarily did all of that.

After spending over an hour rebooking, we flew to Munich, stayed in a hotel (and paid for it because of our voluntary decision to miss the first flight), and then flew to Atlanta on Monday. By then, Baby G had been traveling for three days straight. She had had it for sure. In that long 10 hour flight, I discovered that my sweet little girl had turned into the spawn of Satan. To top it all off, she wanted only Mommy, not Daddy. He couldn't even give her a cup of water. Which meant that she screamed in her carseat, clawing and asking to sit with me while the seatbelt sign was illuminated, or bounced on my lap for the entire trip. Seriously.

It wasn't her fault at all. So I shouldn't have threatened to sell her to the highest bidder once we landed. That was probably inappropriate.

Funny, though. The next day, she was as sweet as can be. Turns out I didn't want to sell her after all. Turns out I miss her desperately now that I am away. Funny.

Leaving Bodrum

We are leaving Bodrum today, traveling to Istanbul tonight and then on to Atlanta via Frankfurt tomorrow. We have packed the bag full of things to keep kiddo entertained. Hope it works.

It was been a lovely relaxing week. Now back to work.

More Bodrum pictures from this past week are here and here.

Ephesus

We have been relaxing in a little Turkish resort town called Bodrum for the past few days. This place is hopping in the summer months, but it is nice and sleepy now. Our little group took a minivan up to Ephesus yesterday, a two-and-a-half hour drive north.


Ephesus is supposedly one of the best preserved Roman cities, besides Rome itself of course. Under Emperor Augustus, it was the capital of the Roman province of Asia. The city used to lie right by the sea, but the centuries have shifted the coastline about 10 mile west (which actually led to Ephesus' eventual decline). Instead of the ocean, the ruins now lie next to a large open plain. This story of change is one that suits Ephesus particularly well, perhaps best symbolized by the statue of Livinia, Emperor Augustus' wife, which was found broken to pieces and "Christianized" by a cross crudely carved on her forehead.


I couldn't possibly retell all of the interesting stories from Ephesus here on this little blog. But if you have some time and are interested, you can start to read about it here.

Take, for instance, Anatolia, the Mother Goddess. She predates the Roman occupation of Ephesus, and took up primary residence at the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World. The many round items on her chest are either a) breasts b) bees' behinds or c) bull testes - no one is quite sure. All of these things are fertility symbols, though, so perhaps it doesn't really matter.



More pictures from the Ephesus trip are here.