Camp Champions Blog

We spent the day cycling in the Chinese countryside.

Some days the creative juices dry up.  Insights are slow to come.  Clever commentary seems elusive.

I am guessing this is one of those days.  As you might have guessed, this was a transition day.  We have spent two nights in the village of Xing Ping among the ethereally beautiful mountains surrounding the Li River.  We had planned on spending a third, but our night bus to Shenzhen (outside Hong Kong) would not pick us up in Xing Ping.  Instead, we would have needed to take a bus with all out gear to Yangshuo and waited at the KFC until our 10:30 pick-up.  [Yes, I said KFC.  We have only visited one place (Xing Ping) that does not have one.  KFC is a common a sight as posters of Mao.  In fact, I am starting to think these two guys might be brethren:

Susie has told me to include the following message in this blog.  Since one of my basic strategies of familial bliss is to listen to her, I am doing as she suggests.

About 3 weeks ago, I was asked to blog for Psychology Today on child development and parenting.  Clearly, they have reached a level of desperation in their article sourcing, but we are excited nonetheless.  I have posted 4 articles. To be honest with you, I prefer this blog as it is more free and fun, but I do not argue with Susie. [Note from Susie: Steve did not think to include this, but I think it is pretty cool. One of Steve's articles was selected by the editorial board as "An Essential Read". If you are interested in checking them out, please go to http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/smores-and-more. This is the end of the proud wife aside.]

I will get philosophical in this blog.  Consider this a warning.  Before I dive in, I will share one nice family picture to start.  I will include more shots at the end.  In the meantime, I need to share.

Our train trip was uneventful until an hour or two before our arrival in Guilin.

• [Note: If you have been following the blog in both Europe and Asia, you may notice that I am including many more pictures in Asia.  This is primarily because we are getting consistently better internet connections here than we did in Europe.  I think this bodes well for the Chinese economy and less well for Western Europe.]

We are the train gang once again.  This time, the overnight train will take us from Shanghai to Guinlin, a city in the south of China (northwest of Hong Kong).  Our other two train rides were both around 14-15 hours, this one will be around 20.  It is NOT an express train.  We think we have made 15 stops so far.

It is the morning and we have 3 more hours of train time.  We are shaking the lethargy and trying to greet the day.

My blog does not have any pictures until after the halfway point, so I wanted to include this odd one with the kids staring at a candle at a Daoist temple.  No, I do not get it either, but I love the fact that it is not a video game.

OK, on to the normal blog.

We in the Baskin Family are true traditionalists.  Just because we are not in the USA does not mean that we will not enjoy the traditional Thanksgiving Turtle.  Give me time to explain.

Today is our last full day in Shanghai and we chose to go to Zhujiajiao, also known as the water village or Venice of China.

The day started very inauspiciously.  In fact,the whole day had its profoundly challenging moments, yet it might be one of my favorite Thanksgivings ever.

Of course, it is worth saying that we miss our family on this family-oriented holiday.  We have spent virtually every Thanksgiving of our lives with either my folks or Susie`s, so this is a little odd.

Nevertheless, this was a memorable day.

We started by packing up a fair amount of souvenirs into 2 boxes to ship home.  Some of the items (like a nice chess set for the boys) are too heavy to schlep around Asia for the next 12 weeks, so we wanted to ease our load.

We headed to a China Post office to do the mailing.  Realizing that this stop would take a while, Liam and I went to the Bank of China ATMs to get some cash.  Almost no one takes credit cards here, so cash is king.  I took both my ATM card and Susie`s.

I took out cash from both and we returned to the China Post Office.  Once there, I handed Susie some cash and the receipts.  She asked about her card, I got mine and then reached for hers.  I reached and searched and frisked and emptied all my pockets and, well, pretty much admitted to being an idiot.

The card was not there.  I must have left it in the machine.

Liam ran back to the bank, but to no avail.  We decided to return to the hostel to call in the card and have a new one sent to us when Terrill insisted that we go to the bank one more time.  There, we found a nice woman that spoke a limited amount of English.  I would say that she spoke just enough so that it, combined with some frantic pantomime, allowed us to communicate the following:

* I am an idiot

* I left card in ATM

* Marital harmony requires your help

She found a key and returned minutes later with Susie`s card.  I was shocked and thrilled.  It was an ominous start to the day, but we were clearly on our way to an easy Thanksgiving!

Or, perhaps not.

We decided to avoid any of the touristy bus trips to Zhujiajiao.  After all, our noodle tour had made us feel truly authentic.  We are not tourists, we are citizens of the world.  We are natives of Shanghai!

We decided to take the bus.   The public bus.

We rode the Metro to People`s Square.  It is worth noting that this park bears the most communist of names yet is surrounded by some of the most modern structures I have ever seen with tons of KFC, Starbucks and Heineken thrown in.

We walked 20 minutes to the bus station (remember, we are natives) and grabbed a bus to Zhujiajiao.  Once on the bus, we realized that we had no idea what the stop looks like.  This is a public bus, not a point-to-point charter.  It stops several times. People get on, others get off.  I have no map or reference.

This starts to feel dicey.  I am feeling a little less cosmopolitan.  Would we miss our stop?  Perhaps we will end up in a small fishing village where we will spend the next few months gutting carp.

Happily, our destination represented the terminus of the bus, so we were saved the pain and confusion of being stuck in some rural backwater with zero chinese skills.

In the station, multiple rick-shaw and taxi people vied for our business.  They kept pointing to our left toward their vehicles.  At least, that is what we thought they were pointing at.

Remember, we are citizens of the world.  The confidence was back.  We would walk to our destination.  Our instincts said "go right."

Our instincts stink.

We found a map written entirely in Chinese, established our location and chose a route to the city center.

Today, we enjoyed Day 2 of our epicurean adventure (thanks to the Silver Fox, my mom).

We awoke this morning to the sounds of an assembly.