I know it's been forever since I've done this

Hi All

It's been a busy last couple of weeks. My elbow is almost totally all
better. Woohoo. So my typing is back to normal too.
We are gearing up to come home for the summer. Kids still have 8 more
days of school left. Lauren's class seems to be doing assemblies and
field trips from here on out. Poor Quint is doing finals. He has 3
more to go. But then he has 6 school days of I don't know what.
Families are already starting to leave, which is kinda depressing.
One thing that Lauren gets to do tonight is go to the "daddy daughter
dance". It's very fun. We went to the fabric market to buy her a
dress. She picked out a yellow chiffon fabric and a one shoulder
grecian style. Today her friend Eva and she are getting mani pedis
(so are the moms) and hair do's. She has asked Scott to wear his
tuxedo. Pics will follow.

But I've got to tell you about this fabric market. It's THE BEST
THING EVER!!!!! I went with Eva's mom Gwen to just see about getting
something that looks Chinese. That is my goal. So I wen't to have a
qipao made (traditional chinese dress). Because god knows that in
china I'm not going to find one off the rack. So off to the Bund
Fabric Market we go. It's a 3 story building that has about 100
cubbies of shops that will make you everything from dress shirts,
suits, raincoats, linen dresses, shirts, and pants to tacky dance
recital dresses for your child to appear on Toddlers in Tiaras. If
you bring in a picture of something you want copied they can do that
too. So I went to a cubby and had a traditional chinese jacket and a
qipao made. A week later and for about $65 I had hand made clothes.
So then I had a silk shirt made. That's where it gets tricky. It's
like an addition. I just can't stop. I now have two cute cotton
skirts, two wrap dresses, a qipao, a jacket and a silk shirt. And
they will sell you anything. I wanted a silk shirt that was hanging
up. I asked for it and after some bargaining, got a good price. Then
I realized it was someones who had it made for them and he marked it
in his book to go home and quickly make another. Ooops. Now there
are some pitfalls. Gwen had a dress made and it wasn't what she
wanted. Since she's leaving soon, she got a discount since they
couldn't fix it. You pay a deposit and they won't give it back if
they've already made the garment. Wrong or not. I was going to get a
tshirt made, but when I wen't to get it, they had ran out of material.
I've got to take you there when you come visit. It's fantastic.

i was thinking this morning about China. It's beautiful here right
now. We've had some unbearably hot and humid days, but the trees and
bushes are so pretty and flowery (is that a word?) right now. The
view from our front window is so nice. We could be anywhere and
sometimes I forget until I see a security guard make his rounds.
China is such a contradiction. It seems so clean in our area. Across
the street is the New Shanghai Expo Center. It's huge and every week
a new expo comes in. To set up, it takes a lot of man power. We walk
to the shopping center just past the expo center, and usually the
workers are eating. When they are done, they just throw the trash on
the ground. Then a group of ayi's come and sweep it all away. And
whoala, its all clean again. Chinese people are so polite and sweet
when you see them on the streets, but in cars they make New Yorkers
look like nuns. And if I had a dollar for every time I've seen a
worker pee in a bush, I'd have a closet full of qipao's.

Seriously
You all have got to come and see this place.

Love to all
Sue

--
The Radeker's - sradeker@gmail.com
1983 Huamu Lu，House #157 (Season's Villas)
Pudong New District， Shanghai 201204, China
上海市浦东新区花木路1983弄157号(四季雅苑), 邮编：201204

Beijing, Seoul, and my elbow

Hi folks

I am so sorry it's taken so long to do another blog entry.  So much has happened since I last wrote.  

Aunt Sue came to visit over our Easter break.  And the first thing Quint wanted to do was have her meet his girlfriend (that's right, girlfriend).  Now mind you, I've seen her 2 times and Scott has never met her at all.  So you can see where we are in the list of his priorities.  Her name is Anna.  She is in the same grade as Q in his school.  Her mom is from South Carolina and her dad is from China.  She was born in the US, but has lived here for about 10 yrs.  So she calls herself expatrianese.  Her mom works at Lauren's school, so I see her from time to time. Really, the relationship is all about texting. Which Q knows that I'm allowed to read since I pay for the phone.  But Anna is great.  If all of his relationships are this good and healthy, I'll be very happy.  

While Aunt Sue was in town, we went on a trip to Beijing.  We took the high speed train up and flew back, because the plane was much cheaper.  Now most Americans I talk to are surprised to know that China is bigger than the US.  So Shanghai to Beijing is like DC to New York (I think).  5 hrs up in train.  2.5 hrs back in plane.  The trip was amazing, but I'm so glad I don't live there.  The city looks just like you would expect a communist country to look.  Most of the buildings look the same and very square looking.  Not a lot of interesting architecture and new buildings.   Getting a taxi is almost impossible too.  After we checked in to the hotel, we took a taxi to the zoo to see the Giant Pandas.  That was wonderful, but getting back to the hotel was not easy.  Aunt Sue, Scott and Lauren got in a taxi after waiting about 15 min.  Quint and I couldn't get one after that.  So we started to walk to more populated areas.  Because we were not Chinese,  or look like we were doing business, none of them stopped.  I got so impatient that I would step out off the sidewalk to flag one down and they would swerve and wave me back.  Finally we walked to a mall and waited for Scott to send a taxi from the hotel.  2.5hrs later from when we left the zoo, we were back at the hotel.  A little grumpy and hungry, but now it's  a great story for my blog, so all worth it (don't tell Q I said that.  He wouldn't agree).  

The next day we went to the Ming tombs and the Great Wall with a tour.  Our tour guide was named Sunny and we booked her for two days.  The tombs were interesting, but a little disappointing since a lot of the artifacts were replicas since the originals were replaced during the cultural revolution.  The wall was very impressive and massive.  The part that is available for tourists has been refurbished in the last 100 yrs and is full of graffiti, but still really cool.  The part we went to had a ski lift up and a toboggan slide to go down.  Of course, stairs were an option, but even Sunny didn't want to do that.  

The next day we went to Tiananmen Square, the Palace Museum, the temple of Heaven and The Summer Palace.  Holy cow were we exhausted by the end of the day.  But we learned so much and it was very beautiful.  Most of what we saw was from the Ming and Ching dynasties.  The last two, for those of you who need to brush up on your Chinese history.  One of the things we discussed was the history of the "dragon lady".  She was the empress dowager for the last two emperors.  There are all these stories that Sunny told us about how she was mean, nasty, controlling and a waster of money.  So scandalous that I went out and bought a book about her.  Only to read that the stories that Chinese kids were taught were made up by two englishmen 15 yrs after her death and were extremely exaggerated.  How terribly disappointing. But I'm still reading it.  

After we got back from Beijing, we did some Shanghai exploring and one of the best things was the Shanghai Museum.  It's absolutely wonderful.  I'm taking all of you when you come and visit.  The visit with Aunt Sue was wonderful.  I can't wait for her to come and visit again.  There are so many adventures to go on that All of you could come and I'd see something new.  

This last weekend we went to Seoul for a couple of days.  It's like China with really good manners.  No horn honking.  Everyone stays in their lane.  No one peeing on the side of the road.  No one spitting or pushing.  And they know how to form a line.  Ok, I'm not selling China now am I.  Example, when going on the subway in China, you don't wait for the people to get off first, or you will miss the train.  It's everyone for themselves and you just have to push thru.  The kids and I did that in Korea and Scott was so embarrassed.  He should have given us the heads up.  I also went to buy some earrings at a street market.  When I tried to bargain he said "have you lived in China?"  Ooops.  It was also incredibly expensive.  I loved the visit, but it's good to be back.  

I get my elbow worked on today.  Apparently I have a small tear in my tendon.  I've been nursing this problem for about 1.5 yrs.  My doc in Louisville said at my last appt back home that we probably needed to think about surgery.  Great I said,, I'm moving to China next week.  I did find someone here who is an american orthopedic doc and it's a pretty simple procedure.  I could've waited to do it back in the US, but I don't have a driver or an Ayi there.  Wish me luck.  Oh and if anyone is placing bets for the Oaks and derby and would be willing to place one for me, let me know.  I'm going to be up next sun morning really early so I can watch it.  Go ponies go!!!

Love to you all

Sue

Pictures from Hong Kong Disney Trip!

More Pictures from HK Disney:

On our way to Shenzhen:

Mom and Quint

Dad and Lauren

At the HK Disney Park Entrance:

The Castle - weird huh?

The Castle At Dusk:

Lauren Meets Cindy and the Prince:

Lauren at Pixie Hollow:

Mickey Mouse!

Weekends

Hi again folks,

Scotty is still in the states, but comes home in two days.  Woohoo.  I can't wait.  I'm so out of practice of having him gone two weeks at a time.  

I'm writing to tell you funny stories.  The first is about baseball.  

Unlike Japan and Korea, baseball is virtually unheard of here in China.  So finding baseball equipment is difficult.  We were lucky that we found a team for Q to play on.  They're called the Shanghai Sluggers and are expat kids trying to keep their skills up until they go back home.  It is more competitive than the YMCA, but is also all about building skills.  So for that reason, we're excited.  We had to buy some baseball stuff here though.  The local sports stores don't carry anything.  I asked the coach if he had suggestions and he told us that at the parent meeting, there would be someone who would be selling equipment.  We needed baseball pants, belt and a bat.  Of course, he didn't have any that would be the right size for my son. (we grow them big), so we were told to go to his "store" that afternoon.  We took our driver Mr. Li to the address on the baseball suppliers business card.  Mr. Li drove us to Puxi (the other side of the river) and stopped in front of a small apartment building in an ally.  After a great game of charades, I understood that the "store" was on the third floor.  Who am I kidding.  Mr. Li had to practically walk us up himself.  The "store" was the spare bedroom of this man's house.  I'm pretty sure the baseball equipment fell off of a very lost truck, but it was cheap and we got what we needed.  Well, almost.  The one thing I didn't buy because I was sure that I could get it anywhere they sold any sports equipment was an athletic supporter. That's right, a jock strap.  Or as the English call it a Hector Protector.  

So on Tues with my friend Shanghai Gwen, I went back to Decathalon, the sports store.  Think Dicks but with no golf or baseball equipment and no english speakers.  After about 5 min of looking around, a very eager young man asked us if we needed help.  Gwen and I looked at each other, shrugged and gave it our best shot.  I said jock strap, cup, athletic supporter and was met with blank stares.  We then started to do hand gestures focusing on our pelvic region using words like "hard" and "protection".  He then showed us women's bike shorts and sports bras.  Gwen and I then amped it up and did the same motions adding pointing to his pelvic regions and saying things like "protection from balls".  He then referred us to a different employee.  Surprise.  After the same gestures, this man showed us slings and shoulder restraints. At this point I was trying to find a delicate way to text Mr. Li and ask him to explain what we needed.  5 min later, after I am sure, offending the last employee also, we had a group of 5 decathlon employees trying to figure out what we needed.  Finally, someone went to the boxing section and found what we needed.  Im just glad we didn't have to resort to pictionary. 

Yesterday all the girl scout from Shanghai celebrated the 100th anniversary.  My "partner in crime" Nahz was out of town so I had to coordinate our daisy troop by myself.  It is sooooo obvious that she is the organized one.  It also makes me realize that Kelly and Shannon back in Louisville were also the organized ones.  After getting everyone registered for the day, it was a lot of fun.  Lauren hung out mostly with her friend Shai who is from Israel.  Shai and her mom Hadar are just fantastic people.  Very fun.  But at one of the booths, after playing their game, you picked a piece of paper out of a bag that said what prize you won.  And low and behold, both Shai and Lauren won a mini keychain Bible.  I was mortified.  My nice Jewish daisy won a Bible.  Thank god Hadar has a sense of humor.  But really. C'mon people.  You're giving Bibles out in China?  

Today, Lauren had a playdate with Shai.  I was to pick her up at 3:30.  We were then going home, get cleaned up, walk to a decent restaurant, have dinner then go see the University of South Carolina's Wind Ensemble perform.  That's right! They were in town.  Now for those who don't know, my Masters in Music Ed is from University of South Carolina.  I was flipping thru an expat magazine when I saw that they were coming into town to play a concert.  At first, I was skeptical.  But after checking USC's web sight I saw it was really them.  I was looking forward to this all week.  But karma really didn't want me to go.  While I was at Lauren's playdate, I realized I hadn't gotten our house key out of my coat pocket.  (you see where this is going don't you).  No worries, I left Quint at home.  I later got a text from Q asking if he could go to his friend Gabe's house.  Sure, just leave the front door unlocked.  He didn't.  Crap.  So I went to our developments club house hoping they had a master key of some sort.  No.  I called my real estate agent, Millie to ask if she could get the key from our landlord. Nope, landlord out of town.  But Millie did call a locksmith.  1 hr later, locksmith came.  30 min later we were in the house.  Now it's 5:45.  So, plan B.  Take showers, have PBJ's for dinner.  Take taxi instead of subway because it's faster.  HA.  That only works if your taxi driver knows where he's going.  What should have taken us 30 min took us 55 because our taxi driver had no idea where he was going.  We passed the same shopping mall 3 times.  

Now taxi's are incredibly cheap here.  But it ended up costing 162RMB (about 25us dollars).  To put it in perspective, the trip home was only 90 RMB and that was including hitting major traffic getting to one bridge so the taxi driver and I decided thru a great game of charades, to try a different bridge.  (I am going to crush all of you in a game of charades when we get back to the states.  I am becoming the charades master.  Watch out!). 

The concert for me was so worth it.  They played so well.  The theater was packed, which was nice to see.  My kids were such good sports.  It was like a mini homecoming for me.  I talked to some of the students after the performance.  They were so excited to see an alumni. And they seemed like such great ambassadors for the university and our country.  The chinese audience members were treating them like rock stars.  I talked with their conductor, who also was impressed to have an alumni present.  I just can't express what a treat that was for me.  And even though Karma was working against me, it was worth it.  But seriously, I've got to do a whole bunch of good deeds tomorrow to change my Karma.  Can't take many more of days like this.

Hope you are all well

Love to you all

Sue

--
The Radeker's - sradeker@gmail.com

1983 Huamu Lu，House #157 (Season's Villas)
Pudong New District， Shanghai 201204, China
上海市浦东新区花木路1983弄157号(四季雅苑), 邮编：201204

It's been a long time

Dear friends and family

I'm so sorry its been so long since I've typed.  So much has happened, I don't know if I can remember all of it, but I'll try.  First of all, we finally went on a trip to see some of Asia.  Well kinda.  We went to Hong Kong in February.  Did we see the sights? Soak in the culture? Eat culinary treats from that part of the world? Why of course not.  We went to Hong Kong Disney.  Thats right.  We're half way around the world and we go see the mouse.  And it was fun.  We flew in Fri and hit the park.

Now I have to admit, Hong Kong Disney is the wussiest of all the Disneys.  It's very small and closes at 8pm.  We were so pooped though, we went back to our hotel and watched the fireworks from our window.  After being in Shanghai for Chinese New Years, we decided we didn't need to see them up close.  After that, we headed to the Disney dining establishment in our hotel.  It was typical Disney buffet.  Some kid friendly, some adult american, and some asian.  We all helped ourselves and then proceeded to eat whatever we picked with chopsticks.  A sign that we are getting used to being here.

The next day, Lauren and I gathered signatures from her favorite Disney characters while the boys rode space mountain over and over again.  It's incredible who is popular here and who isn't.  Rapunzel has not been heard of here so we had about a half hour interview with her.  (she was american by the way).  And you would think Mulan would be all over the place, but no! Not one sighting.  I think the funniest thing for me was the river safari ride.  If you remember, US Disneys used to do a jungle river cruise where the driver would crack all these jokes as you went thru some pretty crappy animatronics (I think that's what its called).  Those Disney's have moved on to build rides like Nemo's adventure and Indiana Jones.  They sent the stuff to Hong Kong.  So for me it was going down memory lane.  They had three lines.  Those who wanted the tour in English, Mandarin or Cantonese, the language of Hong Kong.  We of course, picked English, but her accent was so thick we couldn't tell what she was saying.  You could almost remember the joke, but not quite.  And that cracked me up.  So here I am on this ride from decades ago and am the only one laughing, because I can't understand a word our tour guide is saying.  Everyone is looking at me wondering why they can't understand her, but I can.  And the more I laughed the more the tour guide started to ham it up because she thought finally, someone gets it.  Quint finally told me to stop and that I was embarrassing him.  

Speaking of Quint, he turned 12 on the 25th.  It's hard for me to imagine him being 12 when he used to be so small.  Now he's up to my eyes and outweighs Scott by about 15lbs.  We had the boys from the bus stop over for pizza and a movie.  Totally low key and totally fun.  He even told the boys no presents please.  How very mature of him.  It was a night of nerf guns, burping, too much soda, and bad fart jokes.  Just what Quint wanted.  Quint is still the one I think has adjusted the best to Shanghai.  He loves school.  Probably because he isn't putting as much of an effort into it and the only people concerned about this are his parents.  He's making friends from around the world, and has started playing "American baseball".  (more on that later)

Meanwhile, Lauren is almost used to the amount of homework she has.  Every week she has reading 30 min a night, Chinese, 10 math problems that range from addition, to sequencing to multiplication and division, 12 spelling words that are much harder than in the states. And she has to write the spelling words into sentences using 2 words from the list and an adjective.  We argue often whether each sentence has to have the same adjective or if she can change them up.  A lot of her spelling words are described as "purple" in her writing.  She also has to do math work on the computer.  The problems are easier, but she gets so flustered because her typing is bad and it's a race against the clock.  Poor pookie.  But she also is enjoying Shanghai.  Also making friends and she now has a scooter to ride to school on.  I bike behind her.  Every time I do though, I hear the theme of the wicked witch of the west in my head.  What does that mean?  Today she cut in front of me and I toppled over into a shrub.  I hope she doesn't inherit my graceful ways.  

The person who is having the biggest time adjusting to this move, ironically enough, is Scotty.  He misses being in the Louisville office.  He misses driving when he wants to.  I also think it's hard for him to stay connected to whats going on there when he's 13 hrs ahead.  I also think he realizes this is so expensive for the company to have us here and he has extra pressure to make sure it's worth the investment.  He is back in the states for about 2 weeks working out of the main office.  He was shopping in Costco and ran into his uncle Robbie who apparently didn't get the memo that Scott would be back in town.  It about scared the beejeezus out of Uncle Robbie.  We miss dad and can't wait to see him.

I'm doing fine.  I have days when I miss the US, but then I go out and spend $10 on a people magazine and that usually does the trick.  I also remind myself that this is an election year and how nice it is not to see all the crap about it on the tv.  I've started volunteering at Lauren's school.  I work in the library on Mondays and help her class in the computer lab on thurs.  Today I spent two hours tuning hundreds of violins for the concert that they're doing today and tomorrow.  I bet you wish you were here to hear 500 elementary kids play violin together.  Sigh, I'm living the dream people.  I have a group of friends that are fun.  I go to coffee now and then with the "stay at home dads" Mike and Nigel.  Play with Yawen and Gabriela. And go discover stuff with Shanghai Gwen (not to be confused with North Carolina Gwen who just got engaged!!!! woohoo).  

Rufus the bunny is doing fine.  We have moved him from Q's room to the spare room because he was making too much noise at night.  We let him out to hop around in that room, but have to close the door so he doesn't hop to Q's room, jump on his bed and pee.  This is his absolute favorite thing to do i am sure.  We try to stay in the room and play with him, but whenever you open the bedroom door, he makes a run for it.  if the door gets left open, then he hops to Q's room, hops on the bed and makes himself at home.  Then I wash the bedding.   Ooooh it's a good thing he's cute.

talk more soon

sue

--
The Radeker's - sradeker@gmail.com

1983 Huamu Lu，House #157 (Season's Villas)
Pudong New District， Shanghai 201204, China
上海市浦东新区花木路1983弄157号(四季雅苑), 邮编：201204

I'm so far behind

Hi friends and family,

I'm sorry it's taken so long for me to sit and type, but I've been surprisingly busy.  Girl Scouts are in full swing, and I started volunteering more at Lauren's school.  Which I have to say is very fun.  Both kids had teacher conferences since the last time I typed.  Lauren is adjusting well.  She still gets freaked out by how much homework she has a night (about 90 min worth) but she's adjusting.  We decided that she can do a little, take a break, do a little, take a break ect til it gets done.  This drives me crazy, but it's much better for her.  Speaking of crazy, her chinese teacher told me to chill out.  I would spend hours trying to figure out and translate all of the stuff on the worksheets she missed from the first half of the year.  I would get so upset when I couldn't find a character or the translation was goofy.  (I translated one sentence for her once.  It read "blue mountain squirt gun").  I would go in the next morning to talk to her teacher and she would say, "just don't worry about it".  Of course I kept on worrying.  Finally at her conference, her teacher explained to me if I continue to make it hard, Lauren will not enjoy chinese.  If she has to be a beginner again next year, no big deal.  But if she gets stressed (like I do) then it will be a chore and she won't like it when she gets older.  So if we don't know it, we are to leave it blank.  ITS SO HARD FOR ME TO DO THAT.  Quint caught me trying to figure it out once Lauren went to bed.  

Now Quint on the other hand is having a very different experience.  I have been concerned because we aren't seeing a lot of homework.  I was prepared for him to have much more than he did in the states.  So when conferences came up, I told him he had to come with me.  I was expecting that I would hear that he is slacking off and doing just enough to get by.  Q assured me that he is doing fine.  Scott said that one of us was going to be surprised.  

It was me.

The only thing the teachers had to say is that he can be too chatty (hmmmmm, where does he get that).  But it doesn't seem to interfere with his work.  I hate that he's so smart.  

Sue/Scott Radeker

1983 Huamu Lu, No. 157

Pu Dong New District, Shanghai, PRC, 201204

上海市浦东新区花木路1983弄157号(四季雅苑)

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