When I was 12, I was a certified scuba diver. I ended up taking my certification dive in mucky Western Mexican waters; I didn't see many fish. My next dive ended terribly, and I refused to go down since. Not because of the lack of visibility or fish, but a few things went wrong and I was terrified. I was also very young, so it sort of seeped into my brain that scuba diving is bloody scary...to the point where it was the thing I feared the most. But I decided to be uber cheesy, and conquer my fears after seeing Sharkwater.

It was amazing.


Relearning. It helped that the instructor was really kind and patient.


My dad's an avid diver. He's been on like ... 100 dives or something.


Best part: coffee during the break.




 Um. So maybe I don't look like Kate Bosworth or Demi Moore in my wetsuit.

- Chrissy

Snapshots from the Philippines.

- Chrissy

Obviously. I didn't need to explain this one.
My best friend and I go way back. Obviously.
We even founded a religion in Science class (The Holy Temple of George Clooney and Sexy Older Men) because if they were going to have to teach Creationism along with Evolution in science class, they sure as hell better teach our religion.

George Clooney founded the world with his mighty hand. Because he was bored.
Obviously.

Anyways, Lolita was basically a child prodigy. People went as far to compare her as a similar (but better) version of Robert Frost. Here is here 8 year old masterpieces:

When My Friends Come Over

When my friends come over we rock the nighborhood,

When my friends come over there’s not a sock in sight

When my friens come over my mother says “youre all as quiet as a but!”

Raining Cats and Dogs

It’s raining cats and dogs

In the pig pen, all those hogs.

It’s raining cats and dogs!

Let’s listen to those dogs,

Let’s listen to those cats,

Put away your baseballs

Put away your bats,

Cause it’s raning cats and dogs!

My favorite:

There will be animals.

There will be horses.

There will be bunnyes.

There will be chickens.

THERE WILL BE BLOOD

... I guess she was more of a Poe or Plath...

((that was my artsy layout if you didn't get the memo...I hope one day to be as creative as Lolita...))


And finally...

Her essay:

I want to be an archiologiest.  I want to learn about the Aztecs.  I want to deiscover Atlantis.  I want to find more mumies.  I want deiscover more Native tribes.

I am going to be a photogroapher.  I will travle to different countries and states.  I will go to 50 in all!  I will live in Calafornia.  I’ll have a cottage at the Swedish border.

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Why didn't I get to analyze this for IB English? I think many commentaries could be written about the misspelling and the juxtaposition of California near "the Swedish border"

Ack. I love you Lolita.

Back to Chinese

- Chrissy

I didn't have a lot of time in Shanghai during the break, and most of the time was filled up with various errands and obligations. That being said, one of my major priorities was seeing my former Chinese tutor, and very good friend (my only authentic local Shanghainese friend!) Rainbow Koo (顾建佳).  We meet at Raffels, one of my favorite places in the whole wide world. Seriously. I always ask people to meet me (during the day or for dinner) at Raffles. It has all the best shops, and the best food court. It has a good location, and is less expat-orientated than Superbrand, which is super overrated.

There is no use really describing what we did - so here are pictures!

PS. I read online that a blog post should always include a picture of yourself, or else the post is impersonal. Including pictures here, there and everywhere is super vain...unless you look fantastic (like Elin Kling) and have on fantastic clothes (Elin again). I still feel silly posting a picture of just what I am wearing so that will never, ever happen...but I did came whore lots.


Reunited!  Honestly, I have no clue why my cheeks are so fat and puffy.  I swear I don't look like that!


We ate at RBT. You can sit on swings.
Plus it has rabbit pictures.


Cool interior and pretty coffee drippers.


Lots of mirrors. I think she was arguing with the server...


The drinks are all so pretty. They remind me of the cool colors in Chinese music videos (the ballads).



Her drink.


My drink.


With my "potted milk tea".



She helped me bargin a huge knit scarf (like those in Korea) for 20 kwai. They wanted to charge me "no less" than 300. Love having a Shanghainese friend.
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.Too silly...but I couldn't resist. The hats had rabbits on them.

So much cooler than a Colts cap any day.


BEST THING EVER. I should have bought it, but I didn't know if I would need the money later. It was super fuzzy.

Obviously, we hung out for a much, much longer time then these pictures convey. We didn't just drink tea and look at rabbit hats. Heh.


I still don't understand how this photo-shopping works, which is why the pictures are all disorganized and chaotic.

- Chrissy

It seems everyone has New Year Resolutions...I need some too.

... BEFORE January 7th please.

- Chrissy

I heard about Ye Shanghai's brunch through a blog I read, in a twist of fate I ended up seeing the writer of the blog right before eating. Beyond eerie, it's like seeing an ex-pat celebrity.  I missed Shanghai's din sum and legit and delicious Chinese food, so I asked my parents to go to it's din sum Sunday brunch the morning after I landed.

Ye Shanghai (translates into Shanghai Nights) gathers inspiration from Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghainese cuisine and is located in ritzy Xintiandi. For only 98 RMB you can get an all-you-can eat order off their menu, inclusive of their specialty teas. For a little more you can get roast duck and free flow champagne, a very good deal.  The interior makes for a pleasant experience, with high ceilings, lots of old-style window frames, and antique looking tables/chairs/lighting without being overly cluttered. Also, a good sign was that my family and I were the only non-Chinese family there.

I really, really enjoyed the food. I appreciated that you could order off the menu, rather than go up to a buffet and select what is on your plate. I feel like you get more quality items.  Also, the food wasn't overly oily, which is rare in most Chinese food.

Vegetables:


I think there were bamboo shoots. It was a while ago. They were crunchy and had a light flavor.


Yams. They were sort of sweet and crunchy, without being obviously oily. A nice compliment to all the salty and more-oily din sum dishes.



Mixed greens. This dish is common everywhere, from 7-11 take away to din tai fung. I was impressed that despite being cooked in oil, it still felt fresh and light.


Lotus root with sticky rice. I used to eat this every day at my job in the summer. It was a bit too syrupy for my taste. I could have done well with about half as much oil or syrup.



My favorite vegetable dish. I think it was mushrooms or lotus leaves or something but it had wasabi in it. I ordered it three times.


Dumplings:
Xiaolongbao and pork dumplings with XO sauce.  Xiaolongbao


Pan fried dumplings. Amazing. The skin wasn't too thick and was nicely friend. The meat was juicy, moist and just plain good.


Wontons in soup. The dumplings had a surprising amount of flavor, most soup-dumplings seem to have all their flavor drained out in the soup. But these were juicy.




Meat/Other:






Vegetables for duck. Didn't try it.


Wrap for duck. Didn't try it.


Peking duck wrap. My dad seemed to like it...


BBQ ribs. They had bones in the center, so it was very hard to chew off the meat while using chopsticks. The thick sauce made it somewhat slippery. It's not very clean, and not the strongest dish, so I wouldn't mess with it.


Hot and sour soup. Too slimy! Is it just me, or do many Chinese soups taste slimy. I didn't go back for seconds, but my dad did. I guess it's just personal preference.

Dessert:


The mango pudding had real mango bits in it. It was okay, but I couldn't finish all of it. It was a bit flat and I was full.


Dumplings with whipped cream (?) in the center and mango mixed in. It was a sweet, light way to end the meal.

I would definitely come back, and will most likely request this brunch when I get back from University in the summer. It's a unique alternative to the overpriced and oversalted Hotel brunches.  The food is better quality, and the price you pay makes this a really, really good deal. Overall, all the dishes that I had were delicious, and would be worth ordering on their own in the restaurant.

If choosing the best dishes, I would go with: wasabi leaves, pan-fried dumplings & thin pork slices. Xiaolongbao is a given.

*****/*****

I will definitely come back.

- Chrissy

In a very short few hours it will be the 31st of December all over the world. A special day for one reason:

To Chrissy:

Happy Birthday!!!

There are a lot of things I want and could say but if a picture is meant to be worth a 1000 words...

... then maybe this once I don't need to.

- Joachim

Merry Christmas from Chrissy in the Philippines and Joachim in Belgium!

We hope your day is and has been as fabulous as ours!

- Chrissy and Joachim

For Christmas and New Year's break I am going back to Europe to visit my family.. In fact, I am already in Europe it was just "how" I got here that was the interesting bit.

My original flight plans where to fly from Seattle to London and then London to Dusseldorf, this trip would start at around 18:45 on Saturday.. at 5:00 AM whilst happily in the land of dreams my dad calls to inform me that my flight was canceled (because Heathrow decided to close itself down for 3 days straight) and that he has booked me on a different flight plan with the first flight leaving at 15:40. This flight plan was from Seattle to San Francisco to Munich to Dusseldorf, so quite a bit longer.

This is where the chaos starts: Somewhere in the rush between my first flight and taking a cab to get to the airport my mp3 player goes missing. Later, when I arrive in Munich I get informed that my flight two hours later to Dusseldorf is canceled. I then spend 1 hour and 40 minutes, 22 minutes of which were spent standing on the same floor tile, waiting at the ticket counter. The lady kindly books me a flight in the morning and a hotel to stay in overnight. After sharing a cab with three other people to my hotel I get into my room. Two things wrong: I dont have a suitcase (since its still officially in transit) and the hotel has no power adapters for me to borrow. Add that to the fact that I am still on Seattle time. So I spent a sleepless 12 hours lying on the hotel bed watching German TV channels (the only English one was SkyNews). I catch my flight in the morning and when I land.. guess what happens! My luggage doesn't arrive. I then spend 3 hours in line waiting at the baggage tracking center for an anticlimactic 4 minute conversation regarding the luggage tag and description.

My suitcase still has not yet arrived.

The culprit:


You would think that after three straight years of interruptions caused by the so called "big freeze" that people would learn and buy the equipment to deal with these sorts of things... ugh.

- Joachim

I'm going back to Chinaland.

My plane takes off at around 7 am for San Fransisco so I had the brilliant idea of just staying up all night so I wouldn't be too tired and miss my taxi, such and such. So brilliant, I am.

It was the worst idea EVER. I have just finished taking my finales, and to add another all-nighter without an energy drink is death.  I feel like a zoombie or the world's sadest panda. 

So my second brilliant idea was to blog, so that way I have to stay awake and it gives me something to do.
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Anyways.

Apparently, there is an epidemic of bedbugs across my dorms, it doesn't help that our mattresses were made 40 years ago and have the shiny cover for people who wet their bed. Ew max. So I was informed that I over the break I would have to clear out all my stuff, take down all my sheets and clean the room entirely for workers who would be replacing our mattresses. This would have taken me maybe all day but ...



Joachim came to help me.

Thank God too. He has "OCD", or at least he thinks he does, so I was able to get the whole room spotless in only one and a half hour, and I was able to get all the stuff that my parents needed before the stores closed.


final result.


My view of the mountains, the Puget Sound....along with my Christmas tree and decorations.
My parents sent me them.

Then we split up again, to get various things at various locations for various people. But then Joachim got stuck in the middle of a ghetto, had to call a cab and ended up picking me up.


We were uber hungry, we didn't eat lunch because cleaning up my cesspit room was too revolting. So to celebrate we got Tokyo Sweets, it's too good these Japanese crepes. It doesn't help that one of the blogs I read puts Japanese crepes up every other day and I crave it 24/7.

I ended up getting a "pumpkin pie crepe" where they put a whole pumpkin pie slice, with whipped cream and cinnamon in a crepe. It sounds off-putting, but it's the best.


Can you spot Joachim? He was so camera shy I had to sneak these in.


With the crepes.

Then we split up again to buy another set of various things for various people at various locations. But we met up again for Best of Bento. I think it's Joachim's favorite resturant in the area. The owner is super kind, like today he gave me free sushi today because he was too full. So nice, right? The food is also really good. They have both Korean and Japanese bento options and it sort of reminds me of Saya in Shanghai were we went...all...the...time.


Joachim one day will thank me for taking a picture of him in his favorite restaurant. When he is old it will give him sentiment.


My food


Joachim's food, he's already reaching for it.


Free sushi.

I only have 2 hours left before my cab, so maybe blogging does distract time...