We Love Rachel!

During our time in Shanghai, we've met some amazing friends. One of our favorite people, Wu TingTing, or as we like to call her, Rachel, has recently embarked on her own overseas adventure. In February, Rachel decided to move to Poland to work for a firm in Poznan. Oddly enough, Poznan is my grandmother's home town, where she lived until she met my grandfather after the war and moved to the US. We were very sad to see Rachel leave Shanghai, but at the same time, it has been such an exciting opportunity for her. During the past few months, she's gotten to try skiing and ice fishing for the first time, and visit places like Krakow and Germany. We've also enjoyed her stories and observations about what it's like to be a foreigner in a new country.

We've noticed a lot of her reactions to a different culture and customs have been similar to our own during our time in China. Here are just a few observations she's shared with us:

What I feel is Poznan is a nice, small city with blue sky and a lots of mini forests like a village. The people here are polite and friendly. -Rachel

I hope I will survive eating bread three times a day :-) -Rachel
(I have to say, I felt the same way about rice!)

Do you know Easter holiday? I never have this holiday in China but Easter is such a biggest holiday in Poland, just like Christmas. As i know Jesus died at 14th of April, after three days he have a renascence and every body celebrate it. before this holiday i painted some eggs for the Easter.

Yesterday, It's my boss mom's name's day, a lot people celebrate for her, it was a big party until today keep have guests coming. In Poland people think Name's day (the feast day of the saint for whom you are named) is bigger then Birthday, on the calendar each day has a several names on it. This is very fresh for me, I don't know any other country in Europe like here. -Rachel

And one thing very interesting for me, here boys and girls going to beauty parlor, pay a lot money to get suntan and some people are crazy with this, they going to this kind of place several time per week. Can you image that! in China i guess only have people pay for get white. Actually i have hear about this before but i thought only in the movie. This just really funny for me, difficult place people have totally diffident opinion or maybe i am just confused :-) -Rachel
(I reassured Rachel that she was not confused, that Westerners do spend a lot of time and money to get tan. I also told her I was just as shocked to find the amount of money Chinese women spend on whitening creams, and how prized a 'Casper' like complexion is in China.)

While we miss Rachel terribly, we're so proud she's decided to take on the challenge of moving to a foreign country where she doesn't speak the language. It's nice to know Zach and I aren't the only ones crazy enough to do something like that!