Elephants, Tigers and Lionel

It's easy to see where Zach got his interest in international travel. His parents, Lionel and Lorraine recently took a wildlife-filled trip through Asia. They spent a few days visiting us in the urban jungle of Shanghai...




Then won the hearts of the elephants by handing out watermelons and pumpkins at the Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai, Thailand......


And taught some tigers how to meditate in Bangkok, Thailand.


Lionel and Lorraine have learned what we've been finding all along, the idea of 'human handling' limits is not very prevalent when it comes to wild animals in Asia. While I'm sure organized animal rights groups would protest and throw fake blood on us if they saw what we've been doing (holding penguins, feeding monkeys, etc.), we've decided to take our chances. Who knows when we'll be able to get up close and personal with such incredible animals again!

One Night In Shanghai

All of Shanghai was abuzz last Thursday with the arrival of the Most Inexplicably Famous Person in America, Paris Hilton. Apparently in town for an MTV event, Paris shunned her family's own Shanghai Hilton for the newer, recently opened Grand Hyatt on the Bund.

















In any event, Tiffany and I were too busy with our own big party -- Thanksgiving at our house! We hosted my Credit Suisse colleagues as well as Tiff's Shanghai Centre co-workers, about 15 people in all, to celebrate and give thanks. Most of our guests were native Chinese and were excited to be celebrating their first Thanksgiving.

















One of Tiffany's coworkers brought her 5 year old daughter, Yao Yao, who provided much of the entertainment for the evening. The turkeys arrived in an insulated styrofoam carrying case, and little Yao Yao was curious and scared that when I opened the case, the turkey would fly out and start sqwuaking! You can see her cowering behind her mom in the picture. She soon learned it was a little too late for the poor turkeys. Yao Yao also discovered a love for corn. After polishing off her plate, we caught her later shoveling corn directly from the serving bowl on the food table into her mouth! Luckily everyone else had already served themselves corn.


Tiffany took the opportunity to work on her cooking skills and spent Wednesday and Thursday cooking up a feast. We found an American diner to order in the turkeys (we ordered two, 14-pound birds), sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes, but Tiffany whipped up homemade cranberry dressing, corn bread, herb vegetables, brown-sugar honey coated carrots and a honey-lime-ginger coated fruit salad. She also cleaned out some leftover foods from my cousin Josh and our friend Meredith, by preparing the corn, carmel yams, baked beans and a vegetable curry that we inherited from them.



We gave thanks for something that is rare in China, our kitchen oven. Not a common item in Chinese households, we are the only people from both our works to have an oven in their home! Amazing how the Chinese make do with steamers and a few stovetop burners. But we wanted to show them what they were missing.


Tiffany bought two large cans of pumpkin pie filling and found a recipe for homemade crust using olive oil. The recipe for the pie was somewhat generous, and she ended up baking eight pumpkin pies! She also baked a blueberry and peach crumble. My contribution was my world-famous homemade cookies (I am generously assuming that if people have eaten them in both the US and China that they are now "world famous" :) I baked an assortment using chocolate chips, oatmeal, dried cranberries and macadamia nuts.

I think it is safe to say that we have now left an American footprint on the waistlines of China!





Everyone had a great dinner - most of them were tasting these traditional Thanksgiving dishes for the first time. And we explained in the other Thanksgiving tradition, everyone had to take home leftovers. Some people we even convinced to take entire pies. All in all it was a huge success.

We'd like to wish all of our family, friends and blog readers a Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Bootylicious Kimchee

Actually there are two separate recent events combined into this one entry, our trip to Korea, and the night Beyonce came to Shanghai.

We spent a beautiful weekend in Seoul, Korea, wandering around the streets, visiting palaces, and finding non-Korean foods to eat. I actually had a business dinner one night and ate possibly the worst dish I've ever tasted. Even the Koreans admitted it was pretty horrible, but said it was one of those "acquired tastes". I noticed not even they were eating it, though! Basically it was a cold fish dish that smelled and tasted like ammonia, bitter and sour, like it had been left out to rot for a few weeks before serving. Anyway, all the Koreans had a good laugh watching my eyes tear up as I struggled not to throw up on myself.

Suffice to say, Tiff and I stuck to more pedestrian fare the rest of the time. Luckily, it turned out that Seoul did have great French and Italian food readily available. And even better for Tiffany, they had Dunkin' Donuts, where we binged like Homer Simpson.

It was a perfect fall weekend and we were able to walk around a nearby mountain to enjoy the changing colors of foliage. The air was crisp and clean, and the trails remarkably quiet. A very nice change of pace from Shanghai for sure!





We toured the last Korean palace grounds, which included this "secret garden" area where the royalty could retreat to for some peace and relaxation.




Here I am in front of the main palace receiving hall, still feeling slightly hung over from the post-Dunkin Donuts sugar crash.






Tiffany found a friend in one of the local guards!

A day after returning from Seoul, we saw Beyonce in her first Shanghai concert ever. I don't know what it is, but seeing concerts in Shanghai is remarkably hassle-free. I guess it's because we can take the subway there, the concerts are exactly two hours long, there are no opening acts and the shows always start and end right on time, but we've seen way more concerts than we normally do in the US. And it's fun to watch all the Chinese singing along to "Bootylicious"...