In february, over Chinese new year we went to Australia. We have been patiently banking all of our airline miles and this was a good time to cash-em in. Traveling to Australia during the Chinese spring-fextival was ideal for a number of reasons. You head from winter to summer, and heading someplace warm int he middle of winter is always a nice break wherever you are. Its only a couple timezones away, so no jet lag! Its a thoroughly western country with English as its native language creating a nice break for the family. Finally we arrived 2 weeks after all the kids in Australia finished their summer break, so all the tourist attractions were off-season and not very crowded.
We flew into Brisbane, rented a campervan and drove to Sydney. We visited a large amusement park, rain forest, many wonderful parks & beaches while learning to drive on the left side of the road. Food is expensive in Australia, especially dining out. We made a point of cooking many of our own meals, luckily beef (sausages!) are very in-expensive and the Australians have gas-grills at every roadside rest stop, park & campground. When we arrived in Sydney we stayed at the holiday-inn and could easily walk (or take a ferry) to all the major sites and attractions.
Some shots at the amusement park (where we saw uncle Paul)...they had some decent coasters & a water park. :-)
We flew into Brisbane, rented a campervan and drove to Sydney. We visited a large amusement park, rain forest, many wonderful parks & beaches while learning to drive on the left side of the road. Food is expensive in Australia, especially dining out. We made a point of cooking many of our own meals, luckily beef (sausages!) are very in-expensive and the Australians have gas-grills at every roadside rest stop, park & campground. When we arrived in Sydney we stayed at the holiday-inn and could easily walk (or take a ferry) to all the major sites and attractions.
Some shots at the amusement park (where we saw uncle Paul)...they had some decent coasters & a water park. :-)
Pics from the first beach...
Some pics from the rain forest....
We went on a hike and saw several beautiful waterfalls...
New day...new campground...new beach!! (this one was my personal favorite)
And the 3rd beach...
And the 4th and final beach before sydney (sydney suburbs actually)...
Ok, enough of traveling...time to get back to city life...
(shot from the rooftop pool of our hotel...)
Strolling over to checkout the opera house...
No trip to sydney is complete without a harbor cruise!!
We took the kids to their first opera at the sydney opera house! They had converted Shakespeares Faust to Italian. Luckily there was a video screen sub-titling the show in english allowing us to enjoy the singing and actually get the jokes.
In April papa and the boys visited Okinawa with the boyscouts. There were about 150 scouts staying at Torii beach. The army allows personnel to take time off as volunteers. This meant the merit-badge counselors were off-duty Army & Marin soldiers! Very passionate/knowledgeable and we had a great time. We went with our friends from troop 12 and were able to sleep on the beach. The boys earned about 10 merit badges and took turns cooking breakfast/lunch in camp all week long.
In late April we visited our favorite museum in Shanghai. The Chinese maritime museum. Its about an hour drive from the city center, but well worth the trip. They had a lifesize replica of the ships the chinese built 100 years before columbus. These ships were 4 times longer and 3 times wider than the ships columbus used! There are definitive records of the chinese sailing to india & africa. As well as strong rumors/debate about sailing to north america! The chinese have maintained a strong maritime tradition and have been building ships many sizes and shapes for 100s of years. I believe the shipping industry is an areas that wasn't drastically affected by the events of the last 50 years that caused china to fall so far behind the rest of the world.
In May the kids went on "china alive". They got to travel with their classmates & teachers to different parts of china for 5 days....no parents! The works went to Chengdu and saw pandas in a wildlife reserve and learned to cook sichuan food! The paying customer spent his time on a small island in hong-kong hiking and spelunking. Momma & poppa found made the most of the time and went down to the Bund to eat at one of the super-fancy restruants downtown among the glitz & glamour.
In May we also took our last big "china trip" as a family. We finally visited X'ian. We took the sleeper train from Shanghai. The train was very interesting, I strongly recommend the soft-sleepers. The train was fun, but book your tickets carefully. My friend Michelle once booked only three tickets and the 4th bunk was sold to a stranger that she had to share with for the entire journey. I strongly recommend booking tickets in groups of 4 even if you don't have 4 people! We rented a car and drove out to the terra-cotta warriors. This was an impressive display of Archeology. Although I was a little dissapointed that they reconstructed all the warriros before putting them on display. X'ian is a lovely town, very lively and clearly well loved by its inhabitants. We recomend staying within the city walls. This made it easy to talk to all the historical sites and attractions. Our favorite part of the entire trip was riding bikes around the top of the city wall. A must-do experience for anyone visiting the city. We left on friday evening and returned saturday afternoon, this was plenty of time to see all the major sites. If we'd had one more day we would have driven out to yellow-mountain and climbed to its scenic peak. Our flight home on spring-air was very interesting. This is china's low-cost airlines. Everything was very clean & simple. Seats didn't recline, food & beverage was for-sale only. Plus near the end of the flight the stewardesses lead everyone through a set of stretches/exercises! The site of eeryone raising their hands above their heads and slapping them together will be a memory I hang onto for a long time. [still need to dig through photographs...will update later...sry]
The last 6 weeks was a whirlwind. Pets went home first to scout things out. Then we sent of the airshipment with "essentials" followed by a sea shipmenet containing 19 cubic meters of stuff we never realized we had. Pappa's work got a little crazy since the chinese officially announced a delay for the first flight of the aircraft and the business went through some significant restructuring. But all worked out. We spent alot of time visiting our favoorite places and saying goodbye to many dear & close friends. The works also treated us to some tasty Sichuan food at a very nice local srestruant. That meal was perhaps my favorite because we were very comfortable eating at a place that doesn't usually see any westerners. It became very clear how much we'd grown as a family as we debated what to order and patiently worked with the waitress to get our order "right" Two years ago we wouldn't have even looked at the menu! Let alone gone in with the crowd and eaten.
The trip home went smoothly. We are now back in our house in Grand Rapids. I've got a new job and am excited about all the new opportunities. The kids are getting reaquainted with old friends and everyone is quickly adapting to life in the states. I've had many people as if we'd do it again and the answer is easy.....YES!! Some of those people were from work, perhaps GE will have a need to send engineers to some other part of the globe....keep your fingers crossed! :-)
