In September 2010, a friend and I spent a week in Mongolia. We travelled to Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia by train — across mountains, grasslands, deserts, and more grasslands. It was one of the greatest rail journeys I’ve ever done (and I’ve done a lot). I recently ran across a gorgeous video of the […]
Friday Fish Fry
Nobody in our little group could remember when the tradition started, but they all traced it back to my niece, who issued the first invitation a few years back to go to a Lenten Fish Fry Dinner. Since then it has become an annual trek, and since this is the first time I have been in […]
Church and State
In February I had the joy of hosting 3 Chinese friends in the Twin Cities. It was a whirlwind 4 days, trying to see all the sights and meet all my friends. One afternoon I took them to visit the Minnesota State Capitol, which sits on a hill overlooking the city. It’s a gorgeous building, […]
14 Days in the Life of the Beijing Sky
The Chinese site china.org.cn posted 3 interesting photos that show the various “skies” that Beijing experienced during the recent government meetings. Guess which days the wind was blowing.
Friday Photo: Locked Up
Spotted in a hutong neighborhood in Beijing…the old and the new.
My Mother’s Father’s Sister’s Cousin’s Daughter….Whatever!
Sometime during my first year of language learning (back in 1990), our teacher tried to teach us the various terms used to describe family relationships in Chinese: mother, father, brother, sister, son, daughter, etc. It was useful stuff, since we were all anxious to talk about our families in Chinese. We usually did fine as […]
