Solar Eclipse

It's been awhile since my last post and the reason for that is because I have been flying solo with the kids in the USA while Sev has been hard at work in China. Which leaves me very little time for blogging since I am so exhausted at the end of the day (and I usually can't get the kiddos into bed before 9pm) that I go straight to bed. Anyway, I am a little sad that I missed a pretty cool natural phenomenon that occurred in China today- a complete solar eclipse. I've seen partial eclipses before but never a total eclipse. Sev was kind enough to snap these before and after pictures on his cell phone and email them to me (sorry, the photos are a bit grainy). Keep in mind that these photos were taken at approximately 9:30 IN THE MORNING.

The view from the office at 9:30 AM during the eclipse- complete darkness (except for the city lights of course)!


The conference room during the eclipse- note the dark windows.

Same conference room after the eclipse- approximately 10AM. Note the smog...but that's another story!

I will say that although it's been challenging to do the single parent thing this summer, I am thrilled to be back in the USA and enjoying the fresh air and cool temps in Minnesota! We are off to New Jersey at the end of the next week to visit the parents and then back to Shanghai. I'll do my best to keep up the blog a bit better once this vacation is over!

A new fruit

Being in Asia gives you the opportunity to explore all different kinds of fruits and vegetables that we do not have access to in the USA. I haven't really come across anything that was totally unknown until my Chinese neighbors across the hall offered us a basket of yang mei. I don't even know the english translation for this fruit as I had never seen it before. It's best described as a cross between a raspberry and a mulberry- kind of. Each one is a little smaller than a golf ball. And let me tell you, it's darn good! It's only in season for about one month in June. The only problem is that it is VERY juicy and messy so after finding out the hard way by ruining one of Audrey's dresses with the juice, I decided it's best to strip the kids down to their underwear before eating!
This fruit definitely goes on my list for things that I will miss about China once we leave.

Yang mei

Grace after eating her fill. She thought the coolest part was that the juice looks like blood which provided quite a bit of entertainment around the house (while I chased after her shrieking "Don't get the juice on anything!"