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those twins again: the little one, Mboy7

Saturday, December 12th, 2009

Brasov, Romania

 

“Before we left I saw a movie about war in China and so I didn’t want to go to China. But when we got there I liked it.  I loved going for bike rides, especially the really long one on the tandem with Mama. I liked the food, especially spicy noodle soup. And the people were very friendly. But I didn’t like it that they wanted to take our picture all the time. Though it WAS funny. I also liked England for the English Heritage sites and Mongolia for the ranch.”

What parent would show their six-year-old child a movie about war in China? Not this one! Well, not the usual images associated with “war movie” anyway…what Mboy6 saw was an old black-n-white documentary about Gladys Aylward. Yes, it did end with her rescuing children, crossing the mountains on foot with them, because soldiers were coming, but the *war* aspect was largely missing from the screen. It was not, however, missing from our little imaginer’s mind. For the four months before we arrived in China, Mboy6’s conversations centred on “could world war three start today and where would we go and how would we get food and what if I get separated from you and will you know if there’s war and could there be war in Thailand and could there be war in Laos and could there be war in Cambodia and what about Viet Nam and is it still safe in China and and and????”
ERgirl2, on the other hand, had it in her head that when we got to China it was going to be cold and so the moment we crossed the border she asked, “Are we in China? Is it cold?” Less concerning than whether we were about to enter a war zone or not!!

Most probably visiting war sites in Cambodia, taking a hike through land not completely cleared of UXOs, requiring us to stay on a narrow specially marked track and seeing the effects of UXOs every day, did little to reduce his anxiety.

But after China, the war talk stopped. And Mboy6/7 got on with enjoying the trip.

 


every time Mboy opened his mouth, the fish did too!!!!
~for five full minutes~

Posted in 2008/09, children, postcard: China, postcard: Romania | No Comments »

fat

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

by a ranting member of the lunatic fringe
Lindisfarne, England

According to newly-released statistics, New Zealand is almost leading the world in obesity statistics (apparently currently coming in third). I wonder if we would have noticed England’s obesity if we had flown here directly from home. But we didn’t and the problem here struck us strongly.
I’m not going to get scientific about it….just a little anecdotal…..in terms of the places *we* have been, we’d say Laos is the most non-obese nation. We did not see one overweight person in our month there. Not one. We expected Cambodia to be the same, but we saw an occasional chubby young person there – we were staying just up the road from a private school and quite a few of the children (obviously from wealthy families or they would not have been attending the school) were starting to show the signs of adopting a Western diet. Now I do not know for certain that they eat lots of Western food, but we did see them with bottles of Coke and chocolate bars. None of the people living on the rubbish dump, on the other hand, were overweight. None of the people we met in Thailand or Vietnam, who lived their traditional subsistence lives were fat. None of the rural Chinese were tubby. No-one in Mongolia was carrying extra kilos (and all they eat is mutton and full-cream dairy with loads of fat piled on – so maybe the NZ food nazis should sit up and take notice of the fact that low-fat diets are not the answer – our bodies need fat and while the beauracracy tries to prevent us from consuming it, they are not going to solve the obesity epidemic.)
It’s not even a Western issue (I don’t think)…..in Holland and Germany there were precious few tubbies – yes, there were a lot of men carrying beer pots on their skinny legs, but not general obesity. In those countries you have everyone riding bicycles everywhere – even old dottery grannies (no offence intended – I’m describing the ladies we saw on bikes – so dottery that when they got off their bikes, they sometimes nearly toppled over – but they were still out there cycling well into their nineties!) And there was next to no low-fat food. Just plenty of full cream milk and quark and yoghurt and butter.
Then you get to England and everything is low fat. And a good portion of the population is overweight. My theory stands up to the scrutiny of circumstantial evidence! If our health board is going to ban anything, let them ban sugar. Did you know that in the fourteenth century we used a teaspoon a year of this “luxury spice”. Now Britain’s annual consumption is 35kg per person. Hello! Could we make a link between that and obesity, diabetes and poor teeth, do you think? And how different is New Zealand? (Answer:not very)

Now, if you’ll give me just a moment, I’ll hop down off my soapbox (and to think I thought they had all been packed away in the attic for a year!)….

There, back on solid ground.

Are you still with me? How about something less controversial – a nice wee morning game of hide-n-seek in Warkworth Castle (before the rain came….again). Or if you prefer, the game where you have to run under the drawbridge (which doesn’t draw any more) and try to avoid the missiles being sent from above….that one was fun!

The day ended in pouring rain, we’re perched at the edge of the sea (in fact, according to the GPS we are IN the sea!) in a little carpark just off the causeway that goes across to Holy Island. The island is only accessible at certain times of the day, dependent on tides, as the causeway totally floods at high tide (a most impressive sight to see – and exciting to watch people to-ing and fro-ing trying to make up their minds whether to take the risk once the water has come up a bit! The pictures of almost submerged cars on the tide timetable signposts did nothing to deter some!) We zipped across this afternoon to visit Lindisfarne Castle and Priory, but as the rain took our arrival as its debut time, and we saw the number of motorhomes in the carpark, we came straight back and nabbed spots in aforementioned carpark for the night (no overnighting allowed on the island), not that we needed to hurry as none of the flash motorhomes came into our freebie spot!

Time on the road: need to check Jboy13’s record!
Distance covered: 68km

Posted in 2008/09, food, health, postcard: Cambodia, postcard: China, postcard: England, postcard: Germany, postcard: Holland, postcard: Laos, postcard: Mongolia, postcard: Thailand, postcard: Vietnam, tradition | 4 Comments »

*university*

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009
by a linguistics graduate Bath, England That Bath is a university town was particularly apparent today – hundreds of black-gowned graduates were out on display, marching the streets, proudly clutching their certificates. It seemed an appropriate place to check out second-hand ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in 2008/09, book, children, history, language, learning, parenting, postcard: China, postcard: England, postcard: Laos, recreation | 6 Comments »

*crossed*

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009
by Rob On the K3 train from Beijing to UB (for us, although it continues on all the way to Moscow)

 

“This will be one of the easiest border crossings,” I had commented earlier as ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in children, health, postcard: China, postcard: Mongolia, toilet, tradition | No Comments »

the last that was ever heard from them….

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009
was a short blogpost as they headed off into Outer Mongolia in search of snow. 06:00 Leave hostel – take two subways to train station 07:40 Train pulls out of Beijing Station (and if the other ones we’ve caught are                anything to ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in postcard: China, postcard: Mongolia, transport, weather | 3 Comments »

dedicated to dad

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
by a daughter Beijing, China We turned into the alley our first day here and wondered if we were in a construction site, and not a youth hostel. It turned out we were, and each day as we have walked by, ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in craft, housing, postcard: China, tradition | No Comments »

TRUST

Monday, March 30th, 2009
by an uncharacteristically impulsive buyer Beijing, China “In God we trust”, the official motto of the United States and emblazoned on their currency as a daily reminder, has its counterpart in China. Here bus stops routinely declare:

[Continue reading this entry]

Posted in children, dress, God, housing, money, parenting, postcard: China, price, transport | 8 Comments »

Snow on the Square

Sunday, March 29th, 2009
by an adult who thought it was pretty cool too Beijing, China Never mind the cultural or historical significance of standing in Tiananmen Square, facing the Forbidden City, it was SNOWING!!!!!! So they may not have been the biggest snowflakes, and they ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in children, history, justice, learning, parenting, postcard: China, weather | 5 Comments »

staggering

Saturday, March 28th, 2009
by Rach Beijing, China

 

Badaling is apparently where most people view The Great Wall from. We went in the opposite direction to a less-populous more run-down section, one with the promise of a ten kilometre ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in children, postcard: China, postcard: Mongolia, recreation, weather | 3 Comments »

hostel in the hutong

Friday, March 27th, 2009
by the accommodation-finder Beijing, China hutong = narrow alleyway And there are a couple of thousand of them criss-crossing the city, warrens filled with an eclectic mixture of Qing dynasty courtyard houses, modern brick outhouses (many of the homes do not have ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in housing, postcard: China, recreation | No Comments »

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