Category: Pictures

I came prepared for cold and today I’m sitting in the apartment in rolled up shirt sleeves.  It is supposed to reach 75 degrees outside today.  My son and I went to another apartment for lunch and I didn’t have any need for a flannel to walk outside.  Spring has arrived and the park grows…

How do you celebrate a birthday with COVID-19 restrictions in place?  What does a birthday party look like for foreign kids in China?  We were fortunate to find out.  One of our grandsons turned twelve last Sunday.  The party was on Saturday and did require some extra planning.   The first thing was identifying a location. …

Friday night is pizza night here in Beijing for our family. Pizza is “buy one get one” free at Papa John’s, but only if you pick it up in the restaurant. We hadn’t been out in a while so we decided we would walk to the shopping center where the restaurant is located. The last…

Spring has arrived. It is much warmer outside and the March breezes are keeping the air quality in the healthy range. With the grandkids in school our normal pattern is to feed them lunch, watch a MacGyver episode, and then go for a walk. Most days we take the dog for a walk in the…

One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand…twenty one thousand. I lose count of how many times I count through this sequence every day. The best defense against the Covid-19 is to wash your hands with soap for at least 20 seconds: when entering a residence, after using the toilet, after touching and animal,…

It is impossible to know how windy a day it is if we remain within the apartment complex. The gaps between buildings create wind tunnels that intensify any wind there is. When we exit the gate and walk across the street the wind dies down, the sun appears, and the walk becomes quite pleasant. The…

The above video contains sounds from our apartment complex in Beijing. The first set of sounds are what we hear when we leave our apartment to go see the grandkids. The second set of sounds are of the subway train going by. A train goes by every few minutes. For some reason I can’t get…

When I went into the kitchen on Saturday morning the wind was whistling through the window. It was below freezing outside and the air coming in chilled everything at that end of the kitchen. The blessing was that the wind had blown away all the pollution in the air and the sky was blue again….

Today is Valentine’s Day in China. Grandpa had bought Grandma some of these Chinese Fried Dough Twists early in our visit and she wanted some for a special breakfast treat. It took several searches and some extra effort from my son to make them a reality. A text to our kids’ language helpers returned the…