Kathy & Paul's Adventures Abroad

For the past two weeks we have been in Newfoundland, Canada’s most easterly province and the place where we were born and raised. From St. John’s on the Avalon peninsula to Nain on the Labrador coast is one of the most pristine areas in the world. Newfoundlanders call it “The Rock” and we like to call it Canada’s best-kept secret. A place where drivers stop for pedestrians, where the present fuses with the past and where you will see the most unique and beautiful landscapes in the world.

We spent time with old friends, visited family, ate too much delicious Newfoundland food,went whale watching, and enjoyed it all very much!! Reconnecting with family and friends is always great and Paul was able to celebrate his birthday there too.

The cool weather created by the north Atlantic ocean is a pleasant break from the Toronto summer heat. There is a Newfoundland expression “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes – it will change.”

We are attaching some of the thousands of pictures we took in this post. I hope it helps to give you some idea of the beauty of this place they call “The Rock”, but the best way is to see it for yourself. Enjoy!

We thought you might be interested in seeing some pictures of our house and gardens. We live in a small Ontario rural town of about three thousand people. We like it very much and although it looks like a secluded country property we are just ten minutes from town. It certainly is quite different from the city of Beijing with its population of twenty million people.

Hi everyone! I guess you’re wondering what happened to us, because we kind of disappeared off the radar. Apologies for not writing sooner, but we just got lazy. I’m not going to try and sugarcoat it, it’s just plain laziness!!

Anyway, we’re now back in Canada and have been for a few weeks. Our adventure in China is over and it was an amazing one! We have a lifetime of memories from our time there. We met some very interesting people and made some friends and maybe we will even see some of them again.

But now we’re on to our next adventure – our trip to Qatar in the Middle East.Where is Qatar you ask? It’s next door to Dubai, another small oil-rich country in the Persian Gulf. Kathy has secured a position at the Qatar Canadian School for September, and we will be leaving to fly there on August 28th. Kathy’s sister, Rose is working there at a Newfoundland fisheries college (yes, a Newfoundland college in the Middle East), and she loves it there. She was the one who told us about the Canadian school and that they were looking for teachers. She has been an amazing help and support to us doing everything from finding a nice apartment to setting us up with a Newfoundland hairdresser! We are getting very excited about the whole venture and are also looking forward to seeing Rose, whom we haven’t seen in nearly twenty years.

However, before we go to Qatar we have another trip to take – to Newfoundland. The whole family, except for Ling is going to St. John’s at the end of the month to visit family and hopefully see whales and icebergs.
We will be there about two weeks and will put lots of pictures on the blog to show you what a beautiful place Newfoundland is. The grandchildren, Hayden and Dahlia, have never been there so they will be in for a real treat to be able to go down by the ocean and watch the waves break on the beach.

Paul and I went into the city with Daniel and Natalie to the Emperor Hotel. We had a few drinks and then did some sightseeing before we found a little restaurant where we enjoyed a delicious meal.

The picture below shows the fruits and vegetables we bought for 90 RMB or $13.26 Canadian. As you can see there were bananas, watermelon, lettuce, radish, apples, oranges, grapes, pineapple, tomato, cherry tomatoes, green peppers, peanuts, walnuts, pistachios, strawberries, spinach, and carrots.

Like a Titan rising from the earth, the backbone of a new subway line proceeds at an amazing rate.

The Subway home:

A shave and a haircut

Did you know?

Beijing, China has a population of about seventeen million people.

Beijing and surrounding area has a population of thirty million people.

China’s largest city, Shanghai, has a population of over twenty million people.

Canada as of May 2010 has a population of thirty-four million people.

Just some interesting statistics to help put it all in perspective.

Below some new out and about pictures. Enjoy!!

I recently purchased a trip computer for my bike rides. it is about one and a half inches or five centimeters square, and one centimeter thick. You reset it at the beginning of each trip. It gives a read-out of the bike’s speed, the time of day, the amount of time your trip took. It also gives average speed, maximum speed and the distance travelled per trip. As a bonus it keeps track of the total distance and the total hours accumulated by the bike from the time of instillation. Cool!! We are now averaging twenty kilometers per bike trip.

Below are some more pictures taken while we were out and about on the bikes.

The song by Queen suggests bicycle riding is a little piece of Utopia, an island of peace and tranquility – not likely!! Suddenly you’re facing down a delivery truck in the bike lane, travelling on the wrong side of the road to avoid traffic congestion. Drivers in Beijing generally have little respect for the rules of the road. They consider them as guidelines for other people.

As you rarely see a police officer, people make up their own rules. I’ve seen people do the following things in order to avoid traffic congestion: driving on the wrong side of the road, driving on sidewalks, on bike paths, on pedestrian paths, and many other creative alternatives just too hard to explain.

Our friend Chenxia is a very kind, caring and lovable person, but as a driver she is very frightening, scary, and crazy!

If you’re an adrenaline junkie try bike riding in Beijing. All you need is a sharp eye, quick reflexes and a lot of luck!

We live in the northwest on the very edge of the city. There are apartment buildings and office towers all around. There is new construction everywhere to the north, east and south of us. Beijing has been in a building boom for several years prior to the 2008 Olympics.

To the west there are apple orchards and greenhouses and just a fifteen minute bike ride from our place is a small town which has not had the advantage of the new construction.