Talking about the past... part 1

Yep, we're still here and occasionally thinking about writing posts to share with all of you... It's amazing how easy it is to get away from this, and then how hard it is to get back into posting.

Alright, so let's take some time to go back and talk about the trip that we made over the Thanksgiving holiday in the States. We took advantage of the two days off and bundled it with a week of holiday for a 12 day trip to Asia. And we do mean Asia, as we managed to visit 4 countries during that short trip....

The Tuesday before Thanksgiving we took a night flight from Chicago to Beijing, landing on Wednesday pretty close to midnight, a quick trip to a hotel for 5 hours of sleep and then we are back at the airport and heading down to Xiamen.

Xiamen was almost the same as we remember it from a year ago, some shops had closed and other had opened, but overall it was still that same small town of 4 million that we love. We spent 4 nights there and had a great chance to catch up with a lot of our expat friends that are still living there and the locals that we had gotten to know. We dined twice at our favorite local restaurant, we call it "The Sisters" for the two sister who run the place, and the second time they were kind enough to treat us to the meal. More of a meal then we would have eaten, as we ordered a small amount and they decided that wasn't enough and also brought us a plate of shrimp and a whole fish - the food was excellent, as always, but it was tough to finish it all.

Shelly at the new coffee shop she runs

The Sisters

Lao Joe at CoyoteOn Gulang YuLao Joe, Jasmine, Ulf, and Tina at Me&You2Howard and his brand new fiancee at The Oriental

It was a quick trip, but a lot of fun, and while we were there talking to friends we agreed that we would come back the first weekend in 2012 and run in the Xiamen International Marathon. We think that the 13 months we have should be enough time for training...