Putting things into perspective..

I was reading an article the other day, and came across an interesting story about the unemployment in China.

According to NPR, approx 23 million migrant workers have not been able to secure work, along with 3 million graduating students, and 9 million urban residents totaling 35 million.

Put this in perspective, the equivalent of the entire population of Canada would be unemployed!

Happy Canada Day!

To all my family, friends back in Canada, and fellow ex-pats living in China, I wanted to wish everyone a Happy Canada Day.

It's amazing to me how quickly time has flown. Tonight in honour of my home country, we're having hamburgers and potato salad, not our typical Canadian bbq, but it's as close as we can get here in China. I'll let Mark figure out what we eat for the 4th of July.

I do miss a good Canadian beer!

It seems so long ago...

As I believe you all know, Tina and I flew back from China to spend time friends and family. We had a bit of a weather delay in Chicago which held us up for a few hours, getting us into Toronto just after 3 am. Luckily our friend Barb waited up for us with a nice bottle of wine - I this late night added to our troubles adjusting from being 14 hours off...

The first weekend we spent with Tina's friends and some good food and drinks. A great time catching up people that we hadn't seen in a full year. From there we went off to Tina's father's to spend Christmas with the Schmidt family.

This year there were no naked Asian calendars given as gifts, but it sure seemed like everyone in the family enjoyed seeing us again. An excellent dinner one night at the brother Wilfred's and then the Christmas eve with the Schmidt family.

We'll be brave and leave you all with a video of one of the traditions that they seem intent on keeping going...

Happy New Year

Ok, we finally were able to get to a location where we can get a web connection - however we don't have a lot of time to spend writing about what we are doing as soon we are off to our New Years' dinner.

So far we've had a great trip, seen friends in Toronto and then spent a few days for Christmas with Tina's family. From there to Lenox and spending time with my family and now to Chicago for getting together with friends, getting work done and running just some general errands. Once we get a little more settled, maybe next week but most likely not until we are back in China around January 15th, we will post some stories about all we've done this trip.

For now, we just want to wish everyone happiness going into 2009.... Enjoy.

愉快的加拿大天

To all my family, friends and fellow Canadians,

愉快的加拿大天