I haven’t written much lately because life at Puteri Harbour is very routine. We get up about 6 am. About 7:30 I go out and walk around the entire complex which takes about an hour. When I get back to the boat I follow the Red Sox games which lately have been more fun to follow than they were in April. The rest of the day there’s really not much to do. Our bikes took turns with wheel issues which put an end to riding for a bit. So we read, planned future adventures and I painted a bit. Ho hum…..

Now we are in Jingan, China visiting Bill and Stella and all of our boatyard friends and BoBo, Zoey, and Singkey our young friends. BoBo and Zoey both graduated from college this year and Zoey is in her first year at University. We will take all three to dinner tonight. Yesterday our friend Lilian came to visit us so we could meet her husband and 8 month old baby. Lilian had worked at the hotel in Jingan when we were here in 2006 waiting for DoraMac to be completed. Lilian was always so helpful and joined me for school visits, shopping trips and bubble rides on the park lake.

Lilian, her son and me.

Lilian hasn’t given her son an “English” name yet and I can’t write his Chinese name. I couldn’t even pronounce his Chinese name….but he is such a cute and very happy baby. I had my haircut a few days prior to this photo. It will grow out. It’s actually not a bad haircut. But we limited ourselves to packing in backpacks so we packed really light and I didn’t bring cream rinse so my hair does odd things. I will definitely buy some cream rinse!

Lilian, her baby, and another hotel friend with her son.

Busy corner on the way to the ferry.

Dragon boat races on the Yellow Ocean River.

http://www.echinacities.com/main/ExpatCorner/ExpatsCorner.aspx?n=5579&pageindex=1&gclid=CLy4rIv5nqICFQorbwodnj7txA is one site that tells the story behind dragon boat racing and the holiday and traditions connected to the event.

Yesterday when I walked along the river walk on my way to the boatyard, there were thousands of people lined up along the way where the young men are standing, watching the dragon boat races.

The lower walkway is new, I think because I never walked it while we lived here and I certainly would have. We’re not sure if it is designed to be flooded or it’s that way just because of the very high tide. Lots of folks were enjoying wading in the water. If I were a kid I would have been in the water

We will take a bus either this Wednesday or Thursday to Guangzhou. From Guangzhou we will board the train to Tibet. It takes 56 hours but we have booked a soft sleeper compartment. It is very tiny and Randal and I have the lower and upper bunks on one side of the compartment. We don’t know who will be in the other bunks or if they will be empty since this isn’t the most popular time for travel to Tibet; but it is the time frame when we have time. http://www.chinatibettrain.com/ is one website about the train to Tibet.

I’m using our new acer netbook for this email and my new Canon PowerShot 1100IS camera for the photos. A few days before we started our Tibet trip, the flash on my Canon 720IS stopped working. I took it to the Canon Service Center in Singapore and it would have cost more than the camera was worth to have it fixed in a day…if it indeed was fixable. The stupid camera was only two years old Randal’s big old digital camera that went on his bike trip around the world in 2000 still works. Hmm. This new camera was a spur of the moment purchase so we’ll see how it does.