Return Home!

Return to Rhode Island and Vermont!
Well, it is December first and I have not updated the blog since returning from China almost four weeks ago. It was great getting home to Rhode Island and Vermont, to see Maryal, our daughters Christine and Alanna as well as the granchildren Keegan and Lilyanna. Besides getting caught up with all important matters we have managed an almost two week trip back to VT where our house there has not really been shown at all because the real estate market is so bad. Then it was Thanksgiving and all the usual activities associated with that.


I have to say the trip to China was just fantastic this year. It was my third trip there in just two years, so I think that will hold me for a while. China is a very special place and the people are also very special. I consider myself to have a lot of very sincere friends there now and we continue to keep in touch through email and sharing photos. Maryal and I had doctor’s appointments and my cholesterol went down almost 30 points and I lost some weight as well. I believe it is due to the Chinese diet and exercise. One does a lot of walking in China! The diet there consists of wonderful vegetables, chicken and fish and sparse portions of beef and pork as they are so expensive. I ate a lot of tofu as it is prepared in so many interesting ways and pretty much skipped the beef and pork.


It has been fun distributing some of the gifts ( li wu ... lee woo) I brought back, especially the fun toys. One youngster commented that the feather toy used almost like a foot badminton game was very hard. I told everyone it is the rage in China and the students there actually do play with it over a net. Otherwise it is used like a "hackey sack" with all sorts of foot motions. The jewelry and other trinkets were well received and I’ve squirreled away a few other items for Christmas which will be here before you know it.


We were just connected online this week to our new server Verizon with "FIOS", fiber optics. It is super fast compared to the 56 K dial up system we had in Vermont, so I hope to upload some pictures from China to include a couple of videos if possible (make sure your sound is turned on).



Thanks everyone for viewing the blog and hope we can keep in touch some more!



Frank, aka "Qin Fen", the "diligent" one.