The limits of online shopping

Image courtesy of PCMag.com

I never realized that online shopping has its limits. I guess because usually when I buy stuff online, I have already decided or know exactly what I'm looking for and I buy that particular item online because it will get me a better price. Well, as a first time mommy trying to buy baby stuff online that I have never really taken the time to check out in a store, uh, it's harder than I thought. Why am I online shopping? Well, I live in China and many of the products that I think I want either aren't in China or are two to three times the price of the States. So, with friends coming to visit next month, I've been trying to buy stuff online to have brought over that we know we will need when the baby comes. In between moments of shopping bliss and complete frustration, I have realized that online shopping has its limits. 

Take for example online reviews. You can only rely on them so much! And then, which ones do you believe? The five star account telling you that it is the best product ever? Or the one star review saying that it broke within the first week of use? Being able to see the product in person would help to confirm a good or bad review. Especially for someone like me who doesn't like to do a lot of research. Reading review after review is tiring and overwhelming, not my favorite. 

Maternity clothes is another thing that is hard to buy online, especially when you've never gone shopping in person for them! Fortunately, I had a few friends here who had some maternity clothes that I could try on and see what sizes from which brands did or did not work for me. But, seriously, buying maternity clothes online when you don't know your size - not ideal. 

Some things you just need to see in person, like a diaper bag. At least for me, being able to touch and play around with and put things in a bag in person is way more helpful than reading a bazillion online reviews and looking at pictures and videos. And yes, they have helpful videos for diaper bags. But honestly, I just want to pick it out in person! 

Don't get me wrong, I am incredibly thankful for online shopping. I just also wish that it had a feature where I could step through my computer screen and try out the product. Although, even if that  feature was available, it probably wouldn't be recommended for pregnant women. :-)

Something to Look Forward to - An Exciting Announcement

Great things take time. Like having a baby. We never anticipated having a miscarriage, and last August we thought we'd be having a baby this April. Well, the miscarriage happened and with broken hearts we picked up the pieces, put our trust in God and moved forward. We had no idea how long to wait before trying again. Our doctor here told us four to six months, then when I pushed him, he said when "my body recovered". Uh, ok. My theory was, and still is, that God created my body to have babies. So, whenever we were able to get pregnant again would be okay because God wouldn't design my body to get pregnant when it wasn't ready. 

Well, it didn't take quite as long as we thought. The first week in December we found out that we are pregnant again! Apprehensive after the first pregnancy, we waited until 11 weeks to have our first appointment, but so far everything looks great - except the fact that I am crazy sick. It's not fun, but it's worth it because in August we will be able to hold this little baby that is part me & part Steven and celebrate with God this life He has entrusted to us. Big happenings are coming to our household!

Currently, I'm 15 weeks pregnant, baby (dubbed "Peanut" for the time being) is the size of an orange or a russet potato depending on the source, and I'm having trouble eating anything after 2pm. The only cravings I've had are chocolate cake, spaghetti and corn tortillas. You can't even get corn tortillas in China! I think part of the reason I haven't had many cravings is because my subconscious knows that most of the things I'd be craving are inaccessible here. My staples are cereal, Doritos, goldfish and fruit (although not citrus fruit, because it all tastes really sour - what's up with that?). I'm thankful that I've been going through the first trimester during a holiday because naps have become a daily necessity. And I'm looking forward to the second trimester "you'll feel better" stage everyone keeps telling me about. 

We have been waiting to start a family and are excited to begin this new adventure. There is so much to look forward to.

China Winter Blues

Ice sculptures in Harbin, a city in northern China (photo credit: Reuters/Aly Song)

Winter in China is hard. Ok, winter can be hard anywhere I guess. But I feel it's extra hard in China (for me). January was actually pretty mild. Towards the end of the month we even had one day where it hit 70F! I know! Now? It's back to near freezing with constant precipitation. It tried really hard to snow the other day, but it didn't stay around for long. I'm a firm believer in if it's cold then it should snow. Nanjing does not agree with me.

We live south of the Yangtze River, which means there is no central heating in homes and most buildings. Hotels and some nicer restaurants will have central air, but for the most part people heat their homes with standing heat pumps that are really inefficient. In all honesty, most people don't heat their homes because they don't want a high electricity bill - we are not most people. We usually have our heat pump (called a kong tiao) going all day along with two space heaters we move from room to room to take the edge off. Our home is comfortable and we've figured out to keep it warm (except the bathroom, the bathroom is always cold), it's when we're out in the elements (on our scooter - yikes!), or elsewhere that the cold creeps in. For example, Sundays when we go to church. We meet in a new building. It's all concrete and tile, not a single insulated wall anywhere. Last week when we got there, the outside door was open into the hall we meet in - letting all the cold air in. They have heating, but will only run it on Sunday which means it gets turned on about two hours before service starts. The room we use for our English service has high ceilings, tiled floors and one wall of windows. In other words, it doesn't get warm. One week, it was warmer outside than inside the church! But this is normal in China, it's just hard for us Westerners to get used to.

Class was similar. December mornings spent sitting in a cold classroom were almost intolerable. My opinion is the tile floor makes it worse. Even if you have the heat pump running at full blast on high, your feet are still frozen. I started bringing those one-use hand and foot warmers to stick in my shoes (they made a huge difference). 

The funny thing is, temperatures get lower in the winter where I'm from in the States than they do where I live in China. However, I feel it's colder here because of the lack of indoor heat. Call me crazy, but I guess when you go from your nicely heated home to your car (which has seat warmers) to a heated office building you don't "feel" the cold as much. 

In other words, I'm ready for Spring. 

Singapore

We took some R&R earlier this month, heading south for warmer weather. Classes ended January 3rd, and since the official Chinese New Year holiday doesn't start until tomorrow (January 31st), we'd thought we'd go early and beat any CNY crowds also traveling. It was a good call. 

Singapore was the vacation spot of choice, and it was a very good choice. What an amazing city! It's Asian and foreigner friendly. The official language is English, so everyone speaks English and all the signs are in English making it easy to get around and use public transportation. I had to keep doing double takes hearing so many Chinese speak in English to each other. 

There were some other surprising things about Singapore. The first night we stayed in a budget hotel in an area of town that had a lot of budget hotels. I'm now fairly certain it was some sort of "red light" district (though no one confirmed that). What the hotel receptionist did confirm was that all those ladies (in the below picture, some with umbrellas) standing outside the hotel were prostitutes. So sad. They were in front of every hotel and almost on every corner. This was taken at 10am. For some reason I didn't expect to see this in Singapore - or at least see it so blatantly advertised.

Needless to say, our budget hotel room was a glorified closet and we ended up going to stay the rest of our time at a guesthouse - which was great! It was located just three bus stops from the North end of Orchard Rd, the main shopping and restaurant area of the city, and near the metro which made it easy to get around town.  Our first day at the guesthouse, we ate lunch and then hopped on a bus to head to Orchard Rd where we found a movie theater online. After getting our tickets for The Hobbit (boo-yah), we had an hour and a half to kill before the movie started. We had three objectives: exchange money, buy a SIM card, get Steven a haircut. After living in China for over a year, we figured if we accomplished one of those tasks it would be success. Not only did we successfully do all three things, I also was able to purchase some beauty products at an import store and we got lost in the basement of a HUGE shopping center for 15 minutes which resulted in eating Krispy Kreme donuts. It all felt like a dream.

View of downtown behind us, taken on the skybridge at Gardens By the Bay

While in Singapore, we explored Orchard Rd, visited Sentosa Island and the aquarium, checked out Gardens By the Bay and the downtown area with friends, and went to a water park. We also ate amazing food (including fajitas which were super delicious), saw a few movies and became masters of the public transportation system. 

Sentosa Island

I don't really understand it, but not that long ago the area that is now Sentosa Island was underwater.  Singapore bought dirt from Malaysia and Indonesia and reclaimed land from the sea. Crazy, right? I guess this has also been done in Holland and other places, but I had never heard of it. Anyways, it resulted in Singapore creating this amazing tourist island called Sentosa. It has world class resorts, Universal Studios, beaches, Hard Rock Cafe, tons of shopping, an aquarium that was amazing and lots of other things to do. 

On Sentosa in front of the "Merlion" - Singapore's mascot

I was so impressed by the beaches. This island sits in the harbor of Singapore and just around the corner is the shipping yard.  There are large cargo ships sitting out in the bay in front of Sentosa Island. So I wasn't expecting the beaches to be nice. I wish we'd brought a few chairs and some sunscreen! The beaches were clean and the water was clear. 

Sentosa's beaches

We ventured out to the "Southernmost Point of Continental Asia" crossing this crazy suspension bridge. It was so idyllic (the island, not the bridge). Yeah, there was turf grass on that island, but it was peaceful. We visited on a Friday and there was almost no one out there. Notice in the above picture how there's almost no one on the beach. 

Crossing the suspension bridge

Bird's eye view of the bridge

See how clear the water looks? Ok, in this picture it looks a little green, but it was aqua blue and you could see fish swimming around. There was some debris (leaves, twigs, etc) on parts of the shore, but other than that it was clean. Singapore is really clean and their beaches are no exception (especially when compared to Thailand). 

We wandered around Sentosa a bit, getting lost at one point and having to figure out on the not-to-scale map how to get back to civilization. The only attraction on Sentosa we wanted to pay money for on this trip was the aquarium. There are so many things to do on Sentosa (have you clicked on the link yet?) we couldn't do them all. And it could quickly get expensive. So we opted for the aquarium. 

The aquarium was incredible. Very well done with lots of huge viewing tanks and the world's largest viewing panel! We really enjoyed taking our time in the aquarium. We even bought a tuna sandwich and sat in front of the viewing panel and had lunch. Quite appropriate, yes? 

The shipwreck tank

Seahorse

Mini squid that kept changing color

A pufferfish puffed up! 

Literally seconds before we saw the above pufferfish, Steven said "I've never seen one puff up before." Well, there you have it!

Jellies 

That is one big fish

The world's largest viewing panel

At the viewing panel, they had the coolest music playing. It felt like we were watching the fish do underwater ballet. There were two giant manta rays that were circling the tank and it seemed they had perfect timing with the music. I could've sat there for hours, except that it was only a five minute song on repeat. Twenty minutes ended up being long enough.

As you leave the aquarium, you walk through the shark tunnel. I think the below picture captures how most people feel walking through a tunnel of sharks. 

"Run for your lives!"

Cue Jaws music...

Gardens by the Bay

One of the other cool attractions we saw while in Singapore was the Gardens by the Bay. It's newer, only a few years old, and is free to enter the main garden. There are two domes that you have to pay extra to go into, we chose not to do that. As you walk around, there is a lot to see. We wandered through the Heritage Gardens for awhile where they feature different plants from all over the world, including cultural appreciation for certain species. 

The highlight was getting up on the Skyway bridge in the Supertree Grove. You had a great view of downtown and the bay area. Really cool. There is also a new hotel, the Marina Bay Sands, that has been featured on Discovery programs for it's unique features, and we had a great view of that from the skyway as well. 

On the Skyway bridge

Eventually, these "trees" will be completely covered by plants

The Marina Bay Sands hotel (the roof features an infinity pool and garden area)

To wrap up, we would call this one of our favorite vacations. It was relatively stress free and Singapore is just a great place to visit! It's modern and clean and there is so much to do. We really hope to make it back, especially now that we know there is a budget airline that flys direct from Nanjing to Singapore. 

I will leave you with some funny bathroom signs we saw while there. For the record, these might be funnier if you have previously visited or lived in Asia. :-) 

Seen at Gardens by the Bay

Seen on a university campus. Poor Auntie Mary!

Happy 2014!

Image courtesy of HD Wallpapers Arena

It feels weird to write 2014.  Well, every year it feels weird to change that final number on the date.  Although I have to say that I don't write it as often as I did when I was in school.  Remember when you had to write your name, date, class and assignment number on everything?  Anyways, Happy 2014!  

This year has went by so fast.  I feel like we did so much!  I guess time does fly when you are having fun.  And because time flies, the blogging does not - am I right?  Has it really been since November that I actually wrote a meaningful blog post?  Oops.  I actually have several draft posts going, just nothing I've felt inspired to finish.  Which kind of sums up my personality I guess (it's that Perceiving preference of mine).

Do you have any resolutions for 2014?  Any changes you want to be making?  I am terrible at goal setting and never see resolutions through.  2013 was the first year I completed the One Year Bible (in previous years I always got stuck somewhere between August and October).  This year the Hubs and I decided to read a chronological Bible.  I'm really excited about it.  We chose Reading God's Story and so far it's wonderful reading.  It breaks the Bible down into three Acts with Scenes included to bring to life the overall story line of the Bible.  I enjoy the introduction at the beginning of each Act & new Scene and like how the publishers (editors?) interwove the New Testament and Psalms into the Creation story.  The translation is different from what we've read before, but we have heard good things about it and so far I like how it reads.  We are trying to read it together out loud at night.  I enjoy reading the Bible together, but it doesn't always work out.  This year for Christmas we attempted to read an Advent devotional together and only got to December 14th.  I'm hoping we keep up reading the One Year Bible together a little longer than that. 

Classes are starting to wind down in preparation for Chinese New Year.  We are headed out for a vacation from January 10-20, a little early but we didn't want to be traveling during the Chinese New Year holiday (on January 30th this year).  I'll be sure to throw up some more posts about the end of our 2013 as now I have more down time.  

Cheers to a wonderful 2014!