We’ve spent the last 3 months or so here in Houston. We kind of got a taste of John working a typical office job and me staying home with the baby. It’s been nice for the most part, sometimes challenging for us to be in “traditional” roles.

The great part of our stay has been the multiple weekend camping trips we’ve done. We’ve gone camping at random spots throughout the state, visiting other cities such as San Antonio and Austin, and have gone to the beach twice. I was able to take week long trips to California, Arizona, and Dallas to hang out with family and friends.

Sage is of course growing and continues to be the center of our universe. He is sitting up pretty good and rolls around. He can’t crawl yet but pushes himself backwards and can turn himself in circles.

We are quite the mobile family of late. We left Rochester in January and started to drive south—-destination Houston. We drove until we hit KY, where we decided to try camping in our trailer at Mammoth Caves National Park. The next morning we took a little cave tour with Sage strapped into the Bjorn.

Next stop was Nashville! Sage was able to meet his long time admirer and friend Sarah, who smothered him in kisses. We got to hang out and catch up because we haven’t seen her in a long time. Thanks Sarah! (no pics, gasp)

From Nashville we took the Natchez Trace, which is a really cool road that spans from Nashville to Natchez, MS. The entire thing is some kind of park land and is free of commercialism. There are 3 free camping spots along the road but we decided it was too cold to camp.

We left the Natchez Trace in Jackson, MS and headed down to New Orleans where we got in just in time to hit up my dad’s Chinese New Year party. Yum.

Now we are in Houston. Home sweet home? For 3 months anyways. Sage just turned 5 months! He’s huge, fun, playful, stubborn, active, happy, etc. etc.

It’s that time of the year again, when December rolls into January and as I struggle to remember to write 09 instead of 08, I think (cliche and all) about how fast the year went by. This is now marked in baby time and baby hurdles. I never thought I would be one of those people (now understood to be called parents) who would get excited about the littlest things their baby does. Now I am unabashedly so. And here is me sharing.

These last 2 weeks or so my little newborn has turned into a little person. He can all of a sudden use his hands. He’s found his thumb and it is what gets him to sleep and calms him down. He’ll now play with the toy bar on his bouncy chair and can grab the toy and bring it to his mouth! So exciting!

I am back to work as of the last few weeks. My first day back to work was the longest amount of time I had spent away from Mr. Sage. It is nice to get away and be baby-less for awhile. It also allows for some major quality Daddy/baby time. Our current hurdle is trying to figure out how to get Sage back to sleep after napping for 30 minutes by himself. Suggestions? I can pull it off by nursing him back to sleep but this isn’t such an option when he’s home with his dad.

We just got back from the 2 month checkup.  Here are his stats (previous numbers in parenthesis from his 3 1/2 week check-up):

Weight:  13 lbs 6 oz (10 lbs 10oz); 90th percentile

Height:  23 3/4 inches (22 1/2); 75th percentile

Head:  16 inches (15); 55th percentile

I pretty much thought he was at least 13 pounds.  His doctor said he’s equivalent to a 3 1/2 month old baby in size, i.e. he’s one chunky monkey.  He also got his first vaccinations today!  3 big shots in his thighs and one in liquid form that he swallowed.

He’s sleeping right now but he was just awake and screaming/crying.  You can tell he just feels bad in general.  Hard to calm him down.  Luckily, he supposed to be a bit more sleepy as well so hopefully he will be more asleep than awake.

We are setting off mid week (Sage and I) for the West Coast.  First to San Jose then to Central Oregon.  I am excited and anxious (for the travel part).

Well, Sage is now 6 weeks going on 7, and I think he continues to pack on the pounds, big time.  I don’t have a scale though, so it’s a big mystery until we go to the doctor for his 2 month check up and vaccinations.  He’s a pretty funny guy.  When he’s awake and happy our favorite game is learining how to talk.  I can tell he’s really trying to make and copy sounds and gets really excited when he says something and it is repeated back to him.  Endless entertainment.

I’m feeling like a normal functioning person again and have been trying to get out and about the last couple of weeks.  All of our wonderful parental help has left us and we are adjusting to life as one big happy family.  We spent a sunny Sunday apple picking with friends.  I went out for the first time socially and left John and Sage at home (fun!).  I’ve been running around town with baby in tow running errands and visiting friends every day this week.  A little whiff of life as a stay at home mom……which can be as busy or lazy as I make it out to be.  It all depends on what I want to get done.

I stressed out for about a minute this week on whether or not I should be starting to sleep train him.  After putting him in his crib a couple times and letting him cry for 10 minutes or so I lost my nerve and then decided he’s still too young.  I figure anyone who still unintentionally hits himself in the head with his arms all the time is not going to quite grasp the idea just yet.  I am starting to be able to get him to fall asleep in my bed (with me at his side) and then get away for an hour or two.  Baby steps.

That is pretty much what this blog should be called now as I’m thinking I will be using it to catalog and give updates about what has been going on with Sage.  To get caught up, he was born Sept 13th, a healthy 8 lb 7 oz.  The first week or 2 were kind of a blur of round the clock feedings and recovering from the C section.  Thankfully, my parents were in town to help out.  He seemed so little and fragile at first; so helpless and unaware of his surroundings.  Around week 3 we started noticing him looking at things more and following objects and voices.  More recently he is starting to smile back at times and seems to be responding to us more and more.

From the very first Sage has loved taking a bath.  Right now we’re still only giving him one every 3 days or so.  He just sits in his little bathtub quietly, which is a great sign that he is thoroughly enjoying himself.  At first we gave him his bath in the morning when he is especially alert, awake, and calm but have found he calms down at bath time even at night when he is generally more fussy.

Sage loves to go out!  He is pretty much a model baby when we’re out and about.  He falls asleep in the car and in the stroller and generally stays asleep the entire time we’re out.  Last Sunday we took him out with his Nana on a small road trip to look at the fall foliage.  He slept for a couple hours and then woke up while we were eating lunch outside in the park.  He ate and then stayed awake for 30 minutes or so just looking around and letting us stare at him and laugh.  Then he went right back to sleep for the rest of the 2 hours or so until we got home.

He doesn’t quite sleep as well when we’re at home.  He tentatively naps in his bouncer on vibrate during the day (or on the boppy after eating).  At night, he’s been sleeping in our bed.  It’s convenient for middle of the night night nursing but he’s also not one to stay asleep longer than 10 minutes by himself in his crib.  My only issue is that sometimes I’m pushed to a small sliver of the bed and Sage likes to keep himself pressed against me.

At his 3 1/2 week doctor’s appt he was 10 lbs 10 oz.  The dr was quite impressed.  I stopped keeping track of his diaper changes after the first 5 days because he’s been a great eater (and diaper messer) since day 1.  He’s quite the rolly polly!

So I’m not very good at this…writing consistently and being revealing. Anyways, we are getting settled into our new routines in Rochester, which pretty much means John and I don’t see very much of each other. He is busy busy with school stuff, where he also helps with research and TAing a class. I started work at the university hospital in the cardiovascular ICU. The hospital is nice because it has a new graduate ICU program which helps transition me into the unit.

Outside the work arena, I just had my 26th birthday. We went to Toronto last weekend. It was a haven for culture and chinese food. Made us sad in a lot of ways because it is so cool, and we don’t live there. I fantasize about being able to get tang bao and dumplings anytime I want. yummmm. I got a few surprise birthday calls this year. My favorite one from an old childhood friend from Arlington, Texas, whom I haven’t talked to in so many years that we both did not recognize each other’s voices.

We have arrived in the town of Rochester, our humble abode for perhaps the next 5 years. With relief our road trip ended. It took us 6 full days of driving. Thankfully we were able to take a 2 night breather in Iowa City, courtesy of the beautiful and gracious Omayra. Most of the middle states went by in a blur. We have been exploring Rochester mostly via looking for a place to stay. We have finally found something and will be moving in on the 1st and finally getting settled.

My days recently have been wrapped up in the Hurricane and its aftermath. I finally heard from my dad this afternoon, who had evacuated the area on Sunday morning. Unfortunately, it appears his neighborhood/area was one of the really bad flood areas. Officials are saying residents might be able to go home on Monday just to get some belongings, before needing to leave for maybe another month. I have been looking at pictures of my high school hometown, Biloxi, and it is almost completely destroyed. My heart is heavy and I feel helpless watching from afar.

Arriving back into the US was greeted with a mixture of sadness and relief. I am immediately surrounded by comforts which have been absent during the trip, yet will miss the easy and interesting way of life travelling can provide. Our adventures, however, have yet to end. We spend a few days at Jim and Amy’s gathering our things and wrapping up loose ends. Our biggest worry is what we are going to do with John’s 1967 Plymouth Fury III, which has been sitting outside on the street with a For Sale sign for the whole of our trip.

The morning in which we are scheduled to leave is spent trying to find a cheap and somewhat reputable auto moving company. The delays in our trip allow us to be in the front yard when someone arrives who is interested in buying the car. Amazingly, he buys the car that day (for a bit lower than we originally intended). John is sad to see his Fury go. We stay another day before heading east. Rochester, here we come!

This is the last evening of our trip and I am hanging out at the Hong Kong airport. Taiwan continued on its path of serious family time. I would still like to explore the interesting looking east coast but that is probably better done when it is not the middle of the summer. I realized I had not seen my Taipei relatives for at least 7 years, so all the first cousins once removed are unrecognizable and almost or in high school. My family in southern Taiwan (Kaoh-siung) is funny. My cousin Shu-jun tells her 3 kids to speak english with us. They are embarrassed and run away from us as if we have the plague.

This is the family of my dad’s oldest brother, who is almost 20 years older than my dad. I call him Da Buo. Da Buo tells us about the family flight from China back in the late 1940s. At some point, he took my dad and they split up from the rest of the family. They lived in Hunan province for half a year and continued their education at that time. They eventually continued to flee and were able to get into Hong Kong, eventually continuing on to Taiwan.

John and I are happy to hear tales of the past. We reflect on how we seldom get to hear about our parents history and the history that came before them, realizing this is often because we get lost in routine and forget to take time out to ask our parents to tell us stories.

After our fun week exploring Beijing, we took a 24 hour train back to Hong Kong. It was sad to leave the mainland behind. Our flight to Taiwan left at midnight that evening and we arrived at 2am. We were picked up by my step aunt (Wang Ping) and brought to another step aunt’s house (Yao Yao, whom we had not met before) where we would be staying for a few days. After dropping the bags, we went up to meet my step Grandmother, who had an early morning flight to China. At this point, it was probably close to 3:30 or 4 am. We felt so bad about getting in so late and waking everyone/keeping everyone up.

Taiwan, especially when visiting relatives, can be a total food fest. We had a late lunch with a lot of the women in the family (John was the only guy present) and stayed late talking. Wang Ping then took us to a Buddhist temple and we rushed off to meet more family for another meal. It seemed like we had just finished eating lunch!

We slept in again today and have been wandering around a pedestrian shopping area before we are slated to meet up with the step relatives for dinner. The rest of the week here will be spent bouncing around between the rest of my relatives, and hopefully checking out some sites along the way.

I can feel the end of our trip approaching. It is depressing to think about getting off the traveling circuit, and yet I am anxious to see where we will get taken to next. On the wonderfully plus side, I am extremely excited to see my kitties soon!!!!

We arrived several days ago to Beijing! Neither of us have been here, even though we (especially John) have travelled in China often. Our first several days have been spent hanging out with my second cousin, Yansong. He has been taking us around and showing off one of Beijing’s finest attractions, FOOD!!! He even took us Western Chinese specialty places where we had some of the best food we have ever had (even though we just came from those areas). The highlight of the trip so far was meeting his family over Beijing Duck. It is great to meet up with family in China, a new concept for us since we usually travel to remote areas.

Otherwise, John and I have been doing some hard core shopping. We usually do not buy much on our travels but feel like we have much more of an opportunity since we are leaving soon. It is really hard to get in the swing of bargaining. Often I have no idea what the item should go for and get turned off quickly by pushy and outrageous sales people. At the same time, I would not be able to get anything if I am always too annoyed to play the game. My cousin asked who bargains the best in our family. I told him probably my sister but that none of us are used to haggling for anything. I just went and filled a prescription on some new glasses I bought at a market. Even though the price for the lenses was clearly marked, she went down almost a third in price because I said I had gotten it done cheaper elsewhere.

We travelled north and then west to a Tibetan town called Xiahe. Its claim to fame is an incredibly large monastery called Labuleng Si (Labrang Monastery).

Built in the early 1700, it once housed around 4000 monks. There are many different institutes and temples, but the majority of the land is taken up by short flat topped mud buildings which house the monks.

John and I walked the perimeter of the monastery (about 2 1/2 miles), along which are thousands of prayer wheels. The Tibetan pilgrims/locals walk clockwise around the perimeter spinning each prayer wheel as they go.

The second day in Xiahe we decided to go hiking/camping in the nearby hills. We asked a taxi driver to take us towards the next small town and got out when we saw a path leading into the mountains. We hiked in and climbed cross-country up to the peak of one of the mountains. John was nice enough to suggest I drop my pack along the way, and went back to get it after we had reached the top. The view was incredible. All around us are rolling green hills and views of little villages and rivers. We also ran into a shepherd at the top and all his sheep, grazing along the hillside. Almost immediately after John returned with my pack, it started to drizzle. We set up the tent and rushed in.

The rain did stop for an hour or so, but otherwise seemed to go all night. It was still raining when we packed up the next day but stopped shortly after we started hiking down. However, the rain-soaked earth and grass soon drenched our shoes and pants.

At the bottom of the hill we passed the shepherds bringing their sheep back towards the hills. The sheep are of all sizes and their horns are painted with their owner’s mark. We smile and talk briefly with a shepherd on a horse. Later we pass by the nomadic tents near the road where the children are at play. We hitch a ride back into town (John is a ride-hitching magnet; I try to stand back because I know people are not going to be as interested in me).

We decide to leave that day for the capital of Gansu province, to Lanzhou. We had decided over the night to head to the east coast and the pressure of time running out is starting to get to us. John also starts to feel like he might have Giardia again and we need to find tinidazole or the like (if you are wondering, he has had it a couple times in the past and is very familiar with it).

So I was down and out for awhile there. In Songpan I had a fever and spent a good part of the day (between hiking up to an abandoned shrine overlooking the city and walking the streets at night) lying in a small white walled room being miserably homesick. We left the next day via a private SUV for Lamusi. There was some typical confusion and what ended up happening was the car was overbooked. There were 5 foreigners and 4 seats (pretty much a Toyota 4-runner). Some rapid talk ensued and there was supposed to be some other vehicle at the next town to take some of us. We ended riding all squished for awhile on an incredibly bumpy dirt road. John tried to sit in the back with our bags. At some point, John did not want to ride in the car anymore and decided to hitchike instead. I decided to stay in the car and we planned on meeting up the next day.

The drive to Langmusi was incredibly beautiful. We ascended even higher onto the outer Tibetan plateau and ran across little towns where the indigenous Tibetan people were very much interested in the foreigners (the other travellers where whities). A lot of gold teeth, large beaded necklaces, huge swaths of cloth bundled around the waist like skirts, etc.

Langmusi is a small town on the border of Sichuan and Gansu province. There are actually 2 monasteries there, one on each side of the border. I tried walking the short distance the next morning to see one of the monasteries, but was extremely fatigued and went back to the room. I thought I was tired from the car trip and being recently ill. However, my extreme fatigue, loss of appetite (which almost never happens!), and general feeling of ill health continued throughout the day. I spent the day going between a restaurant/cafe in which John was supposed to meet me at and in my hotel room just next door.

John did arrive that evening (which was great for me cause otherwise I would have really started to freak out). He ended up hitchhiking with a lot of different vehicles going short distances (they are building a massive new road so there are a lot of construction workers). He planned on camping but was found by some nomads who told him to stay with them (plus they let the dogs loose at night who are known to be quite brutal).

We spent the next day in Langmusi together. By that point, I still felt aweful and pretty much attributed it all to altitude sickness. Therefore, we left the next day in the early AM.

I wish we had been able to explore the Langmusi area. The travellers we met all told us there are gorgeous hikes in all directions. Altitude sickness is probably one of the more debilitating sicknesses I have had and once I found out our next destination was a few hundred meters lower in altitude I wanted to get out of there. The worse part about being sick in China is that there are so many reasons you could be sick that it is hard to pinpoint exactly what is wrong. The exhaust and constant smoking everywhere would give anyone a respiratory infection, much less a constant sore throat and cough. Also, being in rural China we are sure to have some GI issues along the way.

We arrived in Songpan on the morning of the 15th.

It is a fairly small city mostly made up of Hui people. We wandered the town in search of a place to stay and ended up spotting a large gathering of people eating food. We decided to stop in for breakfast and asked if we were able to get food there. We were ushered in and immediately everyone stopped and stared at us. We sat down at one of the wooden picnic tables and John started to ask what they had to eat. A lady brought over two large bowls of what looked like sqare gelatin-like noodles with chopped up veggies and meat. We were told to eat and that the meal was free. We were thoroughly confused at this point and speculated that maybe we had stumbled upon a food kitchen or something of the sort. A few older women came over to talk with us and we finally understood that this was part of a funeral celebration which occurs for 7 days after someone’s death. Somebody’s father had just passed away. I apologized and said we probably shouldn’t be there, but they laughed and said they were happy that we came. They also communicated that they were muslim, which we had kind of figured from the paper hats they were wearing. They ended up helping us get a place to stay around the corner and while I was away getting that figured out, John told them we were married. Apparently he had to do a lot of convincing, since interracial marriage is almost of unheard of in rural China.

Later that evening, we walked along the top of the reconstructed old city walls. There is a large concrete sqare in the center of town where families gather and children are playing. Loud music was playing and we stopped and watched as a large group of women were dancing with coordinated movements. It is fun and crazy to see.

This is a shop we ran across which sells dried yak meat. John bought a little packet of marinated yak meat. We have yet to see what it has to offer.

Jiuzaigou is a famous area of northern Sichuan, named for the 9 Tibetan villages which are spread out amongst beautiful lakes and waterfalls. The scenes at this nature reserve are often featured in 3-D chinese paintings (often seen in Chinese restaurants) and movies, such as Hero.

We were told by many it should be a must for our honeymoon vacation. As we arrived near the park the streets are lined with large hotels to house the enormous influx of Chinese tour groups. Our objective was to go into the park because our guidebook (which is 3 years old) describes being able to stay in Tibetan guesthouses inside the park. The hotel touts which surrounded us once we stepped off the bus quickly informed us that we wouldn’t be able to go in this late and that people aren’t allowed to stay inside anymore. This then led to the annoying process of finding a hotel in the area. My fatal mistake was not shooing all the touts away. One girl followed us and talked nonstop. We finally agreed to go with her and spent a while arguing about prices. We ended up sharing a room with a lone Korean traveller we met along the way.

Entrance into the park had apparently just been raised on July 1st. It costs almost $30 for a regular ticket plus an $11 bus pass. With our student IDs, we paid $20 to get in and after much debate decided not to get a bus pass. These are pretty exorbitant amounts for China, much less to get into a nature reserve. We walked along a wooden plank path for about 7 or 8 miles. We passed two bright and picturesque Tibetan villages along the way. The villages look like they’ve been given a recent paint job and are mostly used as selling stations for all the tourists.

They were also slightly marred by the large cell phone towers which have taken up residence there. The path we took that first day was beautiful, running alongside roaring rivers, tranquil lakes, and marshy meadows. We hardly saw anyone else walking along it, even though there is estimated to be over 10,000 tourists per day which visit the park. I asked someone along the way if the buses checked for the bus ticket and found that they did not. The buses are almost always accosted by tour groups who hop on and then hop off at the next “site” to take pictures.

We did end up staying in the park that night. It was not difficult to do. We walked up to houses in the upper part of one of the villages and saw a Tibetan home with numbers painted on the doors. I asked the lady and she welcomed us in right away. They are an older couple who were very welcoming and easy to talk to. I asked the lady if she liked what was becoming of the area and she replied, “No, none of us like it.” Not only have their homes turned into a tourist haven with a constant stream of buses roaring around, but they also are technically not allowed to open guesthouses and restaurants anymore (There is a large ugly building in the middle of the park where you can buy an expensive Chinese buffet, it is the only place to get a real meal). We ate our dinner with their family and slept in the traditionally basic wooden Tibetan rooms. The next day, we continued walking our continuous route in the park and decided to stop at some point when the tourists became thick and suffocating.

I was happy to leave Jiuzaigou. The area seems to quickly have become a serious cash cow for China. Indeed, I often felt like a cow, being prodded along in one direction, bleeding out money all along the way. However, we did have a really enjoyable time there in the end. It just took great perserverence and motivation to go against the grain.

We arrived in Chengdu yesterday morning and wandered the streets for hours, shopping and eating. Our first venture out of our hotel brought us to a glasses store, where I picked out some frames and chose from different quality lenses. The store clerk took me to the back and tested my vision to determine the prescription. All in all it cost 20US and was ready to go by the time we finished eating lunch nearby.

This morning we to the Panda Breeding Center. They have to be the cutest animals on earth.

They reminded us of our fat cat, Miggy. A lot of the pandas were sleeping. Some were eating, walking around, and scratching themselves. We spotted one up high on a tree in a perfect little pocket of branches to lean back on and sleep.

I liked the ones sprawled on their back sleeping with their legs splayed out and paws up (these were the ones that remind me of Miggy).

I had never heard of the Red Panda which is much smaller than the giant ones and look a lot like racoons.

It has been a whirlwind few weeks and time has quickly lost a lot of meaning. I am now Angel Lee Bershaw.

Hawaii: Kauai is a beautiful island and I am so happy we chose it for our special time. I especially enjoyed our families being there and interacting with each other and one another. I really appreciate that they all made it out and gave us so much support and love.

Pictures can be viewed at:
http://www.dijon.soulrebels.com/gallery
Click on the link “Mi Yue” (or something of the like)

Hong Kong:
We spent quite a few days in Hong Kong awaiting our visas. Since we last entered China, the visa prices have doubled (at least) and it is no longer possible to get more than 30 days entry, although it might be possible to get an extension once in the country. The day after we arrived was the July 1st anniversary marking Hong Kong’s return to China. There were streets closed for the parades and it was quite a novelty to walk around some streets in downtown HK without cars threatening to run us over. We also caught a bit of the parade of protesters, who denounce the Chinese rule.

We spent two days on Lamma Island, one of the many islands which make up HK. It is mountainous and is made up of walking trails. There are no vehicles there. We stayed in a remote area with an old lady who only spoke Cantonese. She made us breakfast and dinner each day and our third floor apartment had a balconey overlooking the gently lapping water.

Our entry into China brought us first to ever crazy Shenzhen, the town just across the border. New construction and buildings have overtaken restaurants and money changers we (mostly John) knew from years past. We hopped on a train to Guangzhou than evening. As we were walking around the little island we stayed at there we noticed many waiguoren (foreigners) with little Chinese babies. While shopping one of the ladies told us this is a hot spot for new Chinese baby adoptions. No wonder there were so many stores selling baby clothes!

The train ride….
Our train ride to Chendu, Sichuan lasted about 43 hours. We rode on the yinwu (hardsleeper) class, which consisted of rows of bunkbeds 3 high with little fold up chairs and tables on the other side of the narrow hall. We had top bunks next to one another and had lively and nice neighbors. Carts rolled by constantly with food stuffs and other items. Train stops also had food carts right outside the door waiting to sell their wares. All in all, the experience is not that bad. Time stops still and you catapulted into the present, here and now.