Donna turns 45

Our neighbour in Hanoi has just turned 45. She is a fantastic lady and is working for the Ministry of Agriculture. Nearly all of her colleagues are Vietnamese, (unlike my situation here) and they love to Karaoke. Donna's brain child was to have a BBQ karaoke party. The Vietnamese went all out and prepared soooooo much food and when we got around to Karaoke-ing it turned out that Claire was a hit. She is particularly musical and we will have to do some kind of training with her dance moves as currently she is limited to Saturday Night Fever poses.

Qingtian Revisited

We have recently returned from a week long visit to China. We went back to Qingtian where we lived from 2003-2006 on and off. You hear and see the news that China is moving along at break neck pace but I sometimes wonder just how fast it is really moving. I now know ridiculously fast. In the 2 years since we were in Qingtian last the place has multiplied, there are cars, lights, some kind of resemblance of order on the streets and the toilets smell of bleach.

We stayed near the train station near Mr Qiu's home and quite near Tian Tian Yu Gang a favourite restaurant of ours.

And we managed to catch up with everyone. We had heaps of meals and some old times in Er Zheng's home above Kodak. The kids were a hit most places we went and like most places it can all get a bit much at times with 14 month old twins.

It was nice returning and we hope to see everyone again some time. Good luck to the expectant families in 2008.

From Qingtian we headed up to Shanghai to see our old friends the Riley's. We had some very normal time there and managed some relaxing time before heading back to work, me in Hanoi and Trev is now in India