#232 Family Returns

Kathleen and the kids returned to Suzhou today after their month-long hiatus in the U.S. Wonder Woman Kathleen made the entire journey solo with four kids and 11 checked bags. She left our house in Peoria at 3:45 AM on Tuesday and arrived a full 24 hours later at the (old) house in Suzhou on Wednesday. Upon her arrival, she called me at work at 4:45 PM to say that she was locked out of the house. Ouch !

According to Kathleen's report, the trip went very smoothly. The kids all behaved well, the check-in agent in Peoria did not charge for the extra and overweight bags, and the flight was more than half empty, so there was extra room in coach to stretch out and sleep. Caterpillar dispatched two blue Buick vans to Pudong airport to pick up the Cazzatos and their luggage. We all enjoyed our first dinner together in a month at the La Rosa outdoor cafe in downtown SIP.

The travel oddesey will continue when we leave in three days for our summer vacation in Italy. We will spend three weeks in Italy and be joined for part of the time by Kathleen's parents and then by my father. The basic plan is for our family to spend the first week sightseeing in Northern Italy - Milan, Parma, Venice, Assisi, and Perugia. Kathleen's parents, Don and Margie, will meet us in Rome at the start of the second week. Together we will spend three days in the Eternal City, hopefully see my cousin, Paola, then go to Naples and the Amalfi Coast for a couple of days. Juliana wants to see Pompeii and I have always wanted to visit Positano. Finally, the third week we will meet up my father, Ottavio, in his home town of Tricase in southern Italy and spend some time with my extended family.

It is a big trip and something that I have been looking forward to for over a year. I hope Kathleen and the children can recover from exposure to three very different time zones inside of three days. Hopefully we will find some internet access along the way so I can post pictures and stories. I have one more day of work plus we need to finish moving the rest of our things to the new house. Soon we will be enjoying Italian wine, homemade olive oil, historic cities, beautiful landscapes, and the warm hospitality the Italian people.

#231 Moving Day

Today was moving day. The mission was to pack the entire house and move everything from #96 to #100, four doors down the block.

This big project was way beyond the scope of one person, so I hired some help. Raymond, a colleague at work, arranged for eight guys to come with a van and two Chinese wheelbarrows. The guys were mostly pleasant and polite, though they did not bring enough boxes. When we ran out, they suggested that I go to house #100 and start unpacking so they could re-use the 25 boxes that they brought ! Instead I asked our driver to go out and buy 100 boxes, 85 of which we filled.

Two of the best helpers today were our housekeeper and driver. The ayi, especially, did the work of three hired guys. She was a real trooper, packing up all of the kitchen, dining room, and storage room by herself.

The whole group marvelled at the amount of stuff there was was to move. Over and over again, I heard the Chinese phrases for "so many things", "too many things", and "still more things".

In the end, the work crew ran out of energy at about 5 PM. We still have the garage to pack and move plus a dozen random boxes, pieces of furniture, and large plants. The supervisor said they would come back on Wednesday morning, but in face-saving China that probably means he is never coming back.

#230 Solar Eclipse

Today in Suzhou we experienced a complete solar eclipse. Unfortunately, it rained all morning here and the sun was obscured by thick cloud cover. Nonetheless, it was a very interesting experience to see daylight turn to night at 9:30 in the morning. All the streetlights and factory external lights came on and our motor grader operating out back had to turn its lights on. It looked like midnight for about 5 minutes then suddenly brightened up again. It was fascinating.

The eclipse was visible in a swath of Asia from India to China. It lasted over six minutes in some parts of Asia. There were many news reports this morning about eclipse-chases who travelled to China and India from all over the world to view the event. This will be the longest lasting solar eclipse until 2132.

#229 Sat in Shanghai

Our friend and neighbor, Mike, organized an outing this weekend to visit Shanghai, do some sightseeing, shopping, and to check out the local bar scene. Eight of us drove down on Saturday afternoon and had a non-stop afternoon, night, and early morning in downtown Shanghai. We spent the night at the Holiday Inn and drove back on Sunday morning.

Our sightseeing visit was to the Shanghai World Financial Center which is the third tallest building in the world at 492 meters tall. The building has a very sleek design with the unusual opening at the top. The highest observation deck is at the top of the "bottle opener" shape and provides a fantastic view of Shanghai. We were particularly impressed with the speed and smoothness of the elevators. The "glass floor" experience we had heard about, though, was a bit overrated. The glass ports in the floor are quite small and do not give much of a view beyond the structure below.

Next was shopping at the underground copy market in Pudong. I brought with me a very long, and precise list of items that I needed to buy as gifts to bring to Italy. I hauled out a load of table runners, men's shirts, and Zippo lighters.

Saturday night started with dinner at Latina. Latina is the Brazilian restaurant in Xintiandi which has become my regular stop on trips to Shanghai. Next we started a very long night of bar hopping that took us from O'Malleys (an Irish Pub), to Zapatas (a Mexican joint), then to a number of bars on Hengshan Road, a nightlift district in in downtown Shanghai popular with expats. At one point, several of us found the fireman's pole in one bar to be a worthy challenge. You can see our host Mike sliding down with Magnus, our hard charging head of the Swedish caucus. The final picture is from our arrival back at the hotel just as the sun is coming up. Like I said, a long, long night.

#227 Nanjing - 2

On Day 2 in Nanjing, the sun was out so the weather went from extremely hot to beyond sweltering. I had enough of walking in the heat, so I took several separate air conditioned taxi rides to see specific sights and returned to the hostel after each stop to cool down and recharge.

First visit was to Memorial Hall of the Nanjing Massacre. China was occupied by Japan during WW2 and in 1937, invading Japanese troops in Nanjing bruatally killed over 300,000 civilians during a period of one month. This museum is built over an excavated burial site from the massacre and records the suffering of the people of Nanjing. It was a horrible event for which Japan has never admitted guilt or apologized. It remains a very sore spot for the Chinese people.

Next place I visited was Nanjing University. Nanjing appears to have more than ten Universities. I was interested to see Nanjing U because Kathy, my former Chinese teacher is a graduate. We have often spoken about Nanjing and she encouraged me to visit. The university was quite charming with lots of activity on the sports fields, the quadrangles, and many people enjoying the shade and greenery of the walking paths.

My third activity of the day was a visit to Xuanwu Lake Park with a chance to see part of the 600 year old Ming City Wall and the Zhonghua Gate. The city wall was quite impressive standing over 40 feet tall.

Instead of walking through the park in the heat, I opted for a ride on one of the park trams and met the two people pictured above. The man on the right is a famous Chinese author with four books published and translated for sale world-wide. His name is Bi Feiyu and his first and most famous book is a collection of short stories called "Moon Opera". The woman on his right was his agent. She spoke perfect English having studied for a year at Oxford. Mr. Bi was an animated and energetic personality. He kept wanting to talk to me about the NBA.

Finally there is a picture of the Nanjing Jasmine Youth Hostel which was quite a nice place to stay. It had a comfortable, well air conditioned common room with lots of young travelers writing in their blogs. I was able to reserve a single room with a private bathroom and A/C for $40 per night. This was inexpensive but not rock-bottom cheap for China. Nonetheless, the place had some real character and was located in an interesting neighborhood nearby another Nanjing university.

I posted a collection of pictures from Nanjing on Snapfish. Please visit and see the rest of the things I saw in this historic Chinese city. Click here to view.

#226 Nanjing - 1

Every since I read the book titled "The Rape of Nanjing", I have been interested to visit Nanjing which is only about 100 miles from Suzhou. Nanjing was the nationalist (pre-communist) capital of China and the ruling city of several emporers. I decided to take advantage of my solo existance this month to take a backpacking train trip to Nanjing. To spice it up even more, I booked a room at the International Youth Hostel in downtown Nanjing.

There are some interesting sights to see in Nanjing, and for some reason they all seem to involve long distance walks, steep climbs, or hundreds of steps. The weather in Nanjing was a sweltering 98 degrees, so the sightseeing involved a lot of sweating. Many of the historic sights are located on Zijin Mountain on the northeast side of the city. Above you can see pictures of the Linggu Pagoda, a mountainside budda, the restored ceiling of the Ming Xiaoling Tomb, and the Sun Yat Sen Mausoleum.

I had a lunch of cold noodles outside the Linggu Temple - this meal is the likely cause of some serious GI distress on Day 2. After a day of constant walking, climbing, and overheating, I felt like following the couple in the final picture's approach above to touring the Ming Tomb.

With all of the walking and hiking, this turned out to be a good solo outing. I kept thinking that the children (and Kathleen) would probably have mutineed after the climb to the first Pagoda.

#225 Family Departure

Today is the day that Kathleen and the children take off for their home leave in Peoria. You can see them above packed up and ready to go. Kathleen missed the picnic yesterday because she was packing suitcases all day (and into the night).

We did a little math exercise at breakfast this morning with the kids. They calculated their total door-to-door transit time from home in Suzhou to home in Peoria. The answer: 23 1/2 hours. Kathleen, our driver Nash, and an auxiliary driver from Avis took them all to the airport at 11 AM Sunday. Our friends Greg and Margaret will pick them up halfway around the world at the Peoria Airport on Monday night at 10:30 PM. God help Kathleen !

I will be alone in Suzhou for most of July. Kathleen and kids return to China on July 28th. Four days later we all go to Italy for our summer vacation. It is a lot of travel for the Cazzato wife and kids, but Italy should be a memorable trip.

#224 4th of July Picnic

We had a wonderful 4th of July picnic in the neighborhood yesterday. It was a casual affair organized by Mike and Anthony, neighbors from Chicago and Minneapolis.

Activities included barbeque, water balloons, bocce ball, and Chinese fireworks. All were fun, though the water balloon fight got messy when the balloons ran out and the kids started filling laundry baskets with water.

One can find amazing amateur fireworks in China. They literally blow away the the stuff you can buy in Indiana. The fireworks were very loud and made a collossal mess.

#223 New House

We have decided to move houses within our compound here in Suzhou. There are several new vacancies in our neighborhood and Kathleen has been interested to have more bedroom and closet space. This house was previously occupied by a Caterpillar family who opted for the voluntary buyout incentive to leave the company and left in May.

We will have an extra bedroom, nicer interior, better closets, and a better landlord. The extra bedroom means that Juliana and Maria will no longer have to share a room. Also, bedrooms are all larger than our current house. The real perks for Kathleen and me are the walk in closet (shown with Joseph & Owen) and the large computer room. The kids are modeling above in their new rooms and each kids bedroom has its own bathroom like the one Maria is showing off.

Packing up and moving is, of course, the major downside. I plan to hire a crew of guys to pack and move our things. We will do this later in July while Kathleen and the kids are in Peoria.

#222 Prize Giving Day

Today was the last day of school and the Dulwich "Speech and Prize Giving Day". I am very proud to report that Maria was awarded a prize for have the highest academic achievement in her reception year class ! You can see her receiving her prize and shaking the hand of the founder of Dulwich College China. Though it is hard to imagine what constitutes exceptional academic achievement in pre-school, we were happy and Maria seemed very excited to have been selected.

We celebrated the last day of school with a trip to the new Times Square shopping center and lunch at the new Subway. The Subway prices are little high and the service extrodinarily slow, but it is a treat to have this American lunch spot available so close to our home.

#221 Stanley & Bill

We had a Caterpillar blow-out party last night to send our colleagues Stanley and Bill home to their respective countries. Stanley is returning to Brazil and Bill to Aurora, Illinois. These guys became two of my closest friends during the past two years.

Stanley and I worked very closely together as the motor grader technical guy and program manager. I described him in my speech with the Chinese phrase "ta shì wǒmen de zuǒ yòu shǒu" meaning "Stanley is our left and right hands". It means that he is as helpful to us as our own hands - which is true.

Bill's picture you have seen on many pages of this blog. We have had many fun adventures together in China. He provided daily entertainment with his irreverant assessment of life in China.

Both guys and their families left Suzhou today to head for the airport. I am going to miss having them as part of my daily life. Having to say goodbye to both of them simultaneously is particularly difficult. We all wish them well in their repatriation.