Yingying's Cabinet

Coming soon:
http://megbrain.com

working on it...

it could take a long time... I will record my journal along the road to my PhD... some contents might not be open to public *_*

I have been doing MEG research for over three years. About the data analysis, there are still lots of open questions. I met a Chinese girl at human brain mapping. I had questions about her poster. She told me that I should ask Dr.Tom from NIH. Therefore, I contacted him and told him that I would like to meet him in person. Although I am a frequent visit of his NIH website: http://kurage.nimh.nih.gov/meglab/, I've never met him. He agreed. Wonderful!

I want to save money. Of course, I decided to drive to Bethesda,MD. Tam will be my best company (a good driver and a best buddy)  We started early on Sep.2nd.2009. We left home around 3:55 a.m. Tam was the first driver. I got to sleep a little bit more since I only slept one hour and tried to fix the laptop. At 7:45 a.m. I traded with her to be the driver. We got the the Crown Plaza around noon. I was very happy that I got a little bit time to rest before my first time visit to NIH. Here I really need to mention how I booked this hotel. I used hotwire.com which is really a great website. You can choose the star of the hotel, how much you are willing to pay per night and brief location of the hotel that you want to book, but you will not know the exact name of the hotel until you booked it. I choose 3 star, close to NIH, less than 100 dollars a night. I ended up paying less but staying in a nice hotel. So I think this website is worth of my recommendation here.

Around 2 p.m. Tam took Metro train to the Washington DC. I drove to the MEG lab at NIH. The traffic was much worse than I expected. I got beeped several times just because of a little hesitation. (I was not familiar with this area --- gosh, they should be more patient and gave me a break when they see my OH license plate *_*)  Well, I guess everyone in the big city is always in a big hurry like New York City. NIH's security was tough than I anticipanted too. I have to pay for the parking. (12 dollars over 3 hours) and go through a security check like you are in the airport. Eventually, I was able to locate Dr.Tom's office. He showed me around their MEG Lab. Then we sat down in his office. He spent a lot of time to show me how to do all the analysis. Amazing! No errors with multispheres...COOL! Unfortunately, my laptop does not work properly. He can not set it up for me. We talked till 6:40 p.m. I suggested treating him to a local resturant. We picked up Tam and went to a Vienam resturant. I ate so much and had to stay up late now. Well, joking...my actual reason to stay up late is that the DVD Dr.Tom burned for me does not work properly. I have to try to download the iso file again. It took forever. Hopefully, it can be downloaded tomorrow morning. That is the homework he gave me.

Install Fedora 11 procedure:

My laptop IBM T61 already had Windows XP SP2 installed but was using Grub from the Redhat 3WS installation. First, I just directly delete my ex3, swap file system. The problem started from here. Then I was unable to load my WinXP since the crash of Grub. I got online and tried to find help. There are lots of other ways. But I need to use my Winxp and get everything ready first. Luckily, I had my redhat installation CD with me. So I installed the basic version which took about 20 mintues. At least I can login in my Winxp, so I can get online help. I downloaded a usboot.rar file which inculdes the software to make the boot usb driver. So I wanted to completely remove Redhat 3, including Grub from the MBR.

I booted into Windows XP under an Administrator account, went into Computer Management found inside your Administration Tools and then Disk Management and removed all Linux Partitions which could be found on the second hard drive.

I then rebooted WinXP with my boot usb driver, in command line: mbrfix /drive 0 fixmbr  

This step unstall the redhat system and fix the winXP booting system. From there, I replaced Grub with the Windows MBR (NTLoader).

I then exited out of Console, placed Fedora x86_64 iso into the drive and began installation.

Steps to install Fedora 11:

1. download the iso file：****-DVD.iso from fedore website and save it to a fat32 or ext3 disk volum. I don't think it is a good idea to save it on a NTFS disk.

2. Use WinRAR to open the ISO and extract the isolinux directory to somewhere (eg: external usb drive G:）

3. download: Grub For Dos :
http://grub4dos.sourceforge.net/

uncompress it to G:\ ,
then edit the boot.ini file, add to following line to the end:

It will look like this:


3. edit G:\boot\grub\menu.lst, and add the folling lines:

4. reboot my PC and chose GRUB For Dos/Windows > Install-Fedora 11 in boot menu.

5 then follow the step to install Fedora 11 from hard disk.

Bingo!!!

This is something we should all read at least once a week!
Written by Regina Brett, 90 years old, of The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, Ohio

"To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45 lessons life taught me.  It is the most-requested column I've ever written."
My odometer rolled over to 90 in August, so here is the column once more:

1.   Life isn't fair, but it's still good.
2.   When in doubt, just take the next small step.
3.   Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
4.   Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and parents will. Stay in touch.
5.   Pay off your credit cards every month.
6.   You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
7.   Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone.
8.   It's OK to get angry with God. He can take it.
9.   Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.
10.  When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
11.  Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present.
12.  It's OK to let your children see you cry.
13.  Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about..
14.  If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn't be in it.
15.  Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don't worry; God never blinks.
16.  Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.
17.  Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.
18.  Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger.
19.  It's never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second one is up to you and no one else.
20.  When it comes to going after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer.
21.  Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
22.  Over prepare, then go with the flow..
23.  Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple.
24.  The most important sex organ is the brain.
25.  No one is in charge of your happiness but you.
26.  Frame every so-called disaster with these words 'In five years, will this matter?'
27.  Always choose life.
28.  Forgive everyone everything.
29.  What other people think of you is none of your business.
30.  Time heals almost everything. Give time time.
31.  However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
32.  Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
33.  Believe in miracles.
34.  God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn't do.
35.  Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.
36.  Growing old beats the alternative -- dying young.
37.  Your children get only one childhood.
38.  All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
39.  Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
40.  If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back...
41.  Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
42.  The best is yet to come.
43..  No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
44.  Yield.
45...  Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift."

Crazy weekend. 7 people rode Megabus to Chicago overnight and traveled there for a day. Tiring but pretty fun... see the photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/ireneki

Compare my pictures taken in 2005 with 2009...GOSH! I need to go on my diet!!! Almost gain 25 lbs... :(  Well, God bless America...  Great place to gain weight.

School will start in September. Excitement and anxiety mixture filled my heart! It will be my last chance to go back to school for a degree. A PhD means research for my career. I will get ready for that. It is a long way to be a faculty in U.S.A. But I will try and study hard for it.

:)

HUSBANDS FOR SALE !

A store that sells husbands has just opened in New York City, where a woman may go to choose a husband. Among the instructions at the entrance is a description of how the store operates.

You may visit the store ONLY ONCE!

There are six floors and the attributes of the men increase as the shopper ascends the flights. There is, however, a catch .... You may choose any man from a particular floor, or you may choose to go up a floor, but you cannot go back down except to exit the building!


So, a woman goes to the Husband Store to find a husband. On the first floor the sign on the door reads:
Floor 1 - These men have jobs and love the Lord.

The second floor sign reads:
Floor 2 - These men have jobs, love the Lord, and love kids.

The third floor sign reads:
Floor 3 - These men have jobs, love the Lord, love kids and are extremely good looking.

'Wow,' she thinks, but feels compelled to keep going. She goes to the fourth floor and sign reads:

Floor 4 - These men have jobs, love the Lord, love kids, are drop- dead good looking and help with the housework.

'Oh, mercy me!' she exclaims, 'I can hardly stand it!' Still, she goes to the fifth floor and sign reads:

Floor 5 - These men have jobs, love the Lord, love kids, are drop-dead gorgeous, help with the housework, and have a strong romantic streak.

She is so tempted to stay, but she goes to the sixth floor and the sign reads:


Floor 6 - You are visitor 4,363,012 to this floor. There are no men on this floor. This floor exists solely as proof that women are impossible to please. Thank you for shopping at the Husband Store.  Watch your step as you exit the building, and have a nice day!


Please send this to all men for a good laugh and to all the women who can handle the truth!

June 19^th, 2009, Friday: Meeting day… busy … overwhelmed by all the brain function talks. All the people coming to the conference from Cincinnati Children’s got together and went to the restaurant named Scoma. (It’s very close to the bay) $45 bucks for one meal… wow… http://picasaweb.google.com/ireneki/HumanBrainMapping2009

June 20^th, 2009, Saturday: Meet Dr.Jing at 7:30 a.m. to hang all the posters up.  I presented my poster this afternoon. Everything went very well. Then Kristen, Akira, Ken and I walked all the way to the pier from the hotel. We got to pier 33. The tickets to Alcatraz island were sold out. Only Monday ones are available. They have to leave on that day. I bought the ticket for myself (26 bucks) on Monday. We walked all over the bay area from pier 1 to Ghirardelli square. Eventually, we took a cab back to the hotel. Kristen suggested having disserts. We went to the 39 floor of the conference hotel (Marriot). Well, no suitable desserts… we talked for a while then we dismissed. It was a full and fun day.

June 17^th, 2009: I sent Dr.Wang, Dr.Jiang and Lu to the CVG airport in the early morning. They are going to the out East trip. (N.Y.C. , D.C., …)  It was so amazing to me that all of them only took very little stuff. I got back to my cubicle at 8:50 a.m. (not late at all) I dealt with work emails and organized the poster list of human brain mapping 2009. Wow… unbelievably, huge number, almost over 2200 posters will be presented from Friday to Monday. My flight is 5:30 p.m. at Dayton airport. So I left work around 1:30 p.m. and got home about 2 p.m.  Get everything ready by 2:10 p.m. and took a nap till 3:05 p.m. My best buddy, Tammie, asked for half day off to send me to the airport. We headed out at 3:10 p.m. I still forgot something. My black jacket in case it is cold there… Well, it might be a good reason for me to get a new jacket if it is cold there. The traffic was good. We got to the airport about 4:30 p.m. I said goodbye to Sisi and went through security.  It was the bumpiest flight I’ve even on. Maybe it was a small jet. For several moments, I thought that My Lord please keep us safely landing. The people magazine that Sisi got for me was really helpful to consume my time. We safely landed at Cleveland airport around 6:20 p.m. I found a good spot with power outlet and got my dear Thinkpad T61 out, starting to write my journal. It is always good to write things down when your memory is still fresh. Also it is a really good way to spend my time.  One hour has already been passed.  Now I still have to wait for 1 and half hour for my plane to SFO airport. Hope this time the flight will be smooth. By the way (B.T.W.), I need to mention my roommate whom I found on facebook but never met before.  I am not sure about how she is. We’ll share a room together for 5 nights.  Ha Ha …  We’ll see!  I was so glad that I brought my laptop. It really made time go faster. Around 8:30 p.m. we started to board.  The flight was bumpy again. I think Continental airline is really ok. I got to SFO at local time 11:15 p.m. (Easter time: 2:15 a.m.)  … I spent 11 hours on the road. 12:30 a.m. local time, I got to the hotel Palomar 807. My roommate Xiaosi was already on the bed. She was really nice and tried to talk to me for a while. Eventually, I got on my hotel bed around 1:15 a.m. It was nice to lay down.

June 18^th, 2009: I got up at 7:25 a.m. local time. (10:25 a.m. Easter time) I think it was jet lag. I should be able to sleep in a little bit more. Well, I got ready for the day and took some pictures. Then I just rest till 8:55 a.m. and went to the seminar at the conference hotel. (Marriott)  (9 a.m. – 12 p.m.) EGI company director Dr.Tucker gave us a very interesting talk. He focused on MRI compatible EEG system and tried to combine the good temporal resolution EEG data with the great spatial resolution fMRI data. They provided a feast breakfast. Very yummy. Even when it was close to lunch time, I was not that hungry. So Xiaosi and I walked to China town and had a great dim sum lunch. Each of us only spent 10 dollars. Then we walked to the union square. I went to ride the famous cable car. Xiaosi went shopping. (She is a fashion girl.) It was a pleasant experience to ride the cable car and took pictures. I got down at the Hyde st. pier. I walked around the bay area and went all the up the hill to Lombard Street which is San Francisco -- and America's crookedest street. What does this mean? The steep, hilly street was created with sharp curves to switchback down the one-way hill past beautiful Victorian mansions. The street is paved with bricks and is an amazing site to see. I got back to hotel by 6 p.m. and quickly changed my causal cloth to business causal one. The opening ceremony went very well. Afterwards, there was a reception. Lots of yummy food, I had a great time and talked with couple of folks. 9:20 p.m. Xiaosi and I got back to the hotel, resting. Tomorrow we have to get up very early. (7 a.m.) I’d better go to bed now.

On Saturday, we were invited by one of Yingying’s father’s middle school classmates to eat lunch at a nice restaurant.  She and her sister treated us and we had a nice time.  There was another reason she wanted us to meet with her.  She had a guy that she wanted to introduce Yingying to.  So, after our lunch, we went to the Reming Park area to a shopping mall that is there.  Yingying met the guy and walked around and talked for a little while.  There wasn’t really a lot of time, because we had several other things to accomplish on this day.  But before we left the area of Reming Park, I got to observe something that Yingying had tried to explain to me.  But honestly I had no idea how popular this activity was.  In a particular section of Reming Park, hundreds and hundreds of parents took papers with their grown children’s information and hung them on wires throughout the park so that parents and some young people (but mostly parents) could look at the information and decide if they could find someone suitable for their son or daughter.  I had no idea how big this event was.  We walked all over looking at papers that told name, education, living situation, job, salary….anything you might want to know about someone before deciding if you might like to date them.  Now I really understand what Sisi means when she talks about the dating park!  We had to make a quick trip back to the tailor shop to pick up the clothes we had made.  The afternoon went quickly and after we got our new clothes we took a taxi to the area of town where we would meet one of mom’s cousins for dinner.  Mei Mei, her husband, her daughter and her son in law treated us to a wonderful Thai restaurant.  We had so many delicious dishes.  Her son in law told us that he might be interested in studying in America.  I hope we can help him if he does, because they were so kind to us.  When we came outside after dinner, it was POURING rain.  This is the first time we had any significant rain during our entire trip.  We were trying to meet our friend Meng to see her for a few minutes.  She is a doctor who visited Cincinnati Children’s for six months in 2006.  She and her husband and their cute son picked us up in their car to take us home.  This was really the only way we could be able to visit with her for a few minutes.  It was really good to see her and to be able to meet her husband and son.  They drove us home and came into the house for a few minutes.  It was a short but nice visit.  This was our last full day of our visit.  That night we spent some time trying to pack the suitcases to see how we would carry everything home.  I really thought that on our way home we would have as much to carry, but we ended up with almost as much as when we arrived.  Mom had made us pajamas, bought us lots of household supplies, gave us some dried tofu and mushrooms and lots of other things.  One more day to wake up in Shanghai.

 
When we woke up on Sunday morning, relatives were already gathering at the house.  Baba was already busy cooking many dishes for our last meal at home.  We got up and finished packing our things and then sat down to enjoy one last delicious home cooked meal before leaving Shanghai.  It was great to have all the family with us.  They were all so sad to see Yingying go.  I can tell they really love her a lot and think that she is sort of a celebrity because she has lived abroad for almost 4 years.  When we finished eating, it was time to load into the van and head to the airport.  Baba went with us.  Mom thought it would be very difficult to say goodbye at the airport.  So, she stayed behind.  When we arrived at the airport, we noticed that there were a lot more masks being worn by people there than when we arrived.   Everyone was very interested in taking precautions against the H1N1 virus. Mom even made us some very nice masks to wear.  Everything went fine and we were soon on our way back to the United States.  We arrived home around 9:30 pm.  Shanghai now seemed very far away.

 

There is no way I could capture all the feelings and emotions I experienced during this trip to China.  I can document the facts of what we did and record a few specific stories, but the real memories will live on only in my heart and my mind…..just waiting for the next opportunity I have to return to my second home and more adventures.  I will be forever grateful to my Shanghai family for their kindness and hospitality during my visit.  They gave their very best and did all they could to make sure my time there was enjoyable, and they were MOST successful.  They will be in my heart forever. 

Friday, just two days before we would leave Shanghai, was a day for sisi and I to spend some time touring around Shanghai and doing some shopping. First of all we had to go to the tailor shop with mom to try on our new clothes. Then Yingying took me to the Chen Huang Temple area.  I remember that it seemed like such a contrast to me.  This area is within sight of the World Financial Center building which is very modern, but in this area, the more old fashioned Chinese look has been preserved.  It was a crowded area for shopping tourists.  We visited the Buddhist Temple and made our way over to the Yiyuan Garden area.  Unfortunately, when we got to the garden it had already closed.  But we enjoyed walking all around there.  For dinner, we went to a famous place to get xiao long bao.  This means little steamed buns.  They were delicious and made a nice dinner for us.  One other thing that was in this area was a place that sold smelly tofu.  This is tofu that truly does smell terrible when you walk by.  Yingying got some because she said it really is delicious.  For me, I felt like my sense of smell and my sense of taste are so closely related that I just couldn’t convince myself it would taste good.  Yingying confirmed that it was delicious though.  On this trip, we got most of our shopping done for presents to take back home.  After dinner, we decided to go to the east side of the Huangpu river. This is the financial center of Shanghai.  There we toured the building called the World Financial Center.  It is the second tallest building in the world right now.  We went all the way to the 100^th floor, and it had a glass floor so you could actually look down to the street.  It gave a beautiful view of Shanghai.  The building was just completed in the year 2008.  It is so modern inside.  After spending some time there, we walked toward the Oriental Pearl Tower.  We decided not to actually go inside that, but we got some good pictures.  We had one more fun event for this day.  We would go to the house of Yingying’s high school English teacher.  Yingying always liked her a lot.  She was very nice and we enjoyed visiting in her home for an hour or so.  That was the end of our full Friday of touring.  We headed home to rest up for one more day of adventure in Shanghai.

As a matter of fact, the puppy dog alarm clock did not go off on Thursday, and we didn’t wake up until the Taxi driver called us on the phone.  We JUMPED out of bed, brushed out teeth, got dressed and had to pack our make-up to take on the train with us because we had no time to get ready.  This time we made it to the right train station and had plenty of time to board the train.  It was a very nice train.  But we discovered that Baba had purchased seats for us in a car with tables.  Yingying and I were next to each other and were to share a table with two people we did not know.  We really just wanted to sleep a little.  So, we were able to find seats in a regular car that were not taken and sat in them to sleep for a while.  The train makes stops periodically to let passengers off and pick up others.  At last, someone got on the train who was supposed to sit in the seats that we were sitting in.  So we moved to our regular seats.  We only had about a half hour to go, so it was ok.  When we got to Nanjing, Dr. Rui met us.  He took us directly to his hospital.  He is a doctor who visited Cincinnati Childrens Hospital for six months along with Dr. Wu Ting.  Since they visited Cincinnati, they wanted Yingying to visit them and their MEG lab in Nanjing.  After a short visit at the hospital, Dr. Rui and Dr. Wu took us to do some sightseeing in the city.  Nanjing is a very historic city.  It was the seat of the government when the government was a republic…before communism.  We visited several of the more famous historic sites.  We visited the  Sun Yat-Sen Mausoleum the Linggu Temple, the presidential palace, and we even went to a Confucius Temple.  At Linggu Temple, Yingying and I walked up over 2000 steps to the top of the temple.  I was a little bit scared to stand close to the edge, but the view from the top of the Linggu Temple was amazing.  We were both glad that we made the climb.  We also went to an open air concert area.  At this area, there were hundreds of doves.  The doves were very used to having tourists feed them.  We purchased a little dried corn to feed to the doves.  Suddenly we were totally surrounded, and they were climbing on us and fighting each other for the snack.  After our fun afternoon of touring the city of Nanjing, our friends took us to a very nice restaurant.  We were met there by their families and enjoyed a very nice dinner.  After dinner, Dr. Rui took us back to the train station.  It was a full and very fun day.

 

Tuesday will bring another first for me.  We will go skiing at an indoor ski complex.  First thing on Tuesday morning we needed to go to the  Chinese equivalent of the drivers license bureau so the Yingying could get her driver’s license renewed.  Before we ever got into the license bureau building, a man offered to sell me a drivers license without me having to take a test or anything.  That was funny, because I have absolutely NO desire to drive a car in China!!  J  The whole process was very complicated.  She had to go to one building and go to three different stations in that building.  All the while people are coming and going like crazy and trying to be first in line.  We went to another building after that and she had to go to three more stations….two downstairs and one upstairs.  It took us over an hour to go through the whole process and to leave with a renewed license.  We needed to hurry quickly to meet Lan in the Jing An Temple area of Shanghai.  She is another classmate of Yingying’s from high school.  She was nice enough to take one half day off work in order to spend time with us.  The first thing she did is take us to a nice restaurant for lunch.  She ordered LOTS of dishes….we almost couldn’t eat all of them.  After lunch it was time to go to the indoor ski area.  In order to get there we had to take the subway for a while and then a taxi cab to the ski slope.  Well, Lan had been telling us that the thieves are very skilled and that she had already recently had two cell phones stolen from her purse.  In the taxi cab, she began looking for her small purse with all her money in it.  She had gone to the bank to get a bunch of cash because she would be spending the day with us.  Well, her purse was nowhere to be found.  She looked everywhere.  I felt just sick for her that all her money was gone.  Since there was nothing we could do, we decided to go ahead and ski.  We had a great time!  I learned that Yingying is a pretty good skier and that I am not very good at all.  I think I could get better, but right now I am pretty bad.  Yingying agrees!  J  It was great fun though, and I wish we would have had longer to spend.  But we were meeting some more friends for dinner, so back to the subway we went.  I prayed while we were headed back that it would be really neat if God would let Lan find her purse.  I thought that would be a great way for Lan to start thinking about God.  I asked her if she would call the restaurant to see if her purse was there.  She told me that it was no use.  Of course it was gone or at least all the money would be gone.  I didn’t think too much more about it and was just sad that she had lost all that money.  We got to our subway stop and said goodbye to Lan and went to meet Cheng Min and Cong for dinner.  Cheng Min was Yingying’s college classmate.  She and her husband treated us to a very nice restaurant and they got to catch up with each other while I talked in English to her husband.  J

 

Wednesday was a day for us to catch our breath a little bit.  It seems every day had been an adventure!  One thing we did was ride the scooter to Tesco.  Tesco is a big department and grocery store.  Yingying knew that I still needed to buy presents for quite a few people, so we thought we could get some of that done.  We almost bought more than we could carry back with us on the scooter.  When we arrived back home, Baba wanted Yingying to go with him to do some banking.  So, I stayed home with Mama.  It was around lunch time, and Mama made me some food for my lunch.  It was very yummy and after a while I got full.  This is the only time that the language barrier became a bit of a problem.  I was not sure how to tell Mama that I was full.  So, she kept giving me more food.  I patted my stomach to say I was full, and she thought I just meant yummy, so she would give me more food.  By the time Yingying got back home, I was so full I could barely move.  J  Later that evening we went to meet Grace for dinner again and were joined this time by another college classmate.  Her name was Ming Qi.  We ate at a hotpot restaurant.  We each had our own small hotpot and got to choose the sauce for the pot. Then together we ordered all the ingredients to cook in the hotpot.  We had a very nice time.  After dinner, we walked a scenic route to catch the bus for home so that Yingying could show me some of the famous government buildings of Shanghai.  One other amazing thing on this day was that Lan called Yingying to tell her that she went to the restaurant where we had lunch on Tuesday, they did indeed have her purse with ALL of the money in it!  That was really amazing and the chances were very slim of that happening.  We needed to get in bed early that night because we would wake up very early the next morning to go to Nanjing.

Sunday was another exciting day.  We all woke up fairly early and got ready to leave.  We traveled by bus to Yingying’s cousin Bing’s house.  There the rest of the family joined us and we all walked to a karaoke place.  It was so cool.  You actually rent a room for just you and your family and friends and then you can karaoke as much as you want!!  We karaoke stayed for 3 hours and sang lots of songs.  Yingying’s family LOVES to karaoke and they are pretty good.  We sang, danced and ate snacks they had prepared for three hours.  It was a great time!!  We left there and went to meet some of Yingying’s college classmates for a visit.  After we finished, we headed back to Jing and Bing’s house for dinner.  They had prepared a wonderful dinner with many many dishes and worked very hard to prepare dishes that they thought I would like.  That was very touching to me. After dinner we went to visit with Gu Lin and Tonki for one last time before they returned to Japan.  It was nice to talk with them.  Back home around midnight after a fun weekend!

 

Monday….starting our last week in Shanghai.  Time has flown!  We didn’t get up very early on Monday, but once we got up and got going we were going to head out with mom for some shopping.  I should mention that Baba made a delicious breakfast every morning for us.  I think my favorite was the fried dumplings.  They were always delicious.  Mama and Baba also made homemade rice balls for a couple of mornings.  They are favorites of mine also.  They worked so hard to make lots of foods that I loved.  We got on the bus and Mama took us to a part of town where there was a men’s clothing store where she often shops.  Then she took us across the street to a tailor where we were going to have some clothes made.  I have never had clothes made especially for me before, and it was exciting.  I had some pants and a shirt made.  Yingying got some pants, a shirt, and a nice “interview” suit made.  And as a special gift for mom, we had a Chinese style shirt made for her.  We went through all the selection and measurement process and were finally ready to continue our shopping.  We would return on Friday to see how the clothes fit and then back on Saturday to actually pick them up.  After an afternoon of shopping, we went to Chen Bing’s house to join his family and his mom and dad at a very nice restaurant for dinner.  It was a very nice evening with wonderful food.  Chen Bing treated us very nice while we were visiting in China.  He arranged for cars to pick us up at the airport when we arrived in China, and eventually would arrange for a van to take us back to the airport when it was time to leave.  He also has a very cute little girl.  I was able to practice English with her a little bit.