In July Bob's sister and brother-in-law, Margaret and Tom Johnson came to Lethbridge to visit us. They arrived on Monday, July 6th and on Thursday we all went to Calgary and had supper with Edward & Jacqueline, Jeremy & Julie and Nathan who was in Calgary on business. We stayed overnight in Calgary and then drove to Edmonton to celebrate Barbara and Bryan Doidge's fortieth wedding anniversary. Barb is Bob's cousin. We left Edmonton on Monday. Margaret and Tom went back to Oregon through Jasper and we drove to Brooks in the rain. We had supper at Diane and Donald's home along with Ross & Paulette and my Aunt Elsie.
Margaret, Tom, Bob and Anne along with Bob's uncle, Doug Baines, and many of his family Left to right top row: Anne, Bob, Tom, Margaret, Chris, Trish, David, Bryan middle: Barb Left to right bottom row: Liam, Douglas, Aunt Fran, Uncle Doug and Julia (Uncle Doug's children are Barb, Trish and David) Children of David and Chris are Douglas, Liam and Julia)
from the Legislative Building looking north toward downtown Edmonton
It has been over six months since we have returned to Lethbridge from Nanjing and as we will not likely live there again it is time to change the title of our blog to reflect our present life. We have traveled a bit since we have returned and the blog will now document the travels we hope to do in the future.
The picture on the blog header is from our vacation in Nova Scotia last September.
If for some reason we are unable to travel anymore (perhaps the airlines will go broke because the more stringent measures for security cause people to quit traveling by air or perhaps we will get too old to get travel health insurance or whatever), we may post some of our photos from previous travels. Our travels have taken us to all provinces of Canada except New Brunswick and Newfoundland as well as the Yukon, and we have traveled in the U.S., Mexico, the British Isles, Europe, New Zealand and, of course, Asia.
In the distant future perhaps we will need a slogan to help us get up and get moving. Go Baines, go!
It is somewhat colder in Nanjing this winter. Last year it didn't snow when we were there and the temperature did not often go below freezing. This year they had snow in November. One of Bob's students e-mailed him and told him how excited some of the students were because they had never seen snow before. One of my students sent me a picture of the snow.
Compare the snow in Nanjing with the snow in Lethbridge!
We were excited yesterday because Safeway was selling mini mandarin oranges. We had only seen them in China and they are very good. The picture shows one of them next to a tube of lip balm.
I was also excited because the box the oranges came in had Chinese writing on it and I recognized one of the chinese characters on the box. 小 It is xiao and means small. I have been forgetting the Chinese that I was able to learn when I was there, so it is good to know that I haven't forgotten everything.
Yesterday Bob mentioned that people were still looking at our blog, so I thought I would add a few more posts. This post will be about the Greenland Square Zifeng Tower (or Nanjing Greenland Financial Center). We watched it being built over the ten months that we were in Nanjing.
The Zifeng Tower has 89 stories. It will be the second tallest building in China and will contain office space, retail space, restaurants, and a 500 hundred room hotel.
The following pictures show views over the ten months that we were there. The first was taken in the middle of September and the last towards the end of June.
We arrived in Calgary on the 26th June. Edward and Jeremy's families were at the airport to meet us. We got to Lethbridge on Saturday afternoon and were so happy to see Sue-anne and her family. It is good to be back.
Pearl S. Buck taught English Literature at Nanjing University. She lived in a house located in the North Garden of Nanjing University from 1919 - 1934. In May 2000 a plaque was placed on the house to recognize her, but not many people seem to know about her house. We wondered if she is out of favour with the Chinese government.
We didn't get a picture of the plaque, but this is the house.
Margaret, Tom, Bob and Anne along with Bob's uncle, Doug Baines, and many of his family
from the Legislative Building looking north toward downtown Edmonton
The Edmonton LDS Temple
