Bopcha Blog

There is rumor of a hurricane coming through but Sid and I barely noticed. Actually, I should qualify that from where Sid and I observed, it resembled more of a dramatic rain storm. On a more serious note, there are folks who suffered a lot of damage. George's mother has a house on the New Jersey shore and they suspect the house is flooded. Well I guess that is one way to get a house renovated that badly needs it. New York looked completely disastrous and flooded. And of course the coastal towns (shore) look like they are - for the most part - under water. I sympathize with those people who have houses by the beach or worse for those who live at the NJ shore all year round. I can't imagine loosing my house. It would be a daunting thing.



The one good thing that Sid was especially excited about was the University being closed for two days. In essence, we go two extra days off this year. I planned and many ambitions of "catching up" on so many things, but I am so unrealistic about what I can really accomplish in one day. Actually the more I plan, the less I get done. Interesting how that works.



This past weekend the clouds were heavy and dark and I thought what an impossible contrast to the weekend of the dog races. Racing weekend had to be one of the most splendid weekends I can remember. It was absolutely perfect weather. It may even lead an "outsider" to believe that we have wonderful weather in this area. By the way, it was sort of comical to receive all the reactions I did from the race participants pertaining to the dog bite. People approached me as if I may still be impacted by it, although I have to admit I was minimally traumatized by it. it is definitely not something I think about much - it just did not have that much of a lasting impact on me. I guess "bad" events are just relative. There is so much worse and I think that if that particular dog bite is the worst thing that happens to you in life, well you are pretty lucky person. Of course I also got all kinds of updates on what happened to that dog - which is that it went back to his breeder. It apparently had demonstrated some previous behavioral problems. Now that was useful information; I did not want to believe that I, and I alone, instigated that kind of aggression.



But with all the dog bite comments said, I really enjoyed that weekend and to be outside the ENTIRE weekend was the best!!. It is not something we get to do very often. Sid and I had a lot of fun. The park was quite lovely. It was a state park with trails and historical landmarks, and definitely a viable place to visit sometime. Hopefully, we will get a chance to walk the trails there sometime. We would have never discovered it if it were not for the dog race.



All in all October was a great month because we had events that gave us the chance to connect with family on the "West side." I mean twice in one month: Diana's visit and then Tom and the dogs. It was a very special month for me. I had such a great time with both visits. And I am not just saying it to be polite. I really enjoyed it.



Diana, by the way, my mother was so happy to see you again and she thought the world of you. She kept saying how friendly you were. To state it in Italian for anyone that is interested - she said you were very "simpatica" I think that word is sometimes used in English "simpatico" but I am not 100% certain and I feel too lazy to look it up in the dictionary right now.



Well I guess I should sign off for now before you all fall asleep reading this. See as soon as I have an unplanned day off from work, I write on the blog. Most of the time, I am so consumed by work that I really don't have much time to break away for writing or doing much outside of the routine. It's amazing what a few extra hours a week can do.



By the way Diana, best wishes to Jessica. And blessings to you and Bill as well. Don't forget if you can't find a dress there is always my mother. Don't let the several thousand miles stop you from flying to Philadelphia to be fitted for a dress. I am just kidding of course. I know it would be impossible. But my mother would love to make your dress. She loves making special dresses for people that she knows personally and really likes. Creating something for someone is probably very satisfying.





Much Love to everyone. Hope to write again soon. I will try to not wait until we have a snow day.



Sandra





Sandra

Yawn......nothing special here, it looks the the folks that live near water took the brunt. I would have enjoyed some howling winds but no such luck, just a gust of wind every now and then.



Kay, they claim I am at 20/15 for the eyeball. I'm not so sure. it seems like you give up a little something, I'm not sure how to describe it. That is not to say that I am not over joyed because I, as the advertisement says, am happier than a bodybuilder directing traffic.



Congratulations to Jessica!!!





Welcome back home Tory and Nichole! What an adventure and great blog entries.



Love Sid and Sandra

Sid and Sandra we will be watching the storm and thinking about you. Theresa and Nick are in Virginia and are also stocking up on supplies.



NOW doesn't the farm look really great. We are getting rain but see nothing else bad on the horizon.



My allergies are in overdrive so I changed filters in the furnace and then thought that just possibly I should remove and clean the floor vents in the trailer. Okay, so they might have been just a bit dirty.

Have you noticed? Frankenstorm Sandy's eye is aimed at Philadelphia. Sid and Sandra say they are prepared and promise to keep us all updated--the best that they can anyway. I'm more nervous on their behalf than they are (or I should say, Sid is).

From: Diana V Thompson [mailto:diana.thompson103@gmail.com]

Sent: Friday, October 26, 2012 10:33 PM

To: kc@zoiboyz.com; Tom Golcher; Robert Crooks; Aunt Diana; Nikole Krause-Thompson; Maurice Thompson; Judith Myers; Kay Daniels; Sid Picht; mountainpk73048@gmail.com; d1030krause@gmail.com

Subject: Saying goodbye to China



Good afternoon friends and family!



Nikole and I are all packed to go and have just 15 minutes before our taxi arrives to take us to the airport. Nikole is busy snapping last minute pics of the huge Buddha in the lobby of our hotel, and I am already hungry for lunch....



Two days ago, we left Beijing on a private bus for our long drive through Beijing traffic to the section of the Great Wall we were to call our own. We lunched along the way on wheat bread, cheese, apples, ham slices (for me), and crackers, filling the floor of the bus with crumbs. And then suddenly there it was in the distance -- long and imposing, snaking around the mountains in a continuous, unbroken line, the Great Wall of China! Stashing our overnight bags in the bus, we loaded our daypacks with plenty of water and snacks and were launched onto the wall itself for a 5 kilometer trek atop the wall. There were steep steps up and even steeper steps down, up and down, and through the old guard towers and signal towers (which also served as convenient places to catch our breath). Nikole and I were accompanied by Chinese ladies who "guided" us (took our pics and held our hands on the steep bits), in exchange for the "opportunity" to buy souvenirs from them at the end, for which we were somewhat happy to comply. It was an incredible experience for us both, and we got crazy good pics!!



That night our group stayed at a farmer's family's house (large house -- we had a room to ourselves) and dinner prepared by the farmer wife and grandmother. We agreed it as the best meal we'd had on the trip so far!! At dawn, Nikole and I joined a small group to climb to the top of the nearby hill for a view of the sunrise over the mountains and the wall in the distance. It was just amazing! Unfortunately, because our ambitious group nearly raced to the top of the hill, we arrived a friggin 45 minutes early, well before the sun actually crested the hills. Gosh, it was freezing up there!! We got great pics of ourselves as we slowly turned into popsicles.



Returning to Beijing, we stopped by the Olympic sites to see the Birds Nest and the Water Cube, though everyone in the group was just transfixed by the street vendors selling childrens toys which we bought in abundance!



Nikole and I settled for our last night next to a pedestrian area in the old part of Beijing, and relaxed ourselves with retail therapy and massage to ensure our muscles and bones were in exceptionally good shape for the long flight back home.



And speaking of home, we miss it so much!! Nikole and I are craving western food, soft beds, normal traffic, free toilet paper, regular showers, and sane traffic like you cannot imagine. And we miss each of you, though we've carried you in our hearts every step of the way!



Next email, hopefully we will be back home, safe and sound in your arms and on the phone to order local takeout -- just NO Chinese food (for a while at least)



Love T

You should bonk me on the noggin Sandra!!! My post sounded as though it was only to Sid--no doubt because he was the one who posted the pictures. And...like you, we have reserved the entire month of August 2013 in our minds, knowing that there will be a special week in there that Jess and Gavin will choose to have us around.

Sending love to both you and Sid for being such great sports, spending a total weekend getting your borzoi fix.

Hello Family,



KC, I just wanted to mention that the good photos are ones that I took and the average ones are taken by others. Of course I am just kidding. We both tried to get the best shots and Sid and I sort of shared the success of some of the photos.



Well the picture you see is of Jenny and she is super friendly. She was really adorable and your boyz definitely took a romantic interest. The other possible romance is "Bounce." Encore was trying to flirt with her. Not sure how Bounce felt but she might have taken some interest.



Don't know if Tom told you but the weather was impossibly perfect. Sid and I really enjoyed ourselves; and not to mention that I was in my element since we got to be outside all weekend. It is so preferable to sitting in an office. I was so thankful to be outside in perfect weather and so was Sid. Tom was great to work with. He was so easy going with us and it was quite a relaxed event.



I am so glad we were invited and it was good to be able to help Tom out.





--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Okay so .............to the Goddess Mother of the Bride........



For those of us who are akin to your majesty, will we actually be able to attend this important event. But seriously, congratulations to you and to Jessica. We were thrilled to hear the news. I am sure you and Bill are ecstatic. What an

exciting time in life. Also thanks for your really really fun visit. I hope you also had a really good time. It was really nice to

I even forgive you for the comment about the little girl kicking my 'boyz butt(s). Meanwhile--her owners are looking at Eclipse as a possible mate, so coming in second may still have its rewards.



Cool looking sunglasses by the way. Hope the eyeball is doing good. Will you have 20/20 like Aunt Martha ended up with?



Dee - when's the wedding date??? Anxious aunts need to know.

From: Diana V Thompson [mailto:diana.thompson103@gmail.com]

Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2012 6:08 PM

To: kc@zoiboyz.com; Tom Golcher; Robert Crooks; Aunt Diana; Nikole Krause-Thompson; Maurice Thompson; Judith Myers; Kay Daniels; Sid Picht; mountainpk73048@gmail.com; d1030krause@gmail.com

Subject: Greetings from Beijing!



Good morning friends and family!



Nikole and I are safe and sound, and happily settled into a small hostel in central Beijing! Sorry it's been so long since my last note -- we've had a busy itinerary (and internet is really hard to get here!!) Here's what we've been doing:



We took the overnight train from Xi'an to the small walled town of Pingyao. The train was a lot more "authentic" than our last train, and we began to appreciate the wisdom of squat toilets, as little would have motivated us to put our lily bums on any public surface (if you get my meaning). Sleep was fitful, particularly for Nikole who was coming down with the cold that has been going around our group. My own immune system was not far behind, but I think we were both mostly suffering from the pollution -- their only source of heat was burning coal, and everyone had home coal burners, including the owners of our hostel. The air was thick with ash and soot



The hostel itself was quite charming, but Nikole and I are soft westerners, and were a little dismayed that the beds were wooden planks covered by a layer of felt and a blanket, and that there was limited hot water, and it was only available for 2 hours a day. Meh. At least the food was good (they served pizza in a restaurant down the street -- yumm!!). The next morning we took in the sights of the small walled town, admired some temples and bargained hard for treasures from the street vendors. We've been venturing to try more and more street food as we've had very good luck with the gastrointestinal region of our bodies so far -- but we hedge our bets by sticking to vegetarian, and mostly fried. Seriously good potatoes in this country!



Both of us were pretty happy to leave the dusty Pingyao behind and board another overnight train (seriously, we're grimy dirty at this point) for Beijing. There were real Tibetans on this train! It was so cool! The train was nicer than the previous "local" but felt like heaven compared to our hostel in Pingyao so we caught just enough zzz's to arrive successfully in Beijing! And thank goodness for that because our day was nonstop from there! Our first stop was Tienanmen square -- just amazing, and so HUGE you can't imagine. There's a big poster of Mao over the gate, just like in pictures we've seen. Crossing the massive square, we went through the gate into the Forbidden City. Again, the buildings were so big (I think there's a total of 9999 rooms throughout) Nikole and I were dumbfounded. After a while though they all kind of blended together... Friggin tourists are so hard to impress!



In the evening we hit a local supermarket for a treasure hunt of ingredients we can use for a lunch on the bus this morning (4 hour ride to the Great Wall!), and made it back in time to our room to change into spiffy duds for a Kung Fu show, and a stroll along the food market famous for its deep fried scorpions. All in all, not a bad day,though we were so tired by the end of it, we could barely move our pinky toes. This morning we're hoping we have enough adrenaline to keep us going -- we'll need it for this last little push!



I'm sending my love!



Love T

Great pictures Sid. How is the eye doing. I hope you get the kind of results that Dee did. Keep us posted on the eyes.



Okay Dee we will be watching as the wedding plans develop. This will be so exciting.



Got a call from BofA about a couple of possible fraudulent charges on my bank account. Well yes indeed there were. So, now I need to file paperwork to get the money reimbursed to my account and I am temporarily without a debit card because they close that down instantly. I am really glad they were on it so fast but what a miserable way to start off a Sunday.



I swear I see a lot of grey in Tom's whiskers.



Nikole and Tory better come back with loads of pictures.

The dog race photos were a real treat to see on a cold Northwest Monday morning. Thanks for posting them, Sid.



Plans are in the works for (tentative date) an August wedding somewhere in the San Juan Islands (the Washington ones, not the Puerto Rico one). We will keep you posted. If these plans go forward, Bill and I will rent a house for our family to stay in.



Love,

Dee

aka Mother goddess of the bride

Good afternoon friends and family!



Profound apologies in the lapse of communication -- we've had a

non-stop couple of days! From Shanghai, Nikole and I boarded a local

city bus for the two hour ride out to Xitang, a sort of "canal" town,

along a river whose name we never learned. The village was quietly

preserved in the old Chinese style, for benefit of tourists of all

nationalities (mostly Chinese). Nikole and I (and the others in our

group) are a bit of a tourist attraction in and of ourselves, and

we've all had to pose in other Chinese tourist's pictures. We have no

idea what these travelers do with the photos of random white people,

but they are very intent on getting them!



The canal town was so pretty, and was elbow to elbow with cute shops

and street vendor foods. And across the canal was a short alleyway

called the "bar street" where Nikole and I joined others from our

group for a rambuncious evening out (and yes, there was karaoke

involved... I'll never think of the song Hey Jude the same again)!!!



You'd think after all our hours of shopping and eating, not to mention

a couple of Chinese beers during our "musical" evening out, we had

earned a very good night's sleep! But unfortunately, our room on the

canal in a tiny guesthouse was accurately advertised as traditional

Chinese.... Though we were fortunate to have a western style toilet,

the small bed we shared was just a blank of wood covered with a thin

cotton pad, and a blanket. Tossing and turning was a painful

endeavour! We were awakened in the early morning to the soundtrack of

the nextdoor neighbor brushing her teeth and face washing in the canal

itself, right outside our window. Canal water and spearmint! Mmmmm.



A weary goodbye to Xitang, we returned by city bus to undertake our

first night on the Chinese trains, destination Xi'an, a smallish city

of 8 million. Certainly we could have expected another sleepless

night in bunks described as the "hard sleeper" class, but after our

night on the wooden plank, we actually got some pretty good sleep!



And now we are in Xi'an, and have climbed the city walls with

magnificent views, toured the Muslim quarter (lots of tourists, not so

many Muslims), and today in the early morning we joined our group,

with whom we've become very good friends, for the morning's transport

to the archaeological site of the Terra Cotta warriors! Unfortunately

for our group, today was a very auspicious day for weddings, according

to the moon calendar, so we were pretty cramped in the basic van they

provided (all the good buses were rented for bridal parties), but our

guide was a true delight. His western name (chosen himself) was

Michael Jackson -- easy enough to remember. He was remarkably

forthcoming about all matters Chinese, both social and historical, and

gave tremendous insights into his life and that of his girlfriend, his

mother, and his dreams of the future. Oh yeah, and we got to see the

8th wonder of the world-- the warriors!!! Nikole and I were

awestruck, and they truly are a sight to behold. Though I admit,

during the 20 minute "orientation" film, I got sleepy about 2 minutes

after they turned out the lights and cat napped through the history of

the site, so you'll have to ask Nikole all the details



Tonight we're off on another overnight train. Our guide has warned us

it won't be as "fancy" as our previous hard sleeper train.... Oy vey.

Wish us luck for this most auspicious undertaking!!!



We're sending our love and are thinking of you all every moment. We miss you!!!



Love T

From: Diana V Thompson [mailto:diana.thompson103@gmail.com]

Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2012 9:54 PM

To: kc@zoiboyz.com; Tom Golcher; Robert Crooks; Aunt Diana; Nikole Krause-Thompson; Maurice Thompson; Judith Myers; Kay Daniels; Sid Picht; mountainpk73048@gmail.com; d1030krause@gmail.com

Subject: Off to the countryside



Good morning friends and family!



Yesterday Nikole and I launched ourselves early onto the streets of Shanghai, fueled by rice and bean porridge and so many cups of coffee, the keeper at the hostel raised his eyebrows



First stop was the famous Bund, the area along the river that bisects the city. From the Pudong side of the river we wandered through the skyscrapers until our necks ached then took the fabulously cheezy (if a little mysterious) tourist pedestrian tunnel under the river to the Bund, the more traditional side of the city. If you're fans of the Amazing Race, that's the place!!! We strolled along the Bund in glorious sunshine, snapping pics and reveling in the light breeze off the water.



Turning inland, we entered a local cafe with trepidation. Starving for lunch, we tried not to be dismayed by the menu's entrees, including Beef Mushrooms with Stomach Parasite and other unfortunate translations.... We stuck to a strictly vegetarian diet and had incredible steamed bok choy and a dish of mixed potato, eggplant, and green peppers. Plus Chinese beer, of course. Just stupendous!



We indulged our retail bones in the old French Concession area, trying our hand at haggling for all sorts of goodies. We ended up getting invited into a pearl shop located in the top floors of a traditional Chinese shop in the main historical area. We each got to take a pearl straight out of an oyster (it was a little slimy but they wiped it off) and then we got to keep it! After we got to go up onto the rooftop and snap cheezy pics of the curved roofs, with the view of the skyscrapers in the background. Just amazing. Plus the place had a bathroom, even better



We were exhausted getting home, way-layed along the way by charming shop after charming shop. At one point Nikole declared, I know where we're going! I just don't know where we are....! It was our theme of the day! We supped on pizza because Tory was getting sick of Chinese food, and slept the sleep of the weary travelers we were.



This morning we're off to a small traditional town about 2 hours outside the city. We miss Shanghai already!!



Sending our love,



Love T & N

YaaaaHOOOOOOO~!!! What's the date!!!