exploring my heritage

hello friends! let me continue where jonathan left off. mom, don't worry - jonathan is no longer making me sleep at truck stops. after a restless night, we woke at 5AM and hit the road - what else where we going to do? it wasn't long before we headed into the rolling hills of the province of Asturias in northern Spain.

some of you may be wondering why we weren't going to more exciting places in Spain like Madrid or Barcelona or Seville. well, the reason behind our visit lies with my Spainish heritage. my grandparents on my father's side were from the town of Oviedo in northern Spain. i don't remember much about them as they passed away when i was little, but my 3 sisters filled in enough details to make me curious enough to journey here and retrace my Spanish roots. it was with a lot of excitement that we arrived in Oviedo. we were glad to be out of the Basque region - they are a proud people, and it was a beautiful region, but the Euskadi language hurt my head. horray for Spainish! well, kind of. northern Spain speaks a sort of Spanish dialect called (appropriately) Bable. it hurt my head as well. some of the words were the same and some of the words weren't. in those cases where the words were different, my Spanish phrasebook wasn't in the least bit helpful. we did a lot of charades and pointing at things.

anyway, we quickly found parking and hit the streets for a place to stay. we decided to book a place in the Hostel Romero right on the Calle Uria - one of the main streets right in the heart of Oviedo. we quickly dumped our stuff and got to business eating, drinking coffee, and walking everywhere. we quickly happened upon a flea market in the old town of Oviedo where jonathan bought his own umbrella from one of the umbrella vendors. no later than 2 minutes after his purchase it started to pour. as we walked the streets of Oviedo i realized several things about Spanish shoppers: they love shoes, luggage, and designer sunglasses. they also love high fashion - we saw no less than 20 ateliers selling amazing evening gowns on a couple of the main streets. apparently Spain has some of the best prices in Europe when it comes to shopping. alas, after entering several stores i realized something else: Spanish people are small - it was all i could do to find a pair of fun shoes that fit my big bozo size 9 feet, and pants in every store came to about my shin.

the second day in Oviedo we continued to walk everywhere. we found an old Romanesque cathedral in the old town, witnessed 2 Spanish weddings, and walked through the town park complete with wild peacocks. yes, there were wild peacocks roaming around. in spain. i had no idea. we also ate dinner that night complete with Spanish cider. the Asturias region is known for their hard apple cider, and the way that they pour it. they pour it just so it's frothy and full of bubbles, and after the pour, you have 10 seconds to drink it before it becomes flat. it's quite a sight, and i don't think they do this anywhere else in the world. we'll post a picture when we can.

our third day in Oviedo we made our way to an amazing pastry shop - Rialto. these guys have been in business since 1920. i even wondered if my grandparents had eaten there at some point. on our way there, we saw some people with bagpipes and traditional Asturian clothing. we decided that we should hang around to see what they were up to - they looked sneaky. it's a good thing that we did because we got a complete free concert of Asturian music and dancing. an interesting thing i discovered about this area is that it has a Celtic heritage. as such, there is a mix of Celtic and Spanish. the dances were particularly interesting - a mix of bagpipes and castanets - sounds terrible, but it was cool. anyway, we made our way to Rialto for a small breakfast. yet another thing this region is known for is this tiny donut thing covered with an almond sugar glaze. ridiculously sweet and ridiculously yum.

after our breakfast we drove to the towns of Pravia and Penaullan (pic above is of me in the town square in Pravia). my grandmother was born in the town of Penullan in 1894. I had some information basically tracing back to my great-great-great-great grandparents (thanks for the info, Sue!). unfortunately, we were unable to find a cemetary and no one spoke English anywhere we went in Spain so we spent our time wandering the small streets, taking in the fresh country air, and wondering which streets she might have walked as well. it was really special. i'll have to come back when i know more Spanish to actually talk to people.

even though we only spent 3 days in Oviedo it felt like home. my Spanish language skills are still terrible, but i think that this does not make me any less Spanish. i learned a lot about my heritage - the music and the dances, the importance of siesta, the sweetness of lingering over dinner and then taking a long walk afterwards....each day was like peeling a layer off of an onion. i think that i may have only scratched the surface....

Lost in Space... I mean Spain

First off... let me just say thank God for the inventor of GPS.

OK, when last we left you, we had just explored and throroughly enjoyed the lovely town of Beynac. We then headed off to Bilbao Spain. Bilbao is known mostly for housing the Guggenheim Museum. As an art history major, Sara was quite excited to see that, and she would not be disappointed.

So into the rain we headed for what we estimated would be a five or so hour drive. Things were pretty uneventful until we got to Spain. We were sad not to get a Spanish passport stamp as the border crossing was unmanned. Penny reliably led us to our first stop... San Sebastian. San Sebastian is a resort town along the coast just as you cross into Spain with beautiful beaches and an upscale feel to the town. I hear it is quite popular with the celebrities, but there were no TomKat sightings by us.

It was raining quite hard when we rolled in to town, and parking was impossible. As it was already about 19:00 (that's 7:00 for all of you Stateside), and we had no accomodations lined up, we decided to just press on. We determined that taking the local roads to Bilbao would give us the maximum chance of finding a hotel. Things started auspiciously enough. Driving down the coastline was beautiful despite the rain. The first non-sketch town we hit was Zarautz.

I should pause here for a moment to explain that the towns along the border of France and Spain are in what is known as the Basque region. They are a bit separatist, and choose to speak neither french nor spanish, but have their own language, euskadi. Sara is the primary voice of the Shiu's abroad (except China where surprisingly I was able to communicate quite well). However neither Chambersburg Area Senior High School nor Penn State offer Euskadi as a language course. Jonathan was also no help in this department.

Back to Zarautz.... we saw a sign to a hostel and decided to give it a try. It was above a bar in the town square that was hopping. We spoke to the bar tender/reservations manager who told us that it would be impossible to get a room in any of the hotels in town. I guess it was booked for the end of the summer holidays. Now I was getting nervous. In Europe, you don't have your plethora of hotel chains on the interstates that are available for check-in 24 hrs a day. More characteristic is that you have to check in by a specified time (somewhere between 6:00 and 10:00) else you're out of luck.

We finally made it to Bilbao (about 22:00) after finding a number of other places either full or no longer open for check in. It was then that we passed the Guggenheim. Sara was so uber-excited and said that that made her day so she was happy. I was less satisfied and would much rather be winding down in a nice comfy hotel room. That's when we saw a sign for the Sheraton... we're savedm Woo Woo. Then we saw that it was a five star hotel.... Boo Hoo. It seems that Bilbao was having the festival of the century this particular weekend... complete with carnival rides, live music concert, and fireworks. The streets were packed and the hotels were all full.

After grabbing a light dinner (which we weren't quite sure of what we had ordered until it arrived at our table), we got back on the road, deciding to take our chances outside of town. (Side note.... there seemed to be polka/oompah loompah karaoke going on upstairs at the restaurant. Hilarious. Even I had to smile a bit at that). Timecheck - 0:15 (12:15 am). We exited the city on the expressway. Sara again prayed for a place to stay, even if it was just a nice safe parking lot where we could put in for the night.

Immediately thereafter we saw a sign for a rest stop. That looked pretty perfect to us. We pulled in, quite exhausted from the day. We thanked God for his swift answer to our prayers, Sara climbed in the back seat, and I put down the drivers seat. We pulled on our eye bras (a.k.a. sleeping masks) and put down for the night. I for one, had a great nights sleep.

Next stop, Garcia-ville.... I mean Oviedo.

the rain in spain falls mainly on...us

greetings from Spain! today is the first sunny day in about a week. apparently the weather in Spain in September consists of rain, rain, and more rain. honestly, i don´t know why they have a weatherman on TV because the whole country is covered with the raincloud pictures. it´s so rainy here that there are entire shops devoted to the selling of umbrellas. it´s interesting to think that a family´s livelihood can be supported by selling umbrellas. who´d have though? but i digress....

to back up a bit, we wrapped up our time in paris with a tiny bit of sightseeing. i was starting to feel like meg ryan in the movie "French Kiss" where the eiffel tower keeps escaping her. thankfully, after our final hospital visit, we took the metro towards the city. as we got off, an accordian guy was playing "la vie en rose". i´m sure Parisian´s think it´s cheesy, but i finally felt like we were in paris. we walked in the direction of the seine river towards les invalides and voila! there it was - the eiffel tower. paris is such a great walking city. we walked and got lost and we didn´t care. we actually didn´t have a map of the city but relied instead on maps above metro stops. we stopped at a cafe and drank amazing coffee and ordered a whole plate of cheese. we people watched. and on part of our stroll we saw the security guard of a department store wrestle with an old lady who was trying to steal a shirt. surprisingly, the old lady won. ahhh paris!

the next day we headed to the paris ´burbs and picked up our car. jonathan was very excited about all of the features and gizmos. i was just glad that we had a place to stash our stuff. jonathan wanted to splurge and rent the GPS, but being technologically averse, i wanted to use maps. jonathan really wanted the GPS. thank goodness i caved. that thing paid for itself in the first 10 minutes of our driving. i´ve never driven in europe before. it´s tricky. there are roundabouts like nobody´s business. none of the streets have names in places that are visible to anyone whizzing by in a car. and if you can find a street sign on the side of a building, it´s too small to read. so jonathan was right - the GPS is amazing. i think we would both agree that the GPS may have preemptively saved our marriage. i can sit and enjoy the view, and jonathan can drive until the GPS tells him to do something. the GPS came with many different language options so we decided to make her a british woman. we named her penny. penny has been invaluable. sometimes penny gives us directions too late, but it´s ok because we can get mad at penny and then she recalculates our route. and directions sound so much more pleasant with a british accent. i have a picture of jonathan giving penny a kiss. don´t worry, i´m not jealous or anything....

so with our car and penny we were on our way to Beynac, a tiny French medieval town in the Dordogne region of France. we arrived at our quaint hotel a bit late for dinner, but the lovely hotel owners set up a private table for us by candlelight in the salon. it was very romantic. we had a great dinner and a great nights sleep in our twin beds. it was heavenly.

the next morning, we hiked to the chateau in Beynac that sits at the top of the town (view from the chateau in the picture above). it was awesome. apparently this was the chateau that they used for the movie "Joan of Arc". being at the chateau and church was really awesome for me being the art history buff. although i´ve never studied these buildings in particular, it gave me an idea of what life was like in a medieval town. very cool. i highly recommend visiting this little town or other towns in the region. there were things to see, places to walk, many other quaint towns nearby, and the river provided for scenic boat rides. we were sad to leave this little gem, but excited to head to Spain - the country of my people!!

Jonathan is not Jackie Chan

I just realized that I threw something out there in my China wrap up that may have raised some questions.. namely, how did Jonathan break his arm and how is he doing.

So, let me take you back to August 7th......

It was our first full day running our program for the kids. I was assisting with some games in the afternoon. We were running a relay race and I had to participate as we had an odd number of people. I was on the anchor leg and did not plan on letting my team down.

I was just trailing Mary, a 15 year old girl at the school, at the final turn. I completed the prescribed 5 jumping jacks and sprinted for the finish. I should have kept my eyes up instead of down. As I crossed the finish line, out of the corner of my eye, I realized that everyone on my team who had completed the race was sitting down just a few yards from the finish, and I was about to kill, or at least seriously maim a few little Chinese orphan girls.

It was at that moment that all of my previous martial arts training kicked in... unfortunately I've never had any martial arts training. I lept over the girls, narrowly missing inflicting a serious headwound to one of them. From what has been described to me, I was completely horizontal and spinning through the air. I imagine it to look something like in a Jackie Chan/Jet Li movie when they kick one of the bad guys and that guy falls away, spinning. As you might have gathered, I did not land on my feet. In fact, I probably narrowly avoided a head trauma of my own and thousands of dollars in dental work by raising my right hand at the last second before impact.

All in all for what could have happened, I'd say that God really protected me. It has been diagnosed as a decent fracture of my radius by one doctor in China, then not a fracture at all at the public hospital in Paris, and finally as a small fracture of my wrist by the American Hospital in Paris. I'm trusting the final one. I'm in a wrist splint now and will be for about another three weeks. It really looks cool in every single one of our pictures. As I said, I feel pretty blessed to have gotten off that easily.

Hope that clears up any questions you´ve had. Thanks for your concern.

ahh Paris!

greetings friends and loving family members. thank you for your comments. disclaimer: please note that sucking up to jonathan or sara will not necessarily get you gifts from abroad.

although i am writing this from spain, i feel the need to comment on our first parisian moments. we were reintroduced to the west during one glorious moment on the plane: dinner. now, i know what you´re thinking: plane food = toxic waste, however you would be mistaken. in this instance, the airplane food was amazing. what says "home" better than fresh vegetables, dairy products, and a fork! i was so excited that i even wrote a song about cheese....and no i´m not going to sing it to you. instead, i will tell you about our first 2 days in paris.

we spent the first day in paris recovering from our jet lag and addressing jonathan´s broken arm situation (he will explain the full story on how he broke his arm in another post). although i am thankful for the medical care he received in China, i questioned their cast application techniques so i thought we needed a second opinion.

we were directed to said hospital by the hotel staff. we should have known it was suspect when they said "i think it´s a good hospital." i checked jonathan into the ER after finally figuring out how to tell the story in my rusty french. we waited for about 3 hours to see the doctor, but oh what an entertaining 3 hours it was.

hour 1 i will call "crazy man with yellow pants". being that we were in a downtown, local hospital i should have know that it would draw the local crazies. the man with the yellow pants is aptly named as he was wearing banana yellow parachute pants circa1985. in the beginning he was doing benign things like making kissy faces at a korean women through the waiting room window. later, he started blowing bubbles (yes, he was carrying a bottle of bubbles). but the fun was just beginning.

hour 2 i will call "crazy man with yellow pants meets crazy man with surgical mask". crazy man with yellow pants was funny, but my harry potter book was more entertaining...that was until a crazy man wearing a surgical mask stormed through the waiting room, screamed at the top of his lungs in french, and then threw his shoes at crazy man with yellow pants. i must say that psychotic people sound much more pleasant when they rant in french. i digress. crazy man with yellow pants thought it would be a good idea to take off his own shoes, put on the "new" shoes, and wear his own shoes hanging around his neck sort of like mittens. this was funny.

hour 3 i will call "flashlight magic". crazy man with yellow pants had 2 pairs of shoes and must have decided that crazy man with surgical mask had some more goodies. he left and later returned with the surgical mask and a muffin. he dropped the muffin on the floor, but then after frowning he got an idea. he reached into his pocket, produced a keychain flashlight, and waved the flashlight over the muffin. he also used his magical flashlight to "open" and "close" the automatic doors to the ER for everyone who exited and entered. i think that some people decided their ailments weren´t worth passing crazy man in yellow pants. they went home. it was priceless.

so after this show we finally saw the doctor. she spoke a little english, took one look at the Xray from China and said, "I do not think is broken. Is sprained." so we left. and thanks to the French government, the visit was free! we didn´t have to fill out a form or pay a thing! cheese, forks, crazy people in yellow pants - i think i´m starting to like it here....vive la France!

Yes...We are Alive

Sorry for the large gap in posts, but we were quite busy playing with little children, breaking an arm (jonathan) and giving medical check ups to quite a few kids (sara).

Our time in China was really great. The 14 hour flight (direct from DC...WOO!) was actually not as bad as we had been preparing ourselves for. Once in Beijing, we thought to ourselves...bummer, what a cloudy day. Then we were informed that it was not the clouds but the smog that was blocking out the sun. Yikes. From Beijing we took a chartered van to NanKou, where we were finally able to have a proper meal (not without some food culture shock) and lay our head down to rest. Thankfully, the accomodations were nice and clean, and even had air conditioning.

The next day, we went to the GWTC and met the kids. Everyone was a bit cautious at first, but Danny Katcher broke the ice by inviting himself into a game of Ping Pong. There is too much to write about the week we spent at the GWTC, but suffice to say that it was truly special and life changing. Each day we ran a program with some songs, skits, games, crafts, and English. One morning they treated us to a dazzling display of traditional chinese dances complete with fans, spinning handkerchiefs, kung fu, and bowls balanced on their heads. The kids were really great (and flexible). We returned the favor later that morning by teaching them the Chicken Dance. A fair trade if you ask me. We also introduced them to volleyball and ultimate frisbee. I had a blast getting to know the kids, and Sara was lucky enough to be able to spend a little one on one time with each of them through medical assessments. One other highlight here was that we got to climb some of the Great Wall (which we could see from our hotel). We found it quite challenging, but the Chinese woman in high heels ahead of us didn't seem to be phased. (As you might have guessed by my absence from the picture above, I´m the one behind the camera)

The next week we spent a couple of days at an orphanage south of Beijing in Zhao Xian. While we only had a couple of days with these kids, they again left quite an impression on us, as did the "best hotel in town, which sara wouldn't even let us put the luggage on the ground for fear of what might contaminate them. The place was pretty scary, but we survived. We again ran some games and stuff for the kids. It was a real priviledge to get to know them as well as our hosts.

The last few days we spent in Beijing sightseeing and shopping. We saw a couple of the "must see" sights (Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, Chinese Acrobats) mixed in with a healthy dose of shopping. I have only one thing to say. Sara = ball busting price negotiator. The sellers kept on saying "you killing me lady" to her. I'm so proud.

We are in currently in Beynac, a quaint little town in France. It's really cool.... stone buildings, cobble stoned streets, and a awesome castle on the cliff overlooking the town. We will fill you in on France in our next post. Until then, Au Revoir.