Happy Chinese New Year!!!

Our Chinese New Year celebration extravaganza is stretched over 2 weekends.

Michelle signed us up for a Chinatown & hidden Japantown walk. The Chinatown area had a lot of Japanese residents before WWII. Then the internment thing happened and all the Japanese people had to sell their property and processions at a deep discount and they never came back to this area in the same number. We went to the Nikkei Museum, then got a free tour to the Chinese Garden. Excellent!!!

The garden took up a whole city block and is very nice and peaceful. It is a Suzhou classic garden. You can read more here.
http://www.portlandchinesegarden.org/
I snuck in with mom when they first opened and it was nice, but now everything is settled and it's really great.

The plants are starting to bud already, it's still in the middle of winter.


The fortune buidling. Here is my Year of the OX fortune.
15. "You will experience something unpleasant and expensive that will bring benefits later. You will get your wish"
hmm.... wonder what I will get this year? 8)


The 2 story tea house, nice. I bet they would make more money if they let people in without having to pay for the entrance fee.
Another tree is budding.

The cloud gate, we always love these gates in Chinese culture.

It was cold, but Joe was happy.

The flower gate?

Next weekend, we went to IKEA to get free breakfast. It was ok, scramble eggs, sausage, potatoes, and coffee. It taste like dorm food, can't complain about the price though. Michelle got us a new luxurious shiny orange comforter cover on sale for $20. I went back the next day and got a computer work desk - bright fire engine lucky red. 8)
After IKEA, we went to Fubonn to get some rice and they are having a lion dance, fireworks, and dragon dance. Nice, another free show. These are some long string of Chinese firecrackers, it was awesome!!! Michelle thinks they snuck this through the Canada border because she can't believe they are legal.
little lion was cute

The usual get the cabbage show.


We went to McCormick & Schmick that night to use our $20 coupon. I got steak and lobster and Michelle got King salmon with crab stuffing. The lobster was good, but the steak was kind of tough. I ordered medium, should have asked for medium rare. I haven't order steak for probably 3-4 years. Then we went to Regal to use my free movie coupon, but Slumdog was sold out. So we headed home, it was so cold anyway.

Happy New Year!!!
OXOXOXOX

2008 Christmas

We finally got down to LA after another problem at the airport.
On Tuesday, we went to the airport and our flight is late from Chicago. So we will our connecting flight to LAX. We decided to fly out anyway because we don't want to be stuck in Portland, more snow was coming. We got to San Francisco airport at midnight and stayed in the terminal until 5am. Then we went to get on stand by to LAX and luckily got on, yea!!

Some pictures from LA.
Nok drove us to Wat Thai. The food stalls in the parking lot are all closed down. We saw one at the school courtyard and that was it. too bad.

Man Chinese Theater. Joe finally got to see the Hollywood walk of stars.

LA Subway station, pretty nice.

Jimi Hendrix star


Jimi Hendrix impersonator. We saw Rambo, Elvis, Marilyn Monroe and a bunch of other people. It was pretty busy on Hollywood, fun.

Nik has more pictures. Nik, send me the pictures and I can put on my blogo.
bye for now.

Once every 50 years snow storm coverage continues

Dec 21.
Yesterday was quite a misadventure. We left the building at 7am and headed to the airport. Portland got freezing rain overnight so there is a sheet of ice over snow. At the bus stop we and a few other riders were harassed by a homeless woman. She was yelling "You crazy people going to work on Sunday at this hour? Your are all slave to drug." Then sang Chestnut roasting on an open fire with a lot of expletives inserted. Tough to be homeless in this weather.
We got on the bus then connect on the Blue line MAX and got off at Gateway stop. The Red line to the airport is closed because the track switch frozed. We got off and waited for a shuttle, it was really cold with some serious wind blowing out of the George. There were 3 buses there and they wouldn't go to the airport. These are "warming bus" for people to stay warm on. jeezzz... We waited for 30 minutes and finally the airport shuttle showed up. Everyone rushed the bus, the driver has a Russian accent and eventually he yelled - "no more, next bus for you." We got on though.
We got to the airport and all morning flights was canceled and we waited in line to try to get on another flight. I got through on the cell phone somehow so we rebooked the flight 2 days later on Tuesday. Hopefully the weather cleared by then. We got the ticket from the machine so we were able to go inside the terminal and get lunch at Laurelwood Brewing company. Trudge home...

Dec 22.
Woke up to a flurry of snow. Michelle finally gets her snow day, but she already took vacation. Oh well, bad timing, the story of Michelle's life. 8) Joe decided to make the best of it and try snowboarding.


The Pettygrove park next to our building.


Our favorite photo spot. The snow is fluffy and about a foot deep.

Wheeee..... the whole 5 seconds of it. I thought I would never say this, but too much powder. There is not enough slope so once I get down to the foot of the little hill, that's it. It was really had to put the binding on too, I'm pretty rusty.

Joe's 1st snow angel. yea!! On the side of our building. I was thinking "hope there are no yellow snow under here." There are a lot of dogs in our building.
Looks more like a Swiss Chalet than Portland in this snow.

The corner of First and Harrison is very treaturous today. Two buses got stuck and blocked the street car. I guess we're not going anywhere else today.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for tomorrow flight.
Happy Holidays!!!