Australian Pubs on Andy’s birthday


The day started with lunch at Bundy Sushi owned by Ross’ friends Dave and Toby. I ordered about every Vegetarian Sushi dish on the menu. It was delicious. March 24th is my son Andy’s 32nd birthday, the day we would go to “Red Lobster,” to celebrate. He would order the most expensive item on the menu. Today I am celebrating in “OZ”, keeping his memory alive.

From lunch in Bundaberg we went to the town of Apple Tree Creek and walked through a mesh enclosed open air bird sanctuary. Greeted immediately by a friendly blue Quaker parrot that flew to our shoulders, called the terrorist bird, he escorted us on our tour. I so enjoyed his company as we walked around chatting with the assortment of colorful tropical birds. We left the enclosed bird area to visit with kangaroos as we finished up our trip. I love roos, they are the cutest guys with curly eyelashes and big brown eyes.

Spending the day touring around the country side we came upon Cordalba, an off-beat town located in the midst of a sugar cane grove. The main street housed the only business being a pub. It has been in existence for 120 years. Your typical Aussie bar, with a hotel upstairs it felt like stepping back into time when cowboys clamored into the saloon looking for your typical “Miss Kitty” gals. The owner and his friend showed us around talking in a thick Aussie dialect, causing you to strain your ears to understand what was being said. He loved telling jokes and rambling about his life, loves and business. We realized much of chatter was true Aussie bull-shit. We laughed, drank our XXXX Gold beer and photographed the local four bikers out front.

Driving back to Bundy I couldn’t but smile thinking Andy would have loved the day ‘down under’ with his mom as she continues to see the world.

Love you Andy and Happy Birthday!

A Day in the Life


Learning “to be” is a different concept as my past was a life of “doing.” Believing I am retired, is also a new thought or maybe just believing I can live a retired life… is something I am having to get a grip on. Enjoying getting up whenever, having coffee leisurely, tinkering around, cooking and just envisioning myself in a lifestyle I never had is my new direction. My sweet friend Ross is allowing me to do these things in his lovely Queenslander home in Bundaberg, Australia.

I wake up to birds chirping at 5:30 am. Sometimes it is raining or like today a beautiful sunny morning, coffee on the deck, and Bob, the Butcher Bird appears on the rail for a visit. He is a “young’un” with no fear of humans and very curious. What a delight to have a bird just within reach to chat with. His mom shows up with a worm and he is off to have breakfast. A set of rainbow colored birds fly hurriedly by, chipping loudly, it is a family of Lorikeets. They are the most beautiful parrots I have ever seen. I want one for a pet, plus a kangaroo and a koala. Truly Australia is the land of unusually wonderful creatures.

Last Thursday was Australia Day, a celebration day for patriotism and similar to our July 4th, Independence Day. Innes Park was the site of festivities including live music, food, arts and crafts. A very rainy day we sloshed from tent to tent checking out the activities. I was able to pet a blue tongued lizard a young boy was carrying. His dad, the ‘snake man’ gave me a fright with the huge python snake he was letting others hold. Australia has the largest number of venomous snakes in the world, leaving me to think the only good snake is not near me! Time to move on. We walk down the beach, sighting a hawk with a fish in his mouth. The rain is drifting away to reveal a bright sunshiny day.

Critters are abundant here and each day is another wonderful retired day of “being” in OZ.

Re-locating turtle eggs at Mon Repos

Warm rain water dripped off my floppy Aussie hat as I watched a thirty year old mother Loggerhead turtle drop her fifth clutch of ping pong size turtle eggs into a freshly dug egg chamber on the beach at Mon Repos. Quietly in the darkness, lite by a single flash-lite I saw over a hundred eggs pile up by one by one. The ninety kilo turtle had lumbered onto the beach about thirty minutes before, dug her nesting chamber and as we arrived she started to lay. Not long after she covered the eggs by paddling sand with her flippers. Once it was all flat and tight she meandered back to the ocean.

The wonderful park rangers carefully dug the eggs out by hand to relocate them to a higher spot above the sand dunes. Each person was given two sandy eggs to transport to the new egg chamber. In total one hundred and eleven eggs were moved to the new location.

My first week in “OZ” and I am moving turtles around. I love it.

Summer is over!

To my surprise, I am back in China! Surprised because the time flew by. What a summer! I enjoyed seeing friends, family, past Allen high art students, college roommate, Plano high school friends from the 70’s, watercolor art friends, past teacher friends, and it just goes on and on. So to all my loving friends, family and new friends…Thank you for a beautiful summer. Those of you that welcomed me in your home, thank you so much for a bed, sofa and meals. I love you all.

Texas home of BIG culture

Texas is my home or was my place of residence. Now it is just a vacation place. I love seeing my friends and listening to what they have done over the past year. It’s a hot summer, sweaty and at least 100 degrees daily. Randy treated me to a baseball game at Ranger Stadium. It’s been years since I’ve seen a game. Last one, Houston Astros, when Nolan Ryan was pitcher. That will date me! Baseball is a typical American event, everyone sporting red, white and blue T-shirts with TEXAS printed on the front. Hot dogs are $1 and beer is expensive at $8. The stadium is packed with 36,000 hot sweaty fans. The Minnesota Twins win 7-2. Darn! Best part is the American patriotism and culture!

June in Nanjing

This last couple of weeks have been jam packed with activities. Here are photos commemorating these events.

My 10th grade students created an IB extravaganza performance to display their wonderful talents. One evening I had dinner with my Tai Chi friends and master. They gave me a RED tai chi uniform! I am a part of the group now and am the only one in bright red! Friends, Marty and Jim Hartman from America met me in Shanghai. We explored the Yunnan Gardens and chatted non-stop.

This weekend is Dragon Boat Festival. We celebrate with steaming rice dumplings, ‘Zong Zi’ in Chinese, and salty duck eggs, ‘Xian Ya Dan’ and green bean cakes, ‘Lv Dou Gao’. Our school gave us a box of duck eggs, which I thought I might like, but when I bit into one, it was very gritty with a red oily yoke. Not something this vegetarian really cares for. The rice dumplings are fun, as they are wrapped in bamboo leaves and tied with threads, very yummy.

Life in China is one adventure after another.

Yixing – Home of the Teapot and 100,000 potters

Yixing is a town of one million, and one hundred thousand are potters in the teapot industry. I was there a few days ago with my IB coordinator and her wonderful husband. We went to a little open air pottery shop and studio, not much bigger than a bedroom and met the owner, his potter wife and their apprentice Ding Da Shaung. I fell in love with Ding, she is extremely petite and looks like a Native American potter. Those little hands of hers could flatten a slab of clay 1/16th of an inch thick, adjoin it, and pat it round in just a few minutes. She then placed it in a plaster mold, banded it and attached a base. While it dried to leather hard we created a tiny lid with a slab, added a lip and molded it, too. No water, no mess, no slab roller, and the nicest clay ever. Every artist loves to feel clay, it is that tactile right brain thing we enjoy. I got to play with the clay, make a pot and drink green tea all at the same time.

Yixing has the nicest karma, no wonder a “live terra cotta army of potters” reside there! I could live there and make pots till the end of time. Get my own little studio and sell those crazy Americans Chinese teapots. I left my green-ware pot, to be fired. Maybe someone will buy it, low and behold it will be made by a Texan!

Chinese Tea Ceremony

Mother’s Day in China without children makes me homesick. To my surprise one of my 11th graders, Vivi took me to her class on learning the tea ceremony. All in Chinese, she was so kind to translate the stories and process.

We sampled Oolong and Pu-erh Tea. Dried Oolong looks like little dark green beads, once it hits water, each bead opens into a leaf and is fragrant like flowers. The tea is steeped in a tiny pot with a lid then the water is poured out. This first batch is too bitter to drink. Hot water is poured in again, then strained into a tiny glass pitcher and poured in dainty white porcelain cups. You smell the tea, take the first sip as there are three steps to drinking. The second sip is to get the taste and the third you swallow the entire cup feeling the tea as it caresses your throat. Hot water is poured again over and around the leaves for maybe seven to eight drinking times creating very different tastes with the same leaves.

The teacher told stories about how the tea will calm a person in conflict. If you are at the work place and have someone that is not in agreement, tea is good to drink and during the drinking you will calm down and be able to discuss your problems. She told a story about an emperor and how he ruled. I only got bits and pieces of the stories as I was too calm to really ask many questions!

One of the advanced students wanted to do a tea presentation. She got out a Yixing tea set and opened a dried biscuit of Pu-erh tea that was five years old. Vivi proceeded to pop the tea with a pick to remove it from the dried tea biscuit shape. This tea has a red coloring unlike the oolong and actually smells like woody trees. She waved her hands around more like tai chi in her process. It was magnificent to watch. She proceeded to pour the tea in tiny tall cups and place a small cup on top of each one. With a wave of her hands and a flip she plopped the cups over and sat it before us. We carefully lifted the tall cup up and the lovely tea flowed into the round cups. You then run the tall cup around the rim of the other cup. That was so much fun, I bought a set of those cups. We continued to drink tea all afternoon creating a wonderful learning atmosphere.

Xuyi-Crawfish Capital of China


Xuyi is a town just north of Nanjing and considered the crawfish capital of China. I was invited on an overnight trip with five of my colleagues to socialize with parents of one of our 11th grade students’. The drive leaving Nanjing took an hour on recently paved toll-roads. Our destination a grand hotel, next to the river. The rooms had claw foot tubs, a treat for me. We started with a typical Chinese dinner of many assorted dishes of meats and as a surprise half was vegetarian. I cannot tell you how many different kinds of vegetables the Chinese prepare that I have never heard of. Crawfish was the main entrĂ©e, including large red bibs for all! Baijiu (pronounced bi-joe) is the typical ever-clear liquor at 80-120 proof, we are served to salute each other thorough out dinner. I chose a nice red wine from Chile instead. Dinner is long always over two hours with many toasts going on while we eat.

Saturday we took a hike into the hills around Xuyi. Hiking in China is very different than the US. Here many folks like to walk, in long lines up and down the mountains. Therefore the Chinese pave a walkway throughout the hills, to the Buddhist temple, the peacock holding area, the archery area and little tea house. I found a fun gun range and shot a laser rifle at balloons. The Zorn boys would be proud of their Annie Oakley mom as I shot and killed many colorful balloons. The true Texas did come out at that moment! The Buddhist temple was lovely with smoke wafting above our heads from the incense. Ascending the flights of stairs, there are three temples to pass through. Upon reaching the top, there is a wonderful elevated golden laughing fifteen foot Buddha as the finale. Interesting how three is a spiritual number in many beliefs.

Lastly lunch at a waterfront cafe overlooking the lake at the bottom of the foot hills. More crawfish, baijui, a dish of hedge hog, and eggs that once cracked have a boiled baby chicken in them. (yes I about threw up!) Thank goodness, they always order half veggie dishes. As we are leaving our host, the architect and his wife gave each teacher a huge box of assorted Chinese processed foods. They are very interesting bags of stuff I can’t eat or even want to try, but I am very thankful for this lovely weekend, good friends and fresh air.

Grand Buddha of Lingshan, Wuxi China

Today is the official International Womens Day. America does not celebrate this holiday and I wonder why not rejoice in womanhood? My school invited all the women from janitors to admin on a bus trip to the Lingshan Buddhist Temple in Wuxi on Sunday.

I had no idea this was the home of the largest bronze Buddha in China at 80 meters tall and 700 tons in weight. It was a misty rather gloomy day for site seeing, but the place was brimming with women from all over China. The site included the Grand Buddha, a bronze duplicate hand of Buddha, a bronze Happy Buddha and other sculptures. The Brahma Palace was much like an exquisite cathedral inside, with an area for an Imax show and a live performance of Siddhartha’s life. The musical included Chinese Bollywood dancer’s acting and dancing the early life of Siddhartha, quite a site!

It wasn’t until we had walked half way through the park, that I looked up into the sky and low and behold nestled in the clouds was the Grand Buddha’s face! What a magnificent site, just a head in the clouds, the rest was covered in the fog. I think this was the precise time that I had my “come to Jesus” moment, realizing spirituality is everywhere. I walked up 217 steps and then an elevator to the platform where his feet were. It was raining cats and dogs, my hair was a mess. Looking up at his face huge droplets of water cascaded down his cheeks onto his nose and feel off right toward my face. Ka splat…. I thought to myself move over, those are huge drops of snot falling. I was reminded of the local Chinese men and the constant “hawking of a loogie” on a daily basis in China! These thoughts caused me to laugh out loud. My spontaneous laugh seemed to echo in the misty laden aura of the Great Buddha. It was a glorious, innocent happy moment full of joy!

I saw the cute Happy Buddha overrun with bronze children crawling about him. Five old women where laughing just looking at this sculpture, and they poised for a picture. What a day for laughter, happiness and amazement.

Why does the happy Buddha laugh, he has no fear? He sees with the innocence of a child.

Sorrow will dissipate when you no longer fear — A Buddhist saying.