Family Circle

I had a trip to Barcelona, Spain in June. Of course, it was quite exciting since it was the first time for me to go to Europe. I stopped by Paris, and examined the Paris city from sky, follow the guide of “Da Vinci Code” . The surrounding of Paris, the French country side, was also very lovely at early summer, with green fields and sparkling waterways.

Barcelona is a familiar city name to us because of the Olymipic game in 1992. Situated along the coast of Medterrean Sea, it is the financial center of Spain (like Shanghai of China). But you can feel the art in the air rather the smell of money. Barcelona has several fine museums and great architecture, such as Picasso Museum and The Temple de la Sagrada Familia. Of the people in her history, we know the names: Christopher Columbus, Pablo Picasso, and probably Antoni Gaudi.

On the way back, I flew over London and then headed to Iceland, and then Greenland, and it was fascinating to see the change from ocean water/island mountain to ice water/iceberg. I feel our human people are so small and humble in front of the vast nature.

Photo tours of Barcelona:

		The communications tower, designed by the Valencia architect Santiago Calatrava, was built for the 1992 Olympic Games. It is located on the mountain of Montjuic, close to the Olympic Staduim. Very futuristic.
		Columbus Monument - the monument commemorates Christopher Columbus’s return from his first voyage to America and his presentation to the Catholic Kings, which took place in Barcelona.
		That’s me, cruising along the Barcelona coast of Mediterranean Sea.
		This is the famous Spanish dish - Rice with Seafood stew, or 海鲜烩饭. It looks fine but tastes really good. The restaurants along the tourist attractions are expansive, especially considering the exchange rate of USD to Euro. But if you wander down to the areas that locals hang around, you find good inexpensive food with generous large dish. I had this dish in the Gothic District.
		This narrow winding streets look familiar to the old Shanghai? As the old city center of Barcelona, the Gothic District hosts rich medieval heritage. Many museums are among these old streets, such as Picasso Museum.
		The Temple of de la Sagrada Familia is a architecture wonder of the world, with its innovative geometrical shapes. It is still under construction and projected to complete in 2028. Antoni Gaudi, the most famous architect in Barcelona, began the construction of this unique temple in 1882, and he worked on this project for over 40 years until his death.
		The Casa Mila, aka. La Pedrera, also built by Antoni Gaudi. The facade has the unique characteristic of continuous curves without any corner angles. It is declared as a World Heritage of Humanity site.

It has been a relaxing and lazy summer break. Got more sleeps and just let things go slowly. We will catch up with our writings soon.
This blog server and xiesland.net website were also on summer vacation

Recently, in Suzanne Masella’s Healthy, Wealthy, and Whys book, there was a section about Phobias. It listed a few kinds of phobias and what it’s like.

1. Arachnophobia “fear of spiders”
2. Alektorophobia “fear of chickens”
3. Bibliophobia “fear of books”
4. Couldrophobia “fear of clowns”
5. Dendrophobia “fear of trees”
6. Euphobia “fear of hearing good news”
7. Homichlophobia “fear of fog”
8. Kosmikophobia “fear of cosmic phenomenon”
9. Lutraphobia “fear of otters”
10. Novercaphobia “fear of your stepmother”
11. Radinaphobia “fear of frogs”
12. Textophobia “fear of certain fabrics”
13. Verbophobia “fear of words”

=0
:)
;)
8)

端午节快乐!五月端阳,大家一切顺利.

有没有吃粽子呢?我们在学校也过了一个不错的端午.大家在一起吃粽子,感觉很开心,像在家里一样.

I was going to buy you a card with saying
I love you dad,
But after that I noticed
I sould make one myself instead.

Every day I think about you
For your picture’s in my heart,
We shall be very happy
Until we are apart.

Happy Father’s Day to you,
HALT! Just wait there, I’m not done,
I present you with two prizes-
relxation and some fun!

We have a basketball court in our house’s side yard. Before it was an area with a miniature vegetable bed with rocks-small pebbles, underneath it. Dad thought a rocky area and a small vegetable garden, not much usage. So, he wanted it to be a basketball court! He said “Adabracadabra Lobanakabloog! Shocksanamabaka Korkorkorkoo!” And the basketball court formed with a loud koo-koo-ka CHOOOO! Ha ha. Not really. Yeah, it only happens in fairy tales. Listen and see how it really is like here.

He hired some workers to make the basketball court. Rain or shine, they came to our house to work on it. First, they cut off a tree at the corner of the rock area. Poor tree! Then, they started to shovel out the rocks in our side yard into our back and front yard. After that, they started putting on the cement. My friend and I were in the zoo* at that time. When we came back we saw that it was way different than what it looked like before, which was rocky and dusty. Now it’s nice, gray, and flat ground. We were very surprised to see the speedy transformation of our side yard.

My friend and I scratched our names on the cement before it set. Using an iron nail, we wrote: “D.X., D.K., A.T., B.F.F.” That stands for “David Xie, David Ke, Aaron Tang, Best Friends Forever.”

But there was still one important part missing: the basketball hoop.

We bought the hoop but it wasn’t shipped here yet. So, the workers made a little hole in the cement. When the hoop finally came, Dad had to assemble it from the parts. It took him 4 days to set it up. Then he asked my friend’s dad to help him put it in place since the pole was so heavy. After a long struggle, the basketball pole stood proudly over the basketball court like an albatross looking over the sea. It has a clear backboard with a red hoop and a white net. The pole is black and has the height adjustment of the hoop.

Now it is almost finished and we can shoot some hoops even though the lines (3-pointer, free) aren’t drawn. I can also ride on my 2 bikes, one big and one small, or I can ride my scooter since the ground is so smooth. Emily also likes riding her bike on the court. Now we have a place to do what we want and we can invite others to our house to play basketball. Perhaps someday YOU can come to our house to play!

* for the zoo, look at The Oakland Zoo for our adventure at the zoo.

Ringg! Ringg! Mom picked up the phone. “Hello?” my mom asked. “Hi! This is David’s dad! We’re coming to your house in 15 minutes to the Oakland Zoo in Knowland Park!”
This was the beginning of my great day.
I woke up and didn’t have any time at all to brush my teeth. I rushed downstairs and ate my breakfast as fast as I could. I finished and waited. And waited. They were late! I rushed upstairs and washed my mouth. Ding Dong! The doorbell sounded. They came! I got my coat and said Goodbye. I hopped into the car and we drove off.
While on the car, Dave* and I got bored. So we got out Dave’s Yu-Gi-Oh cards and dueled. Hey! Wait a sec. We didn’t have a flat surface! Dave got an idea to put my The Ultimate Adventure as the board. Dave’s idea didn’t really work. Since we were on the freeway, the car shook like crazy and the cards slid around. Since The Ultimate Adventure is a book, we just slid them into the book. Vroom! Vroom! We finally got there.
We found a space in the parking lot after like, 1-2 minutes. We walked in and Dave’s mom bought the tickets. Right across the ticket-buying place, there were flamingos and white spoonbills. When we were almost going to leave the flamingo exhibit, 2 ducks flew in. We tried shooing them away, but we were too far. We made loud noises, but only the spoonbills and flamingos heard us. We finally gave up and left. We turned left and saw deer. None had antlers. Probably the males were young, or they were all females, OR the males’ antlers shedded. We got bored and went to the tiger exhibit. Guess what? Only two tigers were there! Dave got the camera and took a picture of a tiger. Then, I spotted a white tiger! It was hiding in a cave. Dave’s mom told us to go on. We continued down until there was a monkey going through a pile of hay. Dave also got a picture of that and went down.
There was the children’s zoo! When you first look at it, it looks like a park. But actually, it was also a zoo. There were turtles and tortoises. They all moved very slowly, despite their large shells. We looked up and there were ring-tailed lemurs. We told Dave’s mom that we were going to go to the lemurs and we ran. Up the stairs, past the frogs and on the sidewalk. We went to the ring tailed lemurs and saw them leaping. We waited for Dave’s parents but they weren’t there so we went to the bats section. We went into the room. There, in a jumbo cage, there were 29 bats. 2 of them were spreading their wings, 2 were “fighting” upside down, and the rest were upside down, wings closed. Then I said “probably your mom is at the lemur exhibit already!” We raced up the stairs and got to the lemurs. Fortunately, the lemurs were still swinging from branch to branch. Unfortunately, Dave’s mom wasn’t there. So we waited. I tricked Dave at thinking that I saw his mom. (Well, I wanted something to do!) Miraculously, I was actually pointing to his mom!
His parents came. We told them about the bats and Susan** wanted to go there. We told her where to go and she (I think) was scared. Then, for some reason, Dave said “Can we explore the zoo by ourselves?”. Now I don’t know why he said this, but Dave just kept on asking and asking. Reluctantly, Dave’s dad let him go. “But,” Dave’s dad said “Meet us at 12:00 at the entrance.”
First, we went to a field of waxed turtle shells. I crawled in and pretended to be a turtle. Then, just for fun, I pretended to be stuck. Dave tried pulling me out but I hooked my feet at the end of the shell. Then he tried pushing me out. Then, I hooked my hands to the shell. This time, Dave saw me. We went to a petting zoo, where we brushed goats and horses. Telling the truth, it was a little bittie boring. So we went out and continued. We went to the Monkey exhibit. Since there was a sign to be quiet, and a lot of people were shouting, one of the monkeys actually, well spit on them. We went to the gift shop and I bought a rain stick for Emily***. It was almost 12:00 and we were waiting at the flamingo/spoonbill exhibit. Then, after a few minutes, Dave’s mom came. We went to the other side of the zoo where we saw ferocious lions, mostly male. Then, I spotted a female lion sitting in the corner!
We continued and saw elephants. It was gray, and big, and weird. We saw it crack a tree branch with its mouth and tusk! We also learned that elephants can only have 4 teeth in its mouth and it changes teeth 6 times in its lifetime. Once it has no more teeth, it cannot eat anymore. Some are smarter a go to the riverbank to see if there are plants. If there are it eats the riverbank plants.(They are softer) We also saw some birds, but Dave got bored instantly. We saw giraffes. Brown and red and brown and dark red and black giraffes. There was also a hawk, and an Egyptian duck, and an intruder duck. Just like the same, we tried shooing it away. Still didn’t work. We were a bit hungry now so we ate at the zoo restaurant. I drank root beer and ate fries and a corn dog. It was good! We went out of the zoo where there was a something like a carnival. We bought tickets for the train ride around the zoo. We saw the lions, the bats in the children’s zoo, the giraffes, ect. After the ride, we bought tickets for the merry-go-around. Then we played Yu-Gi-Oh and Dave won. I went to Dave’s house and continued dueling. We also watched some T.V. I came home, and, just like always, today was a great day!

On April fool’s day 2006 there was a disaster. At about 7 o’clock, when we were in Barnes and Noble, Emily started crying and crying and crying and crying. She said that her ear hurt really badly. Wahh! Wahh! She was crying like a crazy duck with its tail in a high-speed blender! Then another terrible thing happened. She threw up! The barf was stinky and it got all over her clothes. P.U! We kept on telling her that she had to lean to the ear that hurt but she wouldn’t. My parents concluded that she had an ear infection. When we came home, dad looked in the yellow pages and called The Night Owl Pediatrics while mom went upstairs to change Emily’s clothes. We had had a ten-minute ride and went there at about 8:30. We waited for the staff to call us to the doctor’s office. There was a Spike Ball that grew when you picked it up. A redheaded staff called us to the office. We waited for the doctor and he finally came in. He was old and wavy haired. He had an orange shirt and glasses. He examined Emily’s ear with something like a funnel with a light and lens. Then he told a staff to give her 2 different types of medicine. The medicine was pink and Emily sucked it quite easily through a tube. Then the wavy haired doctor gave Emily and me red, white, and blue Popsicles. After he gave us the Popsicles, we got to choose a toy from the toy chest. Emily got a baton and I got a “Helicopter Shooter.” On our way home, Emily waved and swung her baton and called it a magic wand. Because she ate her sweaters, mom told her that her ear hurt because she ate her sweaters. Now she doesn’t eat sweaters anymore. Today was both good and bad!

Once there was a man who was scared of the dark. Every night he would be shivering with frightness. This time there were no lights, nor even the moon and stars. One day he went to a very tall moutain and asked the darkness, “Where are your lights?” The darkness answered,” All behind my back”. The man got and idea.He poked his finger in the sky and there was a tiny hole of light. He liked it and he put the holes all over the night sky. Then he went to the tippy-top of the mountain and , using his stick, made a giant hole. These were the moon and the stars.

There were two orphan girls and their parents, well, none knew. They liked exploring when one day, they found an evil witch’s house. The witch offered to keep them, and the girls were gullable. One girl was away at that time, so the first girl stayed in by herself. “Do any thing you want,” The witch had said, ” But DON’T LOOK UP THE CHIMNEY!”The girls were naughty also, so she looked up the chimney. “WOW!” she shouted, because there was a 59,810-ton bag of gold coins. she ran off to find her sister, when she came upon a magical horse. “Mmmoooollllkkkkkkkkkkmmmmmeeeeeee, liiiiiititttttttllllleeee giiggiirrll. IIIIIIIIIIIII hhhhhhhaaaafvvvveeennnnt bbbeeeeeeeennnnnmmmmmiiiillkkkeeddddd innnnnnn 01111294 yyeeearrsss” “I havn’t time!” the girl answered. Then she met a horse. “r-r-i-i-i-i-i–i-d—dd-d-d-de-e-e-e-e-e- -m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-me-e-e-e-ee—ee l-l-l-li–i-i-it-t-t-tl-l–l-le g-g-g-gg-g-g-g-g-g-g-gi-i-i-i-i–r-r-r-r-r-r-l-l-l–l-l-l!IIIIIIIIIIIII hhhhhhhaaaafvvvveeennnnt bbbeeeeeeeennnnnroooooodddeee innnnnnn 01111294 yyeeearrsss” “I havn’t time!” She answered. Then, she met a mill. “TUUUURRRRNNNNN MEEEEEEE, l-l-l-li–i-i-it-t-t-tl-l–l-le g-g-g-gg-g-g-g-g-g-g-gi-i-i-i-i–r-r-r-r-r-r-l-l-l–l-l-l!IIIIIIIIIIIII hhhhhhhaaaafvvvveeennnnt bbbeeeeeeeennnnn tttttuuuuuuurrrnnneeedddd innnnnnn 01111294 yyeeearrsss” “I havn’t time!” She answered. The witch saw her and turned her into stone. After that, she took the gold . The other girl came, and”Do any thing you want,” The witch had said, ” But DON’T LOOK UP THE CHIMNEY!” She loooked up and there was the gold. She also wanted to save her sister, so she came to search. She milked the cow, rode the horse and was just about to turn the mill when the witch saw her. she was so mad that she made a thundercloud and when it was just above her, she was about to turn the second girl into stone but she said the spell to early and turned the cumulonimbus into stone. It crashed on the witch’s head and instantly killed her. The second girl carried the stone girl and took her to a good wizard. He turnd the stone into a girl and agreed to live with the girls.

THE END