Have you seen Google Earth? You really should check it out. It's the most amazing toy.

I played around with it a few months ago when if first came out for the Mac. I obsessed on tracking down interesting sites, finding our home, etc, it's amazing. It has a searchable globe constructed out of satellite images complete with terrain elevations, etc. Not every area is available in high resolution (our home is in a low-res blurry area) but lots of places are high-res. If you're interested in China you might get a kick out of looking at The Forbidden City in Beijing. We got to tour it when we traveled to get Kai, so it was exciting to see it from space. You'd be amazed at the kind of detail you can make out from these images. I'm sure the government has even better imagery to play with, but this is pretty good. The images below are not as high of definition as possible to view in the Google Earth program, as I've shrunk them down a bit to fit the web-page.

Having looked around Beijing, I was curious if I could find other places we visited in China. Here's a picture of Shamian Island in Guangzhou.

The big white building on the south side of the island is the White Swan Hotel where we stayed. This was pretty easy to find as I knew the layout of the island and could just sort of look along the Pearl River in the spots where it flows straight, west to east, through the city.

The other cities we stayed in were available in high-res as well. I wanted to see if I could find Kai's SWI. Unfortunately you can't search China by street address... yet. So I still haven't found it. But I did find the hotel we stayed at when we were in his province. This one was not as easy as the White Swan. My search for this one was much more of a high tech Where's Waldo.

Here's China...


Here's Shijaizhuang...


Where do you start? All you can do really is pick a place and begin. I had a set of landmarks to work with and I'll show them to you in a minute. My mom was staying with us this weekend and she watched me doing this Sunday morning. She thought I was nuts. I probably am, but here's the picture of the hotel we stayed in...



Now here's the landmarks as I've labeled them above...
(A) is our hotel The Hebei Century


(B) is a middle or high school courtyard we could see from our hotel window. See the narrow strip of blue rooftop?


(C) is a destinctively shaped building we could see out our window...


(D) is the mall across the street that we hung out in and annoyed the shopkeepers with our inability to speak the local language...


(E) is the park across the intersection we visited ...


Pretty good, huh?

So now on my hunting list are the temples we visited, and of course, Kai's SWI. If you are planning on visiting any of those places, please do me a favor and bring along a GPS device. exact latitude and longitude would make this a LOT easier!!!

If you'd like to visit these locations in Google Earth, you can click on the links below to download the KMZ files. Opening these will take you to the the location in Google Earth if you have it installed on your computer.
Shijiazhuang - Hebei Century Hotel

White Swan Hotel

It's still "Cameron Week" here at Hui-Hui's world. High school graduation, recitals, parties, etc. It's been a bit tough on Kai sharing center stage, but he's held up pretty well.
Tina and I are holding up pretty well too. It's been an emotional but fun time. Now to show off a bit more of Cam. I have two video clips that show a bit of his musical versatility. These were both filmed this weekend. The first one is the first piece he played at his senior violin recital. This is at his violin teacher's house. Cam has taken lesson with her since he was six. The second clip is of him playing with his funk combo "The Endeavors". This one was shot at a party at his girlfriend's house. I love both these pieces...

Cameron is graduating from High School today.

He just turned 18 about 6 weeks ago. Hard to believe really, as it seems it couldn't have been much before that when he was just born. But it has been 18 years, and now he is leaving behind the safety and security of childhood and is taking his first steps out into the adult world. He's not moving out tomorrow, and the change doesn't happen all at once. But it is really happening, and today is one of those days when you stop and take note; a day you publicly say, "this is a point of change."

This is a real graduation. It's not preschool graduation, it's not kindergarten graduation or middle-school graduation. I can appreciate people wanting to observe those moments too, but I don't feel they are "real" points of demarcation. High School Graduation, in my mind, is THE big one. It is at this point when a person must begin making real decisions about their life. Parents can still offer advice, and may influence their decisions through various means, but ultimately the child has now crossed a threshold and has taken on true control of their fate.

Cam is our oldest son, the first child Tina and I brought into our lives. He's the one who paved the way for Ben and Kai, the one who first showed us how to be a parent. He continues to teach us even now, as we move through this new phase in our relationship. Tina and I both love Cameron very much. He is a gentle person who thinks deeply about things. He is talented musically and artistically. He works hard on the things he cares about and is self-motivated. I feel deeply blessed to be able to call him my son. I am so impressed by the many things he has achieved over the last 18 years, and look forward to seeing him move on to a bright and exciting future.

This is a short slideshow of Cam over the years...

I know, I know, Stinky Mouse has his own blog, but his life is pretty deeply entwined with Kai's so he still gets time on this blog too.

First, I want to give a shout out to some online friends who have linked to Mouse's blog from theirs.
Our friend Princess Brinley gave Mouse a really nice entry and even mentioned The ChouChou Shu Online Store.

Also our friends Michael and Kimberly from Iowa, who are waiting for their referral (I was going to say patiently waiting, but I don't know anyone who waits patiently for that!) they gave mouse a nice plug on THEIR BLOG too!

Mouse loves all this attention and encourages everyone with a blog to give him a link!

Now, the real reason I'm writing about Stinky Mouse is because of the ongoing controversy regarding his real identity. You loyal readers (both of you) no doubt recall that the original Stinky Mouse had a fateful encounter with a bottle of Febreze. I confess, it was me who sprayed him down, but if you had smelled him when I did it, I don't think you would blame me. Anyway, Tina replaced Stinky Mouse. This is much like what happened back in 1969 when the REAL Paul McCartney died and was replaced by a look-a-like. (If you don't remember this you can click HERE, but after you finish reading that stuff remember to come back!)
Well anyway, the original Stinky Mouse, who was now no longer stinky, but rendered unlovable by a cheap, industrial quality cologne was hidden away in Kai's pajama drawer. His replacement became greatly loved and continued to rise in fame and fortune - just like the guy they replaced Paul with.

Well this weekend, something terrible happened. Our oldest son Cam is graduating from high school this week and we are going to be having lots of company and family visiting. So we've been fast-tracking a number of reclamation projects around the house in an attempt to conceal how far we've let things slide since bringing a toddler into our lives. To aid in this, I rented a pressure washer. These are amazing tools, but they run on gas and the one I rented seemed to have a loose gas cap. No one saw this happen, but it was parked by our backdoor, and at some point either Kai or Mouse got too close to this thing, because they both smelled like gas. We were able to clean up Kai, but Mouse had attained a whole new level of stink - dangerous toxic stink!

It was bedtime before we realized it was the mouse that was stinking of gasoline.
Kai wasn't happy with him.
It was Tina again who saved the day. She said to Kai, "I'm going to give Mouse a quick bath. You wait here." She took him down the hall and switched him with the original. Stinky Mouse #1's months of exile in the pajama drawer had diminished his Febreze induced repugnancy to a tolerable level. Kai was so sleepy he just needed someone with big soft ears to snucker on. The switch went undetected!

Now the amazing thing is that Mouse #2 had actually logged more hours of usage, and it showed. We had given him a number of sponge baths (using only water and Kai's baby soap) to keep the smell down, but general wear and tear was showing its affect. Mouse #1 looks all fresh and new in comparison. What an amazing bath!

So we are now planning on stocking up on a few ChouChou Shu clones as backup in case disaster strikes again. Oh and if you don't appreciate the importance of backing things up, check out the latest entry on Cady's Blog.

Tina writes...

"Home"

This has become Kai's favorite word. He says it often, and gets very excited when we are out and hit the familiar main road that leads to our street. He says it gleefully after getting into the car when we have been somewhere. He says it first thing in the morning when inventorying our family, "Cam?" "He's at school." He says, "Ben?" "He's at school too." He says, "Baba?" (if Scott has left) "Baba's at work," I say. Then he will say very happily, "Kai HOME!"

It has been incredible to watch him make sense of this new world we have put him in. To become familiar with the people, places and routines of his new life. And this recent constant declaration of "home" seemed to be much more than just a comment about his
physical location. He seemed to be feeling something very deep and something most of us experience as infants, too young to verbalize or even think about consciously. So I decided
to look up the word "home" and see what Webster thought about all the meanings of this word, and I think I found the one Kai is describing;
"-adv. 3. to the center or heart of a matter; closely; directly; deeply."

Ah. There's no place like home!

It's a new month here at Hui-Hui's world, so if you need to catch up check out the monthly archives in the sidebar.

Kai has been doing great since his surgery. I haven't written any new entries for his blog, but I did get one together for Chou-Chou Shu. CLICK HERE to check it out!