Christmas 2018 was spent at the foot of the Sequoia National Park in California, just a couple of hours drive from Los Angeles. We got in to see the General Sherman Tree, passing snow on the road. The tree is a giant sequoia tree and while not the tallest or the widest, but no other tree surpasses this tree’s combined weight (1,285 metric tons) and height. Its circumference measures 31-metres, and is 84 metres tall. You get a crick in your neck just looking at it (the information point said that it is like a mouse looking up at a … Continue reading Partial shutdown and Christmas 2018

Chinese New Year is a lunar holiday and so this year it was extremely early. We had three weeks for Christmas and then Eleanor was back at school for only 2 weeks in January before our two week Chinese New Year holiday. (Eleanor actually had 4 weeks off as our school broke up a week earlier than the College and then returned to school a week before the college.  Some families didn’t come back for the two weeks of school, other families stayed in Suzhou having been away at Christmas. We decided to travel half way round the world. Shortly … Continue reading The American Dream (just 7 months delayed)