Tag Archives: china

Shanghai – The First Few Days

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Justin and I are a few days in on our China 2011 trip.  While this trip is the first for both of us to get to visit Shanghai, the main purpose of this trip is two-fold.  One, it has been three years since he was able to visit his family so it’s time to reconnect and visit with some of his friends.  Second, and pretty importantly, he is coming out to his mom and dad and by extension (and inevitable gossip) – the rest of his family.

Well, two days ago – the day after we arrived and the same day his mom arrived in Shanghai – he came out to his mom.  It actually went great and significantly better than it would have for most Chinese guys.  Typically the families are very set in their ways and would usually think about how it’s bad for the family’s face or possibly that they would not have anyone to take care of them when they’re older.  His mom however is very forward-thinking about was great with the news.  She asked tons of questions such as if I was what had turned him gay.  He re-assured her I wasn’t and that he had crushes on other guys long before he met me.

Since we are all an extended family now, we have roamed around Shanghai together and with various friends.  The pictures below are from the past few days and are a small selection of the places we have been.

2011 Christmas Cards

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It’s coming up on that time of the year again to start preparing for Christmas.  This year will be especially busy as we will be going to China again.  It has been nearly three years since we’ve gone back and seen Justin’s family.  There is a lot of preparation work that goes into a trip of this scale along with time and money.

It’s good then that Shutterfly is making other parts of Christmas preparation easy for me.  I will be using them again this year for our yearly Christmas cards.  The first year we had used Kodak but used Shutterfly last year which I think was a better experience.  Last year we went with the design on the left.  While I was happy with the design, etc I was highly disappointed in how the pictures of Justin and I turned out but it’s my fault, not Shutterfly’s.  We had very bad lighting conditions and I hope that this year’s card is of a higher quality.  A few things helping in that area are that we know more now about how to use our Canon camera but also we now have a nice flash for it that should help.

Shutterfly has an almost overwhelming number of possible designs and layouts available, from their holiday cards to Christmas cards to standard photo Christmas cards.  While there is a very large number of cards available, it is quite nice to have such a range of choices and not have to do the same thing every year.

Last year Shutterfly sponsored my cards and supplied them for free which was quite nice.  This year they have taken it to the next step and supplied me with an extra promotional code for 25 free cards for my readers.  Post in the comments below what your favorite holiday memory is to win.  I’ll pick a winner at random on November 19 and contact you via email.

*Disclaimer: This post is sponsored by an offer from Shutterfly for 50 free holiday cards for bloggers.
*Contest Rules: Contest is open from October 25 2011 – November 18 2011 11:59PM.  One winner will be picked at random and will receive a coupon code for 25 free cards from Shutterfly.  Shipping/tax charges may apply.

Flight home

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I’m in the Beijing Capital International Airport (BCIA) right now. Using the internet here which uses 0.05å…ƒ (yuan) per minute from the China Mobile SIM Card. That’s quite cheap so using it until we leave.

It’s been quite the past two and a half weeks. Have been to Beijing, Chengdu, Pixian and Ya’an and back again. Been to several airports and taken numerous buses, subways, cabs and cars along the way.

I’ll post more later once I get home and update for all the missing posts. See you later!