The Buddhist Shrine

Dear Sophia

Today I went to visit a site I am doing a design for in a city in the south of China called Taizhou. My site is surrounded by mountains and I had the chance to climb up. Part way up one of the mountains is a Buddhist shrine where people stop to pray.

At the very top of the mountain is a Buddhist temple with a funny little dog who kept barking at me, but when I walked towards him he ran inside scared!

Love Jason

Moganshan Lu

In Shanghai next to the Suzhou Creek is a street called Moganshan Lu which is an old district of warehouses. Some of the warehouses have been converted into art galleries and there are all sorts of statues and pieces of art in unexpected places. I quite like this statue of an ancient soldier...without a head!

Love Jason

Twycross Zoo visit

Dear Sophia,

I finally managed to get all of the pictures from our trip to Twycross Zoo downloaded from my camera , so I thought it might be fun to put some of them on your blog. It was definitely a fun day out and lucky for us the weather cooperated and the rain did not come until we were on our way home.

I liked this guy a lot. He did not seem bothered at all by all of the visitors. He just hung around and watched everyone going by and posed for pictures

My favourites were definitely the two tortoises. But they could not seem to figure out if they were coming or going!

And I was getting a bit worried that you were going to climb in and help them sort it out. Hopefully they worked it out in the end.

Twycross Zoo is a very well known Primate Centre..so there was obviously lots of monkeys and apes. Luckily this gorilla was not real or else I'm not sure how he would have taken to you sitting on him!!

But this guy definitely was real!

I think on of your favourite things at Twycross Zoo (other than the meerkats and prairie dogs) was the elephants.

And I thought it was especially interesting that these elephants were fro Sri Lanka and that the elephant enclosure was made to look like a bit of the Sri Lank-an habitat.

Love Jason

Woburn Safari Park slideshow

At Woburn Safari Park

Dear Sophia,

These are some of the pictures I took while we were visiting Woburn Safari Park. Even though the weather was not very good, I think we had lots of fun. I did not get any pictures of the monkey trying to steal your hair clip but I did get lots of pictures of the monkeys playing.



I also quite like this shot of you with the penguins..



and climbing in the Tree Tops!



Love
Jason

Sophia and Abigail

Sophia and Tamsin making Easter eggs

Sophia and Tamsin taking pictures

Dear Sophia,

I thought this picture of you and Tamsin taking pictures in the woods over the Easter break was very nice. Please send me some of the picture you take, and I can put those on the blog as well!

Love

Jason

Chinese New Year fireworks

This week has been the chinese new year 'spring festival'.

Everyone has had the week off of work, and EVERYONE goes home to see their families. For many chinese, especially all the construction workers and shop workers, that means leaving the city to return to the countryside where they come from.

A big part of the chinese new year (other than the dancing dragons, which you hopefully got to see in Manchester) is fireworks. All the families go out into the street and launch lots of BIG fireworks.

The fireworks last 4-days and when night comes they get especially loud and often. My apartment in Shanghai is only on the 5th-floor, so I didn't get a very good view of the fireworks, but I got to hear all the noise and see all the coloured lights reflecting on all the surrounding buildings. It was amazing and like nothing I have ever seen or heard before. And it went on, and on, and on, and on....

Love

Jason

Sophia in the snow

my walk to work

Dear Sophia,

This is a video of my walk to work in Shanghai. It starts at my apartment building and goes up my street passing all the small shops and then turns onto the street that I can walk along to get to work. If I don't feel like walking, I can turn left instead of right and go to the subway station and catch the metro train to work.

Love

Jason