David and I are overwhelmed by the kindness, generosity, and love displayed by members of Wanda’s church, the Salvation Army Kauluwela Corps. Chaplain Jan Young helped us by taking a truckload of Wanda’s clothing to the drop off for donations and a truckload of trash from Wanda’s apartment to the landfill. She previously spent a lot of time at the hospital, giving comfort to Wanda and even sitting at her bedside on the night of her death. What a splendid person Jan is! Thanks also go to the pastor, Major Brian Saunders, for transporting Wanda’s TV set to her boyfriend Robert’s home.
The church put on a wonderful funeral. People told me afterward that they were deeply touched by it. Some said it was the “best” funeral they had ever been to. The band, the guitarist, the singing not to mention the food at the reception were all top-notch.
We have decided to donate $700 to the Salvation Army. They do good works and we want to support them as an expression of our gratitude for what they did for Wanda. The next time you see one of their kettles, please remember to drop a dollar or two into it. — gigi
gigi-hawaii 
August 31, 2007 at 8:47 pm |
Hi Gigi…I guess we’re not permitted to make non-UH football comments on the WB so thought it’s better to post on your blog about my six trips to China. Before retiring, we wanted to visit China when it opened up because we heard so much about it from our parents and grandparents. We were planning a trip when the Tiananmen Square incident took place in 1989. So we immediately cancelled our trip and didn’t make our first trip to China until 1997. We did a nine day tour to Shanghai, Xian and Beijing. We found China to be a fascinating and interesting country..in some regards more interesting than football. To see the Forbidden City,Imperial Summer Palace, Ming Emperor Tombs, Temple of Heavens, giant panda zoo and of course the Great Wall of China was just awe-inspiring. Xian was the former capitol of the first Chinese Emperor, and when they found the Terra Cotta warriors it was considered by some people to be the archaeological find of the century. And Shanghai has it’s rich history of foreign powers taking territorial pieces of the city and the European flavor is still present.
Our second trip was an eight day visit to Hong Kong and Shenzhen, a shopper’s paradise and if you love Cantonese food this place is it! The best anywhere in the world. We shopped a lot in Shenzhen because of the favorable Yuan to dollar exchange rate which was 8.2 yuan to $1 USD at that time. Imagine buying a bowl of noodles with large pieces of char siu for the equivalent of 30 cents. And ice cream cones selling at their McDonalds for a quarter while it cost 99 cents in Hawaii! Will tell you more of later trips tomorrow.
August 31, 2007 at 10:05 pm |
Long Time,
There was an exhibit at the Honolulu Academy of Arts a few years ago that included a Terra Cotta warrior from Xian. It was so amazing to see it so well preserved — no cracks or anything! It’s hard to believe that there was a whole army of them underground.
I had a stopover in Hong Kong Airport for a few hours. Got really nauseous when the plane made a vertical drop on its way to the runway. Do you remember that happening when you landed/visited? I am very susceptible to motion sickness.
Maybe we’ll dip into our IRA next year and take a tour to a foreign country. Somehow, I get the impression that the hotels in China are not clean. I heard that the maids don’t clean the tubs. So we might go to Japan, instead. We’ll see.
gigi
September 3, 2007 at 12:11 am |
Gigi, those terra cotta warriors were originally painted but as soon as they opened the “pits” the paint oxidized. There are 6,000 terra cotta warriors in those pits in battle formation from archers, chariots, horses , soldiers and officers. Simply awesome! I wonder if they will ever open up the Emperor’s grave. They would probably find some precious jewels, etc. Hong Kong has a new aiport and we did not experience that “vertical drop” like you did. Some of the hotels we stayed in HK and China were 5 star hotels and are better and nicer than the ones in Hawaii. We have never had a “dirty” room in any of those hotels. BTW, in rural Japan they do not have western type toilets and you have to squat to do your business. Japan is cleaner than China but more expensive for both food and shopping. On our China tours all meals were included except in HK where only breakfast was part of the package but we got to try various restaurants on our own for lunch and dinner and that’s when we got to eat a lot of dim sum for lunch ; actually that was the good fun part about traveling.
We went to Bangkok, Singapore and HK on our third trip. And made a getaway to China to Shenzhen to see the sites and do more shopppng. Our fourth trip we stayed in HK for five days, then Shenzhen for two days and flew to Guilin, China. The mountains there are different and interesting so artists use those in their paintings, etc. We flew to Wuhan to pick up the river cruise ship and did a five day Yangtze River cruise. China is building a massive dam to control the river and generate electricity. In a few years, the water level will cover a number of cities and all those articfacts will be lost forever. We ended up in Chongquing and flew to Guangzhou (Canton) and back to HK. Our fifth trip was the Harbin snow and ice festival. We flew to Dalian, where we got outfitted with heavy winter type clothing. Dalian has Russian influence. We took the train to Shenyang where the first two emperors of the Qing dynasty made their capitol. The Qing emperors were Manchus and not well liked by the Chinese. The capitol was later moved to Beijing by subsequent emperor. Took another train ride from Shenyang to Changchun. The group went snowboard riding; it was too darn cold for me, so we stayed back with some other tour members and interacted with the locals. We also did tons of shopping in each of the cities and our suitcases were getting really full. The last train ride was to Harbin where we viewed the snow and ice carvings for two nights. During the day we went to other attractions including a Russian lunch where they had Russian girls performing. Very pretty and some of the girls looked like they were part Chinese, part Russian. Flew to Beijing and stayed there another two nights doing shopping and sightseeing. More tomorrow night.
September 3, 2007 at 4:41 am |
Sounds terrific! Which travel agency did you use? — gigi
September 3, 2007 at 11:49 pm |
Gigi, First, second and fourth tours were with Char Tours; now defunct due to retirement of owners. Third tour with Non-Stop Travel. Fifth tour with Air & Sea Travel (AS&T). They are really good–service and taking care of their people. Sixth trip to China was with AS&T also. We went to Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Wuxi, Yangzhou, and Nanjing.
We also went on seven country, 17-day tour to Europe with European World Travel. We visited London, Paris, Lucerne(Switzerland) ,Florence, Pisa, Rome, Assisi, Venice, Innsbruck (Austria), Munich, Heidelberg, Cologne(Germany) and Amsterdam.
Cruise #1 on Grand Princess took us back to Europe. Ports of call were Barcelona, Monte Carlo, Florence/Pisa, Naples, Isle of Capri, Sorrento and Pompeii, Venice, Athens, Ephesus and Istanbul (Turkey). This was with Non-Stop Travel.
Cruise #2 was Panama Canal cruise on Crystal Harmony. Started cruise in Acapulco, Costa Rica, transit the Canal, Grand Cayman Island, Cozumel and Ft. Lauderdale. This was with Regal Travel.
More tomorrow.
September 4, 2007 at 6:59 am |
I’ll try to publicize your comments about your travels in my blog. Thanks so much for sharing. — gigi