Chris and Camilla

New Zealand

In keeping with Brown family tradition, Camilla and I have decided to write a Christmas letter this year. Whether or not it happens next year or for the next fifty years is yet to be seen. Also keeping the Brown tradition, the letter is long, but hey, it was a long and exciting year!

We were married October 11th 2008 in Toronto, so we have completed our first year of marriage and are well on our way to the second. Immediately after our wedding we drove back to Orange County for a California reception. We drove by way of Yellowstone National Park – a long but worthwhile drive. Camilla and I got a whirlwind tour of some 35 states and two provinces while our car got 16,000 miles added to its engine.

After the reception in California and a nice trip with Camilla’s family to Yosemite and the Bay Area, Camilla and I headed back to China.

Motorcycle Riding

We had a couple months to kill before the new semester, so we traveled a bit in South East Asia and Oceania. Highlights included renting a car in New Zealand, island lounging in Thailand, and scooting around the crowded streets of Hanoi on a motorcycle.

Halloween with our Xiamen Friends

We relocated to our new home in Xiamen in February, just in time to start the new school semester teaching English at Xiamen University. Xiamen is located on the west coast of China straight across from Taiwan. It has nice beaches and mountains – something important to us that Shanghai lacked. We’ve made some great friendships in Xiamen and we enjoy the slower pace of life compared to Shanghai.

Guilin

In May Camilla visited Toronto to attend her sister, Samantha’s, wedding and in July Camilla’s family came to visit. We toured Guilin together and then Camilla and I headed off to Europe for our summer break.

German Wine Fest

We were able to visit my uncle, aunt and cousins in Germany and even saw my mom for one day in Germany, as our trips overlapped. It was Camilla’s first time to visit my German family and I hadn’t been for a visit in seven years. We enjoyed the wonderful hospitality, scenery and food!

Petra

After Germany it was off to Italy where we had another one day overlap visit with Aunt Portia and Uncle Larry in Rome. From Europe we flew to the Middle East. Starting in Cairo, we headed to Mount Sinai and then to Jordan. The famous ancient city of Petra was well worth the trip in itself.

The Dead Sea

Our last stop was Israel, one of the highlights of our trip. We got to see so many historically significant sights and experience the land where Jesus lived. We went from Galilee to Jerusalem and flew out of Tel Aviv. The old city of Jerusalem was wonderful to visit as well as floating in the Dead Sea.

We started our new school year in September. We both have the same schedule, so we get to spend lots of time together. In our free time we pursue various hobbies. Camilla has always enjoyed writing, so she started freelance writing on the Internet. She even got Chris writing a little, too. Camilla also loves cooking, (Chris: I love eating her food, so we make a great team!) so she decided to combine her hobbies and start a food blog. Chris has been learning how to make the website and we’ve both been surprised at how popular the blog is. You can visit it at Foodrepublik.com if you like. Chris also continues to pursue his photography hobby.

Besides our teaching, traveling, hobbies and spending time with friends, we have a fellowship on Sundays with a group of Chinese university students.

Olivia and Alex's Wedding

We were lucky enough to attend Camilla’s cousin, Olivia’s, wedding on Dec 20th in Hong Kong. It was a beautiful wedding and a great time to visit with many of Camilla’s relatives.

For Chinese New Year this year, we are going to take a trip to North America and visit both of our families. We look forward to visiting friends and family and enjoying western comforts for a couple weeks.

After Chinese New Year we’ll be back to Xiamen for the spring and summer semesters. We finish at the end of July and are planning to move back to America. Where we end up mostly depends on job opportunities, at this point. Either way, we’re sure we’ll end up wherever we are supposed to.

We both hope this letter finds you healthy and at peace. Enjoy the holidays and the New Year.

Merry Christmas from China!

Chris and Camilla

We made it back to Xiamen after a wonderful trip to the Middle East and Europe. We had sporatic internet access throughout the trip, but I was not really able to upload many pictures. I have just put some pics up to go along with the text in the post below. Also if you want to check out some more pics from out trip, you click here. Enjoy

We went through Berlin and London on the way back.

We are heading to the Dead Sea today to a place called En Gedi. It’s about an hour and a half from Jerusalem so we are just making it a day trip. It is the lowest place on earth and probably about the hottest place as well. We heard it is in the 40s celcius!
After tonight we have two more nights in Israel. We might either stay in Jerusalem again or try to find something on the Coast near Tel Aviv. We fly on Saturday night, so we are a little worried it might be difficult getting to the airport with public transportation because of Shabbat.

The Dead Sea is extremely salty. You float like a boat in the dense water, in fact we were bobing around so high we felt a little sea sick. The Water was probably 90 and the air was about 100, so it was not super refreshing, but it was a great experience!

This picture is from the Mount of Beatitudes, where Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount. In the background is the Sea of Gallilee

We are in Jerusalem. We are staying in a hostel just inside the Old City at the Jaffa Gate. We walked to the Mt. Of Olives today and viewed the city from the hill. We also walked the Via Dolorosa today. It’s an interesting city full of life. In the middle is a jumble of market stalls lining the winding streets. Much of the stuff is junk from China. There are churches and chapels everywhere. Even Calvary is a giant church. It’s too bad I was hoping to climb up the barren hill and follow the path Jesus walked. Instead the Via Dolorosa is a bunch of stations for random made up events where you can give money and or buy more junk. They even miraculously have Jesus’ tomb which they claim was in the same place as the cross. Now all housed under the giant church. Anyway, we ae having a great time. I think we will try to head to the Dead Sea for a night on the 2nd. Then we don’t know, maybe back to Tel Aviv or somewhere on the Mediterranean.
Israel is not really what I pictured it would he like. It is a very nice and livable country. The people have been quite friendly, once you get past the border, and the living conditions are nice. It is as expensive as Europe unfortunately, but it’s a bit of a break from Egypt and Jordan. I pictured the landscape being mostly desert, which it is, but more like how California is desert, not like how Egypt and Jordan were desert. Those places are bleak nothingness between towns. Israel has a lot of farming and nice hills. We even saw people surfing as we rode the train down the coast.

This is the Western Wall or Wailing wall. It is the last remaining part of the Temple Mount fromt he Jewish temple. Women go to the right, men go to the left. Men have to cover their heads.

Where do I begin! We have had some crazy adventures on this trip. We are now at the sea of Galilee in Israel and will head go Nazareth and Jerusalem tomorrow.

On the last post I said we were headed to Mt. Sinai at about midnight. Well, we paid for a half day at our hotel so we could use the pool and our room for the day. That was nice so we could relax before our night hike. We got in a minivan with 12 other tourists and headed out across the the dark desert. The hot night wind blowing in my face reminded me night drives to Palm Desert. There is not much in Sinai; it’s mostly desert. There are a few check points on the drive to Mt. Sinai. We pulled up to a guard house with about 10 guys sitting around in uniform trying to keep themselves busy at 1am. One guy, presumably the head army dude, strolls over to the drivers window and exchanges words for a couple of minutes with the driver. Then he walks over to van and asks to see our passports. For the first two or three people he flips through each page pretending to study it carefully, but after that he relizes he has about 10 more to look through so he checks a few more breifly and doesn’t even bother forthe rest. This same proceedure happened about four times. Always we would drive just long enough to start dozing and then get to the next check point. I’m not sure what they are checking for and I’m pretty sure they don’t know either, but if anyone wanted to get through the check, they could just sit in the back of a tourist van, since the guard is to lazy to check more than about the first five people.
At about 2am we arrived in the St. Katherine Protectorate which encompasses Mt. Sinai. It cost about $3 to get in. When we got there I was amazed by the number of tourists doing the same thing as us. There were multiple bus loads and mini vans all arriving in a steady flow as we arrived. I would guess somewhere close to a thousand people were all climbing the mountain on the middle of the night. The Bedouin people of the area have been granted exclusive rights to the mandatory guide services so every group of one to 30 people had it’s own guide. We headed out on the dusty trail after another pointless security check (just in case anyone wants to blow up Mt. Sinai). It was a beautiful night. The stars were out and as we got higher up the trail you could see a snake of moving lights behind us from the flash lights of other tourists. Camilla head gotten food poisoning the night before and had relaxed for most of the day hoping to be better in tome for the hike. She decided she was up for the hike, but it was hard work. She did very well and kept up with and even beat many of the people in our group who weren’t getting sharp stomach cramps to slow them down.
We made it to the top about half an hour before first light. The air was actually pretty chilly by this time, but we had come prepared with sweatshirts. We waited, lying on a rock, for the sun to rise. It was a beautiful sunrise and well worth the hike to be atop the same mountain that Moses climbed to commune with God.

The area around is suprisingly moutainous. I expected on hill in the middle of an open desert. This was pretty much mountains and hills as far as the eye could see. We hiked down the trail a steeper path and arrived at about 7am at the bottom. There is a church at the bottom that was not very impressive, yet the thousand or so tourists waited until 9am for it to open only to pile in for about 10 minutes to look around and then head back to where ever they had come from. We had arranged before hand to meet a bus headed to the Israel border at Taba. Amazingly this transfer worked out. We left one backpack with our clothes and those items deemed less valuable with the hostel that arranged the connection. They sent our bag on the 10am bus from Dahab which met us along the road as we were coming back to Dahab from Mt. Sinai. This was a great connection because it enabled us to make it to Petra in Jordan the same LOOONG day!
We arrived at Taba and had no problems getting through the Egyptian side of the border, but then we arrived in Eilat and were greeted by the horrible experience of crossing an Israeli border. I have crossed the border in many third world countries before, but never have I experienced anything like this. We first we stood for an hour in the blazing sun as the line inched forward to a guard shack where they were looking at passports and slowly sending people to the next line. The young girls at the border were quite rude but we made it past them eventually. I think Camilla was the first Chinese person they had ever seen because the really scrutinzed her passport and had her say her name three times. This was just the beginnig. Next we moved go another hour long line at the end of which another person checked our passports. All the while we had the obnoxious people on the planet standig behind us. There were about three Israeli women and a few men and there five or so annoying kids. I guess the mother like daughter holds very true. The mothers were loud and rude. They seemed to be inept as parents and they kept trying to push past us on line. As if trying to cut and having kids climbing all over us and screaming constantly wasn’t enough, the lady behind me kept pushing her bag against ours and even started pushing my bag forward for me. I’m generally a pretty patient person but this was about all I could handle. We finally went through the rest of the usual security check hoops and arrived in Eilat. After dealing with a few shady taxi drivers and paying $15 to get to the Jordan border and $25 each to exit Israel, we made it to Jordan!
Enter new problem, Jordanian taxi drivers!!!
More later…

We made it to Petra. It is an incredible historical site. Even after dealing with all the hassles of the Middle East, it was worth the visit!

We finally made it to Egypt on Saturday. We arrived in Cairo at about 2am on the first day of Ramadan. During Ramadan Muslims, who make up 95% of Egyptians, are not allowed to eat or drink anything during daylight hours. Currently the weather in Cairo is almost 100 degrees during the day. It is quite interesting to be here during Ramadan, but there have been frustrations involved with it too. We were told that the pyramids were open until 6pm, so we decided we would go toward the end of the day to see the setting sun over the pyramids. When we got there, they told us the pyramids were closed at 3 for Ramadan. No one really knows why, which seems to be the typical truth here in Egypt.

We were able to be heckled into a camel ride up a near by hill to overlook the pyramids. After be significantly disappointed about not being able to see the pyramids up close, we really enjoyed the camel ride and the beautiful view of the pyramids inthe distance. Our legs are still soar from the bumpy ride, but it was well worth it!

Now we are in Dahab, a small town on the eastern coast of the Sinai pennisula. We are going to do a midnight hike up Mt. Sinai tomorrow night in order to catch the sunrise, then head over land through a small portion of Israel and into Jordan to see the ancient wonder Petra.

From Petra we plan to head back to Israel before flying back Germany and then back to China to begin the next school year.

This is what the Nile looks like in Cairo

I was just recalling interesting experiences with airport security. It’s an interesting job, that’s for sure. It seems that if you are a security worker at an airport you get to choose how strickt or lax you will be. I have had so many random experiences with security. I remember the the first time I had an annoying run in at the airport about ten years ago. I had a credit card shaped Swiss army knife kit in my bag. I had been on at least a half dozen international flights with the same tool previously, but they decided it wasn’t okay on this flight through Vancouver. I watched as the lady carefully placed her newest prize in a box with her other spoils; Christmas was coming early to her home. Nowadays the airlines are all upidy about this no liquids rule. I think it’s just a ploy of the bottled water sellers on the other side of security. A few years ago I was on a flight out of Shanghai, the flight had been delayed by half a day due to oven failure (that’s a whole other tale). Anyway, the previous day I had successfuly made it through security with my bottle of water. The next day when we returned to the airport I still had my bottle of water in my bag and the guy wanted me to throw it away. I said they let me through yesterday and kept walking (I think that is more of a China thing, just keep walking…) and no one stopped me. Now that I think about it, it’s a little scary how inconsistant the security is around the world. That was a for a flight headed to LA.
Two weeks ago we were on a short flight within Europe. The security was extremely tight. We had to take off our shoes, I had to remove my belt, then they wanted to make sure my camera and flash weren’t some sort of weapon. I had to turn on the flash and make it flash for the guy. Next he wanted me to take a picture and show him. Then he had me take my extra lens out and remove both end caps to he could see through it! Wow that’s strickt. A week later were on another similar flight from Italy and I had a cork screw in my bag. (We had bought a 2 Euro bottle of wine, but couldn’t open it, so we bought a cork screw for 3.50 Euro). Since we were traveling with only carry on luggage and I didn’t want to just throw a perfectly good cork screw away, I thought I’d give carrying it on a try. When we got to the security check the man asked me it he could see my “screw driver” so I pulled it out and handed it to him. He looked it over and handed it back to me and let me go. The cork screw was a Swiss army knife style device with a short knife blade attached. I guess that’s not a security concern but me camera is! Anyway, the next flight they caught the cork screw again and made me toss it in the trash. The guy obviously didn’t think my 3.50 Euro cork screw was a good Christmas present.

Italy

Camilla and I have had a great experience in Italy, but we are also ready to move on. I think one week was enough for us. We got to experience the beautiful Mediterranean coast at Cinque Terra, we enjoyed the art and beauty of Florence, and the historical relics of Rome. Italy has a lot going for it when it comes to tourism and Italians have not been shy to exploit that fact. While touring Italy has so much to offer, we found that being a tourist can also be frustrating at times.

In Cinque Terra we found a campground in Deiva Marina just north of the national park. This was about the cheapest accomodation we could find at 15 Euro each. We had our own little tent with two steel framed simple beds inside. The campground was clean and very popular. We arrived in Deiva Marina from Pisa via La Spezia. Our first experience with Italian trains was not very pleasant. The Italians have created a very interesting and awkward ticketing system. Buying a ticket is not too difficult from an automated machine which sometimes has English (luckily Italian isn’t too difficult to read basics). We bought tickets and boarded the train. We were pleased to find air-con on this train as the weather was about 35, but we were disgusted finding a seat; the car was filthy. I don’t think the train had been cleaned since it was set on the tracks. Really it wasn’t that bad, but Camilla sat upright for the first half an hour because she didn’t want to touch her hair against the greasy black stain on the head rest. We have since found in Italy that anywhere you could think of sticking gum, there it will be stuck and anywhere you could write something with a marker or spraypaint, there it will be written. Back the train ride, We were just getting comfortable when the ticket checker comes along to check our tickets. I confidently hand him our tickets and he smuggly tells me we neglected to stamp our tickets before we boardered the train. Oops sorry no one told us, that’s okay it’s just a 10 Euro fee for the ticket man’s signature on a reciept. He was quite efficient at explaining our fault because he must do it all day long with newbies to Italy. So now we know the system, but it’s sure hard to remember even after that episode, we almost forgot to stamp our tickets a few other times. Usually the ticket machine is only at the main building of the station, so if you have already walked to your platform, you get to go back. Enough of that, we were relieved to arrive at the beautiful Mediterranean coast. The coast is rocky, which makes it a little hard on the feet, but it makes the water crystal clear and creates a beautiful coast line. I had flash backs of childhood experiences at European beaches as we looked down on the sea of umbrellas and changing booths that was the coast. We didn’t have time to worry about what to do with our backpacks, it had been a very long day and the water was beckoning. We plopped our backpacks by the shore, towel changed and jumped in the water. It was actually quite cool, but very refreshing. One wonderful thing about Italian beaches is that they almost always have a shower. After our bath in the Sea, we headed to the campsite. We set out to try our luck at dinning on some fine Italian food after a short rest. This was the first of many atempts to find fine food. We were delighted by the house wine that most restaurants have for about 2 Euro for a half liter, but were disappointed by the over priced, often poorly made, small portions we found at most restaurants. I’m pretty sure this is a result of going to tourist areas, but it’s disappointing to come to a country that was once known for it’s great food and get expensive slop because I’m a tourist!

The next day we had a wonderful time hiking from town to town in the National Park Cinque Terra. The park is made up of five villages that sit along the coast. Each has it’s unique charm. We walked between the bottom four and stopped for a swim quite frequently to cool off from the heat.

Before Cinque Terre we made a quick stop in Pisa to see the famous leaning tower. Camilla tried to push it back up, but it wouldn’t budge.

It’s hard work being a tourist! We’ve been walking many kilometers a day through the heat, but somebodies got to do it. Our trip has been great so far. We arrived in Rome yesterday, just in time to see my aunt and uncle (who just happened to be visiting Rome as well) before they head out on a Mediterranean cruise. It was great to catch up with them since we haven’t seen them since our wedding almost a year ago. They say when in Rome, do as the Romans do, but I don’t think there were many Romans walking around their city in the middle of the day under the blazing summer sun. We have been a little concerned about the heat in Egypt when we get there, but the weather report says it’s hotter in Rome than Cairo.

Rome is a city of endless ancient structures and a wonderful place for touristing. Just spending the day walking around the city, there are endless treasures to see. We saw the Coloseum, the Pantheon, and many other ruins and churches today.

Before Rome we were in Florence. We enjoyed the beautiful architecture and art of Florence. The view from a nearby hill over the city is amazing.

From Rome you can hop over to the Vatican on a short Metro ride. This is St. Peter’s Basilica above and Michaelangelo’s famous painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel below.