Category — Krembs’ Family

Check out Nie Nie in Beijing! We had a blast with her.

We finally took Nie Nie to the Great Wall of China. We had been waiting for the perfect blue-sky day, alas we just needed to go despite the “haze.”

I’ve been meaning to post pics of our fabulous house forever. We absolutely love our house. We feel so comfortable here–it’s intimate yet spacious. Before the pics, I’ll describe it as a modern Chinese hutong. A huton–a traditional Chinese house–is U-shaped with a courtyard in the middle. When you enter the house, you have three options: straight ahead to the sunroom and out to the yard, to the right for the kitchen, living room with dining, or to the left to the bedrooms. What’s really nice about our home is being able to see all the areas no matter what room you’re in. If you’re in the living you can see across to the master bedroom and vice versa. From all areas you can see into the sunroom since it’s walled in but by windows. The house is all one level which is really nice too. We have a large yard plus a deck landing that’s fenced in with a view of Starbucks across the street. Although we each have our own room, we also have a small little guest room off the living room; we call it Nie Nie’s room. All of our Indian goodies plus other worldly travels fit in nicely. It’s hard to believe that we fit into our quaint little apartment in Juhu, Mumbai. While this house isn’t as big as our first home in Beijing, our heart feels here. And no worries, we can still host guests! Come and see us!!

Approaching the house in Eurovillage, it's on the left.

Will the guard let us in?

This is a little powder room right off the entryway.

We're in!

By turning to the right you head towards the kitchen and living room.

Here's the living and dining room with nice high ceilings.

Here's our little guest room. It's quite cozy.

Our kitchen is a good one--I've been enjoying cooking with Pei.

This is Vincent's room.

This is the hallway on the living quarters' side.

Gigi's chillin' on her bed.

The first thing you see when you enter the master bedroom is our groovy bathroom. The whole wall is covered in a mirror and the shower is open--it's not closed off.

We finally got reunited with our Nain carpet to the right of the master bed.

Here's a sampling of looking out of the master bedroom. You can see out to the deck, into the sunroom, or across to the living room.

Here's one half of the sunroom--the left side.

The sunroom is Rani's room.

And last but not least, our backyard.

*Perhaps you’re wondering why we moved. In November when it started getting cold, our house was also quite cold. We couldn’t get it to warm up. Before leaving for our winter break, we notified our hr department at school about the temperature, and they in turn notified our landlord. It was agreed upon that the landlord would add some radiators throughout the house in order to increase the temperature. When we arrived back from winter break our house remained at a solid 13 degrees celsius–that’s 55 degrees in fahrenheit. We had to break contract because we were absolutely too cold in that house. It’s too bad since it was a neat home with a park right across the street and plenty of friends around the neighborhood for the kids to play with….but, it was just way too cold!

Our trip over winter break to Hawaii for my brother’s wedding was fantastic! I was anxious for the trip, but once we all got together I knew I had nothing to worry about. The wedding festivities were beautiful, sharing a condo with the Collins’ was a breeze, the weather was glorious all week long, and the Hawaiian mentality was catching.

They have a term with accompanying hand gesture that solves all: HOWZIT! It basically means how’s it going, but it also means all is goin’ well. It’s like a nice chill term for everything’s gonna be all right.

Last Saturday morning, November 28, we woke up and decorated the tree. I had asked if Sally and Cork would prefer if we did this task before they got there, but luckily they wanted to join in the fun. Part of decorating the tree requires wearing a special hat!

Elf Gigi

Elfo Vincenzo

Elfo Kevito always has the tough job of putting up the lights.

Even Elfette Ranita got into it.

Elfo Corkito

And the most enthusiastic elf of all, Elfie Sally.