2016 Begins/ Explorers Group Tour Part 1

Interestingly, a snow storm in Chicago the day before we were to leave resulted in cancellation of our return flights so we were able to spend a few extra days, yes I said days—3 days in fact— with family before returning home.

2015 Holiday decorations have segued into Chinese New Year decorations. Time flies quickly.

Shortly after our return we alternately seemed to be dealing with upper respiratory issues which left briefly but returned with gusto. We are still trying to fully kick these beasties out once and for all.

In the meantime, I want to tell you about my Explorer's group visit to a porcelain factory last month. One of the other ladies in the group hitched a ride with me as this was pretty far out of town. The lead on this trip had changed drivers without giving us a new name and phone number so we had a little trouble finding the place and eventually waited on the toll road until we saw the other cars from the group catch up to us. We had been making very good time prior to that. And I should say rather that Pak Oky was watching for the other car. He is a car-recognition savant. He will often tell me who's at a friend's house as we arrive—based on the fact that their car is parked out front.  Memorizing other people's vehicles and plate numbers is just not something I can handle. It was always hard enough to memorize my own.

Anyway, we arrived to "test drive" this new tour. The place pulled out all the stops for us. We were all very impressed. We had tea, we had a nice lunch, a short intro to the company and holdings, a dance performance by local children, we applied underglaze to a plate which would be later glazed, fired and returned to us, and had a tour of the facility. Now for some details.

First up, personal tea services for each lady. This is one of the patterns of porcelain they produce here. I forget who they make this for but they have customers in the US, Europe and more. Interestingly, while sugar is usually the only sweetener supplied here, these personal tea services had only artificial sweetener.

The dance performance was interesting. The children performed dances from 6 different regions. The hands play a very important part of the storytelling in the dances.

Here are a couple of very short clips of 2 of the dances:
Note: I was having trouble seeing the videos myself on the blog website, so if they don't appear, my apologies!

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