Tag: What to Expect

Ice Ice Baby

On By Dani Francuz Rose2 Comments

Well, we’re officially waist-deep into winter, and even though we’ve been ice skating, snowboarding, and snowduck making for months now, I still feel like I haven’t got my fill! So, in order to up our winter games even further, we spent last weekend in Québec City, a winter wonderland if ever there was one, and even more spectacularly wintery, we also spent a night at the Hôtel de Glace (aka the Ice Hotel).

This was definitely a once in a lifetime kind of experience, and I don’t want to forget any of the specifics, so this month, I’m sharing a detailed timeline of events as recorded by the many pictures I took throughout our stay. Bundle up and enjoy!

17:00 – Check in

Technically check-in started at 4pm, but we were a little late getting to the resort area for a few reasons. One, it was snowing, so everyone was driving slower than usual, and two, we totally forgot to bring our bathing suits and had to make a pitstop at Value Village. It happens. Luckily, the Hôtel de Glace and all of Village Vacances Valcartier is only 20-30 minutes outside of Québec City.

Once we arrived and found our way to the correct front desk (this place is massive, so it wasn’t as easy as you’d think), we got the usual check-in spiel plus a few irregularities. When you stay at the Ice Hotel you actually get two rooms: one outside made of ice and snow and one inside the Valcartier Hotel where you can put your bags, shower, brush your teeth, and at some point, finally take off your hat and gloves!

But before you can don your all-access pass of sorts, you have to watch a safety video and sign a waiver. The safety video talked a lot about what to wear and what not to wear overnight and expressed many times over that you must completely dry off after showering or hot tubbing before you go into your rooms at night. They also gave us maps of the premises and showed us where we could go if we needed help during the night.   

17:45 – First look around

Needless to say, the excitement levels always increase when there’s a waiver to sign, so we quickly dropped off our stuff in our “dry room” and went to see what the Ice Hotel was all about. It’s divided into roughly three sections: the chapel, the communal rooms, and the individual rooms. The chapel was beautiful, but there wasn’t a wedding that day/night, so it was pretty empty. The communal rooms included several galleries, seating areas, the ice bar, and an ice slide. To say there was a lot to look at would be a gross understatement.

Between the ice sculptures, snow carvings, lights, and music, my senses were on overdrive. I think my favorite room was the “club room” with light-up instruments and DJ-ing composers on every wall. Tucker liked the “fire room”, which, although no warmer than anywhere else in the Ice Hotel, definitely felt cozier with the heatless fireplace, warm colors, and fur-lined benches. Of course, the ice slide was also super fun – it was in the “dinosaur room” and had us laughing hysterically as we scooted our way down the slide. You know what’s not very slippery? Jeans.

The individual rooms are also open for viewing during the day (of course, they did have ropes near the doors, so you couldn’t get on the beds or mess with any of the lights or anything). This year there were 30 guest rooms. The vast majority were single bed rooms, but there were a few doubles and even a triple as well. Every room had a theme and was designed by a different artist. My favorite was probably the exploration room with huge ships, maps, and a compass on the walls. Tucker liked the science-y ones, of which there were many.

It honestly took us quite a while to see all the rooms because this part of the hotel is very maze-like, and we weren’t always sure if we had been in any given hallway before or not. The walls of the hallways were also covered with art, and there was a workshop room off to one side, which housed photos taken and machines used during the building process. During this part of our initial walk around, we also noted the hot tubs and sauna (free for guests to use) and started thinking about how we were going to manage that in the heavy snow with only our thrifted bathing suits and big winter boots.

19:30 – Drinks at the Ice Bar

But before we dealt with being cold and wet, we decided to cash in our complimentary drink tickets. The ice bar was SO COOL! Yes, pun-intended. The bartender was all bundled up as she mixed our drinks, the “Lave-Glace” and the “Accident de Ski-doo” (clever because it had a splash of red Grenadine and a little sprig of juniper in it) and poured them into ice glasses. The drinks were beautiful and tasty, and the glasses, well, the glasses were challenging. They were obviously really cold, but also very heavy and had very thick edges – not the easiest thing to sip on. Despite the odd mouth positioning required, we still felt pretty amazing drinking our fancy cocktails in the très chic Hôtel de Glace.

In hindsight, I should have held on to my ice glass since we opted to bring our own beers into our room later, alas we were too excited to shatter them (prematurely) into the collection bins. We also debated getting another drink at the bar because they had a lot of interesting cocktails and were surprisingly not that overpriced. But after another short walk through, we opted to hit the hot tubs instead, hopefully while they were still empty and we had enough time to enjoy them and fully dry off before heading to our frozen beds.  

20:45 – Hot tub and sauna in the snow

I really want to do a polar plunge before we leave Canada, and perhaps now I understand just how uncomfortable that will be when it happens. Running from our “dry room” to the hot tubs wasn’t so bad (I did wear my socks and boots with my bathing suit lol), but running to the sauna after the hot tub was painful, especially for my feet. From the crazy hot water to the crazy cold snow made my feet feel like they were burning! Stepping into the sauna was very welcome…that is until we had to get out and do it again.

Ultimately, lots of lessons were learned, like: the more towels you can take with you, the better; be sure to remember to take your shoes with you when you go back and forth, and also, just like we’re not really beach people, we’re not really hot tub or sauna people either, which is apparently a lesson we’re still in the process of learning.

22:50 – Final preparations

After we had our fair share of extreme temperature fun, it was time to prepare ourselves for sleeping overnight in a room that was approximately -5°C (23°F). First, as per the instructions, we had to be completely dry. Then, we had to decide what to wear and what to bring with us into the room. I don’t think I’ve ever planned my pajamas quite so carefully. In the end, we went for having as many options as we could – layers that we could take off or leave on depending on how warm we were in the sleeping bags they gave us. As for the snacks (much more important, obviously), we brought some local Québec beers, the rest of our Québec mix popcorn, and some chocolates from La Fudgerie. It was perfect!

23:30 – Bedtime snacks and hunkering down

Between 8-9pm the individual rooms portion of the hotel was closed off for the staff to clean and prepare the rooms for the overnight guests. When we pulled back the velvet curtain of our room, we were surprised to see they had raked the floors in addition to changing the sheets and leaving the sleeping bags. It felt very Zen and very cold. But we were ready! We rolled out our sleeping bags (rated for up to -30°C/-22°F), got into the liners as instructed, and put our outerwear away for the night. After enjoying our little picnic and watching a few videos, we zipped ourselves fully into the sleeping bags (well, mostly), and drifted to sleep.

4:17 – Slight panic

I say “mostly” because I actually struggled with zipping mine up over my head. I felt super claustrophobic and ended up choosing to be slightly colder than necessary just to keep my face from being covered. Unfortunately, in the middle of the night I woke up and the sleeping bag had fallen away from the top/back of my head a little, and I was very cold. That got my thoughts and heart racing as I wondered if I was doing irreparable damage to my system. You know, the normal things that keep a person up at night. Thankfully, I was able to calm myself down, readjust, and fall back asleep.

8:00 – Wake up call

As part of the check-in process, they informed us that someone would come to wake us up the next morning at 8am. This was in part to make sure that everyone would be up and out before they had to clean up and open for business again and also to make sure everyone was alive and well. Fortunately, we were! The sleeping bags, if anything, kept us too warm, and the main struggle we had was just getting comfortable enough to sleep through the night. Even without the claustrophobia issue, the sleeping bag was a bit like a strait jacket – not much movement possible, and if you’re not a back sleeper, good luck falling asleep as you lie there feeling like a mummy in a fluffy sarcophagus.

8:15 – Back to sleep

So, after not the best night’s sleep we’d ever gotten, we were very happy to return to our “dry room” once again and sleep in our nice, warm king size bed for a few more hours. Usually, we say there’s no place like your own bed, but honestly, this one was definitely a close second, especially in that moment!

11:00 – Check out

And just like that, our stay was at its end. We packed up our bags, scraped the snow and ice off the car, and headed back home to enjoy the rest of winter from our very own “dry room”.  

That Was Unexpected! As Was That…

On By Dani Francuz RoseLeave a comment

31144029_10216476090563099_1771299139375349937_n
Family selfie!

Last month my parents visited us in China, and I think it’s safe to say everyone learned quite a bit! Tucker and I learned a little more about what it’s like to be responsible for people other than ourselves (consistently asking if everyone had what they needed, were they hungry, did they understand, etc. It was exhausting!), and my parents definitely learned a lot more about the Middle Kingdom, this time, firsthand.

When they arrived after their very long flight, we met my parents at the Airport Express station in Beijing. We then spent the following two weeks fitting in as much Chinese culture, food, and fun as we possibly could! We spent a few days each in Beijing, Shanghai, Huangshan, and Hefei: four very different cities in China. Of course, we did lot of touristy things (like walking the Great Wall, shopping on Nanjing road, and hiking Yellow Mountain), but we also went grocery shopping, met Chinese friends for dinner, and spent some time just hanging out in our campus apartment. Overall I think it was a well-rounded trip, and even though we were often on the go, we did still find some time to talk about the things that surprised my parents most about China.

31265336_10216486806390988_8557087024694336051_n
I can’t stress enough how much there is to see in China.

Delightful Surprises: There seem to be three areas in which China excels in my parents’ eyes: restaurants, transportation, and safety. Very early on they were impressed with China’s restaurant game. A la carte menus, ordering for the table (rather than individually), food coming out as it’s ready, and the lack of tipping just to name a few of the positives. They also, as does everyone, loved paying for everything through a mobile phone app (like WeChat or Alipay) – it’s so quick and easy: no receipt, no signing, no waiting! My mom also really enjoyed the plastic tops and to-go bags for drinks on the run, another innovation that we don’t see much of in the US.

31124689_10216468532094142_6756384212000522965_n
Family-style meals

As far as transportation goes, they were most impressed with how fast, cheap, and punctual everything was. China doesn’t usually have the reputation of timeliness like, say, Japan, but every train we took left on time or a minute early. They were also amazed that with as many people as China has, the traffic wasn’t really bad and any/all lines moved pretty efficiently. Even I was doubting a few times during the peak tourist hours at the most popular destinations, but even some of the longest lines we had ever seen still moved along pretty rapidly. No dilly-dallying here!

22007944_10214679398486920_5059747423061294812_n
“Flat toilets”

In China my parents also mentioned safety fairly often: how safe they felt with the cameras, hotel check-ins, and security presence and how welcomed they felt as foreigners. They also noticed fewer homeless people and a great emphasis placed on family time and family connections. Perhaps not directly related to safety, but my mom was also extremely pleased that the hole in the ground that she was imagining China toilets to be was entirely exaggerated, and that they are actually pretty clean and easy to use.

Not So Delightful Surprises: Of course, leaving the familiar can always lead to a few uncomfortable surprises as well. One of the most common difficulties foreigners have in China is adjusting to some of the culinary differences, and my parents were no exception. They mentioned the lack of ice in drinks and the lack of good coffee a few times. My dad had also not expected the lack of meat in many Chinese dishes (probably because American-Chinese food is all about the meat). And of course, even after only two weeks, they also started craving Western favorites like a bacon cheeseburger or a plate of fettuccine Alfredo (imagine the cravings after nine months!).

31369382_10216493849407059_7343932562646878862_n
Tea > coffee anyways…

Some other unpleasant surprises seemed related to the expectations of personal boundaries. My parents noticed pretty quickly that a person’s “personal bubble” is much smaller in China, and that bumping shoulders is a way of life here. They also weren’t so pleased with finding themselves head-to-head with a bicycle, scooter, or even the occasional car on the sidewalk (something I was already used to thanks to Poland). And finally, coming across several street-spitters and the rare, but still present, late night street-urinators were also surprises that didn’t exactly fall into the positive category.

31180116_10216476094763204_5471004553647765357_n
Nothing like pushing through the hordes

A third area of perpetual surprises seemed to be in the lack or inferiority of paper products in China. Due to China’s vast size and population, many public restrooms and restaurants do not provide general-use paper products, instead, customers carry around their own packs of tissues to use however and whenever they’d like. Even when some restaurants do provide “napkins”, my parents correctly pointed out that they would be better off using their pants than the tiny, thinner-than-tissue-paper pieces they could get there. And while, as my parents also noticed, this does actually have a positive impact on the potential overuse of resources, it can be pretty annoying when you find yourself without a multi-purpose paper pack in hand.

31224164_10216493904128427_7402362084022758603_n
The adventurers!

It’s always interesting to see what expectations are met or broken upon first arrival to a new place! Although my parents did have a lot of advanced information from my photos, blog posts, and stories, it was still so much fun to see them experience life in China for themselves: the good, the bad, and the ugly. I’m so proud of my parents for seamlessly adapting to the ambiguity, and at times, insanity, that comes with immersing yourself into a very different culture, and I’m so thankful we were able to share this experience together! I truly can’t wait to do this again with another culture in a few years, and for the impending reverse culture shock I’m sure to experience when we’re back in the States at the end of the summer!

Living in China: Daily Differences

On By Dani Francuz RoseLeave a comment

23130648_10214977335335155_6425516221530541009_n (1)
Temples in our backyard!

We’re almost three months into our move to China, and something that we’re asked pretty regularly is: what are the differences we notice in our daily lives. Most people are aware of the obvious differences like the language and the food, and, although most daily activities are pretty universal (shower, eat, work, play on your phone, etc.), there are definitely some things that we didn’t really have a need to think about before moving to China. In reality, these are rather small differences, but their regularity and new-found importance have kept them in our minds daily as we shift into a new way of living – the China way!

 

21751831_10214553838387996_1478804182428819340_n (1)
“Noodles 22” – my favorite!

First is our struggle for food. Of course, as I mentioned, the food itself is obviously quite different. For example, most things are cooked in oil here rather than in butter, and almost everything (from drinking water to what some refer to as a “salad”) is served piping hot. However, something we didn’t think about is how difficult it would be to obtain our food, let alone the foods we actually prefer. Whether at a restaurant or a grocery store we have to put a lot of effort into translating food items. Even then, we’re often not sure what we’ve actually purchased. In the last week alone we’ve gotten translations like “sealed duck palm”, “saliva chicken”, and “fried enema” – I’m sorry, what?!

21686126_10214628783901587_1078398650307237772_n (1)
“Fruit Parkway”

At the grocery store, things are not only hard for us to read, but they’re often packaged differently or organized in a way we would have never thought of; for example, milk is not refrigerated, but pasta is! On top of these difficulties, there is also a sense of lingering mistrust. We’ve all heard stories about China and the shortcuts they may have taken, so when we see something unfamiliar or “weird”, we’re conditioned to think it’s not healthy or good. The depth of these feelings really surprised me because, although I saw similar things in Poland, I never questioned the hygiene or motives there. This is something we’re really working on by constantly asking “why” and delving a little deeper into these differences. Our Chinese friends have been incredibly illuminating, and honestly, we’ve learned to look at our own way of doing things a little differently as well.

22814129_10214916132805130_4342214456280253414_n (1)
If this doesn’t scream “weird”, I don’t know what does…

IMG_8615 (1)
Do I wear it well?

Another daily difference for us is the general environment that we’re living in. Typically when I wake up, the first thing I do is check the weather. However, in China, I must also check the AQI (air quality index). We live in a city of 8 million people; a city that still uses coal to heat some of its building and has farms just outside the city limits that burn their fields twice a year before replanting. These conditions mean that the air quality in Hefei can have an effect on my day. If the AQI is above 200, I need to wear a mask to ensure that I don’t get a sore throat the next day. Checking the AQI and occasionally wearing masks have become part of our routine. In our (almost) 90 days here, we’ve only had a handful of “bad days”, which we recently found out are about the equivalent of smoking a few cigarettes (and we all know that is not great for long term health).

21557452_10214502718510031_1066655538901985017_n
An exciting acquisition!

Another environmental issue I was not at all looking forward to was the inability to drink the tap water. I remember last time we were in China, I had a really hard time making sure I had enough water bottles. Something about steaming hot water served in restaurants (even in summer) really just didn’t agree with me. Turns out, although this is a difference, it really isn’t a difficult one to handle. Now that we’re residents of China, it’s pretty easy to get water. We have a water cooler and a weekly delivery that ensures we have plenty of drinking water (hot OR cold)! Another environmental difference, for Tucker, would have to be the height of everything. Doorways, sinks, counters, they’re all much lower than we’re used to, and he (just about 6 feet tall) struggles with hitting his head and constantly bending over at an uncomfortable angle. I (at 5’3”) don’t really have this problem!

21462860_10214530461363585_3988519170618761027_n (1)
Tucker’s Taobao fail

Finally, the way we use technology has also changed greatly. It seems that in some ways we’re using technology more efficiently, and in others it’s substantially slowed down or non-existent. For one thing, in China you are not allowed to have two people sharing one bank account. Therefore, Tucker and I “share” my card by handing it over whenever one of us needs it, which just feels so strange! Online banking is also not very popular here, and it’s only possible with a monthly fee. Needless to say, Tucker and I have become much more familiar with the “balance inquiry” function at the ATM. While those banking aspects feel less than modern to us, we’re also being ushered into the future by instead paying for everything with our phones and buying most of what we need from an online service that delivers to our door. The saying “there is an app for that” feels so true in China, as we now utilize our phones for everything! Even street vendors use QR codes for payment!

Capture 2
Love seeing this!

However, possible is not the same as familiar. As westerners new to China, our most valued service is a VPN (virtual private network). As many people know, China is very particular about what shows up on their search engines (or even which search engines are available), and for this reason, we need to use a VPN to access YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and several other favorites. Of course, for nationals and people who have been here long enough, those services are no longer as important as YouKu, WeChat, and QQ (Chinese versions of the same services), but for now, we’re bogged down remembering to connect to the VPN for some things and at times, not having enough bandwidth to do so.

There are plenty of other differences in our daily lives, and some, as we’re beginning to see, are less China-specific and more like everywhere-but-in-the-US kind of things. We find ourselves walking so much more here, watching less TV, meeting with very different groups of people, and taking advantages of opportunities that we would’ve never had at home. There are so many reasons I enjoy my life abroad, but I think none are as great as these small differences that teach us so much!

My step counter is impressed
Umbrellas, rain or shine