Sunday, August 28, 2011

Chinese Siesta‏

What's up, homies? :)

Hm. I'm not sure the last time I sent one of these blasts out, but I'm sure it wasn't that long ago. Who knew that I had that much to say? Oh, wait, you ALL knew that about me. Kar always has something to say.

The thing is, we're not really doing a whole lot. We wanted to take this trip to the beach, but we've decided to hold off. Here's the deal - we are required, under our visas, to leave the country every 90 days, and then re-enter. I don't know why; but we do what they say. :) So we have to leave the country the first week of October, then the first week of January. Lex will be here the last week of December and the first week of January, so we're going to do Beijing the first week she's here and then we've decided to do Thailand with her the second week. And we really want to see Hong Kong, so we've decided to go there the first week of October. These trips won't be cheap, especially Hong Kong, which I have heard is really expensive, so we decided to just kind of hunker down and save money. It was, "should we do a bunch of little trips or a few big trips?" And we decided on the big trips. So we're really boring; we don't really go anywhere or do anything. Yet I still have so much to tell you. So here we are.

General Kid News

Gagey-pooh now has five teeth - three upper, two lower. He's doing a pretty good job feeding himself certain types of foods, but sometimes, for instance, I'll be eating a sandwich and he'll want a bite, even though he's had an entire half sandwich two minutes ago. So I'll rip some off and kind of tuck it in his mouth, and I've gotten bitten HARD. He bites and then doesn't know how to let go. Kind of like that toddler in that A Series of Unfortunate Events book. He bit Micah's finger today when Micah was trying to help him eat, and he just...couldn't figure out how to unchomp his jaw. It's funny. Yet painful for the recipient.

Micah is...Micah. He is my little shadow - he's always been like this, but it's been especially intense since we've been in China. If I go somewhere, even down to the corner store to buy water or anything, he HAS TO BE WITH ME. I usually acquiesce - it's good for him to get out of the apartment. And he has to hold my hand the ENTIRE TIME we're outside. Usually, that's fine. But if I take garbage bags down with me (and I usually do), if I let go of his hand to unlock the front door of our building, he freaks out. I'm like, "Hon, I needed my hand to unlock the door." Tonight, he had a big freak out when Ben had to let go of his hand for a moment to throw the garbage into the dumpster outside. It's driving me nuts. I'm trying to figure out what I can do to make him feel more safe. I feel badly that he feels so threatened all the time. He copes by picking his nose or grabbing his private parts. Therefore, he spends most of his time with his hand on his crotch and his finger up his nose. Sigh. I need to do some more praying and thinking about that kiddo. Any ideas?

So I've told you that small children, from birth to maybe two years old, either go around without pants on at all, or they wear pants with big holes where the crotch should be, right? Right. We've established this fact. Sadie is still struggling with seeing everyone's private parts all over the place. We were getting housewares at the flea market a few weeks ago, and this adorable little boy was with his mom and was just fascinated by Sadie. Sadie and I were waiting inside, out of the rain, for Summer to try to call a taxi. So the little toddler comes up to Sadie, smiling huge, just adorable...and then Sadie saw his nethers, frowned, and hid behind me. I felt badly. I told the child's mom I was sorry - "toy po she." I'm sure she was confused as to why Sadie suddenly was so cold to the kid - it's his privates.

We were down on the street last week, walking back from the post office, and we stopped to watch a man who was making sculptures to sell. He used some kind of extremely fast-setting solution. He had rubber molds of all kinds of stuff - dragons, elephants, horses, Chairman Mao, Buddha, etc. So he would use this stuff that looks like flour, add some water, mix it up really fast, and pour it into one of these molds. Literally 30 seconds later, the sculptures were set. So he would peel the rubber molding off, and there was his sculpture. Then he had this gold paint. The customer who had committed to buying one of these sculptures could paint it themselves if they wanted, or they could have the guy do it. So you paint the sculpture with gold paint, and voila - a cheesy knickknack that kind of looks like real gold! I thought they were ugly as sin, but my kids were just fascinated and wanted to watch for awhile. There were a whole bunch of people on the street watching this guy work. Among them was a grandma and her husband, who were looking after their twin grandbabies. The grandbabies looked maybe Gage's age. So they were holding the babies and watching, and Sadie caught a glimpse of one of the baby's private parts. She frowned and said to me, "I can see that baby's pee-pee." "Yes, honey. Remember that they don't use diapers here," I reminded her. The grandmother heard us speaking, and she heard the word "pee-pee," and I don't know what "pee-pee" means here, but it must mean something really great or really worth talking about, because she just started chattering on and on. "Blah blah blah blah pee-pee. Pee-pee blah blah. Blah blah pee-pee blah blah blah." On and on about pee-pee. I just nodded vaguely, smiled and said goodbye to the lady, and steered the kids home. It was funny.

Cute Stuff My Kids Say

Sadie loves to play checkers on the iPad. But she keeps thinking that checkers is called chess. And she is so cute - she calls it "chest." It's so cute - I don't correct her. Is that wrong? Tonight, she said, "Mommy, when you put the baby to bed, can you and me play a game?" "Sure, hon. What do you want to play?" "Chest."

Sadie is quite the worry-wart lately. We have lots of conversations - initiated by her - about the future. About turning into a woman and being a mom, specifically.

Sadie: Mom, how am I going to know how to cook when I'm a woman?

Me: I'll teach you while you're a child and a teenager. By the time you leave the house, you'll know what to do.

Sadie: Do I have to shave my armpits like you do when I'm a woman?

Me: Well, you don't have to, but don't you think it's pretty gross when men lift up their arms and there's all this hair in there?

Sadie: Yes. Will you teach me how to do it?

Me: Sure, when the time comes. You bet.

Sadie: If I want to become a cook when I'm a woman, how do I do that?

Me: Well, you go to culinary school.

Sadie: Well, what if I want to be a hairdresser?

Me: You go to beauty school.

Sadie: What did you do to earn money when you became a woman?

Me: I taught school.

Sadie: [laughing] No you DIDN'T!!

Me: [smiling] Yes I did!

Sadie: What if I don't want to be a mom? What if I just want to be a woman?

Me: You don't have to be a mom unless you want to be.

Sadie: I want to be married. But I don't want to be a mom.

Me: Well, that's just fine.

Sadie: But how to I keep from having kids if I'm married?

Me: Well...you take a pill every day to make sure.

Sadie: Do you take that pill every day?

Me: Yep.

Sadie: But you had kids!

Me: Well, I stopped taking my pill when I wanted kids.

Sadie: [the lightbulb turns on over her head] Ahhhhhh...

I have such worrywart children. I wonder where they get it from? *cough*my mom*cough* :) Love you, Mom!

Having Babies in China

Speaking of having children, Summer and I had an interesting conversation the other day. We were on the bus, and there was this cute little baby in his/her mom's arms. I can't ever tell which sex the baby is, because they shave all kids' heads until they're, like, three. Someone asked me the other day if Micah was a boy or girl. I was like, "Uh, boy." I think they're used to seeing girls in boys' clothes and not knowing which sex the kid is. They make no efforts to dress infant or toddler girls in girly clothes. If the girl has an older brother, she wears his old clothes. Or if she has an older boy cousin, she wears his clothes. Back to my story. So this baby's cute little chunky butt cheeks were there on his/her mom's forearm
I pointed at the baby and said, "Aw. I love babies so much." Summer said, "Oh, I do, too, but I don't know if I'm brave enough to have one." I laughed and said, "All you need is the epidural. Then you will be brave enough." After some discussion, I cleared up what an epidural is - she didn't know the term; I didn't expect her to. She says, "Oh, the shot in the back?" "Yes!" She frowned and told me that, in China, yet another law which totally tramples on peoples' personal lives is that you can only get an epidural if you get an elective or emergency c-section. If you choose to deliver vaginally, and there are no complications (despite the fact that you feel like you are going to DIE from the pain), you are SOL. Isn't that horrible??? I told her she'd better have her babies in the U.S. She laughed. So then she wondered if she should someday just plan on a c-section or deliver vaginally. I told her that was a tough call. Then she said, "I think I'd rather have a c-section then have that cut that they give you so the baby's head can come out. Did you have to do that??" I laughed. "Have you SEEN my kids' heads?" Hahaha! I told her that it didn't hurt at the time, because I had an epidural; that I couldn't imagine how it would feel without one. I told her it was easy enough to recover from, though. She shuddered. She said I was so brave to have had four kids - I've heard this before, from other women here. I've always thought they referred to how hard it is to raise four kids, but now I wonder if they're all under the misguided notion that I had all four vaginally, with no epidural, and got those cuts with no painkiller at all?? Trust me, ladies, I want to say, I am NOT that brave.

Oh, and another thing - men are not allowed in the birthing rooms. Your mom can be there, and the doctor and nurses can be there, but not your husband. Sad.

Food

I just can't get used to the whole milk. I can take a bus to this one market and get 1% or 2%, but if time is a problem, I go to the corner market and just get the whole milk. Ben and the kids love it - I'm not a huge fan. So I usually go without, or drink something else. And if I refrigerate the milk and eggs and pretend that's how I got them in the first place, I feel better about it. It's a little game I have to play with myself. Hahaha! It's hard, being a persnickity person, and living in China. China is not a place for persnickity people. :) The milk comes in 8-oz bags, which I think is funny. We pour several bags into a pitcher and keep it refrigerated.

The eggs don't come in cartons. They put eggs in a regular grocery bag. And you have to hope that they don't get too jostled on your way home. You keep them in the bag in your fridge, and again, you hope they stay put and don't roll out onto the floor and crack (that happened to me tonight).

Luckily, I'm able to access anything on the net that's not social media, like facebook or blogger. So I can look up many, many Asian recipes. That's what I did all this week. I got onto allrecipes.com and looked up Chinese food recipes - they have zillions of them. But they're Americanized Chinese recipes, so they're more like what you would have if you went to a Chinese restaurant in the U.S. Earlier this week, I decided to make Kung Pao Chicken and Cabbage Salad - that kind that has the crunchy ramen noodles, chopped almonds, etc. All of the ingredients were available either down on Stinky Street or at the market down what we call Party Street, two bus stops away. And then I made rice for the chicken to go on, obviously. And it turned out great! Ben made a stir-fry the other evening while the kids and I were finishing up with homeschooling (more on that later), again, with rice. And tonight we had Asian pork ribs and Chinese potato salad, which has bok choy, red bell pepper, and cilantro in it. I was so surprised/excited that they had cilantro at the market that I let out a little squeal, which made the veggie ladies laugh at me even harder. I think they must call me "Wa schwah da bo how Girl" or something. Because you might remember that I said that to them last week, which means, "I don't speak well." And they had laughed so hard at me at the time - I wonder if I accidentally said something different, like, "I love to kiss chicken beaks," or something. Because now, whenever I go to get veggies, they chuckle and keep saying under their breath to each other, "Wa schwah da bo how.... blah blah blah....wa schwah da bo how... hahaha!!" They're good-natured when they laugh at me, and honestly, I'm laughing at myself most of the time, so whatevs. I know they like me.

Summer went with me to the store on Party Street to help me find stuff - chili paste, brown sugar, etc. Thank goodness she was there. She had to ask the women in the store about a lot of the stuff - I don't think she cooks very often. She didn't know where to get cornstarch, but the ladies showed us. Cornstarch here is yellow, and more course than the cornstarch in the states. I grabbed butter (I know where that is now), and Summer made the comment that the Chinese don't often use butter. There were, like, only four boxes available to grab, instead of whole sections for butter, like in the states. I told her that butter is the reason Americans are so fat. :) I have everything I need to make chocolate chip cookies except for a cookie sheet and shortening. I described what shortening is to Summer, and she said, "The bakery must know where to get some. They make things that have to require that ingredient." I agreed. They've got weird-tasting cookies and some weird little pastry things they make. So she asked the bakery lady about it. She nodded and said she has some, but doesn't know where to get it. Then she actually offered to put some in a canister and sell it to us, but then her boss said no. So that was that. Ah well.

Cheese is soooo not available here. But I did see some at the market that is farther away, Da Fu Yuen. I'll have to go get some sometime. Oh, and I did find brown sugar! It's very dark, and it smells strongly like molasses. So what you told me, Deann, about the lady you know who makes her own brown sugar with molasses, can't be far off. I had no idea you could do that!!

I buy my bananas from the same lady always. She's adorable and has really cute little dogs. (Everyone on Stinky Street brings their dogs with them to work. They are extremely docile. I love it.) She thinks I am so, so funny. And she thinks my kids are funny. The whole time I'm getting bananas from her, she just chuckles and chuckles. When I ask for 4 or 5 bananas, hahahaha. When I ask how much they are, hahahaha. When I give her the money, hahaha. She's hilarious. Sometimes my kids and I, or just I, pass by her on the other side of the street when we are going to the vegetable market or to the corner store to get water or whatever. And I hear her laughing when she catches sight of us. The cackling banana lady. I love her.

There are a few things to eat here that we actually LIKE. The list is small, but it's there. They have all of this luxuriously-flavored milk. Mango milk. Apple milk. etc. etc. Dylan really, really loves apple milk. I think it tastes horrible. But I buy it for him, and he drinks it by the gallon. I haven't been able to find ice cream in tubs or gallons or anything like that, but they do have ice cream bars, and they are YUMMY. There is one I really like that is vanilla ice cream on the inside with white chocolate on the outside. Oh baby. Ben had one the other day that was mango-flavored on the inside with white chocolate on the outside. I want to try that one next time.

Um, yeah, and that's our list of things we like. Hahaha! Two items.

Cicadas

I've heard of cicadas, just in passing, but I've never really seen them. They are all over the trees here, and they are LOUD. They get louder when people walk under the trees. And I notice that they're louder on hotter days and quieter on not-so-hot days. I've never actually seen one - I had no idea what they looked like. Until I saw a dead one the other day on the sidewalk. Actually, I thought it was a really, really gigantic fly. Like, the size of Micah's fist. Enormous. Ben was like, "No, that's a cicada!" Whaaaaaat? That's what has been over our heads all this time? Apparently, they only come out and breed every five to ten years. This year happened to be the year. Then they, like, have little bug sacs or whatever the heck and bury them in the ground. And then in five to ten years, those babies will come out and hang out in the trees and be loud. Who knew? Not me.

Ben's Work Status

Good news - Ben went to his job site a week ago because another shipment of stuff came in from the states. When shipments come in, he always goes to make sure things get unloaded carefully and correctly. And guess what - they have started work on the job site! I guess the kind of...angry...e-mails they got from Ben's bosses in the states made them a little more motivated to get the ball rolling. So it looks like things are going better. (Part of me was hoping we'd be sent home! Hahaha!) One of the boss guys was there, and he invited Ben out to eat when they were done - Ben didn't get home until nine or ten. I guess they went and got donkey burgers - a local specialty. Barf me.

Ben in Beijing

Ben had a meeting in Beijing

Laundry in China

People are always like, "I love it when clothes dry outside on the line! I love how they smell!" But I've always felt like 'outside smell' is kind of stinky. Like, when my kids come in from playing outside, I'm usually like, pew. Hahaha! And hanging clothes outside here is just a bad idea. It's wayyyy too dirty and stinky. I'm really, really glad we got our lines set up inside. I have to do some more laundry today. For some reason, having this system, with the clothes lines, is making it easier to get laundry done. I don't know why that is. I wash two loads every day, then hang them up. Then, the next morning, I pull them down and fold them, then wash two more. And I'm actually on top of the laundry situation for the first time in...years. :) The kids ADORE hanging up and taking stuff down from the line. And I let them. I just set up some chairs in there and let them go at it. They actually fight over who gets to hang stuff up. I love it.

Homeschooling

Ugh, school started Wednesday and we still haven't gotten their school supplies yet. Ben's company shipped them ages ago, but we haven't heard or seen anything. We work with this teacher through e-mail, so she mailed me a contingency plan for one week of lesson plans that are only web-based. So we're doing that for now. Usually, it's a bit of old-fashioned book learning mixed with on-line learning. And different kinds of assessments - some online, some worksheets that the kids do, and then you scan them and e-mail them. So we had to do a bit of improvising. The kids take a 2nd grade science class together (Dylan's in 3rd grade and Sadie's in 1st grade), and we had to do a lesson on tools used for metric measuring. So what we were supposed to do was get these tools out of their school supplies boxes, show them how they work, and do this flash card matching thing where we match the card, which has either the name of a tool, what a tool measures, or what unit of measurement the tool uses. So you get a card, and if it says, "mass," you put it next to the balance. If you get a card that says "graduated cylinder," you put it by the graduated cylinder. If you get a card that says "degrees celsius," you put it next to the thermometer. So, we didn't have any of these things to show, so I printed pictures of them instead and had the kids match the things up to the pictures instead of the actual objects. (Sadie did NOT get it and only got a 60% on her online assessment, so we have to do that lesson for her again. A big difference from 1st grade to second grade.) They also take history together, and we had to do this activity where we color and cut out pictures of several animals, and then we were supposed to have this big inflatable world globe. We were supposed to tape the pictures of the animals onto the continents where they live. So instead, I printed out world maps and had the kids tape the animals onto that. So we're making due, but dang, I'd like to have the books, workbooks, teacher resource books, etc. to use. But I really am impressed with the Idaho Virtual Academy. I think it's going to give my kids a challenging and thorough education.

If I can figure out how to not take 12 hours a day teaching both of them. Maybe it's because we don't have the supplies. Maybe it's because I'm a bad time manager. I do try to have them do things at the same time whenever possible, but the fact of the matter is that our broadband is very small. So we can only have one person online at a time. And often, the kids need help navigating the online lessons, assessments, etc. So yeah. It's taking us 12 hours per day this past week. Thank goodness Ben hasn't had a ton to do at work; he's been kind of cooking and cleaning while I've been teaching. But when he has to go to work every single day, I am so screwed.

The Adult Big Toys

I have to come up with sixty minutes of P.E. EVERY SINGLE DAY! This is such a pain in the butt!!! We went down to this big toy area in our little neighborhood for the three days of school last week and had a good time.

It's interesting - the big toy-type playground I took the kids to has stuff for adults, too. Things that rub your back; things that help you stretch, things that help you exercise... It's hard to describe. Okay. They have, like, a metal, very old thing that's like a NordicTrack. And they have this thing that is like a disk that rotates. It's near the ground. So you step on it, and hold onto these bars, and you twist from left to right, left to right, to, like, stretch your sides. There's this thing that massages your calves. It's so weird! So when we were there, the sun was just setting, and that's when all of these old ladies and old men came out in droves, to do these exercising/stretching/rubbing things. The weather is actually cooling down and feels quite pleasant at night lately. A bunch of them tried to speak to me, and of course, I couldn't understand them, but I'm catching on a little bit more. I figured out the word for "pretty" all on my own - they all use it when they're talking about Sadie and touching her hair, which she really hates. It's "pee-yow lee-ong." And I'm starting to recognize the names of the ages of my kids - "sahn-sway" is "three years old," "wu-sway" is "five years old," and "bah-sway" is "eight years old." Again, I've only figured this out because when I'm out with the kiddies, people seem to indicate, "How old are they?" So I point to the kids and use the hand signals. So, when I do the signal for "three," they nod and say, "Ah. Sahn-sway..." Things like that. So being here, seeped in the culture, is helping my Mandarin a TEENY bit. "Ee-tay-are," which means, "a little." :)

I've seen these types of playgrounds-for-adults-and-children all over the city, and after my experience the other night, I'm wondering if all of the other play areas are just as inhabited by adults at night as ours is. And then I wonder why everyone is always so sore, needing to rub and massage and stretch. Maybe because they are all older. But here's my theory. I think it's from those horrible Chinese mattresses that feel like rocks. Seriously; how can anyone's body feel okay when they sleep on something like that??? I would be sore all the time, too.

Rubma But

Funny story. I hope Nat doesn't mind me sharing it. So there was a girl she went to college with named Amber Tub. And I don't know WHO figured this out, or HOW, but they figured out that, if they said the girl's first name backward, it was Rebma, and the last name back word, But. So if you put it together, it's "Rebma But." Which they decided is like "Rubma But." Like "rub my butt." I love that story.

I had sciatica pretty badly on my left side when I was pregnant with Micah, and it flares up every now and then. And it feels really good to, well, "Rubma But." I have this massaging wand thing that I'll use. I don't have it here - luggage room was so minimal for us coming over. But my bumb has been really, really hurting since we've been here - on both sides. And since I don't have my wand, I'm always begging Ben to "Rubma But." I'm trying to figure out why it has flared up since we've been here. Possible causes I've come up with are as follows: 1) These floors are different than the flooring at home. Hard concrete with laminate floor on top (it's NOT hardwood, like I thought). So maybe my body is having a hard time with that adjustment. 2) Stress. I've heard that people carry a lot of stress in their butts. And emotions. In their butts. I heard from somewhere that, if you get a deep tissue massage on your butt, you cry and laugh and scream and sob, etc. It just lets everything out. Maybe I'm carrying my stress in my bumb. 3) Increased intake of coke, or as they say here in Northern China, "Kaluah." (Gabby told us they call it Co-Cola, but she's from the south, by Hong Kong. I found out later that they call Coke "Co-Cola" in the south, but in the north, it's "Kaluah.") Water isn't clean out of the tap, right? We have bottled water in the fridge, but it just tastes weird to me. I'm trying to drink as much water as I used to, but I must admit that I've been bad. I find myself reaching for Coke more often as a result of stress, also. I've always used Coke as a stress-relief thing, which is unfortunate, but true. And I think Greg, my stepfather-in-law, once told me that caffeine makes his sciatica worse. I wonder if I should get off the coke and see if it helps. 4) Sitting on these piece of crap chairs for like 12 hours a day doing dang homeschooling. I don't know how these ladies who homeschool and make homemade jam and sew all their kids clothes, etc. (I'm talking about you, Lyndsay - you are ASTOUNDING) DO it!!! I'm failing horribly! Hopefully I'll get into more of a rhythm and get better at doing two things at once with my kiddos. But for now, we sit on these horrible chairs, which are like a piece of cardboard with a crocheted thingey on them, which are then on top of these metal bars that cross to make a chair. Think the torture chair in Casino Royale, and you have our kitchen chairs. But with cardboard on them. Okay, not really cardboard. But plywood. For sure. No spongey material. No cushioney material.

Another Retraction

Baoding has two million people, not six million. My bad. Just FYI.

Cute Things Dylan Says

Dylan and Sadie are taking an art class. I had to read the introduction to the class with them on Wednesday. The introduction is all, "You'll be going to your local craft store and buying this and that and making sculptures and doing this project and that project..." and I'm like, "Um, craft store???" It's just going to be tons of work and tons of preparation. I'm soooo not thrilled about it. However, Dylan was so cute - I love the things that come out of his mouth. They were all, "Look at both of these pictures. They are both of animals. One is realistic and one is abstract." So it showed, like, a realistic painting of a rabbit on the left, and then some Picasso thing on the right that is supposed to be a dragonfly and a snake, but you can't tell. I thought Dylan would be like, "That picture on the right is so weird. That doesn't look like a dragonfly and a snake!!" But he was adorable. He looked at them and said (all by himself - no prompting from me), "You know, even though the one on the right doesn't look like an animal, it's still beautiful." Sniff, sniff. Tears welling in my eyes. He takes after my own artistic heart. What a babe.

Another cute thing he said the other day - he had, like, a blood smear on his cheek. And I was like, "Dude, what's on your cheek? It looks like a blood smear." And he goes, "Oh, it's probably chocolate." (The kids love this chinese snack called Cacao Pies. Think Twinkies with chocolate on the outside of the spongecake part.) I was like, "Well, go wash it off." So he went into the bathroom and washed it off, and he came back out and said, acting like he was admitting something horrible, "The truth? I sometimes pick my nose. And then it bleeds and it gets all over." Hahaha! I laughed and laughed. "The truth?" Oh, how I love him.

Denied

I tried to go get my haircut last week - the haircutting joints stay open until, like, 10. It's crazy. And cool. I decided to go to a different one this time, because I seriously got PTSD after my last haircut - they didn't sweep up the hair on the floor until the end of the day, and then they just dump it all in the gutter. I'm not even kidding. There was something leaking in there, so you had to wade through old, stagnant, water-from-who-knows-where, with hair in it, to go get your hair washed. And then, when they dry your hair with a towel, they hang it outside on a rack to dry, and then they USE IT AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN. All day. I'm not kidding. Who knows how many heads my towel had touched when they put it on my hair!!! Shudder. So I decided to go to a place that, like, maybe won't give me tapeworm. Hahaha! I brought a picture so that poor Summer didn't have to accompany me again. So I printed off my picture and headed down to this place Ben got his head shaved at. He said it was much cleaner. It's further down Stinky Street, across from the post office. So I showed my picture to the dude in there, and he spoke a teeny bit of English. He muttered and tugged at my hair, turned the picture upside-down and right side up, muttered some more, tugged some more, and said, "No, you hair too short for this cut. You come back in three weeks." I was trying to tell him that I just needed it shaped upa bit; less shaggy, less Ramona Quimby, Age 8-ish - but how do you communicate that to a person who can't speak English? I didn't necessarily want it cut shorter - I wanted it shaped up. A very different thing. Anyways, he just shooed me out the door - "You come back in three weeks. Then I cut." Alrighty then! Haha! It reminds me when I went with Lex once to get a pedicure. The Asian lady told me to pick a nail polish color, so I picked purple, of course. She looked at it and said, "No. That ugly. You pick red instead." Uh, okay! Or when my Asian doctor in California responded to my concerns that my weight gain was thyroid-related, said, "No, I think you're just getting fat." I think Asian people are just...very honest. Very blunt. But it's funny and really endearing, I think. It doesn't matter if I go three more weeks - I hardly do my hair anymore - my flat iron died, so I got one here, and it's crappy and doesn't really do much. And honestly, I'm just soooo unmotivated to do stuff - makeup, hair, working out...meh. I just don't care about anything anymore. I think it's my depression, rearing its ugly head. I'm trying to fight it.

Chinese Siesta

So I went down to the vegetable market yesterday - it's really close to our building - just a few doors down on stinky street. It was around 3 o'clock. And it was...well, it looked deserted. I was like, huh? Weird! All the vegetables were covered up with blankets, and I couldn't see anyone. And then I realized that all of the merchants were taking naps behind their little counters. They got cardboard, lay it on the ground, and lay on the cardboard and took a snooze. It's like a Chinese siesta. There were three dudes at the back that were playing cards on top of an overturned box. They were gambling - big wads of cash were held down near each man's right hand with heavy objects to keep the money from falling down or whatever. I love watching men play games and gamble. I see it in the streets all the time. Often, they have a big audience of other men, looking over their shoulders and mumbling appreciatively when someone makes a good move. I'm not sure what card game they're playing, but I just think it's really cute.

So anyways, I told Ben about these shopkeepers all asleep behind their tables, and he nodded and said that it's the same at around 3 p.m. all up and down stinky street. The doors are open to all of the businesses, but everyone is lying down inside, either napping or chatting amongst themselves while lying down. Or gambling. Interesting, huh?

Duh.

I learned something else today. Something I really should have figured out sooner. Ben taught me. Chinese toilets have these buttons on the top of the tank thing that you push to flush, right? They're kind of shaped like yin/yang symbols. So they're right next to each other. And they can be pushed independently or together. I never knew what to do, so I have always just pushed both buttons at the same time. Today Ben told me that the button on the left is for flushing just poop. The button on the right is for just pee. If you do both, you push both. WEIRD!!!

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