Sewer smell is fun.

Ohhhhh, guys,

Sorry for the long, long delay in writing. Nothing much was happening last week, and on Saturday, we moved into our new apartment. We didn't get internet set up until yesterday afternoon, so here I finally am.

Let's see. I'm going to paste an e-mail I sent to a friend last week - it has some interesting stuff in it - and then I'll tell you what we've been doing just the past few days.

July 29

We've been lying low since practically getting heat stroke last Monday with our trip to Badda-Bing Lake. And it's just too dang hot to go out and do much. I feel like I'm going crazy sitting inside, but would I rather have heat stroke? No.

The other Jnight, I helped Summer with her boyfriend's English-language resume. He's applying with some English-speaking companies in Beijing, and Summer wanted to make sure that the resume she interpreted sounded right. It was pretty awkward, so I helped her to clean it up so that it sounded right for a person who reads and speaks English.

I asked her about these Thai transvestites, and she told me the most interesting thing. She says that Thailand is very, very poor, so some families, if they have boys, inject them with female hormones from the time they are babies. So these boys grow up and get breasts and look like women, but still have the low voices, etc. (I didn't ask what happens to their genitalia...) Then they have a chance to be performers and make enough money to get out of the squalor of their homes. She says that they die at a very young age. Isn't that the saddest thing ever??? Wow. I am so lucky to live where I live.

I went and checked out our future apartment a couple of days ago. It's coming along, and we're planning on moving in tomorrow! I cannot wait. I sure hope the air-conditioners are in by then. The floor is done, the plaster on the walls is all fixed, and there are new toilets and sinks in each bathroom. (But there will not be any bathtubs put in, dang it. Just more of those dumb showers that spray everything in the whole dang bathroom. Chinese people are so weird.) There are beds in each bedroom, along with wardrobes (there aren't any built-in closets in this apartment). The kitchen, so far, only has a fridge. Then there are two futons that function as couches in the living room, a coffee table, a table for the TV to sit on, and a table and six chairs for us to eat at. Professor Han owns the apartment and has been doing much of the work himself. The views are amazing - there's tons of natural light, and the living room really is so huge.

Sadie's bed and Ben's and my bed have mattresses, but the two boys have "traditional Chinese beds," according to Summer. They just have hard wood, and you are only supposed to use these things called "ticks" to go on them. They're like very, very thin mattresses. I remember reading about "ticks" in Little House on the Prairie books, and from that John Denver song, "Grandma's Feather Bed." Poor boys. But honestly, the mattresses Sadie and Ben and I have are as hard as rocks - we're not in much better shape than Micah and Dylan will be. There is a washing machine for clothing, but we are expected to dry our clothes on a line with clothespins. There's extra space in the master bedroom that we can use to string up line, I suppose. And we aren't getting a dishwasher or an oven. So we have to decide if we want to buy one of those microwave-sized ovens to sit on the countertop.

So it won't be what I'm used to, but you know, it will be better than what we've had for the past month. I'm excited to cook, though my choices will be very limited, because there is very little in the way of western groceries here.

I went with Summer and Maria a couple of days ago to buy bedding - ticks for the boys' beds, and sheets, comforters, and pillows for everyone's beds. It was expensive, but it was on the company's dime - they knew that bringing our whole family would cost them, but to them, it's worth it to keep their workers happy over here. Maybe the workers' productivity is so much more when the families are there with them? And the bedding wasn't as expensive as the bedding in the U.S. is. I only had enough money leftover from buying the bedding to buy a few pots and pans. So our goal today is to get dishes, silverware, and towels.

It was a miracle that we were able to get all the stuff out of the store and into a taxi. We were stuffed clear to the top. I taught the girls the meaning of "sticker shock" on the way home. :) Then they asked me what else I've been learning from Rosetta Stone - it's their favorite thing to ask. I listen to Rosetta Stone more often than I ordinarily would, mainly because they love asking what I'm learning - I do it for them. They're so cute. I'm really going to miss them when they leave this fall.

But guess what? They're going to Beijing when they leave Baoding, so when the weather cools off and we feel like touring up there, they have offered to arrange everything - hotels, transportation, etc. And they want to take us around and be our tour guides. So it will be perfect timing. And they're going to arrange new interpreters for us when they leave.

A lady stopped me in the hall a couple of days ago - she has been staying next door to us, and she spoke a teeny bit of English. I apologized to her for how loud my children are, but I think that part was lost in translation. :) She said that her daughter speaks English and wants to play with Sadie. So I got her phone number, and I also gave her my number and Summer's number. I tried to communicate that Summer could arrange it between us - I drew stick figures showing Summer speaking both Mandarin and English, and me talking to Summer, and Summer talking to the lady... it was really pathetic. I think she got the message. She says she lives here in Baoding - why she was staying in a hotel here is a question I wanted to ask her. Who knows. Maybe she needed to get out of her house for the night. I know the feeling. Anyways, obviously, if we arrange a play date, I'll be going along with Sadie and staying there the whole time. The lady said her daughter is 12, which made me go, "She wants to play with a five-year-old?" But whatever.

I found out that there will be six more workers coming from Idaho at the end of August. Did I already say this in one of my e-mail blasts? If I did, I'm sorry - so anyways, five of the guys are single, but one guy is married, and his wife is coming over. I hope she wants to be my friend. I need an English-speaking friend. :)

Yesterday was AWFUL. It's so stinkin' hot. I cannot even describe how awful it is. So it was my turn to go get breakfast, and, unbeknownst to me, they were re-paving the road in front of McDonald's. So I call a taxi (I had Sadie and Micah with me because they were bored and wanted to get out) and the taxi driver used all these back roads to get there, which I thought was weird, but whatever. So we get there, and I see why - they were re-paving the road in front of McDonald's. So when we got our food, I tried to take the back roads to get to a point where I could hail another taxi, and it took us like two hours to get a damn taxi back. We walked and walked and walked. I was drenched in sweat. Sweat was dripping off my hair. And I was carrying all this food, and the kids were whining, and we were walking right next to all of these crazy drivers, and I was like, dude. I so want to go home. I came home, shoved the food at Ben, took off all my clothes, and went to bed.

Last night, Summer, Maria, and I went and checked out the movie situation - they have movies with English to the ears and Mandarin subtitles! Yesssss! The lady didn't know the times for tonight, so Ben is gone right now, getting tickets for sometime tonight. When you buy movie tickets, they have a screen in front of you, showing which seats are available. And you touch the screen and actually have reserved seats. Pretty cool. At least the Chinese have something right. We are going to Transformers 3 tonight, and we plan to go to Harry Potter on August 4th, when it comes to town. I cannot WAIT.

Ben's other chore when he left a little while ago was to go to the supermarket and get some more formula for the baby - he needs about one more can until he turns one; that's when we'll transition him to whole milk. Well, Ben just called me and said that one small can of formula (it lasts maybe 4 or 5 days) is 235 yuan - that's almost $40. Yikes!!! So we decided to transition Gage to whole milk sooner than his one-year-old birthday, in August.

I've been seeing all these guys with one long pinky fingernail, and I've been wondering if they all do cocaine, or if maybe it's opium-related. Something I'll have to ask Summer about.

When we were in the supermarket getting sheets, I saw all of these pillows made of pieces of bamboo strung together. I asked Summer what on earth - who would want a pillow made of wood?? She said that they are much cooler than normal pillows. That's how hot it is here - people are willing to sleep on wooden pillows to keep cool. Sheesh. How is it even inhabited here??? Hahahaha! So hot.

Okay, now it's August...3rd, I think?? So I'll update you.

We moved to our apartment on Saturday - I was surprised at how much stuff we already have accumulated. We had all the bedding, pots, pans, dishes, silverware, etc. that I bought last week, plus all of our luggage. And then we had the small fridge and microwave that will eventually go to Ben's office. His coworker, Mr. Ju, has a sedan-type car - it took him three trips to move everything back and forth. It was hotter than Hades.

And when we got here, well, the apartment wasn't really...move-in ready. The air-conditioners in the kids' rooms were working, but they hadn't installed the air-conditioner in the living room, and the air-conditioner in the master bedroom wasn't working. There were still no cabinets, countertops, stovetop, or anything like that in the kitchen. The bathrooms smelled like sewers (more on that in a moment), and there was a thick layer of mucky, dirty mud all over the floors. So we spent all day long on Saturday cleaning the crap out of the apartment, and sweating bullets. You may think, "Gosh, you need that many air-conditioners in just one apartment?" Yep. It is JUST that hot here. Everyone has an air-conditioner in each room of their apartment, if they can afford it. So we cleaned and cleaned so that the kids could play around and the baby could crawl around without getting disgustingly dirty. Then we showered everyone and set about to go to bed.

And OMG. The mattress on the master bed....it's indescribable. Um....it was like a ROCK. I found out later that it is stuffed with palm fronds. I wondered what that smell was. I seriously could have slept on the hardwood floor and probably been more comfortable. It really doesn't qualify as a mattress. Ben and I lay there for like an hour and were like, dude. What the H. And Dylan kept coming in, crying, saying that his bed was so hard that it felt like "hammers." He's cute. So we decided to put Ben in on Dylan's bed (it was hard, but not nearly as hard as our mattress) and then Dylan and I slept on the scratchy futons, with absolutely zero sheets on, and a fan that we bought at the last second blowing right on us. It was a rough night.

I had a little meltdown again after we got Dylan settled on his futon. I just cried and cried and cried. I told Ben that I'm so depressed, and that mornings are so hard, because I wake up, and I realize where I am, and I get so sad. It's just been really hard. And I know I'm a huge brat for feeling this way. I should be so excited that I get to experience a new culture and see new things and all of that, but I'm just sooo....uncomfortable. The food is disgusting, and the filth is disgusting, and the smells are disgusting...

Ben said, "Okay. Enough is enough. Let's send you and the kids home." And I felt such relief. But I also felt nervous. I knew that Heavenly Father wants me here for the duration of this work project. And I told Ben that - "Heavenly Father will be upset. He has told me to stay here." So I asked for another blessing. This experience is seriously starting to feel a little bit like all of my pregnancies. Crying every night, asking for a blessing of comfort every other day....it's unfortunate. But this blessing was so powerful. The blessing that Ben gave me a couple of weeks ago kind of focused on the need for me to stay here for the sake of our family, that our family needs to be together, and that we are stronger together than we are apart. But the blessing on Saturday night was completely different. Heavenly Father specifically said that I was sent here to plant seeds of the gospel. That the people with whom I'm in daily contact will eventually hear and accept the gospel because of my love for them and my example. This is why I'm here. It was incredible, you guys. In a very real sense, this is like my mission. The mission I never served. And these are the covenants I've made in the temple - that I will forward the Lord's work. And the Lord's work is more important than my comfort.

So I'm here to stay. And I'm going to try to just keep my chin up and focus on why I'm here. Ben kept saying that he kept feeling, during the blessing, that I am here to be an instrument in bringing Summer and Maria to the gospel. That it was specifically for them that I am here. So anyways.

Okay. The bathrooms. Here's the deal. Ben says that bathrooms in apartments here are like the bathrooms in Brazil - they don't have what he calls "pee traps." I guess apartments in more developed countries have these flap-like things, so that fumes from the sewer line don't come back up and stink up everyone's apartments. Ohhhhh you guys. The smell is sooooo horriffic. Worse than any outhouse I've ever been in. When I have to go use the bathroom, or when I have to shower, I'm breathing through my mouth the whole time, and I'm hurrying really fast. The other night, I went in to brush my teeth, and I literally started gagging. I almost threw up. We find that keeping the toilet lid shut and closing the plug in the sinks between use helps a teeny weeny little bit. But not much. We keep the bathroom doors shut at all times.

Last night, Summer was over, and I was like, "Um, is this smell normal???" So I took her in, and she quickly retreated. "Um, it's not usually that strong. But I noticed that you don't have a bathroom fan. Where is your bathroom fan?" I noticed there was no fan to vent air to the outside, but I just figured that was another part of the fun of living in China - that they hadn't really caught on to bathroom vent fans. No, we're supposed to have fans. Just another thing on a long, long list of things that need to be fixed.

Our clothes washer wasn't working, so Professor Han came over and fixed it, and now it works really well. We still need to get line to hang up in Ben's and my bedroom. For now, Professor Han gave us this PVC pipe. We prop it between our window and the railing on our fire escape and put clothes on hangers on the PVC pipe. It works okay, but if it's windy (and it gets windy up on the 10th floor), the clothes blow off the PVC pipe and land on the filthy fire escape, which makes them dirty all over again. So it's not the best system. I need to go get some line today.

Oh, and on Sunday, Ben was like, "Dude, we are getting western mattresses. The end." So after much searching, Maria found a store that had soft, western-style matttresses. We got a twin mattress for Dylan's bed and doubled up the ticks on Micah's bed. Sadie's mattress is pretty soft, so there was no need for change there. And then Ben and I got a mattress. Professor Han came over the other night and felt the mattresses and said, "Too SOFT." He's nuts. They're all nuts.

I got a phone number for an English-speaking LDS branch up in Beijing, so I called it about a week ago or so. Someone answered, but she didn't speak English at all, which I thought was funny. It's an "ENGLISH SPEAKING BRANCH." There is one other English-speaking LDS branch in Beijing, so I called that number and got a recording. I left a message and hoped for the best. I asked Summer if she knew anything about the LDS church, the "Mormons," and she said she'd check it out. She called me later that day and said, "Good news! I found a Mormon church! They have services at 10 a.m. and at 6 p.m." I was like, "Six p.m.? That's weird..." I came to find out that it was a Catholic church she found. :) I told her that it was close, but not the same. And then I got a call back from the bishop of this other English-speaking branch. He said that there are no other members in Baoding, at all. In a city of a million people. Crazy. But they have this thing called the Beijing Virtual Branch. You actually get on skype and have church via skype. We got the program for Sunday's sacrament meeting a few days before, and someone from one city was giving the prayer, someone from another city was giving a talk, etc. etc. So interesting. Unfortunately, we weren't able to sign in that day, but we're looking forward to this Sunday.

We continue to eat at KFC, McDonald's, and Pizza Hut for every meal. It's getting reeeeeeeeeeally old. No idea when our kitchen will be installed. Maybe I should just go buy a dang hot plate. My heck. I do dishes in my bathroom sink (while breathing through my mouth). Our air-conditioning in our bedroom finally got fixed, though!!! After three days and three different sets of workers examined it. So that's a relief.

Summer really likes Ugly Betty, and she knew that we watch the same dang movies over and over again on our computer, so she put them on a jump drive and we put them onto our computer. There are mandarin subtitles at the bottom, but it's English to the ears, and we love it. I've never seen it before, but I'm so hungry for anything English that I'm thrilled to be watching it. And it's a cute show. It's funny - Summer said, "So, is this an accurate portrayal of American society?" I frowned and said, "Well, not the society I live in... Maybe it's accurate for New York City magazine companies, but I think Betty's family is probably more accurate of American society." The other day, Micah was coloring his fingernails and toenails with crayon (he does this because I refuse to paint his nails), and she laughed and asked why he was doing that. I said, "Well, let's put it this way...Micah is like Betty's nephew." She laughed and laughed. You'll only get that joke if you've seen the show. :)

So we have something to look forward to this afternoon - Maria invited all of us to a karaoke party! They call karaoke, "K.T.V." here. I know that karaoke is only usually done in bars or things like that in the U.S., so I was like, "Um, are you sure my kids are invited?" She was like, "Oh, yes. Definitely." So maybe it's more of a family-friendly thing here?? I have no idea. She gave us the address to give to the taxi driver. It's at one o'clock. I'm excited to do something different. Summer told me that they have a few English songs to choose from - "My Heart Will Go On," "I Will Always Love You"...I was like, "Don't you have anything....FUN??" I'm so not singing a cheesy song for karaoke. For reals, ya'all.

I smell like sour milk, because Gage spit up on me. The whole milk is working okay for him - he spits up as much as he did on formula. But it smells worse in spit-up form. I seriously wonder when he's going to get over this. And he has FOUR teeth coming in at the same time. I feel really badly for him. He's grumpier than usual. But then again, so am I, and I'm not teething. Hahahaha!!

So. Good news. According to Summer, Maria, and Jack Chan (Ben's interpreter for work), the weather will soon be getting cooler. They say around the second week of August is when it cools down significantly and it's much nicer to be outside. I cannot WAIT. Touring, here I come. I'm getting antsy to get out there and see more stuff.

Chinese Valentine's Day is August 7th. Both Maria's boyfriend and Summer's boyfriend are up in Beijing, so they're sad. The tradition for this day is that there were two lovers, but their parents opposed their union, so they can only get together once a year, on the 7th day of some lunar cycle blah blah blah. Summer's boyfriend is named Justin - again, he chose an English name for our ease. Maria's boyfriend doesn't have an English name, but she says his name means Double Tiger. And he has a brother whose name is Golden Tiger. I thought that was funny. I told Summer and Maria that they need to pick a Chinese name for me. They chose one. It means "Lotus Flower in the Rain." I love that. I can't remember how to pronounce it to save my life, though. They're so cute.

So we've been reading in 1st Nephi for nightly scripture study. And we were reading the part where Nephi is describing his family's 8 years of traveling in the wilderness. I've always read about that and thought how miserable that must have been. Camping. For 8 years. But not as easy as our modern-day camping is, for sure. So there's a part where he's saying that his wife and his brothers' wives were amazingly strong - able to still have milk for their babies, bearing their children in the wilderness, and becoming as strong as men. Here. I just looked it up - 1st Nephi 17:1-2 - "And it came to pass that we did again take our journey in the wilderness; and we did travel nearly eastward from that time forth. And we did travel and wade through much affliction in the wilderness; and our women did bear children in the wilderness. And so great wre the blessings of the Lord upon us, that while we did live upon raw meat in the wilderness, our women did give plenty of suck for their children, and were strong, yea, even like unto the men; and they began to bear their journeyings without murmurings. And thus we see that the commandments of God must be fulfilled. And if it so be that the children of men keep the commandments of God he doth nourish them, and strengthen them, and provide means whereby they can accomplish the thing which he has commanded them; wherefore, he did provide means for us while we did sojourn in the wilderness." I just love that. What I'm going through here isn't nearly, nearly, nearly as hard as what Nephi's wife was going through. But it is hard for me. But here's the deal - the Lord has given me a commandment - I am to stay here to help plant seeds of the gospel. And he'll help me if I try my best to do what he is commanding me to do. He'll make me strong; he'll help me adapt, and it will get to the point where I can bear my journey without murmuring.

And really, is six months long? No. I feel really badly for missionaries who have to live like this for two years. Yikes. Bikes. I have a whole new respect for missionaries. I mean, I always have respected them, but I guess I've never appreciated their almost certain discomfort until now. When Dad would talk about his mission to Korea, I just kept picturing this beautiful place with perfect weather and women who wear pretty silk kimono-like thingeys, and that they ate a lot of rice and sweet and sour pork, you know? But the truth of it probably was more like what it is for me here - the weather was intolerable, the food was intolerable, and most people lived in squalor and filth.

Ben went to his work site to check up on the preparations they are supposed to be making for Ben's project. And they haven't done jack diddly squat. How dumb. So Ben has to kick butt and take names.

Dude, kay, I need to get everyone ready for this karaoke party. I'll take pictures and post them on here for you. I love you all and miss you so much.

Love,
Kar