Mooing in the Supermarket‏

Herrrrrrrrrrrrrroooooooooo! (as the Chinese would say.)

They all remember "hello" and "goodbye" from their English lessons in high school, and...that's about it. :) Just like me and the French lessons I took for so many years. Gone. Blip. When I'm walking alone, the locals just nod and smile at me, but when Micah is with me, they always say, "Herrrrrro!" because the "l" is kind of hard for them to do. Most of the time he just smiles and looks down shyly, but other times, he says hello back. The other day, a lady in the corner store yells to Micah, "Herrrro!" and grabs him to take a picture with him, and Micah started freaking out. When I told him that she just wanted a picture, he relaxed and smiled for her. It's funny - the locals just kind of grab your arm and drag you to do what they want you to do. There isn't any gesturing or waving of the hands - they just grab you and drag you. It's funny.

More Clothes Shopping

I wanted to return to that open-air market to get more clothes for the kids - it's cooling down rapidly here - but it was raining, which would have rendered it a muddy, muddy little trip. So Ben and I took the kids to a kids' clothing store here on Stinky Street instead. We bought a few things. We got some pants for Gage, and the lady was indicating that we could cut the seem on the crotch with our own scissors to expose it for easier peeing and pooping capabilities. I giggled. Yeah, that won't be necessary. We'll keep that sewn up and use our diapers, thanks. :)

Oh. And Micah got a free toy car from that store. Because people give him free stuff. That's just what happens. :)

Why They Wear Those Sleeves

I told you, way back when we first got here, that everyone rides bicycles or motorbikes around. And that the women wear long-sleeved shirts backward when they ride. I don't know if I also told you - I also sometimes see these sleeve...addition thingeys. They have elastic at the tops. So if ladies are wearing short sleeves, they pull these sleeve thingeys up and snap the elastic over their short sleeves and are off to the races. I wondered if it was to fight bug bites, or dirt...it's very, very dirty in Baoding. I asked Summer the other day what the deal was with the sleeves. She says that women wear them to avoid getting tan. White skin is beautiful skin here. And they all use umbrellas constantly - if not when it's raining, then to protect their skin against the sun.

When we were briefly thinking of taking a little trip to the beach, Summer said, "But Karlenn...your family will get sunburnt." "Well, it's a good thing I brought sunscreen with me, huh?" I said, smiling. But then she frowned and said, "Yes, but you will still get brown." I said, "You know, that's alright with me." A difference in perspective.

A Word About Office Supplies

Maybe it's different in other cities, but in Baoding, there is no such thing as a tape dispenser. You can get rolls of scotch tape, to be sure, (I haven't seen any masking or duct tape yet, but I have seen clear packing tape) but they don't have any way to use a jagged end to cut the ends. You have to sit and pick at the tape to pull it up, and when you have the desired length, you have to cut it with scissors. I have searched high and low and asked everyone. Nobody knows what a tape dispenser is. When I bought our microscopic oven, the lady that put the floor model that we bought into the box, pulled out her boxing tape. She wrapped it over the flaps of the cardboard box to secure them, and then she pulled out a ballpoint pen, jabbing at the tape until she poked a hole in it, which enabled her to rip it the rest of the way.

Same thing goes for the post office. I've sent a few things, and each time they box something up, they use this boxing tape, then find a ballpoint pen to jab at the tape to make a hole that they can rip to separate the tape from the tape roll. There's a better way, people! :)

Glue. They do have rubber cement and glue sticks, but I haven't found anything resembling elmer's glue anywhere. I've sent a few birthday cards home to the U.S., and no envelopes come with self-adhesive licky things on them. You have to glue them yourself. They have a jar of rubber cement in the post office that you can use to glue your envelopes shut. The very first time I went to mail some stuff with Summer, she very, very, very carefully applied the rubber cement to the envelope for me (maybe she didn't think I knew how to apply glue?). When she folded the flap over to seal it, some of the glue came out the sides. So she digs and digs in her purse and finds a kleenex, and then very, very, very carefully wipes the excess glue away. The whole process took like five minutes - I kid you not. I just stood staring at her, mouth agape, like, "Are you serious??"

So the next time we went, I just walked up to the glue myself and sealed my envelopes. When some of the glue came globbing out, I wiped the excess with my finger, rubbed my fingers together until the glue hardened and balled up, and tossed the glue ball into the garbage can. That whole process took like 30 seconds. It was Summer's turn to stare agape, like, "You got glue on your fingers???"

Crayons - you can't find 'em. You can find zillions of pastels, anywhere and everywhere. Even in convenience-type stores. Pastels, colored pencils, and markers. But crayons? They've never heard of 'em. We brought one box with us from the U.S., and we hold that box very sacred. We're careful with our crayons, because if we lose them, that's it - they're gone.

Homeschooling

Guess who finally got their books on Friday??? Yeee! It was like Christmas around here. The kids are especially excited about the science stuff they got - safety glasses, graduated cylinders, balances, iron filings, a magnet set, a rock and fossil collecting tray, complete with labeled rocks and fossils, grass seeds, beans, all kinds of stuff. The kids are thrilled. We got to do our first "experiment" on Friday for science class - measuring orange juice in our graduated cylinders and "figuring out" how many milliliters makes a liter. They insisted on wearing their safety glasses for this very important experiment. And Dylan wore his safety glasses during his one hour of required independent reading that night, also. So cute.

So this is how we got our books released. A different gal at DHL said that we would never get them if we said they were books. She sent us a form to sign that said that the boxes contained our "personal effects," instead of books. And then I had to send, via courier, my passport up to Beijing. Once they had that signed document and a look at my passport in the flesh (I was really nervous doing that - that is my only ticket out of here, dude), they delivered our books, and thankfully, my passport, right to our door in Baoding.

Often, Dylan will be playing on the computer while Sadie and I are reading Ramona the Pest together, and he kind of listens to the story as we go along. The other day, I was like, "Sades, let's get the iPad out and do our reading for today." Dylan said, over his shoulder, "Oh, are you guys going to read Aroma the Pest?" I laughed and laughed at his cute little slip of the tongue. Aroma the Pest. Hahaha!

To kind of introduce graduation marks on cylinders and thermometers, one of the lessons had the kids rate their favorite foods, giving their favorite food a "10" and their least favorite food a "1." As we were doing that activity together, Dylan said, "If we were rating beautiful girls, Sierra would be a 10." (Sierra is his "girlfriend" from his school in Idaho Falls. She hung out with him a few times when school got out; we tried to get her parents' e-mail address before we left, but we couldn't get them to call back, and we were so busy... so we never got it. So the two lovers haven't been able to communicate since we've been here. I feel bad. He misses her.)

Ben was helping Sadie with her math class the other day, and he was saying everything in a weird accent. He kept referring to "forty" as "farty." He was reviewing with Sadie counting from 1 to 100. At one point, ,he said, "So, what comes after farty?" Sadie smiled and said, "Poop, and then pee." It was funny.

Ben really adores math, and I really don't adore it, so I was grateful that he offered to teach Sadie that day. It made me giggle within myself, though. Math and Sadie do not get along. Much like Math and I have never gotten along. Watching Ben struggle to try to teach Sadie these concepts brought back memories of my poor dad trying to help me with Math, every evening at the kitchen table, for hours. I swear Math took me like four hours per night to do. And my dad tried so hard to make me understand these abstract concepts. It was so hard. Sorry I had to put you through that, Pops. :) Some of us just do not have the math gene, eh?

More Market Facts

Something I've just barely realized (I'm really slow on the uptake) is that, when I indicate what I want at a fruit/vegetable/egg stand, they are referring to yuan. When I've told them I want 12 eggs, they have always given me, like, 24. I was always like, "Okay, I guess you want to give me more. Whatever." But I just realized that I've been paying 12 yuan every time. Light bulb goes off. And then I realized, when I told my Cackling Banana Lady that I wanted four bananas, she was giving me, like, 8 of them, because 8 bananas is about 4 yuan. So now I know - don't ask for pounds or numbers of these things. Ask for how much you want to pay. You learn something new every day.

I have to wash my eggs when I get them home, because they are straight from the chicken's bumb, dude. They have chicken poop and feathers stuck to them, in some cases. So I wash them before I put them in the fridge.

Summer thought that maybe we would have to request our beef to be ground, if we wanted ground beef, but luckily, Ben found some ground beef in the supermarket. They had a lot of ground-looking meats, and Ben wanted to make sure he got beef, but he forgot his Mandarin/English dictionary. Not knowing how to say "cow" in mandarin, he was left with no other recourse than to put his fingers up by his head to make horns, and to say, "Mooooo." When he did that, they were able to direct him to the ground beef. :)

Like a Purse

I went to the supermarket awhile ago, and this lady was walking in front of me on the sidewalk. I noticed that she was carrying a kitten. I was like, "Awww, kittens are so cute..." as I looked at the kitten, though, I realized that it was dead. And she was just carrying the cat and walking and walking. I was like, "Weird!" I would have put it in, like, a grocery bag or something. And then...I don't know...the dumpster??? But there she was, carrying this kitten like it was her wallet, or her purse, or a pair of keys. A dead kitten, flopping there in her hand. It was weird and sad.

The Nut Couple

There are some trees by our building. For a couple of weeks, every now and then, I've seen this elderly couple underneath these trees, gathering something. They have three long sticks lashed together, and at the end, a hook. The man reaches this long apparatus up into the trees, grabs a branch with the hook, and just shakes it and shakes it. After awhile, some nuts fall down on the ground, and the lady puts them in her bag. I'm not sure what kind of nuts they are, but I think that old couple is really cute.

Mid-Autumn Festival

Tomorrow is a holiday - mid-autumn festival. Everyone eats these things called Moon Cakes - Ben has tried them and says there's nothing really awesome about them. But we've seen them everywhere recently. You eat the Moon Cakes at Mid-Autumn Festival. And you have family reunions. Summer wanted to go home to her hometown, but she'll be going there next weekend for her big test, so she would rather spend the time tomorrow studying. She's been studying for this thing all summer long; I hope she does well. She says it might take a couple of years to pass the test, but that when she does, she'll get a certificate that enables her to get paid a lot more for whatever job it is she's going to do. She said that her professor invited she and her classmates to his house for a little party tomorrow night. I think maybe we'll buy a few moon cakes as a family and give it a shot.

Jessica Alba Socks

So almost every little thing seems to have someone famous on it. Shampoo bottles have Jackie Chan on them, along with his signature next to the picture of his face. That girl from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - I can't remember her name - is on a certain brand of milk. Again, her signature is right there next to her face on the milk cartons. I haven't seen that Michelle Yeoh lady or Chow Yung Fat yet. And that's the extent of Chinese stars I know about. :) There is this famous singer guy - like the Justin Timberlake of China - and he's always on crackers and chips. He's always making a "number one" sign on them.

Anywho, I saw, on packages of socks the other day, Jessica Alba! I did a double-take. I haven't seen any product packaging with any American stars or anything yet. The picture looked really weird, like someone had stuck her face on someone else's body. I was wondering if she had given her permission to have her face on the packaging for these socks. I laughed.

District Conference

We had district conference yesterday and today for church. I get the feeling that district conference is like stake conference? Like, maybe several wards make a stake, and several branches make a district? Anyways, there are bigger cities that have branches that are able to meet together, like in Xian and Shanghai and other big cities like that, and obviously, Beijing. And then there is our virtual branch, with people all over China in smaller cities. So our district is ALL OF CHINA. It includes the branches in Xian, Shanghai, everything. Every single international Latter-Day Saint in China. The Chinese citizens have their own branches and districts that we're not allowed to be a part of. There was an area authority who is American, who flew in from Taiwan, and also a man from the quorum of the seventy who was born and raised in Taiwan. It was neat to hear what these guys had to say. I enjoyed it a lot. I was supposed to give one of the prayers in the adult session last night, but my neat computer cut me off, so they had to ask someone in the congregation there in Beijing to pray for me. Sheesh. The same thing happened last week when I was supposed to share a story in Relief Society! Dang skype...sometimes it's not very reliable. I was embarrassed. Oh well.

Cheeeeeeeese!!!

Ben found cheddar cheese at the supermarket the other day. It was so exciting for us. It's very white and very sharp, but we'll take it. He also bought some Dutch Edam cheese, which I've been a fan of since I first tasted it in Europe. We won't be able to buy cheese that often, because it's like $7 per one half-pound brick, but it's been luxurious. We had grilled cheese last night for dinner and enjoyed it IMMENSELY.

You Give Me Fever

Gagey became the first person in our fam to get sick since we've gotten here. It was bound to happen sooner or later, eh? He was fevering for about four days, but today, he woke up fever-free and back to his happy self. He was suuuuuch a grump last week. I felt badly for him. There were no other symptoms - no runny nose or diarrhea or dehydration or anything. Summer was very, very alarmed. The very first day he was feverish, she was like, "We need to take him to the doctor NOW." I told her that we should wait it out and see if it went away by itself in a few days. I told her that, if it got too high, we'd take him in immediately, but where it was low-grade, I wasn't alarmed. She was so shocked that I wasn't more scared. I was like, "This is my fourth, babe. I'm a pro." :) She's so cute. I want her to come to the U.S. to visit us when we go back. Or just maybe move there permanently. :) She has become such a dear friend to me.

Alright, Micah has been sucking on the geometrical shapes that came in our Math supplies, so apparently I need to intervene. Here are some pics taken this last week:

Some cute pics of the kids: http://utahben.smugmug.com/Travel/Random-Shots-of-the-Kids-While/18971796_KfpKzj#1473115070_xTgRHCR

Sequin Mania: http://utahben.smugmug.com/Travel/Shopping-Finds/18864864_jbZbP7#1462247594_Bm87z8Q

Pics of our new kitchen: http://utahben.smugmug.com/Travel/Our-Apartment/18427321_wQ6pj3#1420807863_thcSnBF

Homeschooling Adventures: http://utahben.smugmug.com/Travel/Homeschooling-Adventures/18971928_L5Lbt6#1473142271_MsB3zsf

Love,
Kar