Kar's Kith and Kin

Cheaper pumpkins and a picture thingey to boot.

2012-01-30T12:25:00.000-08:00

So like I said, we got our Halloween pumpkins from the Scoresby Farms stand again this year. Best carving pumpkins ever.

We walked away with one enormous pumpkin, five large pumpkins, two pie pumpkins, and three loaves of pumpkin chocolate chip bread for $20. Not bad, dude. Not bad.

And they even had a picture-taking thingey for the kiddos to pose in.

A Good Refresher

2012-01-29T17:08:00.000-08:00

My mom got me a book called Parenting with Love and Logic about three years ago. She had heard really good things about it and figured I probably needed the help with Dylan.

Which I did. I still hadn't had him tested for ADHD and was in denial about it. It was like living with the Tazmanian Devil. For reals. I did a lot of spanking and screaming. And it did nothing for Dylan.

This book really was such a revelation. One of its basic tenets is that you don't need to have these big, emotional scream-fests when you're punishing your kid or trying to teach your kid. They broke the rules, and this is their consequence. Badda-bing, badda-boom. No need to get all charged up - that's counterproductive. No need to lecture - kids don't listen to lecturing. They're capable of knowing what they did wrong, and they need to learn how to not repeat the behavior again by themselves.

And it really has helped. For instance, my kids have always been terrible eaters. What I specifically remember Love and Logic teaching me is that, if the child doesn't eat his dinner, say, "That's your decision not to eat your dinner. But you can't have any snacks or drinks clear until breakfast tomorrow morning. If you'd rather go hungry all night instead of eating dinner with us, that's your choice." And then you stick with it.

I also mentally applauded when I read certain things, like, for instance, the idea of not being a "Helicopter Parent" - hovering around, swooping in to save the day when your kid forgets his homework, or if your kid gets a bad grade, marching in and demanding extra credit from the teacher to make up for what your kid just plain old didn't do. I wanted to drive back to where I had taught junior high, and throw this book into a few parent faces that I had dealt with who were major, major Helicopter Parents.

Nat called me soon after we got back from China and said, "Hey, they're having a Love and Logic class for free at the library for six weeks; let's sign up!" I readily agreed and went with her every week. We dragged our husbands along, and our parents very, very kindly watched our kids for us.

I felt like an old pro at Love and Logic, but there were a few things that stood out to me in class that I had forgotten from my reading. And they're worth noting:

1. Don't remind your child to do their chore/homework. If you remind him, you're telling him that you don't think him capable of remembering, and you're taking the responsibility on yourself instead of leaving it on his shoulders. I needed to hear this. I'm really bad at badgering/reminding my kids about stuff.

2. Don't be sarcastic. Another big problem for me. When your kid can't go to his friend's birthday party because he didn't finish his chores, and he's whining at you and mad at you and is trying to wear you down into letting him go, don't say, "Wow, that is soooooooooooooooo sad...." And don't say, "I told you that you couldn't go to the party until your chores were done!" You have to really pretend you're sad for them, but stick to your guns: "That is a huge bummer. I hate when I can't do fun things because I didn't get my chores done." When you empathize with them, then they are mad at the appropriate thing - themselves - instead of at YOU.

3. When your kid is in time out, and you release them from time out, don't tell them why they were in time out. It shows them that you don't think they're smart enough to figure it out. And don't lecture. Give them hugs and move on.

4. Don't give warnings. First infraction, and they're done. When your kids start bickering, instead of saying, "If you don't stop bickering, I'll....", just dismiss them. First time. "Feel free to work this out in your bedroom, guys. You're hurting my ears." The end. Don't try to figure out who started it, etc. In real life, you don't get five warnings. The first time you mess up, you get a consequence. And that's that. Love and Logic is all about teaching your kids about consequences so that they're prepared for the real world.

5. Model taking care of yourself. Show them that their negative decisions will affect them, but NOT you. Let them know that, if they get thrown in jail for bad decisions, you won't use the family money to bail them out. You love them, but "our family doesn't work that way."

6. If you keep "rescuing" kids when they're young, they'll expect it when they're older and their decisions carry heavier consequences.

7. Use enforceable statements. Instead of, "Don't talk to me in that tone of voice!" Say, "I'll be glad to listen when your voice is as soft as mine." Or, "I'll be happy to take you to the baseball game as soon as I feel like I'm being treated with respect."

It was a really great refresher course, and the teachers were so. cool. I kept finding myself wishing that they were my friends. :) Hahaha! It's a husband/wife teaching team, and the husband is a principal at a local junior high school. He had lots of good examples and stories to tell us - he uses Love and Logic at his school.

I should seriously just always take this course. Once a week, for the rest of my life. Because it's easy to fall back into old patterns. It was nice to go once a week and get fortified for the upcoming week and to get reminders of what you should and should not do. It was great. Thanks, Nat, for suggesting it!

Dylie Lately

2012-01-26T11:02:00.000-08:00

Dylan and I are in a good place. It wasn't like that for many years, when he had ADHD and I was in denial about it. Now that he's on a good medication, things have been running pretty smoothly. And I really love spending time with him.

Well, I should say that, in MY opinion, he's on a good medication. His teacher doesn't agree. We recently changed medications because she said his wasn't working at all. I felt like it was, when I was with him on weekends and after school, but she didn't. So we changed to a long-acting medication, hoping that would help. Apparently, no. I'm still of the opinion that the medicine is working great, when I'm with him on weekends and after school. Yes, it wears off around 7 p.m., but that's normal. During the day, he's gold.

Not according to Ms. C. But I'm starting to wonder if anything is good enough for her... Like, if he's not perfectly still and quiet all day, there's something really wrong with him, in her opinion. I don't know.

When we run out of clean jammies for him to wear, he's fond of wearing my workout clothes, which drown him, of course. He's figured out a system where he can loop the waist band up and over his head so that the shorts stay on. With my scarf as an added little belt. Such ingenuity:

Yep, he got a mohawk again. Do I like it? No. But he adores it. So I let him have it. It's not hurting anything. Except for maybe my eyes. :)

Dyl is all about computer games and Wii games.

This picture was taken last fall, when he thought there was a wasp inside the house (there wasn't):

His friend, Jackson, comes over almost every day to play Wii with Dylie. They're Wii buddies.

Dylan is the only one of my kids with any kind of attachment to stuffed animals. Jackson gave him a little stuffed bird, and Dyl looooves it. He had the bird play Wii with he and Jackson one day. The bird was Player Number 4:

Dyl is a bit of a worry wart. It's intensified since his daddy's been gone. He's convinced that some bad guy out there is going to somehow get into our house and murder him. I know, it's pretty intense. One night, we were all in the living room, and Dylie wanted some water. But he was too scared to go into the kitchen and get some. I asked why on earth not. He said it was because someone was certainly looking in the kitchen window and was going to break in and kill him.

Most nights, he'll do his nightly assigned reading in his room, no prob:

But every now and then, he'll be too scared to be in his room alone. He says someone is going to break his window and kill him. Last night, he read in the dining room, on the other side of the wall from us, so that he could still feel us close by, but not be distracted by the TV.

This may be bad of me, but I told him a little white lie the other night when he was having a tough time going to sleep. I said, "You know, you have nothing to fear. Only people who are drug dealers get murdered. Are you a drug dealer??"

"NO! Of course not!"

"Well, then you have nothing to worry about! You won't get murdered!"

I know. Bad of me. But I was desperate, yo. I wanted to go to bed. And it really seemed to help him.

Last night, I was vacuuming and shorted our living room fuse or whatever you call it. I had to go outside and flip the breaker switch. Dylan was freaking out. "Mom, are you okay out there? Are you alone? Are you scared? What if someone murders you???"

Apparently, my kids don't deal well with change.

Dylan's imitation of Yoda:

And of Sleeping Beauty, when she has to wear her cloak when she finds out she's really a princess and has to return to the castle and is really sad:

He is so, so, so funny and sweet and cute. I love him.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!!!

2012-01-25T16:30:00.000-08:00

"Turrrrrn and face the CHANNNNNGE! Ch-ch-ch-CHANGE-ES!"

I just like that song. Always have.

So. Before we left, we had the Nappy Neighbors on one side of us. We had the recently-divorced nice guy on the other side. Across the street, we had the Drug Dealer/Domestic Violence Couple. Also across the street, we had sweet Nephi (maker of nasty applesauce) and Dorothy (I think she might be a lesbo, but I'm not sure. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Just some exposition for ya).

When we came back, many things had happened:

1) The biggest, and best, news is that the Drug Dealer got sent to jail (presumably for drug dealing, but you never know), and her husband, Mr. Domestic Violence, ALSO got sent to jail! He was arrested, like, two days before we moved to China, thanks in part to us. He was out on his front lawn, beating Drug Dealer up. Like, holding her with one arm and punching her right in the FACE. So we called the police, and they arrested him and took him away. Nephi told me later that he had also called the police.

Like a winner, Drug Dealer dropped charges against Mr. Domestic Violence. And they were back together again. So it wasn't the Domestic Violence charges that got him in the end. He was actually stealing car parts and hiding them in his garage! Hahaha! So, he got caught, and now he's in the slammer.

Another fun piece of info that Nephi gave me about these guys - when Domestic Violence came back, he told Nephi that the police actually TOLD him who called the cops on him. So he knew we had done it, and he knew that Nephi had done it. Which is REALLY neat. I thought one could trust cops not to divulge information like that??? Maybe not. What if he had, like, retaliated against us??? Nephi has told me several times (he tends to repeat himself sometimes) that he informed Domestic Violence that he carries a firearm in his house, and, from that time forward, Domestic Violence "killed [Nephi] with kindness." I guess Nephi scared Domestic Violence (according to him). Big, tough Neph.

AND, this is what kills me: Domestic Violence told Nephi that Drug Dealer told him that, after he returned from jail after Domestic Violence incident, Drug Dealer had an extra $100 on her person. Domestic Violence demanded where she had gotten the $100. She actually told him that WE, my hubby and I, GAVE it to her. Dude, I wouldn't give her $1, much less $100. She didn't want to tell her boyfriend where she had gotten this money. And, according to Nephi, he BELIEVED her!! What in his experience with her makes him think that anything she says to him is the TRUTH?? Hahaha!

Ben actually saw Drug Dealer at Burger King a few weeks ago. She was working in the drive through window. Ben said, "Aren't you, um...."

"In jail?" she said, helpfully.

"Yeah."

"Oh, yeah," she said, cheerfully, "But they have us do this work release thing, so..."

Ben said he felt really scared and worried when he handed her his credit card to pay for his burger. Yikes. Bikes.

All their stuff was inside and around their house for about a month or so, and then I saw the owner of the house come and clean it all out and cart it away. And then he's been cleaning and fixing the house ever since. There must have been some extensive damage to the home. I saw lots of contractors and people coming over for the past few months. I just want to say, "Next time, if you want someone who actually takes care of your property, CHECK THEIR REFERENCES!!!" Jeez Louise. Nephi says this isn't the first time the owner has rented to horrible people. It makes me so mad. Thanks for making our lives a nightmare for a year, dude. Thanks a lot.

2) Nice divorcee next door - he lost his house. He couldn't pay child support plus his mortgage, etc. etc. So he's gone. And the house sits empty. I feel badly for him. It's his wife who left him. She wanted "more freedom," and last time we talked, he said she spent most of her time bar-hopping. He was so, so sad. He just wanted her back. And his kids back.

3) The Nappy Neighbor parents separated. Nephi told me that another neighbor told him that the hubby - let's call him Hank - actually had an affair and left the wife - let's call her Lana - for the "other woman." Sad, sad, sad. The kids have been pretty mopey. And I don't blame them. One of the many hard things about this situation is that they work for the same company. Awkward. I feel so badly for Lana. Today, I saw Hank come and get several pieces of furniture. He's been out of the house for at least four months, so I'm wondering if he just came to get more furniture than he already took with him for his new apartment, or if the wife and kids are losing the house because they can't afford it now, and he's helping them move? Who knows???

Here's my thing - I know Hank. I actually grew up with him; went to the same schools as him. And he's kind of...a dud. Really a boring guy. Not charming or funny or any of those things that you might imagine being attractive to a woman, you know?? He's not handsome. He has a really high voice and is pretty hefty. Maybe this is mean of me, but I'm like, "Who would want to have an affair with him??" I just don't get it. But I guess there's someone out there for everyone, right? I shouldn't be all judgey. Maybe he's really interesting when you get to know him?

So that's what's going on in our soap-operettic neighborhood. Such drama. What can I say? We leave, and the whole block goes to pot! Haha! Just kidding. At least we still have dear Nephi, who, by the way, sneakily shoveled my walk one evening:

The man is 84 years old and has prostate cancer, and here he is, shoveling my snow. What a babe.

The Punkin Patch

2012-01-24T11:15:00.000-08:00

So yeah, I'm trying to catch up on blogging. Things have just been sooo crazy in the three months since we've been home, so I've been a blogging slacker. I'm trying to be better. These pics are clear back from October, dude. But I need to include them, because I've been slowly printing out my blog as our family photo album/my journal.

My friend, Megs, and I wanted to go to the pumpkin patch that's near my house. I had heard that they had some fun things for kiddos there, and they did. They had a little train ride around the patch - the kids loved it:

That's Megs's son Brynnan on the right:

At the little "train station" after their ride:

This was back when Micah let us do his hair cute:

Now he wears Dylan's green jammie shirt on his head, as his "hair":

Yep, he's back to doing that. I think it's because Ben is in China. Micah started doing it the very day Ben left last week. The poor kid. I don't think he deals well with change.

You may wonder what he's doing in that pic. He's using a piece from Sadie's Littlest Pet Shop collection - it's two carrots - to pretend he has one extra-long tooth.

Back to the punkin patch. Meggie's husband, Mark, in a contemplative mood:

And little Meggie:

They also had a hay bale maze for the kids. They loved that, too. I think they went through it about ten times or so, over and over and over:

Meggie's son, Jonas:

Unfortunately, the pumpkins at the patch were wayyyy too rich for our blood. We all decided to head over to the Scoresby Farm stand to buy 'em. They're just as cheap as Wal-Mart's pumpkins, but easier to carve. I find that Wal-Mart usually only has that kind of pumpkin with spaghetti innards - way too hard to carve.

So, um, basically, we just used the pumpkin patch for its free entertainment - sorry, Pumpkin Patch Guys.

Various Applesauce Adventures

2012-01-20T10:37:00.000-08:00

While we were staying at my parents' house, Mom, Nat, and I made a whoooooole bunch of applesauce. My gramps had picked hundreds of apples from his friend's apple trees, so we got all Becky Home Eckey. We set ourselves up in the garage - it's a sticky mess to make applesauce, so we cut down on some of the mess by making it in the garage, where there is a hose we can spray the floor with.

Nat's kids love cranking the applesauce maker thingey:

Mom has an old camp stove that we use to boil the apples:

Nat and I were having so much fun. We kept singing that song from the Disney Johnny Appleseed cartoon, the one where they list all of the things you can make with apples:

"There's apple pickles
Oh so tasty
Apple tarts and apple pastry..."

Sometimes the apples would boil over, and one or two apples would fall on the garage floor and get all smooshed. We called it Apple Carnage. And then we added it to the song:

"There's Apple Carnage, nice and tasty,
Apple tarts and apple pastry..."

It was funny. I love hanging out with Nat. It felt so good to be together again.

Just some of the billions of jars of applesauce we made:

It took several hours, honestly. My dad came home at lunch and saw us slaving away, and then, when he came home after work, there we still were, cranking the applesauce thingey. He said, "I have a good idea. Why don't we just BUY applesauce at the store to put in food storage? Then it won't be so much work."

"But Dad," I said, "This applesauce is practically free!"

"I promise you that I will buy you all the applesauce you could ever want for your food storage. It won't cost you a cent. So that we can forego this awful mess next year."

Sounds good to me.

Speaking of applesauce, my dear 84-year-old across-the-street neighbor, Nephi, was getting his applesauceing on at the same time my family was. He brought some over. He comes up with interesting add-ins:

I think he had put, like, raisins and coconut in it, maybe? I just....couldn't bring myself to eat it. Call me a snob.

He also brought some over that he had made three years ago. He bragged that it still tasted as fresh as the day he made it:

Um, I doubt that. Very much. That just looks like a tub of poop. I didn't taste that stuff, either. Ya gotta be careful with the stuff Nephi brings over. He often brings over gallons of store-bought juice - pomegranate, cranberry, pineapple, etc. It's so sweet of him. But, um, usually, they have expired. We just graciously accept his gifts and don't tell him that most of them are inedible or undrinkable. He really means well. He's such a sweetheart.

Gagey Lately

2012-01-19T12:56:00.000-08:00

Awww. He's so cute. Just when I think he's reached his pinnacle of cuteness, more cuteness ensues. He really is such a blessing in our family. Very easy-going and sweet. Except for when he's tired or thirsty. Then watch out! Haha! When he cries, he does as our other kids have done - he cries in vowel sounds: "Ayyyyyyyyyyyyyy...... aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah......ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh....."

He started walking within a week or so of getting home. Oh, how I love watching him toddle around. He kind of leans back, with his huge belly leading the way, and takes steps with his little toes turned out like a ballerina. I've seriously never seen such a huge belly on a kid, and I love it.

Gage's bedroom is pretty cold, so we keep a space heater on in there. Ben forgot to put on the heater one night when he put Gage down, and when I got him up the next morning, his poor little lips were BLUE:

I took that picture and sent it to Ben's e-mail to make him feel bad. But did Gage complain any? Nope.

Just today, he started pretending to talk on my cell phone. He'd put it up to his ear and say, "Aoh?" Adorable.

Gage loves to give smooches. He hasn't figured out how to kind of purse his lips to do it, so when he wants to give you a smooch, you get an open mouth slobber kiss. But it's so cute that you don't mind. After he kisses you, he says, "Dank you!" Every time.

He's started saying, "Uh-oh," too.

He loves throwing stuff. He especially likes to get into my tupperware lids and chuck them down the stairs. And he's learning to go up the stairs. He hasn't yet figured going down yet.

Luckily, he hasn't figured out how to open the toilet seat, but if it's left open, he throws things in there. Last week, when Ben and I were on our cruise, he threw in a couple of DVD's when my mom wasn't looking. :)

He really, really hates when I change his diaper. It takes away from his play time, and he's not okay with that. He kicks my boobs over and over, and it hurts.

He thinks Sadie is the bee's knees. They're good, good buddies. I love that. He knows to be wary of Micah. Micah just adores him, but through sheer evil compulsion, he often bullies Gage. I think he's jealous of Gage and is kind of fighting for his place in our family. So poor Gage sometimes gets shoved or pushed. It makes me SOOOO mad.

His gigantic lips are always chapped, poor thing. And he got a bloody lip yesterday when Micah shoved him. Micah is Satan. He has sucking blisters often, as well, because he sucks on his right pointer finger all the time.

Gage is very, very brave. When Ben swings him around and throws him up in the air, he laughs and laughs and squeals in delight. (Very different from Micah, who gets really scared when Ben does that stuff.) Another difference between the two is their appetites. Gage can really "put away the groceries," as my friend's husband says. He eats as much as Ben or I at mealtimes, which is amazing.

He hates apples and loves bananas. He loves bean burritos, like his dear old mom.

He still can't figure out the concept of tilting his sippy cup up to make liquid come out of it. All of my kids have had a weird time with that. I'm considering getting the straw kind of sippy cup, because I'm tired of helping him with it. His favorite drink is chocolate milk. When I give him water at naptime and bedtime, he looks at me like, "What IS this crap??"

He still is needing two naps a day, which is weird. I've been trying to wean him to one, and he just can't hack it. So I'm going with the two naps for now. I guess some kids need more sleep than others.

He adores sleeping in. Sometimes he'll sleep until 10 or 10:30 if I let him. (And when I'm particularly tired some mornings, yeah. I let him.)

Example of Jet Lag.

2012-01-18T07:29:00.000-08:00

We had hired a shuttle to take us from our hotel in Beijing to the airport. Beijing is just so enormous that it was going to take maybe an hour or two on the freeway to get there, so we left extremely early to be on the safe side. To our delight, the freeways were free and clear and we were making excellent time. And then.... the shuttle quit on us. Just shivered and clunked and...coasted to a stop. Our driver didn't speak one single word of English. We didn't know if he had forgotten to fill up his gas tank, or if there was something else wrong. I'm pretty sure he was swearing like a sailor. Chinese swear words are really funny. It just sounded like a lot of "ShhhhhhUH! ShUH!! ChaichuhshUH!!"

I had a horrible moment where I thought to myself, "This is it for me. I'm going to be stuck in China for the rest of my life." Irrational thought? Yeah. But for reals. I was panic-stricken. Luckily, he called a different shuttle. They came to the freeway, loaded our luggage up, and whisked us away to the airport. Phew. We made it in plenty of time.

Ben and I went on a Caribbean cruise last week (I promise to write a post on it later), which entailed us flying across the country to Florida. After listening to a screaming toddler all the way there, and a different screaming toddler all the way back, I've gotta say that my kids did really well on our flight back to the states. Gage didn't want to sit still, so we had to do lots of walking up and down the aisles. There was no sleeping to be had for Ben or I on the plane, with four needy kids. But we made it. With no screaming.

My family came to pick us up at the airport, and when I went down that escalator and saw my dad standing there, I started crying. I was so relieved to be home. So. Relieved. He was soon joined by my mom and my sis, Nat. Mom was freaking out when she saw Dylan. She said he looked really, really skinny. I hadn't really noticed. Nat's daughter, Ivy, was so funny. When she feels awkward in a situation, she puts one hand on her hip. So she was all about the hip that morning.

Jet lag is an interesting thing. When I went to London for a semester in college, I was horribly jet lagged when we arrived. I slept for, like, three days straight. Princess Diana died, like, the day we arrived, and we all wanted to go watch the funeral procession, but I just could not get up and go. But when I returned to the states after four months, I didn't struggle at all.

I felt like, for all of us, when we got to China in July, we adjusted pretty well and pretty quickly to the time change. But coming home was a different story. Maybe it's traveling East that's harder? Who knows. I should write a paper on it. Or not.

We had to stay with my parents for about one week while my friend, Lindsey, was moving out of our house and into an apartment (she and her hubby rented it while we were gone). My parents kept waking me up in the morning and saying, "Do you want to go work out?" And I'd be like, "Umhphhhhhhhhsheooooooooooophhhhhhhh." I just couldn't get up.

Micah struggled the most. Well, maybe he and Ben tied for biggest jet lag struggle. It took both of them about a week to get into the swing of things. Ben flew immediately down to Vegas after we got into Idaho Falls to visit his dad, who had just had emergency surgery (he's doing much better now). And he basically spent his whole time down there sleeping. I think he slept for 20 hours straight one day. Silly guy.

So I was at my parents' house with my kids, and Micah and I were sharing a room. The kid would just NOT sleep. It was to the point where I was swearing at him and throwing pillows at him - "JUST GO TO SLEEP, YOU FREAK!!" Not my best mother moment.

One time, my folks offered to take me and the kids to Five Guys Burgers and Fries. Oh, baby. I was excited. But then I fell asleep on the couch. When they gently jostled me and asked if I still wanted to go, I said, "Ohmspphhhhhhhhhhhhhewoooooooooooiphhhhhhh." So they went and brought some food back for us. It was tough.

Speaking of jet lag, my Main Man just left this morning to go back to China. Sighhhhhhhhh. I'm very, very sad. Most likely, he'll be there for one month, and then come back, and then have to return there at the beginning of April for five or six months. Woe is me. I'll miss him terribly, but I just couldn't rip the kids out of school and take them over there again. It was too hard on them. And on me, honestly. I was really struggling over there. So depressed. So this is how it has to be for now. I just keep telling myself that I'm so grateful that Ben has a job that pays the bills. That is a huge blessing.

Sadie Lately

2012-01-16T11:58:00.000-08:00

Sadie actually went through a tough time transitioning back to life in the States. Which was weird. She didn't necessarily love living in China. But I think it was hard coming back to school for her, first of all, because anything that cuts into her playing time is NOT okay with her, and secondly, because I think a lot of the girls in her grade and class had already established friendships, and she had a hard time finding her niche again.

She had been pretty good friends with a girl named Daisy last year. When I took Sades back to school that first day, she was nervous, so I stood in line outside with her while they waited to go in to their class. Some kids said hi to Sadie, some kids stared, some kids didn't care. Whatevs. But I'll never forget the look on Daisy's face. It wasn't curiosity. It wasn't happiness. It was absolute, unequivocal dismay. She was NOT happy that Sadie was back. And I thought that was so weird.

On Halloween, the kids had a little Halloween parade at school. Sadie was talking to a little girl "with orange hair," as she puts it. She told the orange-haired girl that she would like to maybe have a play-date with her sometime. Daisy had overheard their conversation, grabbed the orange-haired girl's hand, yelled, "YOU WILL NOT HAVE A PLAY DATE TOGETHER!! SHE IS MY FRIEND!!!" and dragged the girl away.

Dylan actually heard Daisy yelling at Sadie, from inside his classroom. It was that loud.

Sadie also said that Daisy would give her mean looks on the bus. I try to stay out of a lot of things - I don't want to be one of those "helicopter parents." And I think it's important for kiddos to learn to deal with difficult social situations. However, when I heard about the screaming incident, I was like, okay, that's enough. So I called the school counselor, explained the situation, and asked him to maybe pull in both girls and have them talk it out. I mean, who knows - maybe Sadie did something to really offend Daisy. I know from my own experience as a teacher that there are two sides to every story. And sometimes Sadie can be a stinker. If I knew her mom, I would have talked to her myself and gotten her input, for sure. But I don't, so this was the next best thing.

I had talked to the school counselor at the beginning of November, and has he pulled the girls in for a talk? Nope. I guess maybe he thought it would blow over. I ask Sadie about Daisy from time to time. She says Daisy still gives her mean looks, but there haven't been any more screaming incidents. So maybe everything is okay for now...

Sadie's teacher told me that she had a hard time in the class with being back. She kind of stayed by her teacher's side at all times, and was sullen and frowny and pouty a lot. Sounds familiar. Like I said, she can be a stinker sometimes. I guess some kid came to school with a new mohawk, and it fa-reaked Sadie out. She couldn't even look at the kid. Weird. But her teacher, at parent-teacher conference time, said that Sadie seemed to be more at ease, more like the "old Sadie" she used to know. (Sadie's teacher taught her in kindergarten last year. She took the 1st grade position that became available when a teacher retired at the end of the year last year.)

Sades is really, really, really forgetful (the poor girl has two forgetful parents - she was doomed from the get-go). She often forgets to bring her homework home, or forgets to turn it in when she gets to school. It drives me berzerk. I keep telling her how embarrassed she'll be if she flunks 1st grade and has to repeat it again...

Her teacher says she's right there in the average, as far as reading and math skills go. Which is good. Dylan does so well in school that it's hard not to compare and worry. But as long as she's not behind, that's good.

Her dance teacher (my cousin, Kort), moved back to California last summer, so Sadie hasn't been doing anything extracurricular since we've been back. We just don't really have the fundage. Or the time. Maybe we'll sign her up for something once we get our feet under us a little more. She says she wants to learn to play golf. Which I think is adorable.

When Dylan got baptized, like two days before we left for China, Sadie stared at him in horror as he was immersed in the water, and then brought back up. She leaned over to me and said, "When it's time for me to be baptized, do I have to go all the way in the water like that?"

"Well, yeah, hon."

She frowned, folded her arms, and said, "Well, then I'm NOT going to do it."

One-on-one time with me is really important to her. She insists upon us spending time together quite often. Which is cute. She's always saying, "Mom, when can you and me do something together?" She loves to play games with me. Her favorite is "Bonopoly." She likes to build houses and hotels on her property. That's her favorite. My mom had two different Aggravation board games, so she gave me one, and now Sades likes to play that with me a lot.

Sadie still isn't much of a girly-girl. When her friends come over to play, they are always saying, "Where are your dress-ups? Let's play dress-up." We don't have any. Sadie couldn't care less about playing dress-ups. She prefers to run around and hide and jump out and yell at people. I guess it comes from having all brothers.

I just love this girl. I worry about her a lot. I worry about all my kids. It comes with the territory when you're a parent.

The Great Wall of China - Marked.

2012-01-06T10:11:00.000-08:00

The whole second day of touring, Charles, our tour guide, kept going over our itinerary, and whenever he mentioned seeing the Great Wall of China, he would say, "And then, your dreams will finally come true - you will see the Great Wall." He said that, like, five times. It was really cute.

We were going to go to a popular section of the wall, called Badaling, but then our bus driver told Charles that there was horrible, horrible traffic on the freeway. Charles was worried that we wouldn't get to the Great Wall until nightfall, and he wanted us to be able to see it in daylight. So he got permission from his boss to take us to a different section of the wall, a little more toward the east of the Badaling section. I guess it usually costs more to get in to this part, for some reason. But they didn't charge us extra, which is nice.

It still took us a good two hours to get to this section, I'd say. Lots of winding roads. Sadie, Dylan, and I all got carsick and had to move to the front of the bus. We were glad to finally get there.

So, after you get off the bus, you walk up this little path to get to the chairlift that takes you up to the wall. The path was packed with vendors selling their wares:

It was the most fun atmosphere. For reals. And I wanted to do some shopping, but our time was so limited, so we were forced to kind of march past everyone. One guy was like, "Pretty American lady! Buy t-shirts! Only one dollar each!!" T-shirts for only one dollar??? A good deal, but for reals, we had to get the heck up that mountain.

There's this little area where you wait in line for the chairlift - Ben took some pics of the kids. These pics crack me up:

Micah was in a FABULOUS mood. :) The Pakistani guys were laughing at him so hard. I loved those guys. They were so funny.

Here is little Sades:

And me, riding in the chairlift!:

I was FLIPPING out. And I don't know why. Chairlifts are very, very familiar to me. I'm trying to figure out why I was so nervous. Was it because I had two kids with me? It was my first time riding on one with my kids. And I was scared of them falling. Was it higher than other chairlifts? Was it because there wasn't this nice, powdery snow you could fall into if you slipped??? No idea. I just couldn't wait to get off.

I adored our time on the wall. It was just amazing.

More Micah Fun:

I think he had HAD it with pictures. Three months of constant picture-taking by strangers had done him in.

Dylan was holding his panda stuffed animal in his black bag. He loooooves that thing.

Look at how tiltey the stairs are - it's not easy walking along:

Micah and I are in there, toward the left:

Can you see the wall snaking up the mountain and then, at the top, going to the right? I'm amazed at how much work and time and struggle it must have been to build this thing:

So, there are little stations on the wall, not too far apart. I think Charles told us that they were an arrow's shot away from each other. So there were guards at each little station. Some of them are dilapidated:

Some of them were bigger than others:

I love this picture Ben took. I don't know much about photography, but to me, this picture might have good "composition"? You'll have to tell me if I'm right, Megs:

Mike and me:

So. Funny story about Mike. He decided he had to pee. Of course. So, there are all of these little holes near the walkway that would help drain water when it rained, right? I had no choice. I had to help Mikey pee through one of the holes. Several Chinese people stopped and stared. When we finished up, one guy says, in muddled English, "Good job!" It was hilarious. So now Micah can always say that he once peed off the Great Wall of China.

I so wanted this picture to turn out better so we could send it in our Christmas cards, but Gage wouldn't turn around and face the camera, dang it:

Gage had HAD it:

Two days straight stuck in a backpack - I don't blame him.

Another amazing photograph by Ben:

Isn't it gorgeous? This is with no photoshopping or touchups. Not kidding. The view was breathtaking.

Such tiltey stairs:

More Micah Fun:

Some more Chinese paparazzi:

Ah, here we are inside of one of those station thingeys:

And here are Ben, Dylan, and Gage on the way down the mountain:

This is a sad part of the story. Charles was like, "If you don't meet at the bus at 4:20, we will leave without you." And Ben and I didn't keep good track of time. All of the sudden, it was 4:10, and we were like, crap!!! We have to get down there!! You can ride an alpine slide down the mountain to that little path and parking lot, which would have been so much fun. Sadie had so been looking forward to riding the alpine slide. She couldn't care less that we were standing on one of the wonders of the world. Nope. She wanted to ride that alpine slide. We could see people sliding as we rode up in the chairlift.

However, the line to slide was really, really long, and there is no way we would have made it to the bus in time if we had ridden it down. So we had to ride the chairlift down. Sadie was heartbroken. She seriously cried for like an hour. I promised her that, this next summer, we'll go over to Jackson and ride the alpine slide. Poor girl. Life is hard when you're six. :)

It took another two hours to get back into Beijing. We were supposed to visit a silk-painting factory and the Bird's Nest Olympic Stadium thingey, but our time was up. I wasn't heartbroken. Ben had seen the Bird's Nest a couple of weeks before and said it was already crumbling and in disrepair. Which is sad.

So that was that for our touring in Beijing! I seriously had so much fun. I'm convinced that, for a somewhat-finicky American woman, it's better to TOUR in China than to LIVE in China. :) We had such interesting adventures, but boy, are we glad to be home.

Oh, Jade, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways...

2012-01-01T21:41:00.000-08:00

For some reason, I don't really think I'd ever seen jade before we went to China. Perhaps because the only piece of fine jewelery I own is my wedding ring, and because the only fine jewelery store I've been in was a cute little Jewish guy's dark, little shop in the jewelery district of L.A. to purchase said ring. I'm not much of a fine jewelery junkie. I'm more of a...junk jewelery junkie. :) I like it plastic and I like it chunky. I'm a Junkie Chunky Junkie.

So anywho, when I had to buy linens for our apartment in China, the only place you could get good ones (according to my interpreters) were department stores. So we were walking past the jewelery counter to get to the linens, which I ordinarily would have done without looking sideways, but out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of something green and GORGEOUS, and I stopped in my tracks and said, "WHAT...IS THAT???" Pretty, pretty, pretty.

And expensive. Boy howdy. I really wanted to bring home a nice, chunky pendant as a souvenir for myself, but dang. Too rich for my blood. I sent home some microscopic buddha pendants for my sister and BFF for their birthdays, but having bought them off the street, I'm not entirely sure they're real. (Sorry, girls. They may be plastic. The vendors swore up and down that they were real, but...I don't know that I trust them. Just so you know...)

On our second day in Beijing, we stopped at a jade-carving factory - another one of those things where they gave us oodles and gobs of time to spend all our money. It was fascinating. Here's a guy doing the carving:

It reminds me of tile cutting, with the water spraying and all. Something I've experienced recently. Another post for another day. I don't know how they do it. I just know that the end result is amazing:

And, on a larger scale:

Dylan saw another wasp, I think. He's so funny.

A closer look at the jade carving boat of beauty:

It's all about dragons in China.

On the other side of the giant jade boat are a bunch of foo dogs:

The prices in the factory were really, really high. But of course, we relented and got a couple of things. We got Ben's dad and my dad these things called Happy Family Balls. The ones we got for them were woefully small, but certified as real jade. We picked up ourselves a "jade" happy family ball at the silk market later that night for much, much cheaper. But is it real jade?? That is the question:

Isn't it GORGEOUS?? Ben wanted one that was a more olive color. There are tons of different colors of jade, ranging from a really light turquoise to black. I think the gal there told us that, the darker the color, the older the jade. I got a light turquoise happy family ball for my dad, and Ben chose a black one for his dad.

What is a Happy Family Ball, you ask? I found the most charming explanation online, undoubtedly written by a Chinese person:

"Jade happy family ball. This ball was carved by a whole pics stone. The carving is
very complicated. One ball represent one big family . And one big ball covered many
small balls inside. One layer represent one generation.

For example,if a ball covered 4 layers together that can represent 4 generations live together in a family.

Outside the ball is the design of dragon and phoenix that was the symbol of double happiness. Between dragon and phoenix is lucky flower with 6 petals that was the symbol of good luck. How to carve the ball, it is easy to say but hard to do. First, we need to dig many holes on the surface of the round jade ball .and then use diament tool to carve the distance between every two holes, part by part, from outside to inside,no mistake.

This is the medium size ,which need about 55 days to complete the carving."

I loved that explanation. I couldn't describe it any better (or any cuter). It's so neat - the balls inside can roll around within each other and everything. And all cut out of one stone. I adore it.

I really wanted to bring some jade earrings back for Lex for her birthday, but the only ones I could find were studs, and Lex isn't much of a stud-wearer. Unless Chris has his arm around her, get it? (Chris is Lex's hubby. So get it? Stud-wearer?? Arm around her??? Hahaha!) So, um, anywho, I wanted something chunky and never, ever found it.

And that's something I noticed about China. I never saw anyone wearing earrings. Maybe it's not a big thing over there? Six-inch heels to go grocery shopping, yes. But dangly earrings? No such thing. And I hardly ever saw earrings for sale. Only studs. So that was interesting.

So here's what I did. It's so dumb. But I wanted chunky jade earrings for my sis, dang it! So. All of the cars in China have these things hanging from their rear-view mirrors. They remind me of the graduation tassels that sometimes people hang from their rear-view mirrors here. But there's jade or gold coins or whatever interspersed between these tassel things. I'm sure it's something about luck.

So I bought one of these rear-view mirror hangey thingeys. And when I got home, I cut the tassel things apart and had some beautiful jade stones to work with. And then I bought a jewelery-making book and tried to figure out how to make earrings. For a first time effort, they look alright:

The brown stones are some I had leftover from making a watch a couple of years ago. I thought they looked nice next to the jade. The bigger jade pieces dangling in the middle are little turtles. Cute, huh?

Um, they fell apart twice the night I gave them to Lex, so I'm not sure how they're doing at this juncture. I think my jewelery-making days are over. But it was a nice thought. I'll have to make it up to you, Lex, and get you some earrings made by actual professionals. I'll stick with my day job - running after kiddos.

Very Superstitious - The Ming Tombs

2011-12-26T21:23:00.000-08:00

OMGGGGGGGGGG. I swear that every holiday season gets more and more crazy as the years go on. It's been, like, three weeks since I last blogged! Sheesh!!!

Okay. Next stop - the Ming Tombs. Now, here's the deal - there were 16 emperors in the Ming dynasty, and 13 of the 16 emperors are buried at this site. The tombs are spread out over 15 square miles. This tomb we went to is the most popular, the tomb of Yongle, the 3rd Ming emperor.

This is the first gate you get to - the Gate of Eminent Favor:

The center arch could only be used to transport the body of the emperor to his resting place. Everyone else had to use the other arches to walk through the gate.

This is the Hall of Eminent Favor:

It was a sacrificial hall.

We could not, for the life of us, find Sadie's jacket, and we knew she'd need one, so the night before, when Ben made his run to the silk market, he looked for children's jackets, but they didn't have them. This was the smallest sweatshirt he could find - a women's extra small. It was still huge:

Sadie crouches like this all the time - our Chinese friends loved it, because this is how the Chinese customarily rest or relax:

They kept saying, "Sadie is Chinese! Sadie is Chinese!"

There were these carvings all along all the tiers and stairways:

I read that they are meant to resemble clouds and are supposed to be beacons to guide the souls of the deceased.

Inside the Hall of Eminent Favor (this was the first time that we could actually go INTO an enclosure. A miracle), there is a huge sculpture of Yongle:

I looooove that picture because of Dylan. He had seen a wasp and was freaking out; hence the pinching of the neck of his shirt. For some reason, whenever he sees a bug, he is worried the bug will fly into his shirt. It cracks me up. What a wuss!

So these columns are sooooo tall - 43 feet tall, to be exact:

And each one was originally a tree TRUNK. They're big. And rumor has it that they were transported clear from the south of China (and this was clear back in the 1400s) up to Beijing for this purpose. Can you imagine how long that must have taken???

I love this model of an ancient Chinese ship:

I read that you can actually ride one of these in Hong Kong somewhere. I would have liked to have done that. There were a lot of things I would have liked to have done. :)

Some artifacts they had on display - hairpins:

Crowns:

Vases:

Cups:

Ancient artwork:

I love this pic, too, because it shows Dylan holding my hand. I love that he still holds my hand. One of my favorite things about him:

To our immense relief, our tour guide the second day wasn't the loud screaming lady. I think his name was Charles, and he was a doll:

Behind him is a Pakistani guy who was in our group. There were three of these Pakistani guys, and they were hilarious. They got the biggest kick out of teasing Micah and making him scream. I liked them immediately.

This is the funniest thing about the whole Ming Tombs thing. I kept thinking we'd actually see the TOMBS. Being called the Ming Tombs and all. Nope. You see the entrance to the tombs, but only one of the tombs (an emperor named Ding Ling. I think that name is funny) has actually been excavated. What you get to see here at Chang Ling is a hill wherein Yongle is buried:

Charles told us that they're too scared for the oxygen to ruin everything. So it sits there, inside the dirt. I seriously thought I'd see an old casket or whatever, you know? Like you see all over Europe. With intricate carvings on the top, etc. So Yongle, his wife, and 16 of his concubines are all in there. Somewhere.

Micah, making like a local:

At the entrance to the tombs (which you can't actually enter), there is a big building called the Spirit Tower. There's quite a view from the top of it:

This was so interesting - each brick had the brickmaker's name on it:

That way, the emperor would know who to praise/punish for the workmanship, depending on how well it held up. :)

As you can see, Dylan was still concerned about wasps:

This was interesting - a tree that had grown through one of the walls of the Spirit Tower:

You can see how pidgeon-toed Dylan is in this pic:

Right after this picture was taken, for reasons unknown to me, Dylan shoved Sadie and made her fall down this steep ramp. I was pissed. I don't think he even knew why he did it. He is very compulsive like that.

A good shot of the Spirit Tower:

This little gate is really interesting:

According to superstition, you can't walk through it on your way to the Spirit Tower. It's bad luck. You can only walk through it when you are leaving the Spirit Tower. And you have to walk through it holding hands with your wife or husband. You have to step through it with your left foot first. And you have to shout, in your native language, "I'LL BE BACK!!!" If you don't do these things, you're destined for bad luck FORRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEVVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRR.

So Ben wanted to take a picture of the kids and I walking through the gate and yelling, "I'll be back!"

So we did it. And then Charles came running up to us, brow furrowed.

"Why didn't you walk through this gate with your husband???" he asked.

"Um, because he wanted to take a picture," I said.

"But now you won't be able to be together forever!!" he whispered, dead serious.

"Um, I think we will be okay," I said, smiling sweetly.

Charles told us a lot about Chinese superstitions when we were on the bus on the way to the tombs. It was fascinating. He talked about the animal years. Like, I was born in 1977, the year of the snake. That is supposed to mean that I am pliable, that I bend with each new situation, like a snake can bend its body easily.

Charles asked when Sadie was born. We said 2005. "That's the year of the rooster!" he said. "That means that she must love getting up really early. She is a morning person." Ben and I looked at each other and chuckled. "Uh, not really. She sleeps in and hates waking up." Charles seemed thoroughly confused that the Zodiac animal didn't really match her personality. He seriously treated it as undisputed truth.

Next year, 2012, is the year of the dragon. If you have a baby born in 2012, they will be very powerful, talented, and strong. (Ben likes to brag that he was born in a year of the dragon, which he was.) Charles told us that many, many couples actually timed their pregnancies so that their babies would be born next year. Can you imagine??

He told us more about some of the superstitions of the Chinese. For example, many buildings will not show an eighth floor. Ben and I actually noticed this. You'll be riding in the elevator, and you'll see all the buttons for all the floors - 1, 2, 3, and so on, but then there is no 8. It goes straight to 9. They still build an eighth floor, but because 8 is an unlucky number, they label it the 9th floor. Like I told you, I don't make this stuff up. I just tell you about it.

I love these waterspout thingeys:

The dragons look like they have braces. So I feel an affinity with them, since I've had braces three times in my life. I feel your pain, dude. I feel your pain.

A lot of these trees are hundreds of years old. Each one was labeled according to how old it was. I think this one is 200 years old:

The Ming Tombs were nice and uncrowded. It was a refreshing change from the day before. :) And Charles was so nice. He let us take pictures and wander around. That's my kind of tour guide.

Two Seconds at the Summer Palace

2011-12-06T11:53:00.000-08:00

Ugh, I really should be making jello for dinner. But what am I doing? Blogging. That's so me.

Alright, the Summer Palace! The last stop for our first day of Beijing. So, no, I wasn't wearing the same shirt for seven days. All of this happened in one day!!

Kay. So the Summer Palace was built by an emperor named Qianlong. It's situated on a hill by a man-made lake. The hill is actually made from the earth moved to make the lake. It's north of the city and was basically a vacation home for the emperors. I guess it was much, much cooler there than in the Forbidden City. I can imagine. There are tons of trees and gardens at the Summer Palace, and basically zero trees and foliage in the Forbidden City. If I was the emperor, I would want to stay in the Summer Palace permanently, dude.

You can take a little boat across the lake, which is fun and really refreshing. Our boat looked exactly like this:

You can see, behind the boat, the hill made from the dug-out earth. It's called Longevity Hill. The building behind the boat on the left is the tallest one on the hill - it's called The Temple of Buddhist Virtue. It's where the emperor would pray on the 1st and 15th of each month. It's so weird to me that such a huge, gorgeous building would only be used twice a month. That's what I kept thinking of the Temple of Heaven - "All that work, for just visiting twice per year??"

Here's a closer view of the Temple of Buddhist Virtue:

This is called Happiness Longevity Hall - Emperor Qianlong's library:

This grouping of buildings is called the Court of Picture-Like Scenery:

I wish I knew what those buildings were for. Maybe for looking at the scenery?? :) Just a wild guess.

This is called the Autumn-Depicting House:

Again, no clue what it was for. Seriously, all of these pictures were taken from our boat, and we got out and got to see like two things and then had to get back on the boat.

This is called the Bronze Pavilion - it's made of mostly bronze and weighs 207 tons:

Do I know what the Bronze Pavilion is for? Nope.

Ah, now here is something I know a little about - it's called the Marble Boat. It's actually made of wood, but painted to look like marble:

However, it's not seaworthy - it's actually built onto a concrete pedestal and just sits there. Haha!

The lady that ordered the boat built was called Empress Dowager Cixi:

The Chinese call her The Dragon Lady, because she was soooo powerful. This woman amazes me so much, because she started out as a low-ranking concubine to an emperor named Xianfeng. BUT, she gained power when she bore the emperor's only son. Out of who knows how many kids. Remember - each emperor had thousands of concubines. And then that emperor died when her son was only six years old, so she became kind of his advisor.

Maybe rising in the ranks went to her head, because she looooooved her power. She actually used money earmarked to improve the Imperial Navy to expand and improve the Summer Palace. Our tour guide told us that she had 200 courses from which to choose for each meal. Holy moly. Just for her!!! This wasn't a meal for her and a bunch of courtiers. Just for her! Imagine all the food that was unused and thrown away!

Anyways, so that "marble" "boat" was built from those embezzled funds, among lots of other things. And I guess she liked to get on the "boat" and feel the coolness from the lake. I don't blame her. Summer in this part of China is a KILLER. I know from experience, dude.

And look! Another long corridor!!:

I love these. This one was even more ornate than the one at the Temple of Heaven. This was built so that Emperor Qianlong's mom could walk through the gardens protected from the elements. So funny. Get an umbrella, lady!

Ben wanted to snap a pic of the kids and I:

Gagey was sleeping. And Micah was being...Micah.

So, while Ben was posing us and taking pictures of us and trying to get Micah to smile, all of these tourists started gathering and taking pictures of us, too. I seriously felt like I was on the red carpet. It was flash, flash, flash, flash. It was really uncomfortable for me. Here I am, saying in my head, "Alllllrighty then....time to escape....":

Before long, our Nazi-like tour guide was screaming at us to get in line to get back on the boat to leave. The line was really long and very compact. Because of where we were in line, we missed the boat our tour guide wanted us to get on, so we got yelled at. :) By this time, I had HAD it:

The ride back across the lake was gorgeous, because the sun was setting. This pagoda is called Yu Feng Pagoda:

This is called the 17-arch bridge. It connects the Eastern edge of the lake to one of the man-made islands on the lake:

And of course there's a reason for 17 arches. From either side of the bridge, the architects wanted there to be nine arches to the middle of the bridge. And nine is a lucky number. So no matter what side of the bridge you're on, there are 9 arches to the middle arch. The middle arch is shared/claimed by both sides. I don't make this stuff up; I just tell you about it. :)

That night, when we got back to our hotel, I sent Ben to the silk market to pick up non-Chinese dinner for us and some more gifts for family and friends. I gave Gage some snacks and a drink and put him down for a very, very needed evening nap. And the other three kids and I gathered in the second hotel room on the bed and watched Harry Potter on HBO China. It was awesome. Ben brought back pizza, and we gorged ourselves. It tasted amazing.

And, a little factoid for ya - HBO in China is totally edited. Everything on TV, no matter the channel, is basically rated G. Which is kind of cool for a family like ours.

You look just like Angelina Jolie!!!

2011-12-03T22:35:00.000-08:00

After the Temple of Heaven, we were off to another tourist trap - the pearl market. Micah was dead to the world at this point:

It's hard work getting carried around all day. :) Haha!

We were ushered into a little classroom...

...and a lady there taught us all about pearls, which are a huge export in China. She told us that most of the pearls grown in China are actually freshwater pearls, and that the majority of them are grown and harvested in the lake in Beijing where the Summer Palace is located. (The Summer Palace is my next post. Stay tuned. If I ever get a dang moment to blog - December is busy.)

Freshwater pearls actually yield about 25 pearls per mussel. Cool, huh? She actually cracked one open for us and showed us the rows upon rows of teeny pinkish pearls. They were very small - she said that this mussel was only two years old or so, and that they usually let the mussels grow more mature before they crack them open - when they're six or so. She kind of wedged the pearls out of the mussel and let each of us keep a couple of them. Dylan asked if he could have mine in addition to his, to give to his girlfriend, Sierra. He's so cute.

So there are four colors of pearls that the freshwater mussel makes - pink, white, and purple. They're just gorgeous. She told us which colors go best with which kind of complexions - the white are supposed to look really good on olive-skinned people with dark hair. The pink is supposed to look best on blondes with tan skin. And the purple is supposed to look best with brunettes or blondes that have non-olive skin.

The gal in there taught us how to tell between real pearls and fake pearls. She rubbed two different strands of pearls together. One of them sounded kind of like hard plastic toys rubbing each other. The other sounded like two smooth rocks rubbing each other. I couldn't tell them apart by sight. The one that sounded like rocks was the real set of pearls. She says that sometimes people create fake pearls by using ground pearl dust and some other component together.

She also said that, when you rub two real pearls together, they will leave a small amount of dust on your hands. Fake pearls won't. So now ya know.

Then we were let into the main area to do some shopping. The pearls weren't cheap by any means, but gosh, they were gorgeous. Ben tried to do some bartering, but they weren't having any of that here. We really should have saved our money and gone to the silk market for pearls (though this shop was a state-run, guaranteed certified pearl place, and who knows if the ones in the silk market are real?), but the lure was too great, and we got a few birthday and Christmas presents for certain relatives who shall remain nameless, except for Mom. Her birthday was in October, so she's received her gift. We got her a necklace and bracelet with pink pearls in it. Yes, she's blonde with non-olive skin, so we should have given her purple, but I knew she already had purple pearls. My mom is a jewelery junkie. She had purple and she had white, so we gave her pink. And she loves them.

As we were milling about, there were, as is usual in any store or shop in China, about ten billion salespeople who were just standing around. I feel badly for them. But at least they have jobs, right? Maybe the Chinese have it right in that way. So I went to this one counter and was looking at necklaces, and this cute little Chinese gal looks at me dreamily and says, "You look just like Angelina Jolie."

To say I was flattered is an understatement.

But then I realized that this was probably like the flattery technique used in the silk market - flatter the vain Westerners, and they'll buy more stuff from you. Haha! (It still made me feel good. Even though I know it's in no way true.)

Micah got really heavy, and Ben and I had made our purchases, but of course, we had like two hours at the place where you can spend money. Haha! So I rested for a bit until the whole group was ready to go to the Summer Palace:

The Temple of Heaven - Not as close as we thought.

2011-11-21T09:39:00.000-08:00

When we first got to our hotel in Beijing, we got this cute little map to show us where things were:

Our hotel was actually called the Holiday Inn - Temple of Heaven. And if you see there at the bottom center of the map, you see our hotel, and then you see the temple of heaven like one block away, right?

Wrong.

We found out this map is crazily condensed. If you see one block on this map, in real life, it's like 30 blocks away. So funny. Beijing is ENORMOUS. Enormous.

So, after we ate some halfway decent Chinese food, off we went to the Temple of Heaven. We never got a really good shot of it, so I got this picture from online:

It is so. dang. pretty. The Temple of Heaven is where the emperor would go to offer sacrifices each winter, and to pray for a good harvest each spring. They had this little rule that the sacrifices had to be killed and prepared at least 200 steps away from the altar, and they wanted to keep the weather from damaging the sacrifices in any way, so they built this thing called the Long Corridor to link the preparation areas to the temple:

I was so amazed. Each beam in this hugely long corridor was painted so beautifully:

I love the blues in the corridor and on the temple itself:

The tour guide said that they made the temple of heaven mainly blue to signify heaven. Red signifies earth, which is why the Forbidden City was all red. Also, in feng shui, heaven is round and earth is square, so temples and pagodas are round, but gates and living areas for earthlings are square.

Again, we couldn't go inside, which is a shame, because from what we could see, it was truly spectacular:

This is called the North Sky Gate:

They have these little spouts to get rid of water when it rains (and when it rains, in this area of China at least, it POURS. It's crazy. I've never seen anything like it. So it's really smart of them to have lots of things to help disperse the water). I think they're so cool:

Yes, Ben was there. :)

I tried to snap at least one pic of him at each place we went. He was our main photographer, which is a good thing. I'm a terrible photographer.

Poor Gagey kept falling asleep like this:

I wish he would have just put his head down in front of him, where it was shady and comfortable. Maybe my hair was tickling him. His little head was exposed to the sun. I felt bad. But he didn't get sunburned. We learned living in this area that the pollution is so heavy, and the altitude is lower than where we're from, so we didn't really ever get sunburned. It was nice not having to slather everyone with sunscreen every day.

This gal took a picture of our family, and then was looking to see how it turned out:

So funny.

After we explored the temple for awhile, our hyper tour guide actually let us play in the adjoining park. Maybe because we had spent like five minutes at each attraction in the morning, we were ahead of schedule? Haha!

So in this park, there are eight really large boulders. Seven of them are carved to resemble mountains. Here's the story. In the Ming dynasty, each emperor was supposed to go to Mount Taishan to pray for his people. It was a hard climb, and one of the emperors got sick of it, so he had his artisans craft 7 boulders to look like little mountains. They represent the seven peaks of Taishan, and apparently, they look just like the seven peaks. So he would just walk to the park and pray there to save the trip to the actual mountain.

Now, like I said, there are actually eight boulders. The Qing Dynasty overthrew the Ming Dynasty. The Qings were Manchurian, and there are eight ethnic Manchurian groups. So one of the Qing emperors decided to add one more boulder to make eight, and to have them represent, not the peaks of Mt. Taishan, but the eight ethnic groups of the Manchurians.

Micah was pissed about something:

He's always pissed about something.

This lady was selling these pretty twirly things. I can't remember what they're called:

So she would kind of dance around with them. It was cool.

We had to wait in the parking lot for a few minutes while our tour guide looked for our bus, and Ben snapped a cute picture of a little Chinese girl. I think it's a great photo:

As it turns out...

2011-11-18T07:36:00.000-08:00

So here's something that was interesting about our tour group - I think it was sponsored by certain businesses. Because here we were, running through Tiananmen Square, sprinting through the Forbidden City. And then we were scheduled to go to some Chinese Ancient Medicine Clinic place, and dude. We were there for like 2 hours. And there was plenty of opportunity to buy all of these Chinese herbs there, you know what I'm saying? The same goes with later that day, when we went to a pearl market, and then the next day, when we went to the jade-carving market. I think they pay for the tours if the tour guides make sure there is plenty of time for the tourists to buy stuff there. Funny.

So we go in to this Chinese Ancient Medicine Clinic, and they had this dude speak to us about the ancient philosophy of Chinese medicine, and how it's so much better than western medicine, and how western medicine is too invasive, and that Chinese medicine takes more time to take effect but isn't as invasive, etc. etc. etc. I mean, I can see in some cases that it's better to kind of try different things if you don't need surgery, right? And I can also see what he was saying about a lot of western drugs having harmful side effects. Absolutely. But sometimes western drugs save peoples' lives. And sometimes surgery saves peoples' lives. So whatev. It was interesting.

And then they brought in four or five Chinese doctors. And they had interpreters with them. They said that they could tell what each person's health problems were by just feeling their pulse - not by taking blood or anything invasive. Just by feeling the pulse. So they had all of us line up and wait our turn for the doctors to feel our pulse and tell us what was wrong with us. We were at the very end of one line, and at one point, maybe half an hour or 45 minutes into these little consultations, the doctors had some place to go, so they just up and left. Ben and I never got our pulse taken, but oh well. I wasn't heartbroken about it.

From what I could see, they would consult with each tourist, and then give them a long list of herbs that they should buy from the shop downstairs to help with their health problems. Our cute little Indian/Irish friend - I think his name was Aardem - finished up his consultation and came to sit down by us. We asked him what his official diagnosis was. He said, in his little Irish brogue, "Well, as it turns out, I'm prrrrrrrregnant!!!" He's a crackup. Here he is with his wife - they've only been married a few months:

And then it was finally lunch time. Phew. That's right, folks, I've only taken you through half of one day of touring in Beijing.

I was nervous about the food, because well, you know. I haven't had good experiences with the food there. :) But it was actually kind of decent!! It was a little bit like the Americanized Chinese food that we have. There was sweet and sour pork, and normal rice, and then some kind of potato thing, which is fine by me (as long as it doesn't involve sheep's brain's, I'm cool with it), and broccoli, and eggs.

So the kids, Ben, and I were happily wolfing our food down, like, "Hey, this is okay!" Remember, we hadn't had decent food in three months. But our European friends in our group weren't very happy about it. They were like, "Where are the fish and chips? Where are the crepes?" Hahaha! They wanted western food; to them, this was really gross. We were like, "Oh, honey, you have NO IDEA how good this is." Perspective. Aardem and his wife hardly ate a bite.

Sitting at our table in the above picture is a cute little couple from Malta, and then a mother and daughter from Spain. (The waitress is in front of the daughter in that picture. Here, I'll put another picture on so you can see what she looks like.):

She's the blonde. The man from Malta is actually a travel photographer. What a cool way to make a living, eh?? And the daughter from Spain had just arrived in Beijing to study Mandarin for a couple of years. Her mom brought her over and was going to help her get situated with an apartment, etc.

After we ate, off we went to the Temple of Heaven.

Running Through the Forbidden City

2011-11-14T10:20:00.001-08:00

Kay. So. The second stop on our whirlwind tour of Beijing was the Forbidden City. It's hard to explain how it's laid out without showing you a picture to kind of give you an idea. It's a series of gates and courtyards, gates and courtyards:

Sorry; crappy copy! I just scanned that out of my Eyewitness Travel book.

So here is what you see when you are ready to go in. I'm not sure what this gate is called - it's not on the above map - it's just the main entranceway:

And here we have a lady taking a picture of our family, there on the right:

It just cracks me up. It's so bizarre being photographed by people who don't know you.

Walking from the main entrance through that first courtyard - we still weren't in the part that you see on that map:

Alright. Here is where we get to the map picture. This is the Meridian Gate, which is where the emperor would review his armies and perform ceremonies marking the start of a new calendar:

Then you're in the first real courtyard. Then you have the second gate - the Gate of Supreme Harmony:

This was used for receiving visitors and for banquets.

It was sunny.

So then you go through that gate. And then you come to the next courtyard and the next building, which is the biggest one - The Hall of Supreme Harmony.

This hall was used for major occasions, like the enthronement of an emperor.

I sooo wish we had had some kind of backpack to carry Micah. Yeah, it would have been crazy-heavy, but dude, he is the slooooooowest walker. Pulling him is like pulling a waterskier. I was the boat, my arm was the rope, Micah was the waterskier:

Our dear, loud little tour guide grabbed Sadie's hand and chugged along, no doubt hoping she could speed us up. Oh that woman... And we couldn't find Sadie's sweatshirt that morning, so she wore mine all that day.

They have these amazing carvings everywhere, even on the handrails by the stairways. Just beautiful:

This was the closest we got to looking inside any of these buildings - this is the inside of the Hall of Supreme Harmony:

I was really hoping to go inside some of these structures. Like, wouldn't it be cool to see where the emperor slept? But everything is cordoned off so you can't even go inside. I asked our tour guide about not being able to go into any of the buildings. She said that it's because they're scared that someone will flick their cigarette butt inside and burn the structure down. All of these structures are just made of wood. She said that they aren't worried about foreigners flicking their cigarette butts, but that it's the Chinese citizens that are the main concern, because they just kind of throw their garbage everywhere and flick their cigarette butts everywhere. I thought that was really interesting.

Fire really must have been a big fear even hundreds of years ago, because they have these huge bronze cauldrons all over the place, which used to be filled with water in case of fire:

There are different walkways and stairways that go through each gate - there was always a walkway and stairway reserved only for the emperor. Not even his wife could walk through the same doorways and stairways as he could. His stairways are really spectacular:

Those are marble carvings. The tour guide told us that they moved them into place by waiting until winter, spraying water along the pathway where they needed to move the huge piece of marble, waiting for it to freeze, and then sliding it along.

This is the Gate of Heavenly Purity, which leads to the inner court, where the emperor and his wife and some concubines slept:

So yeah, this is just the outer stuff that you've seen. I haven't shown you the inner stuff yet. It's really unbelievable how huge the Forbidden City is. And guess how many rooms are in the Forbidden City? 9,999. I guess 9 is a lucky number in China, and the Chinese believed that the God of Heaven had a mansion with one million rooms. The emperors didn't want to outdo the God of Heaven, and they wanted luck, so they had one less room here - 9,999.

And you heard me mention concubines - each emperor had about 3,000 of them. That's right. But he only personally knew about 20 of them. If you were really pretty, you might get a chance at being the emperor's concubine. But you may never meet him in your whole life. But you couldn't marry anyone else or have a relationship with anyone else. The guards assigned to watch over the concubines were all eunichs, to ensure that no hanky-panky went on between guards and concubines. The concubines were the property of the emperor, and that was that.

There are these Chinese Lions all over the place:

I guess foreigners call them "Foo Dogs" - I'm not sure why. They are supposed to keep evil spirits outside of a structure. There are always two, one on each side of an entrance way. The Lion on the left is always the female, and she is holding down a playful cub, because the woman is in charge of The Generations. The male is always on the right, with a ball under his paw:

The ball represents the world. The male is always in charge of the world. I brought some miniature Foo Dogs home for my friend Emily.

Aaaand more people staring at us:

So weird.

So you may have noticed that there were no trees inside the courtyards - I guess each emperor was scared of getting assassinated, so no trees were allowed where he would be, because assassins could easily hide in trees. But once you get past the inner courtyard, there is a lovely Imperial Flower Garden, with lots of very, very old trees:

I kept thinking to myself, "So did the emperor never go into the Imperial Garden???" Maybe just his wives and concubines hung out there. Who knows. Me in the garden:

Can you tell Ben was the photographer that day?? Haha!

They have these beautiful rock formations there in the garden:

When you're leaving the Forbidden City, you can see this big old hill with pagodas on it:

That hill is called Jin Shan Park. The hill was created from the earth that was moved to create the moat that surrounds the Forbidden City. That's a whole lotta dirt.

You can see the moat here, along with one of four arrow towers:

They had one arrow tower at each corner of the Forbidden City.

It truly felt like we were there maybe for one hour? It went by so fast, and we were jogging or speedwalking almost the whole time. It was a killer.

By the time we had gone all the way through, Micah had fallen asleep in my arms. And our tour guide was in a hellfire hurry to get to some Chinese traditional medicine clinic, so we literally ran probably five miles, me with this 30 pound sleeping child in my arms, to the bus. I seriously thought I was going to faint. Sheesh. That lady really needs to simmer down-a.

Five Minutes in Tiananmen Square

2011-11-11T10:43:00.000-08:00

We got a fantastic night's sleep in our lovely, sewer-smell-free hotel rooms, and then we got up bright and early the next day for a very, very full day of touring.

First stop - Tiananmen Square. Our tour guide that day, a very fast-walking, loud-talking, short Chinese lady (Sadie would unabashedly put her hands over her ears when the lady was talking - she was pretty dang loud), talked to us a little bit about the history of Tiananmen Square while we were on the bus going there. She talked about how huge it is, how it's a great gathering place for the Communist Party's rallies, blah blah blah. She didn't say one word about the Tiananmen Square Protests/Massacre of 1989:

Yeah. Those are tanks. Firing into a crowd of unarmed, peaceful protestors. Those are bodies. You can see The Forbidden City in the background, so that is for sure Tiananmen Square. That's the Tiananmen Square I remember from newscasts back then.

Whenever I've thought of Tiananmen Square since 1989, this has always been the image that comes up in my mind:

That's a lone man, protesting by blocking those tanks in the street. I wasn't very old - only 12 - when this happened, but I very much remember that picture.

Considering that thousands of people died on June 4th of that year - The Chinese call it "The June 4th Incident" - an "incident" - it's a shame that they aren't mentioned when you're touring this historic place.

An American man we met the second day we were touring said that one of his favorite websites is blocked in China because there's a documentary on the website you can play about the Tiananmen Square Massacre. They don't want people to know about it or talk about it, so it's blocked. Neat.

Sorry; having just finished White Swans, I'm kind of fired up about hating Chinese Communism right now. :) I'll get off my soapbox and get on with the touring.

So we parked, and basically ran from the bus to the square - did I tell you that this lady walked FAST? - and then she said, or rather, yelled, "OKAY! YOU GET FIVE MINUTES TO TAKE PICTURE! THEN WE GO TO FORBIDDEN CITY!!!"

Five minutes? What the heck? So we just ran around and took as many as we could. I sure would have liked to spend more time there. Yikes.

Kay, so in this pic, you see a tall tower thingey with a squareish building behind it. That's Chairman Mao's Mausoleum. The portrait you see there a little to the right of the tall tower isn't Chairman Mao, though. That's Sun Yat-Sen - he's the dude that overthrew the Qing Dynasty and founded the Republic of China in 1912:

Can you see the group of people on the left just STARING at Ben?? Hahaha! We thought, since we were going to Beijing, which has so many foreigners, that we wouldn't get as much attention as we had gotten in Baoding. We were kind of looking forward to some apathy. But it was National Week that week, so there were a lot of people from outside of Beijing who had come into Beijing for their vacation, much like my family would, say, go to Washington, D.C. to tour. So we still were being followed/videotaped/touched nonstop by Chinese people from outside of Beijing. Which was unfortunate. The kids were troopers.

There was a dude from Ireland - he was born in India, but raised in Ireland, so he looks totally Indian, but then he has this cute little Irish brogue. Anyways, he was in our tour group, and he said at one point, "You arrrrrrrre being so kind. I think I would be punchin' everrrrrrrryone rrrrrrrrrrrrright now. The poor wee babe [he was referring to Gage] can't get any decent sleep because of everrrrrrrrrrrryone touchin' him." It's true. He would fall asleep in our little carrier, to be woken up with a start when someone squeezed his little chubby leg or rubbed his little cheeks. Poor thing.

Behind Ben and the kiddos is the Museum of the Revolution (don't even get me started on the revolution) and the Museum of Chinese History. Which we didn't get to see:

Can you see those beautiful flowers behind them? The entire city was totally decked out in flowers. It was gorgeous. I don't know if it always looks that pretty everywhere, or if it was just because it was National Week. Everywhere we went, billions of red salvia and yellow marigolds. Just gorgeous. It made me really want to put some salvia in my garden next summer.

So, Tiananmen Square is directly across the street from the Forbidden City. So you can see the entrance to the Forbidden City behind me and the kids here:

The street is wide and busy, though, so there is an underground tunnel thing you take to walk there. And I was so excited to see that street, because when I was taking my Pimsleur lessons to learn Mandarin, that was one of the names I had to learn - it's called Long Peace Street, or "Chung An Jia." So that was fun to me. I can say "Where is Long Peace Street Located??" - "Chung An Jia tsai nar?" The portrait on that entrance gate to the Forbidden City is Chairman Mao.

And then behind us in this picture is called the Great Hall of the People - it's where China's congress meets:

Too soon, our tour guide lady was screaming at us that it was time to go to the Forbidden City, so off we literally ran, down to the tunnel and across the street.

"Young Sexy Mom! You need sexy Gucci purse!! Sexy purse for sexy mom!"

2011-11-04T12:01:00.001-07:00

The ride from Baoding to Beijing was entertaining. We were stuffed into our van like sardines, with all of our billions of suitcases. Ben offered to have me sit in front while he sat in the back with the kids, and I could hear, through the muffled sounds coming from behind the barrier of suitcases, that it wasn't a pleasant ride for him. Haha! My kids have a way of making car rides unpleasant.

I actually had a great time. I briefly asked the driver if he knew English, he said "A little," and that was about all we had to say to each other. So I took a snooze. It took about 2 hours to go 80 miles. That's how bad Beijing traffic is.

We got to our hotel and asked if we could put most of our suitcases into their locked storage room. We had the clothes we needed for Beijing just in a couple of small bags. It was nice not to have to climb over suitcases in our hotel room.

And can I tell you how amazing that hotel was???? The mattresses were really, really soft. Ahhhh. And the bathrooms DIDN'T SMELL LIKE A SEWER!!! So luxurious. The showers had doors so you didn't spray everything under the sun! It was wonderful.

As soon as we put our small suitcases down, we were ready to head out and eat some American cuisine. I had read that there were several American food spots to eat at the Silk Market, and we needed to head over there anyways to pick up some UGGs for my sisters. Word on the street was that you could get them for really, really cheap. Summer had expressed her skepticism that we could get such a good deal on authentic UGGs, but I did want to check it out.

So we hailed a taxi and went on over there. Here we are on the outside of the Silk Market:

It was so strange to see so many foreigners there. And so many Americans! I wanted to run up to each American I heard speaking English and just HUG them!! We saw a deli inside the front entrance and made a beeline for it. We hadn't had deli sandwiches in three months - there's no such thing as deli meat in Baoding. We ordered four or five different kinds and just PIGGED OUT. It was so heavenly eating those sandwiches, after so long. I was so, so happy.

While we ate, we stared at other foreigners on the veranda eating - people speaking all sorts of languages. Ben picked up on some Portugese, and I picked up on some French. And of course, English. Heavenly English. I remember our busy waitress was Chinese, and she had on really heavy whiteish base and powder on her skin that was kind of flaking off with her sweat. It's so funny to me that Chinese ladies want white skin. Opposite of us westerners, for sure.

So then we were off on our quest to find UGGs. We started walking on the level that has clothing, just kind of browsing around, and the salespeople were like flies on...well, you know what. They would grab and touch us and our kids and yell and try to entice us to come to their stands. "Look at you! Four beautiful children! Come try our Abercrombie sweatshirts!!" And, of course, the title of my post is a direct quote from another saleslady. They were very flattering. At first, I was feeling like hot stuff, like, "Yeah! I AM a sexy mom!" But after hearing the same thing fifteen more times, I realized that this is the way they lure you to their stands. :)

I learned not to wander into a vendor's stand unless you're serious about purchasing something. I went into this one stand to look at some coats, and I tried a few on. There was one that was kind of pretty, but I wasn't in love with it. The saleslady was like, "This is only 1,000 yuan!!! You can't get a better deal than this!" 1,000 yuan is about...300 something bucks. I was like, "Whoa, yikes," and went to take it off, so she started bringing the price down. Down and down and down. I really wasn't serious about getting a coat - I have a billion, and I wanted to buy something that I was really in love with, you know? So I kept saying, "You know, I just don't really think I want a coat. I'm so sorry... Thanks for letting me try this on, though..." But this gal wasn't about to let me walk away without selling me this coat. Her price continued to drop, clear until she hit 180 yuan. From 1,000 yuan to 180 yuan!! 180 yuan is about 30 bucks. As I walked away, she grabbed my arm plaintively, saying, "I don't know what I did wrong...I don't know what I did wrong...I can't give you a lower price than this..." I almost bought the coat just so she wouldn't be sad. :) I told her I would come back, but, um, I didn't. Haha!

We finally got directions to the shoes, which was one level down. And then we saw them. UGGs. The real things. Any color you could want. Silvery paisley ones. Pink satin ones. And of course, the original tan, brown, black, grey... We asked how much, and I think they were quoting about 1200 yuan a pair, and we were like, dude. We can get those for that much ($200) at home. So we started to walk away, and they started lowering their price. Ben looooooves bartering. He was having the best time. The ladies would wave their arms wildly as he continued asking for a lower price, protesting loudly, "What you are asking for is RIDICULOUS! There is NO WAY we can give them to you for that price!" But every time we started to walk away, they would lower it. That's what we learned - the lowest price they will go is the one they offer when you're walking away. We got them down to 180 yuan per pair - $30. Thirty bucks, for UGGs!!! Everywhere here that I see them, they're $200. So I got two pair for Lex and one pair for Nat. (Beads thinks UGGs are named UGGs because they're UGly, so I got her a different souvenir.)

They had to go upstairs into the storage area to get the right sizes, so the saleslady offered me a stool to sit on:

Dylan is playing with his chosen souvenir - some dumb laser light that he has since totally lost. Sigh.

While I was sitting there waiting, there were two gals from Scotland bartering with the saleslady over some slip-on flats - a different brand. They finally settled on a price, and the lady was digging for the right size when I asked the gals whereabouts from Scotland they were - they were from Edinburgh. They had the cutest accents. They had been to the silk market several times and told me that you can always get a price down to 10% of what you would pay in England or the U.S. So perhaps we could have talked them down to $20 per pair of UGGs, but I felt great about the deal we were getting and went with it.

I didn't really find anything for myself that I was interested in that day - the kids were really grumpy (they were tired of people touching them and yelling in their faces about how beautiful they are), and I was overwhelmed. So we got the kids some softserve vanilla ice cream - our first real ice cream in three months, and it was ohhhh so good. And then we left the silk market without having bought anything for me. But later that night, I was really regretting not getting myself some UGGs. My boots at home were wearing out, and I thought, "What was I THINKING, not getting any for myself? Duh!!" So, the next night, when we got home after a long day of touring, I sent Ben out for some American food and some UGGs for Kar. I stayed with the kids in the hotel room, because they were tired and grumpy. I told Ben I wanted one pair of black and one pair of brown, and that cute man not only got me those, but one grey pair as well. And dude, I love those boots so much. As Lexi says, walking in them is like "walking on a cloud." Hahaha!

Goodbye, Dear Hans

2011-11-03T00:08:00.000-07:00

The sweet Hans came over the morning we left to say goodbye. Our driver, whom we had hired from Beijing, was coming down with a big van for all of our zillions of bags of luggage, and he was late getting there because Beijing traffic is ca-razy. So we hung out with the Hans for a couple of hours.

We were always joking that Mrs. Han was Gage's Chinese Mother, because he loves her so much. She would always respond, "And I love heeem." So cute. So Professor Han started calling himself Gage's father. He would say, or rather, yell (he is the kind of guy who yells everything he says. I think it's really funny), "GAGE! I AM YOUR FATHER!"

Professor Han always, always, always has his Baoding Balls in his pocket. He's always getting them out and twirling them around on his palm when he's thinking about something. They're actually the pits of some kind of fruit, I think. He said they cost him, like, 800 yuan, which is, like, $130. Pretty pricey for fruit pits, in my opinion, but whatevs. He said that the kind of harsh texture of the pits promotes circulation better than normal smooth Baoding Balls. That's what he also told me when he made me walk barefoot on his rug-made-of-rocks. He's ca-razy. :) I don't care if walking on rocks improves your circulation - it HURTS.

Mrs. Han was teasing Sadie by squishing her:

I can tell it pains her that she could only have one child. She's meant to be a mother of many, you know??? It would make me sad, too.

Cute little Ha Han:

He was so sweet with the kids. I know Micah especially took a shine to him. And he's single, ladies! Wink, wink! Haha!

We miss the Hans so, so much. I'm going to have to get them American presents, as well as the presents I'm planning to get Summer and Maria. We'll have to get Ha Han something about Barack Obama. He LOVES Obama - all the Chinese do, because they feel like he's a socialist, basically. And the Chinese love socialism. There were these t-shirts we saw in Beijing that had a cartoon Obama on the front, dressed in Chinese revolutionary garb, and on the back, it said, "ObaMao." Ben thought that shirt was so funny that he bought one for his dad. :)

Sheep's Brains, Anyone?

2011-11-01T09:46:00.000-07:00

The Hans wanted to take us out to eat the night before we left. Professor Han has a friend who owns a Mongolian restaurant. When he suggested it, I had a fleeting thought: Oooooh, maybe it's like the Mongolian barbecue restaurants we have in the U.S.!! But really, I knew better than to indulge in such thoughts.

The restaurant was really cool - little authentic Mongolian tents, with boardwalks in between.

And, luckily, the tents are air-conditioned in the summer and heated in the winter. It was a particularly cold night, and my poor kids were freezing in their summer gear - I had packed all of their long pants deeply in their suitcases. The forecast called for very, very warm temperatures in Beijing, so all I had available were summer duds. The Hans were shocked at my lack of good parenting. :) The Chinese we met were always shocked at my parenting skills. To them, you are a bad parent if you don't carry your child on your hip and hand-feed him until he's five or so. Not kidding.

Professor Han's sister wanted to hold Gage, but he would have none of it. He wanted his "Chinese mom," Mrs. Han. It was really cute:

Mrs. Han gave me a going-away gift - a shawl from the Hunan province - she had gone there for a weekend for something or other. I was so touched:

It felt a little "old" for me - although I may be delusional and wear stuff that's too young? I gave it to my mom when I came home, and she loves it. It seems more like something someone her age would wear, for sure.

I really need to get some gifts for the Hans and Summer and Maria. I wanted to get them something really Americaney/Idahoey. I need to get on that.

After we had started eating, some musicians came in and sang to us. This one lady did this interesting, ritualistic song. You had to stand up, sit down, chug your drink, stand up, have her drape a shawl around your neck, and then sit down and chug ANOTHER drink. She was most insistent on making everyone do it, including Micah and the baby:

Here I am, chugging my Coke:

Here's the cello-like instrument that one of the men was playing. It sounded soooo beautiful and reminded me of the soundtracks to movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero:

Our cuisine, as I had predicted, didn't taste anything like the Mongolian food we have in the states. I've also learned that you really need to ask before you eat anything, whether you're eating Chinese food or Mongolian food. Because they use EVERY part of the animal. Organs. Ligaments. Hooves. You name it. I asked what this dish was:

Yeah, it was sheep's brains. I had thought it looked familiar, but couldn't put my finger on it. And then I realized that it looked like the cross-sections of the human brain in the Bodies exhibit I went to last spring. Hahaha!

I pointed to another dish, saying, "Okay, well, what's that??"

"Chicken hearts."

I played it safe with fresh spinach leaves and cucumber stalks. Oh, and they had these things that were balls of dough that are fried and then coated with melted-down sugar. You pick one ball of the fried dough up with your chopsticks (something I never quite mastered), dip it in water to separate the sugarey strings that drape from it to the main dish, and then eat it. I gave lots of that to poor Gage. The noodles were really spicy and difficult for him to eat, and I just wasn't in the mood to give the poor child sheep's brains.

In many restaurants we went to, they would give you all your dishes together and sealed with plastic. You get one chopstick and pop the plastic to open up your packet-o-dishes. It's always a very loud, satisfying popping noise:

There's Mikey - he didn't want to sit by any of his family:

He preferred the professor's son, Ha Han. Ha Han was so doting with him. He even took Micah to the "bathroom," which was an outhouse - an outhouse where you have to crouch. Micah is a trooper about using the bathroom anywhere, but when Dylan had to go, he was so traumatized by the crouching-style outhouse that he REFUSED to go. He held it the entire time.

Oh, and that pitcher you see in the above picture, to the right of Micah, had the most interesting drink in it. It tasted a lot like cream of wheat. From what they told me, it sounds like they boil the wheat in water, add some milk, then use a colander to drain the wheat bits from it. They serve it warm, and it was actually pretty good.

Here is Professor Han before heading outside our tent to have a smoke:

I wonder if Chinese cigarettes aren't as powerful as the ones here, because everyone smoked, just walking along the streets and stuff, but it never bothered me or made my nose itch, like it does here. I know the coke was a lot different over there. Not as stinging as it goes down your throat. And just a different taste.

I realized that night that I hadn't seen one woman smoke. Only men. I asked Professor Han about it. He said, "Oh, no, women don't smoke. Just men. It's improper for a woman to smoke." I thought that was so interesting.

I MISS these girls.

2011-10-31T17:23:00.000-07:00

This was the last time I saw our cute little interpreters before we left. They are so stinkin' cute.

I was joking and saying, "Chezzzzzzzz-uhhhhhhhhhhh!" - the Chinese version of pointing a camera at someone and saying, "Cheese!" They thought it was so funny I had picked up on that.

That shirt makes me look fat. Um, because I AM fat! Hahaha! Oh well.

National Day (the celebrating of the founding of the Peoples' Republic of China on Oct. 1st, 1949) was the following day, I think. The Chinese usually take a whole week to celebrate. I asked the girlies what their plans were. Summer was going home to hang out with her fam - they live about half an hour south of Baoding in a city called Shijiazhuang. Don't ask me how to say that. Whenever I referred to her hometown, I would just call it "shwawawawawa." And she would laugh and slowly pronounce it for me, having me repeat after her, but I never could remember it. It was our little "bit," kind of like "Who's on first?" with Abbott and Costello.

Maria told me she was heading home to help harvest corn. Her family lives on the outskirts of Baoding. I asked her if they do corn mazes in China. She had no idea what I was talking about. Dylan got in on this part of the conversation, excitedly telling the girls that some people here in Idaho, after they harvest their corn, make corn mazes and charge money for people to run around and get lost in them. Maria and Summer were nonplussed, just totally baffled as to why anyone would do such a thing.

And THEN Dylan and I started telling them about HAUNTED corn mazes. We told them that, when October rolls around, there are a few corn mazes that have people in scary costumes jump out at you and scare you. The girls' jaws dropped. Then Dylan added that some guys get chainsaws and take the chain off, so that they're safe, but that they may jump out at you and chase you around. The girls' jaws dropped even lower. Summer said, "But why would anyone want to go somewhere to be scared???"

"That's the question I've asked myself my whole life, Summer." I'm not a huge fan of Halloween. (Parenthetically, Ben has been watching scary movies on TV all week, and I've been hanging out down in my bedroom, because I get really, really freaked out when I watch scary movies. So I've been reading White Swans, speaking of China's National Day. I just finished, and it's sooooo interesting. I recommend it.)

I actually got a little teary-eyed when I was hugging them goodbye. I may not ever see them again in this life, which makes me sad.

I just heard from Summer yesterday via e-mail. She moved to Beijing and got a job at a "design firm" - I'm not sure what that means - I asked her more about it. She says that Beijing feels so big, and that she feels a little lost. Beijing, indeed, is enormous - I think one of our tour guides told us that you can fit TEN Hong Kongs into Beijing. That is how huge it is. But it was so funny to me that she has lived in Baoding, a city of 11 million, and considers it a "small town." And that Beijing is a "big city." To me, Baoding is a big city. And Beijing is a big city. When you can't see the edge of the city from any vantage point, that's a big city, in my book. Her boyfriend, Justin, lives there, so I hope he's keeping her company and helping her to transition.

Maria's boyfriend, Double Tiger, lives near Baoding, so she wanted to stay there to be close to him. I'm not sure what she's been doing. Hopefully I'll hear from her soon.

I just wish I could have packed them in my suitcases and brought them over here with me. Every time I do something interesting or fun, I think, "What would Summer and Maria think of this??" Like, yesterday, we were carving pumpkins, and I thought, "I wonder what those girlies would think of this?" Or trick-or-treaters that are coming by tonight. I think they would get the biggest kick out of it.

I wonder if they would appreciate the wide, open spaces and the fresh air here. They might feel as weird and uncomfortable as I felt in such a dirty, crowded, smelly city - a fish out of water. Maria is probably used to the countryside, because she grew up on a corn farm on the outskirts of Baoding. But Summer is a city girl, through and through. I'm not sure she would know what to do with herself. And I'm pretty sure she'd hate the food here. Because here, "Chinese food" isn't authentic at ALL. The people I knew in China had never heard of, say, sweet & sour pork. Or chow mein. Or chop suey. They ate more along the lines of...chicken heart and duck legs and stuff like that. :)

I really am so thankful to be back to My Own Private Idaho. Yesterday, my friend, Megs, and I went driving around the countryside to pick a spot for my family's photos, and I thought to myself, there is just no prettier place on this earth. A girl can BREATHE here. And see the horizon. And the stars. It just feels so great to be home.

But I miss my little friends.

Papa, Paparazzi

2011-10-27T07:55:00.000-07:00

So Ben, being the cautious man that he is, put our camera on the couch in our apartment in Baoding. And Gage, being the toddler that he is, picked up the camera and THREW it onto the hard floor to see what kind of sound it would make. This broke our lens. This was my face when Ben told me the news:

Lenses are NOT cheap. You could still technically take pictures with it, but you have to kind of help the automatic focus thingey with your hands. It's a huge pain, and it doesn't always work out. We were worried about being able to get good, non-fuzzy shots in Beijing.

The nice thing is that our lens can be fixed, but it takes time, which we didn't have. So we decided to get a different kind of lens right then new - I don't know what type it is, but it can super-zoom. It's hard to get used to - if you're taking just normal pics of the kids, you have to stand REALLY far back to get the shot, so it's an adjustment. But at least we had a lens for Beijing.

Summer and Maria helped Ben purchase it:

Summer got bangs cut - I think they're so cute. They suit her.

Ben was having wayyyy too much fun with the new camera:

He took tons of paparazzi-like stalker photos of the people walking and riding along stinky street downstairs:

Considering that we were on the 10th floor, these ain't too bad.

And the cute cackling banana lady who wouldn't let me take her picture? I had the last laugh - Ben got a photo of her stand, and I also got a nice close-up of her, and she never knew. Mwahahahaha!!!

The Floating, Detached Thumb

2011-10-26T10:40:00.000-07:00

We had our cute new American friends over a couple of times the week before we left. I was so sad to have met them just a couple of weeks before we had to leave. They were so much fun. They came over to play a raucous round of Uno one night:

Felice is actually an amateur magician! She brought a pack of cards over and did some amazing tricks. Dylan was enthralled:

He told me, later that night, that he wants to be a magician. I said, "I thought you wanted to be a scientist." After much thought, he said, "I want to be a scientist during the day, but a magician at night and on the weekends."

She actually taught Dylan (after much insistence on his part) how to do some of the tricks. But she didn't teach him how she got the penny to go through the coffee table and onto the floor. He has concluded that there isn't a "trick" to it - that she is, indeed, magic. :)

She has a really good way of moving her hands to trick your eye. She can do that detached-thumb trick - where you are like, "Look, my thumb is floating in the air!!" Even I can do that trick (but really badly). But Felice's detached thumb looks soooooo real. In fact, when she first did the trick, Sadie thought FOR SURE that Felice's thumb had come off her hand, and she totally did the ear thing that Buster does on Arrested Development when he's uncomfortable, shocked, or scared (which is always):

She did the ear thing and just started to RUN away. It was really funny. We were over at Megan and Mark's house last night, and Mark pretended to pop his eyeball out. Apparently, it was so convincing that Sadie did the ear thing again. She cracks me up.

Here is cute little Hannah, who never would look right at the camera when we took pictures of her:

I can relate. I feel uncomfortable when people take my picture, too. But instead of just looking away, I make weird faces. We all cope in our own way. :)

We were talking about English names that the Chinese pick for themselves. Hannah and Felice told me some of the funniest names that their students, or some of the students of their friends, have chosen:

Sundae
Hairy (not Harry. Hairy.)
Sober
Potato
Easy (a girl had chosen this name - haha!)
Zero (Hannah's student chose this name, because he is positive that he is going to get a Zero in her class. Haha!)

Hannah also explained something to me that she had learned in her training to be a university professor in China - the term "high-context communicators." There is a lot involved with that term, but part of it is that in a country where you have high-context communicators (a.k.a. China and France), the people don't express disagreement or reservations about an issue unless they know you extremely, extremely well. And only in private, one-on-one. If they're in a business meeting, they will pretend that they are okay with everything, but if they really aren't okay, they will pull their boss or coworker aside and communicate it one-on-one, rather than express it for everyone in the meeting. When it comes to communicating uncomfortable things with someone who isn't your utter best friend, they just shut down. Like, I think Hannah was telling me that she was talking to one of her students after class, saying, "You know, you're failing my class. You haven't done this and this....and you need to do such-and-such to salvage your grade." The whole time, the kid didn't say one word. He just shut down. Because he was uncomfortable. He didn't have anything to say for himself.

In many high-context cultures, the concept of "saving face" is a reeeeeeeeally big deal. The Chinese don't want to appear like they don't know something, or aren't prepared for something. So, if you ask them a question, and they don't know the answer, instead of saying, "Gosh, I don't know that," they'll just offer some weird answer. For instance, when I was like, "Summer, where can we buy a hammer to put up these clothing lines?" She didn't know the answer, so she gave me a lame-o answer: "Find a rock to pound the nails in the wall." Do other Chinese pound their nails into the wall with rocks? Maybe. But maybe she just needed an answer, so this is what she thought of.

Or Candy, the little gal across the hall. I once asked her, "What do you do about this consistent sewer smell in the bathrooms??" I don't think she really knew what to do about it, so she said, "Well, you open a window." A lame-o answer, but an answer.

Hannah put it this way - if you ask someone in China for directions, if they don't know how to get somewhere, instead of saying, "Gosh, I don't know," they may give you the wrong directions in order to save face. Isn't that interesting?

So having learned this put a lot of my experiences in China into perspective. For instance, Professor Han took three weeks to get our kitchen in to our apartment. And during that time, we never, ever heard hide nor hair from him. It was like he had fallen off the face of the earth. We would call, and he would avoid our calls. Once our kitchen was in, he and his family were visiting and calling several times per week - our BFF's. I personally think that he was embarrassed that it was taking so long to put the kitchen in, and that he was avoiding us because he wanted to save face. Once his face was "restored," or gained back, then he was fine being friends with us again.

Or Ben's experiences with these work associates in China. They didn't want to admit that the groundwork wasn't prepared for the dome construction. So, instead of saying, "You know, we haven't finished that yet. You'll have to come over when we finish," they said, "Yes, yes, the groundwork is totally prepared." They lied to save face. So we went over there. And nothing was ready.

And then they didn't do any work on the project for the whole three months we were there. Apparently, there were some funding issues they were having, which was causing a halt in the construction, but not wanting to admit that, they said, "Um, well, Ben wasn't available to us...." A lame-o lie/excuse so that they could save face.

When they had that big meeting before we left, and the Chinese company said, "Yes, we will pay what we owe you in ten business days." Well, they never did. When Ben said, "Okay, where are the payments?" the finance guy said, "Oh, my partners never told me we were supposed to make the payments in ten business days." That may be true - maybe they don't really want to make the payments, so they avoided telling the finance guy about the agreement. OR maybe they did tell the finance guy, but he knows they can't afford it, so he's making an excuse/lying to cover himself. Does that make sense? So this high-context stuff is just really different from what we're used to in the U.S. It's complicated, and it's hard to understand.

Anywho, back to our American friends. A foreign professor had lived in Felice's apartment before her, and he had these little muffin tins that looked like they were made of rubber. But they were MUFFIN TINS!!! I hadn't seen anything resembling muffin tins or baking pans at all there. I told her that Ben had gotten a brownie mix in Beijing the last time he had gone, so she was like, "Let's try to bake these in your oven!!!" I was really nervous about the muffin tins looking like rubber. But dude, they totally worked! We had real, honest-to-goodness brownies that night. All four of us adults, while we ate them, were closing our eyes in silent ecstasy. Hannah swore softly to herself. It was really funny. It had been so LONG since any of us had had any baked goods. I'm not usually a brownie girl, but I was pigging OUT. As Hannah was leaving, she saw that there were some brownie crumbs left on Dylan's plate. "I'm contemplating eating those crumbs," she said wistfully.

This is why, if Ben returns to China (he insists that he might be leaving in a month - he's gotten some encouraging E-MAILS from the Chinese company, but no real money yet. I told him I'll believe it when I see it), I'm sending him with some baking pans, muffin tins, and all kinds of brownie mixes - if all you need is water, oil, and eggs, then you're okay. You can find those things in Baoding. But I'm sending some for him, AND I'm sending some for my poor American friends. 'Cause I know how it feels to go three months without baked goods. It ain't pretty.

The History of Rome, by Dylan and Sadie

2011-10-24T10:16:00.001-07:00

Amulius was a nasty king who had taken over his brother's throne and exiled him. The exiled brother had a daughter who had twins, Romulus and Remus. Amulius told his servant to kill the twin babies, but in true huntsman-character-in-Snow White tradition, he just couldn't go through with it. So he put the babies in a basket and sent them down the river:

Somehow, the basket reached the banks of the river safely, and a she-wolf discovered the babies and raised them as her own. A shepherd and his wife then found them and raised them as their own. When they became adults, they decided to found a city. They kept fighting over where to build their new city, and Romulus had Remus killed. Then he built the city on the Tiber river and named it after himself, calling it Rome:

Years later, the Etruscan king, who lived on the other side of the river, wanted to take over Rome. There was a bridge that connected the two kingdoms. An amazing hero named Horatius somehow fought off hundreds of Etruscans on the Etruscan banks while his fellow soldiers destroyed the bridge. As Dylan so poetically put it, "He is so drave. He bib not run.":

The kid has troubles with b's and d's - what can I say? Ben used to have trouble with that as a kid, as well, but then he came up with his own way to remember. He made up a sentence that says, "Because b was right, d left." He taught it to Dylan, and he hasn't had a problem ever since!

Back to the story. After Horatius's comrades destroyed the bridge, he, miraculously still alive (though dreadfully wounded), jumped into the Tiber river and swam, armor and all, back to the Roman side of the river. And was a hero forever more.

The Etruscan king was really sad that his plans to take over Rome didn't work:

Many years later, there was a consul in Rome named Cincinnatus. After his term in public office was up, he returned to his farm and worked as a simple farmer. All of the able-bodied men in Rome had gone off to fight a battle, and word came back that things were not going well. So Cincinnatus, even though he was now an old man, gathered up all of the other old men and teenage boys, armed them, and led them to join the other Romans in battle:

They won that battle, and Cincinnatus ruled as a very just and righteous dictator just for a short time, until that war was over. Then he went back to his farm - he was the model of civic duty and humility.

The Romans, being neighbors to the Grecians, picked up on their Greek Gods, adapting them to their own country and naming them their own names. Many of the planets are named after Roman gods and goddesses:

For example, Venus is the Roman goddess of love:

Stories of the gods and goddesses were a way of explaining natural phenomena, for example, the story of Proserpina and Pluto. One day, Pluto, the Roman god of the underworld, heard Proserpina, Ceres's daughter, singing. [Ceres is the goddess of agriculture.] He fell in love with her and stole her, taking her to the underworld. Just in case you were wondering, the underworld is black. I don't think you understand black until you're down there. Black, black, black:

Jupiter, father of the gods, ordered Pluto to release Proserpina, and Pluto obeyed, but first he made her eat six pomegranate seeds:

Pomegranates are the food of the dead, and once you've eaten pomegranates, you can't return to the world of the living. Because she ate six seeds, she has to live six months of the year with Pluto, and six months of the year with Ceres, her mom. This is how the Romans explained the changing of the seasons - when Proserpina is with Pluto, Ceres is sad, allowing everything to wither and die. When Proserpina is with her, she's happy, and everything blooms again.

Who knew Roman history was so interesting? With such intrigue, revenge, heartbreak, and heroicism? And who knew that Pluto had a large, platypus-like beak? Or that Cincinnatus's arm hung from his hair?? Or that the Etruscan king didn't have a torso? Not me. You learn something new every day. :)

It was impressive.

2011-10-19T11:38:00.000-07:00

Just one more thing about homeschool. I gotta say. The curriculum we had for homeschool (The Idaho Virtual Academy) was in.cred.i.ble. My friend, Lyndsay, had homeschooled for a time with the IDVA, and she had said it was good and challenging, but I didn't realize how much so until we came home.

Before we left, which was three weeks ago, Dylan was doing addition and subtraction up to the number 10,000. Guess what his worksheets have been like since we've been home? "9 - 7 = ?" Yeah. :)

And very hands-on. This is a picture of Dylan measuring the weight (in Newtons) of Sadie's box of Baoding balls, using a spring scale:

The kids la-hoved their science lessons. Dylan says he's going to be a scientist one day. He's cute.

And now it's time for me to have a fight with my three-year-old about his naptime. Toodles!

Channelling the Masters

2011-10-18T21:32:00.000-07:00

For the most part, homeschooling was torture for me. And for the kids. Except for the art lessons. Oh, how I loved those. The kids were learning all about line and movement and shape...as well as about some of the greatest artists in history and their techniques.

After we learned about portraits and self-portraits, one of their assignments was to make their own self-portraits. Dylan's:

And Sadie's:

We learned about Hokusai - the way he made art is fascinating. Like stamping, but upside-down. I love, love, love this work by him - The Great Wave Off Kanagawa:

One of the kids' assignments was to make a piece of art that imitates Hokusai's use of lines to show movement. Here are the results - Dylan's:

And Sadie's:

Then we studied Joan Miro, who was really into using shapes and bright, bright color. This is one of his works called The Tilled Field:

The kids' assignment was to make a work of art that imitates Miro's use of enclosed shapes, bright colors, and bold, defined lines. Dylan's work:

And Sadie's:

I'm a little sad that these art lessons are over; it was so fun learning more about art and great artists. I'm impressed with what they did.

And, lest you think that Micah was left out, here is photographic evidence that he was in on the creativity:

Dylan and Sadie don't really fit into the role of emotionally tortured artists, per se...

But Micah...oh yeah. He's an emotionally tortured artist. For sure:

He's seriously messed up. He's liable to cut off an ear one of these days...

Fancy Girls

2011-10-17T10:30:00.000-07:00

When we flew from Beijing to Seattle, we had a two-hour layover or so there in Seattle. We got some bagels, which were H-E-A-V-E-N-L-Y. Ben took Micah to the bathroom, and Dylan and I were munching our bagels while watching Sadie and the baby crawl around on the floor and play. This is how our conversation went:

Dylan: Every single girl I know says the word "like" all the time.

Me: Every single girl you know?

Dylan: Well, maybe three-fourths of the girls I know.

Me: Um, okay....

Dylan: [reconsidering] Well, maybe not that many girls say "like" all the time. Only fancy girls say "like" all the time.

Me: [giggling] "Fancy Girls"??? What on earth are "Fancy Girls"??

Dylan: You know, like Aunt Lex. She's a fancy girl.

Me: What do you mean??

Dylan: Well, fancy girls wear makeup and have cute clothes. So Lex is a fancy girl. And it's true. When she talks, she's always saying, "Like, totally. Like, what-ever..."

Me: [laughing] No she doesn't!!! You're so weird!

I laughed and laughed. The bizarre things that come out of his mouth... So Lex, just in case you ever wondered, you are a Fancy Girl. And, apparently, you talk like a Valley Girl. According to Dylan.

Boy, you're in a heap of trouble...

2011-10-16T21:20:00.000-07:00

Look at Micah's Chinese haircut. Sa-weet. I have never seen such nasty-asty haircuts as the ones we all got in Baoding. I'm scheduled to see my dear hairdresser this Friday, and I. cannot. wait.

A couple of days before we left, I was talking to Summer. I was telling her that I thought coming back to the U.S. might be the best choice for my kiddos' sake. I told her how I was especially worried about Micah's anxiety and...general freakishness. :) I said, "I think I need to get him into preschool." She responded, "Yes, Micah needs to learn the English language." Hahaha! I love that. And it's so true.

I've noticed, however, that he's speaking so much better, just in the past two weeks since we've been home. Isn't that weird?? And good?

Here's something crazy - Micah says something my sis, Lex, used to say when she was little: "Leave my lone." Which is, "Leave me alone." I love, love, love that he says that.

Cars is one of his favorite movies, and there's a part where Lightning McQueen just got tangled up in electrical wires and barbed-wire fence and is hanging there. The cop who has been pursuing him says, "Boy, you're in a heap of trouble." When Micah is angry at someone (which si 99.9% of the time), he yells, "You in a heap of trouble!!!"

Mom was bathing him the other night, and she poured some water on his head, because he refused to lie down to get his hair wet. He stood up and screamed at her, "NOT COOL!! Not cool!!!"

Like I mentioned before, our bathrooms in Baoding didn't have bathtubs, so we had to do this communal shower thing every day with the younger kids, because let's face it, they won't wash themselves. Ben was showering Micah, so obviously, they were both, ah, in their birthday suits, right? Micah smiled at Ben and said, very sincerely, "I like your body." I guess he was giving Ben some kind of compliment. Ben laughed and laughed.

JibJab Baby

2011-10-15T20:55:00.000-07:00

Gage's hair cracks me up. He reeeeally needs a haircut. His hair looks like that one guy on the JibJab logo, the guy on the left. Let me show ya. Gage:

The JibJab guy (on the left):

See what I'm sayin'?

He is the babiest baby ever. Here are some pics of him that last week we were in Baoding:

Love this kid.

My bags are packed, I'm ready to go...

2011-10-14T13:01:00.000-07:00

Ben went with Summer and Maria and got tons more suitcases for our trip home. We hadn't accumulated that much stuff while we were in China, but we had to bring these infernal school books home (and I still have to mail them back in - it's on my to-do list), which necessitated more luggage. The kids had a good time fitting into the suitcases and then popping out:

I was so preoccupied with schooling the kids for a million hours per day, so Ben did allll the packing that last week, which was sweet. We had to make sure that each bag wasn't over fifty pounds - tough to do when you have a zillion books to take home. He had me pick up a scale at Hui Mart - it was in kilograms, so he had to use his phone converter app to figure out how many pounds each bag was - he would move books around from bag to bag to make sure none of them went over the weight limit. He's cute.

It was a huge pain in the butt carting those things around the various airports on our travels home. It took forever to check them in at the Peking airport. When we landed in Seattle, we made the mistake of keeping a club sandwich from the plane, which a special sniffing dog found. So we had to get our luggage from the plane (we had to do it ourselves - the airport personnel weren't supposed to touch it until it went through a conveyor) and then, after the conveyor, it had to be thoroughly searched by various airport personnel. Then we had to re-check it in. It was fun to do that after a ten-hour flight with four small children. :) A tip from me for any future international travelers out there, especially if you're returning from Asia - don't bring the airplane food off with you. It spells big trouble. They said it was the whole bird flu thing they have to worry about. And because we had turkey in that sandwich, ka-bam. It's a good thing we had a two-hour layover there in Seattle in which to do all that.

Goodbye, Stinky Street.

2011-10-13T21:12:00.000-07:00

Woot-woot! We're back home! I'm Raising the Roof. I'm doing the Running Man. I'm doing the Cabbage Patch. And the Calypso.

I actually don't know what "the Calypso" dance looks like, but the Black Eyed Peas talk about it, so it must be cool. I'd better look it up on YouTube.

Whoa. I can access YouTube now!!! Weird!!!!! And, in case you didn't read my novellas/posts for the last three months, I couldn't access any blogs. (My sweet, sweet friend Jenny took my e-mail blasts and put them onto my blog for me while I was gone.) Or Facebook (which was fine with me). All of them are against the law, baby. The Chinese call it "The Great Firewall." I think that's funny. You can get this thing called a VPN, which helps you get around the internet laws, but apparently it's $80 per year (not bad, but we weren't going to be gone that long), and not terribly reliable.

But now I'm back! From outer space! I just walked in to find you here with that sad look upon your face!

Sorry. I'm hyper.

So. It's been a few weeks since I've written. I have many, many things of which to blog. So let's get to it!!!

And you're just going to have to wait to see pics of Beijing. I'm re-sizing them. It's a long process. Especially when your hubby takes around 500 pictures within two days. :)

Leaving Stinky Street was bittersweet to me. Do I miss the smell? Uh, no. But I miss the vendors. I miss the excitement that built when they were setting up for their evening sales. I miss how friendly everyone was. They're good people; they really are.

At sunset one day, Ben took this picture of one of his favorite buildings, which we could see from our kitchen window. I really do love the way cities look - rooftops for miles. It's amazing.

Look - photographic evidence of the feathers and bird poop that I had to clean off my eggs every day:

I wanted to take pics of some of my favorite Stinky Street-ites before we left. It was awkward. I would point to me, then pantomime an airplane flying, complete with sound effects, and then say, "May-gwah [Mandarin for America]." Then I would point to my camera, point to me, make a camera clicking pantomime, and then point to them, to ask if I could take their picture.

I'm amazed at how much you can communicate with a little bit of acting.

Most of them would refuse to look at me, or they would wave their hands at me and laugh and laugh and laugh, turning away. They're cute. I would compound their giggling by aiming my camera, and yelling, "Chezzzzzzzzz-uhhhhhhhhh! [what they say instead of "cheese" when posing for pictures]." Giggle, giggle, wave, wave...

Here's one of our guard dudes. He manned the gate leading into our neighborhood:

The fruit guy and his wife who worked right outside our gate:

I swear he had, like, three doppelgangers I saw in Beijing. I kept pointing them out to Ben, saying, "That looks just like the fruit guy!!!" We seldom bought fruit from him, because he wouldn't let us pick out our own fruit. He was always trying to sell us bruised bananas and apples. He didn't seem to take it personally that we got our fruit elsewhere, though. He was always friendly.

My favorite checkout lady at the corner store:

The Chinese that pose and smile, always give the peace sign. I've noticed that the Japanese show the peace sign and have serious faces. The Chinese show the peace sign and smile. Interesting.

She used to be really sullen, but I warmed her up, and at the end, I could always get her to smile.

My cackling banana lady. She was not about to get her picture taken:

Which is a shame, because she has the cutest little crinkly eyes.

My egg gal:

My two vegetable ladies:

This is what the hairdressers all along stinky street do after they wash your hair - they hang their towels to dry on racks, and then re-use them over and over and over again. It gave me the heebie-jeebies:

Stinky Street was smelly and so very, very gross, but in the most endearing way possible.

Oh boy, do I have biiiiiiiiiig news.‏

2011-09-23T22:11:00.000-07:00

WE. ARE. COMING. HOME!!!!!!!

Well, we are all coming home, but then Ben will return at some point. But not me and the kids.

Let me 'splain. No. There is too much. Let me sum up. (What movie??) So things have continued to stall at Ben's job site. They worked for, like, one day, maybe a month ago? But that's it. The executives at the Chinese company here continued to deal shadily with Ben's company. They haven't paid Ben's company yet - they've missed two payments; and they refuse to pay some customs charges and a few other charges which the contract that they signed clearly stated they were responsible for. Not only are they refusing to pay for anything, but they are acting like Ben's company is soooooooooo privileged to be working with them, they should just roll over and say, "Okay, don't pay us! We don't mind! Because we're so excited to have an opportunity for working with you, oh big, bad, powerful Chinese company." Ben's bosses were so incensed that two of them came over to have a big old meeting yesterday. I would call it a Come to Jesus meeting, but considering the circumstances, I'm calling it a Come to Buddha meeting. Ben's bosses basically said, "You pay us now or we walk." And they meant it. They have so many other projects going on around the world; they don't have time to be pussyfooting around with people.

I'm pretty sure it scared the Chinese guys, because they're all, "Okay, we'll pay you the thousands upon thousands that we owe you within ten days. And we'll get more going on the job site." So the plan is, my fam is coming home. We'll see if they really do pay. If they do, yay. But they still have to prepare the job site. So when or if they actually get it all ready, then Ben and probably his boss again will fly here, check it out, and make sure they're not lying. Because for REALS. They have been big liars. If they're not lying, and they have prepared the site, Ben will stay here and finish up with the project managing. The Chinese company were all, "Yeah, it will be three weeks, tops." But after looking at the job site today, Ben's boss and coworker said, "It will be a miracle if this is ready by February, even if they work every day on it." Sooooo, who knows??

As for me and my kids, we're done. Stick a fork in us. We're ready to get back home. Homeschooling is a nightmare - Sadie gives me major 'tude every day when it's school time for her - "I hate school! I hate you! I hate Math! I hate reading!!" It takes up too much of my time and energy, and everything else is getting neglected. Luckily, Ben has been here to help with the kids, cooking, housekeeping, etc. But I knew that I would be screwed when the project started in earnest. I got a taste of that yesterday and today. Dylan is supposed to do six hours of work per day; Sadie is supposed to do five. Yesterday, Sadie got her hours in, but Dylan got maybe 1 1/2 hours in. Today, vice versa. Dylan got all of his; Sadie got 1 1/2 hours in. Neat. But I have obligations, dude. For instance, today, breakfast had to be made (there isn't any cereal here, so we have oatmeal every other day and eggs and hash browns or eggs and toast every other day), served, and fed to the baby (I am NOT giving him a bowl of oatmeal and seeing how he does with it. That's just asking for trouble). I'm trying to teach the baby how to use a sippy cup and use it himself, but he doesn't get it quite yet, so I had to help him with his drinks. I had to change his diapers. I had to intervene when Micah and Sadie were slapping/punching/pulling each others' hair. I had to put movies into the computer (when we had offline parts of school) to keep Micah occupied. I had to run down and buy some vegetables to chop up and put in our Ramen for lunch. (We have Ramen every other day and peanut butter sandwiches every other day. There is no such thing as deli meat here. I put veggies in our Ramen to make it a teeny bit more healthy.) I had to run a load of laundry and hang it up. I had to do dishes and clean up, because Ben told me his boss and coworker were coming over after they saw the job site today, and my kitchen was gross. Does that leave 9 hours per day for instruction for the kids? Nope.

And the kids can do some parts of their lessons by themselves, but because they're so young, and because, for instance, Sadie needs more help with phonics and reading and stuff, they can really only do the independent reading and the handwriting practice by themselves. For everything else, they need my help.

So, yeah, the kids and I are sick of each other with the schooling thing. And I need to get Micah into preschool. I need to have some separation from him. For reals. He's killing me. And he needs more social interaction. He's more difficult to deal with and harder to understand with his speech than ever. I wonder if he hasn't regressed a bit since we've been here. It's been traumatic for him.

Ben has been really supportive of my thoughts on this and says that, though it will be hard for us to eventually be separated, it will probably be better for the majority of our family to get back to the states. And it will just be, like, maybe six months, tops.

There was some talk a few months back about having Ben head up a project in Korea. If they decide to assign Ben to that job site, again, I will probably send him on his merry way and stay at home with the kiddos. If the Korea project is a year or longer, though, I might just have to join him. That's just such a long time to be apart. And my bet is that Korea will be a bit easier for us - depending on where in Korea, hopefully there would be an international school where I could enroll the kids, a congregation for church that are allowed to meet together, etc. More of a support system for me as a busy mom.

There has also been talk of actually opening an office in London, and maybe of Ben working there. Again, if it's a year-long commitment or more, then we'll go with him and enroll the kids in British public school. I just know that I can't ever try to homeschool again. And I also know that I LOVE ENGLAND. And dude, there is a crepe stand on every corner, and a bakery on every other corner, and chocolate on every third corner....I think I'll be okay if we live in England. :) Verrrrrrry okay.

So that's that. We're leaving. And, honestly, I'm really glad. We have to be out of the country by Oct. 5th, because then we will have been here 90 days, and per our visas, we have to leave the country every ninety days, so we are flying out Oct. 4th, but like I told Ben tonight, now that I know we are going home, I want to leave YESTERDAY. You know? I want to get home and prepare for Halloween and enjoy what little there is left of autumn in Idaho Falls. My favorite time of year. But Ben and I both agree that we really should see the sights in Beijing before we go - it would be so dumb to have lived only 80 miles away and never toured Beijing. So we'll hit the big stuff. Ben booked this touring company and got us a hotel (a Holiday Inn Express) there in Beijing. We'll leave here Oct. 1st, do Beijing for three days, and fly out the fourth. And I'm SO EXCITED. Here's what we get to see - The Great Wall, the Ming Tombs, the Temple of Heaven, Tian'men Square, the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, the Olympic Park, a jade-carving factory (I'm so in love with jade and have a feeling that many souvenirs will be bought there by me), and a silk manufacturing factory. We will be totally exhausted, but dang. I cannot WAIT.

Soooooooooooo, lots of stuff to do. We'll have to load all of those books and school things, that took forever to get here, into our luggage and try to evenly distribute it. And cart it all back home. I'm not interested in homeschooling for the remainder of the school year. The kids miss their old friends at Hawthorne, so if they still have space, I'll be putting the kids back there. Maybe, with jetlag and everything, I might try to get them started Oct. 10th or so. We might have to buy a couple of more really big bags. Because not only do we have these infernal books, but dude, I want a few souvenirs, you know?? :)

So that's my story. And I'm sticking to it.

I'm jealous of teachers in China.

Kay. So, if you don't know, and you should if you are on my contacts list, but just in case, I taught junior high school for four years, right? And it was wonderful, because I truly love teaching and I love teenagers. I probably won't feel that way when I have my own. Hahaha! Anywho, I had tons and tons of really great experiences, but lots of frustrating ones. One of the hardest things about teaching in this day and age is the disrespect you have to deal with in the classroom. I had students say the F word to me...I routinely had to kick three or four kids out of my classroom per day for serious problems. Many of the parents of the students were mad at me that I didn't give their kids A's for not doing one iota of work in the classroom. I just think that the culture of students is different than it was when I was a teenager. I probably spent 99% of my time with classroom management and discipline, leaving very little time for real instruction or teaching.

So anyways, in talking with several teenagers here, I've discovered that I am breaking a commandment, for I am coveting the experience of these teachers here. Chinese kids have absolute and utter respect for their teachers. There isn't any swearing at the teacher. Kids don't even talk in class. At all. They prepare their work. They work hard.

Some interesting factoids about how school works here - you are at school from 7 a.m. until 10:30 p.m. Candy, the cute little teenager across the hall, has told me this, as has Professor Han's son and his nephew. I think they have class, then a break to study, then class, then a break to study, all day long. I guess that takes the pressure off from studying at home every night, right? You just stay there all day and all night. You take a lunch, and dinner is provided.

Professor Han's son's name, funnily, is Ha Han. If he was in the U.S., he would say, "Hi, my name is Ha Han Han." Here, he says, in Mandarin, "Hi, my name is Han Ha Han." Funny. And weird that he doesn't have an English name that he picked years ago in English class. Anyways, Ha Han is 18 and goes to college about an hour away. He was home last week (more on that in a minute), and we were over at their house, and he told me that in his high school, you have the same 30 kids in every single class. You stay in the same room, and the teachers are the ones who rotate. So you're in the room the whole day and evening. He told me there were 5,000 kids in his school, but he only knows his 30 classmates, obviously. And there are 200 teachers just at his school.

Mike, Professor Han's nephew, is 14. In his junior high school, there are actually 89 kids in each class, again, with the teachers rotating. There is no talking, there are no group projects, there is no conversation. I've met some American teachers who just got here to teach at the university (again, more on that in a sec), and they told me that, as far as reading and writing English, the Chinese are pros. But ask them to speak it or understand it when it's spoken, and they are lost. Because there is no interaction in the classroom. This is where I think the Chinese kids are at a disadvantage compared to American kids. In high school and college, we did tons of group projects, presentations, etc., the idea being that it would better prepare us for the real world - in work environments, you work with other people, together. Not by yourself. Which is true. I guess I just envy the nice, quiet respect that the teachers get here.

Mike showed me his English class textbooks. I was BLOWN AWAY. The things he's learning are at the same level as NATIVE ENGLISH-SPEAKING 14-YEAR-OLDS IN THE U.S. I couldn't get over it. In fact, I read lots of the questions and exercises and worksheets and whatnot, and I thought to myself, "Okay, so half of my students would be like, 'Huh?????? I don't get it.........'" After four years of teaching, you kind of know what your students can and cannot do.

In Mike's English class, they do listen to language a little bit - they watch these movies and then fill in worksheets that ask questions about "typical American life" from these movies. Mike was like, "Here are some pictures from the movies. Are these famous movies in your country???" I looked at the pictures - stills taken from movies - of actors I don't know, with early eighties hair and clothing. I laughed and said, "Uh, no. I don't think these have been seen by anyone except Chinese students!" I also was sure to let him know that we don't dress like that in the U.S. anymore, nor have hair like that anymore. It made me chuckle.

Free Stuff Micah Has Gotten This Week

1. A toy car and launcher from our neighbors
2. Little circular cards that pop when you throw them down. They have pictures of Plants vs. Zombies characters on them. He got those for free from the Hans.

People looooooooooove him. The more he is shy and refuses to speak to them or look at them, the more they want his approval. It's weird. Sadie is really jealous of this ability he has to get free stuff from people. She says people don't like her as much as they like Micah, but I don't think that's true. Yesterday, we were buying some fake UGGs on the street (more on that in a minute), and the saleslady was so thrilled to meet Sadie that she embraced her in a huge bear hug while shouting joyously. Sadie took it like a man. She's getting used to the constant touching and grabbing. She's so cute.

Mooncake Mania!

Okay, so Sept. 12th was mid-autumn festival here - a big deal. I was telling my dad that it reminds me of Thanksgiving. People go home to be with their families, always. And they have certain traditional foods, the most prominent being the mooncake, because mid-autumn festival is always on the day that the moon will be full. So the date changes every year. So it reminded me of Thanksgiving, because in the U.S., it's all about getting together and eating, and because what dessert do you always have? Pumpkin pie. We have these traditional foods that we eat at Thanksgiving - same with mid-autumn festival here.

Mooncakes - what can I compare them to? Like pasties from England. But filled with mystery datey, figgy stuff of different flavors. And the pastry part is thin and many-layered, kind of like Baklava. You're not missing anything, I promise. Our cute neighbors bought us a box of them. People exchange boxes of mooncakes like gifts at Christmastime. They had hundreds of vendors on the streets for the whole week before the festival, selling all different kinds of mooncakes. Some of them have edible red stamped patterns on the top of them. Some of them have carvings stamped into them, kind of like they used to do with signet rings and wax in the olden days in Europe. It reminds me of that. But you know, instead of wax, it's mooncake dough. :)

We weren't sure what we were going to do that day - it wasn't a holiday for my kids, as far as school was concerned, so it was just going to be business as usual. And before our neighbors got us mooncakes, I thought maybe we'd buy a few and try them. But then sweet Professor Han's family invited us over. We had a BLAST.

So like I told ya, Professor Han has three sisters, because that was the era before the one-child policy here. And, parenthetically, he told me another provision for the one-child policy - if you live in the country, you can have two kids. If you live in the city, though, just one. And one of my new American friends (more on that in a minute) told me that you can also have more children if you can pay for them. You have to pay some kind of fee.

One of his sisters actually lives right across the hall from him; her son is Mike, the 14-year-old. I can't remember her name or her husband's name. I so wish everyone had English names. The native names are just wayyyy too hard for me to remember. Then Professor Han has another sister who lives on the outskirts of Baoding. She brought her son, Andy. I didn't meet her husband - not sure the story there. Andy is actually 7 years old, so he played really good with the kids. I really, really liked Prof. Han's sisters. Sooo sweet. His mom came over, as well. And then Ha Han came home for the holiday, as well as the third sister's daughter - the third sister lives far away, but her daughter goes to the university here in town. She was adorable. She couldn't get enough of my kids. And Prof. Han's wife completely took over the care of Gage, as usual. When she's around, I don't have to worry about keeping him out of stuff, baby-proofing the area, feeding him, giving him his bottle, changing him - she wants him the whole time. She adores him. And he actually adores her.

So the ladies were making traditional Chinese dumplings, and it was very important to Prof. Han to have me learn this. They make the dough with only water and flour. They don't use any kind of measuring spoons. (I actually have never found any measuring spoons or cups of any sort here. When I make oatmeal, I just measure quantities by eyeballing things in a drinking cup; same with when I make rice.) They just grab the flour with their hands, add tap water, and moosh it around to make a dough. Then they roll it out like a snake, slice it like you would a cinnamon roll, into several small discs, then roll each disk out into a small circle. Then they fill it with the teeniest amount of filling, and then they seal it up in the most artful of ways. The sisters tried to teach me all of these ways of folding the dumplings up. It was fascinating and really fun. And mine were the ugliest. They were so surprised that I know how to work with dough. I was like, "Oh, honey, if you gave me some shortening and a cookie sheet, I could show you my famous apple dumplings." Which have a similar name to the dumplings here, but are nothing alike!! The filling, as far as I could understand through their halting English, and my non-existant Mandarin, was some kind of squash. (They kept calling it a melon, but then they showed me one, and I was like, "Oh! Squash!" They thought that was the funniest word they have ever heard.) It wasn't a squash that I'm familiar with. In addition to squash, there was...some kind of date? And that's about it.

So, after we folded like a million of these dumplings in artistic ways, they steamed them up. Professor Han's mom refused to sit at the table and eat with everyone else. She wanted to man the steamer, and nobody else was allowed near. I felt disrespectful, sitting there eating while she cooked. As far as dumplings go, they were alright. Better than any I've had in restaurants so far. But still weird to me. I kept thinking, "This would be so much better baked!!" They dip their dumplings in vinegar. Their vinegar is dark brown, as is their rice vinegar. Both kinds of vinegar I've used in the states have always been white, so that's interesting to me. They had tons of watermelon, which was good. And grapes, none of which are seeded, so you have to be careful when you eat them. The kids used to love grapes, but after many traumatic seed incidents, they sure don't like them anymore. But they ate like ten pieces each of watermelon, so that was good. It's also traditional, in addition to mooncakes, to serve pita bread with sugar stuffed inside of it. Kind of strange. Like I've said, I'm a fan of the pita bread here, but I haven't yet found any stuffings that Iike. Ben brought some pitas home the other day with donkey meat in them, which is a local Baoding specialty. Barf me.

Gage ate two dumplings, which impressed everyone there. He's a fan of any kind of food. The kid can pack it AWAY. Oh, how I love him.

Professor Han also insisted that Ben play Chinese chess with Mike and with Ha Han. I noticed, while they were playing, that Ha Han was wearing Barack Obama socks. I laughed so hard and took a picture. His mom and dad laughed, too. They must have been a recent college purchase. :) My American friends say that people here love Obama. I thought it was interesting. And it made me ashamed. Do I know the president, or dictator, or whatever they are calling it nowadays, in China? Uh, no..... How dumb. I need to read up on my Chinese politics and history. I'm going to read a book after I'm done with the one I'm reading now, called White Swans. My mom just read it and raves about it, as does my virtual branch relief society president. It's about three generations of Chinese women in this Chinese emigre's family history - her grandma, her mom, and her. It's non-fiction and it's supposed to be just fascinating. I've been kind of avoiding it - I've been kind of Chinese-d out. But maybe once I'm home I'll be in the mood. It's supposed to talk a lot about that time of the 1950's when Chairman Mao took over and all that - I guess this lady's mom and dad were high up in the communist government at that time.

Needless to say, White Swans has been banned in China. Hahaha!

There is a coffee shop across Stinky Street that also sells ice cream - ISH. Pretty close to ice cream. Anyways, I so badly want to take a picture of a sign in there that has a picture of Stalin, Lenin, Marx, Mao, etc., sitting at tables at a party, and at the top, it says, "Welcome to the Party!" I think it's really funny.

Sorry for the giant tangent.

Professor Han was sure to show Ben and I his bed and to assert that firm beds are better for you than soft beds. And he made us walk on this..rug made of rocks. I don't know how else to explain it. He says it's good for the circulation. Whatev, Professor. Whatev.

Often, when Sadie is tired of standing, she crouches, like a true native. They saw her doing that there and were so pleased that she was relaxing like the locals. They encouraged me to try to do it, but my stomach fat got in the way, or I was unbalanced, or something. I'm not sure. I was grunting and almost fell over. Neat.

Professor Han kept making me try all of these Chinese snacks before and after our meal. One was a dried date. It was gross. One of the other things he had me try, which was soooo funny, but also made me throw up in my mouth a little, was this chocolate-covered who knows what. I cautiously bit into it, and guess what it was? A GARBANZO BEAN. Dipped in chocolate. If you were to buy a can of garbanzo beans at the store, drain them, and dip each bean in chocolate, that is what this was. I laughed and laughed. They have the weirdest foods here!

We asked them how they felt about cheese. They weren't sure what we were talking about. Mrs. Han pulled from her fridge a sample of margarine that she had clearly gotten from a hotel somewhere. It was very old. "Cheese?" she said, pointing to it. "No, butter," we said. We explained what cheese was. They finally realized what we were talking about and made faces. "Cheese is disgusting," they said. They asked how to make it. Neither Ben nor I had any idea. Hahaha!

After a few hours, I told them that we really needed to do schooling. And Gage had had it. He needed a nap. I was going to start with Dylan anyways, so they offered to watch Sadie and Micah and have them play there, and then said they'd bring them home in an hour or two. The kids have been over there a ton, and they love it. And the Hans love them. So we felt totally comfortable leaving them there. And they felt totally comfortable there. Which is weird, for Micah. He very much trusts the Hans. And that's saying something. Plus, they have an adorable little dog that the kids love. Ha Han, Mike, and the adorable neice brought them home in a couple of hours.

When Dylan, the baby, Ben, and I left, Sadie and Micah were pretending to play Chinese chess, making up their own game, and saying, "I got your guy!" and then stealing each others' playing pieces. The Hans thought that was the funniest thing ever.

I've just been so grateful to people like the Hans who have been so kind to us here. It's made things much easier. And we'll miss them.

Oh, and something I've noticed that's funny - when the Chinese get people into a group to take their picture, they say, "Chezzzzzz-uhhhhh!!" Like our "Cheeeeeeeeeese!" Funny.

Grandpa's Other Job

The kids were doing a history lesson online the other day - it was like a memory game, but with pictures of land forms and their names. So, like, glaciers, peninsulas, islands, deserts, etc., and their names. Each time a kid would virtually turn two cards over, the dude on the recording would say, "Is this a match?" and the kids had to click "yes" or "no." Dylan was convinced that the man who voiced this question that was repeated over and over, was my dad. "Did you HEAR that, Mom? Grandpa Hale did the voice for this game!" I chuckled and said, "Um, I don't hear the resemblance, but I can assure you that he didn't." Dylan, being Dylan, insisted upon this for hours and hours. I finally said, "Well, Dyl, you'll have to ask him yourself when you see him." That kid never says never. Kind of like Jaedan Smith on Karate Kid. "I will never say neverrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.....I will fight 'til foreverrrrrrrrrrrrrr....." By the way, that movie should NOT be called Karate Kid. It's set in China, dude. Not in Japan. My heck. That really bothers me. It should be called Kung Fu Kid.

So I found out the name of the Justin Timberlake-type of guy - Jin Chow. Oh, he's big time here. His face is on everything.

The Seamstress on Bombed-Out Road

Before we knew we were coming home, we had started to buy some cold-winter clothes for the kids. And Ben had bought some slacks at a cheapo store. I wasn't too impressed with the prices, but they were comparable to what you would pay at Old Navy, so whatever. I wasn't about to spend double that in the department stores. Kids grow out of stuff too quickly to spend lots of money on their clothes, in my humble Kar opinion.

Well, after just one washing, one of Sadie's shirts' seams came undone, as did one of Dylan's hoodie seams, and Ben's pants seams. Just really shoddy workmanship. Ben wanted his slacks mended in time for his trip to Beijing last weekend, so I suggested that he go to this lady I've seen on Bombed-Out road. She sits on one side of a canal, her sewing machine right there on the sidewalk, a long extension cord running to the building behind her. She has hundreds of colors of thread. I made a mental note when I saw her a few times, so while I was teaching the kids one day, I sent Ben down there to see if she could fix our stuff. I think he had, like, two other things that needed mending, too. So he went there, and she fixed them up really nicely!!! She matched the thread really well and did backstitching and everything that a proper seamstress should be doing. It cost the equivalent of $5 for her to fix all five things. I'm a fan.

I'm sure she doesn't make very much, but I love the idea that, if you need something mended, you go to the seamstress at the side of the canal to do it. The keymaker is behind the Nut Guy on Stinky Street. You need a key made? That's where you go. Not to Home Depot. To the Key Guy behind the Nut Guy. If you need your shoes repaired, you go to the, ironically, legless man in front of the internet bar. He sits there on the sidewalk and fixes shoes for you. If you need your bicycle wheel pumped up, go to the guy beside the newspaper stand. He just pumps up tires, all day long. I just think it's so cool, though I really feel badly for these people, and for the vendors on Stinky Street and Party street. They work every single day, from 8 in the morning until 10 at night. No weekends off. No breaks. They are out there in the infernal heat, no matter what. If it's raining, they put tarps up above them. I just don't know how they can stand it.

Cowboys and Aliens

My hair was getting really nasty, unbearably so - just so shaggy and gross. So I took Micah and Dylan, who also needed cuts, and headed back down to the non-PTSD-inducing hair salon farther down on Stinky Street. The guy who so harshly sent me away, telling me to come back in three weeks, wasn't there, but it had been three weeks, so I felt justified going. Summer came, and I'm glad. She explained to the gal what I wanted done, and the gal did a good job. Not as good a job as my lady in I.F., but okay. While the kids and I were getting our hair cut, there was a movie playing in the waiting area. And the movie was an American movie I had seen previews for before we left - something about Cowboys and Aliens? It had 13 from House on it, and Daniel Craig, the James Bond guy. I laughed so hard. It's my guess that that movie is still in theaters in the U.S. So there has GOT to be somewhere you can buy these black market movies here! I just can't get anyone to tell me where. But do I want a movie with Chinese subtitles and horrible lighting, that looks like it was filmed literally in an American movie theater, even though it's only $5? Naw. I'd rather get the one I can see and actually hear. That's how I feel about it.

Dude, I've been working on this letter for three days, and it looks like I'm going to have to finish it up tomorrow - it's so late, and I'm bushed.

Americans!!!

So last week, Dyl, Micah, and I were walking down Stinky Street, and this Chinese lady yells, "Hello!" I just nodded and said Hello back, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because people just shout hello to us left and right while we walk down the street. It's so funny. So I kept going, and she stops me and goes, "No, I'm American!!! I'm American!" I go, "Whaaaaaaaaaaa???????????????" I was so excited that I practically hugged her! My first American in 2 1/2 months! Her parents are both from Hong Kong, but she was born in the U.S. Her name is Felice. She's teaching English at the university for this school year. It was so fantastic to see her. We exchanged phone numbers and promised to call each other. Later that night, I was going to get some drinks at the corner store and I ran into Felice again, this time with a blonde gal named Hannah, also a teacher. And then two American guys came up and chatted, too!!! Their names are George and John. Those two have come and taught for a couple of years now. They go home every summer, all summer, and then return again. George can actually speak Mandarin now, pretty well. This is Felice's and Hannah's first time. They say there are two other Americans at the other university in town, and then two in another town nearby. I told them we should have them over for dinner, and they got really excited - "We haven't had decent food in two weeks!" they said.

I decided to have them over last weekend. I was feeling sad and lonely, with Ben gone, so I got tons of food prepared. I was planning to make marinated Asian chicken, rice, and five-spice carrots - all recipes from, well, allrecipes.com. That website has saved my life. Because honestly, you can't really cook anything western here. The ingredients just are not here for it. I planned to have them over on Sunday night, all eight of them. But then I got horrifically sick - just a really bad cold, and I canceled.

A couple of nights later, the girls called and offered to bring me medicine. I readily accepted, since we were out of Nyquil, and I hadn't slept well for three nights. It was just Felice and Hannah. It was so fun to talk to them and have them play with my kids. They are total sweethearts. Felice grew up speaking Cantonese in her home. I asked her what the difference was between Cantonese and Mandarin - was it like the southern drawl in the southern United States vs. the accent in, say, Boston, Massachusetts? She said that the writing, the Chinese characters, are identical. But that the spoken language is completely, totally different. She took Mandarin in college, so she can get around pretty well.

Hannah has lived in, like, 27 different countries. All over the place. Many third-world places. She says she just really loves to learn new languages and new cultures. It's her first time in China, and she said that it's been a struggle for her to adjust to life here. I thought it was telling, that she has lived in a lot of impoverished, tough areas, but that this has been the hardest adjustment for her. It made me feel a little bit more justified in my discomfort. :)

They came over again last night - I think they like us. And I like them. And it sounds like their apartments are truly horrific. So we welcome them to our apartment, which really is luxurious, by Chinese standards. I ended up making that meal the night before, and I had leftovers for last night and offered some to them. They gobbled it up. Then Ben was still hungry and made pancakes with his own made-up syrup recipe. He and the girls gobbled up a whole bunch of pancakes, too. They were so excited. They only have one electronic hot plate in their apartments, so I honestly don't know if they'll be able to cook with any butter. You have to have the teflon pans here to cook with butter, and the electronic hot plates don't work with teflon pans. They have microwaves and toaster ovens, so that's good. I told them that they could have my cooking ingredients when we leave. And then I'll send Ben, when he comes back, with baking powder, baking soda, etc. to replace what the girls use.

Hannah has told me the funniest stories about her students. She says they all ask her personal questions, all the time: "Why aren't you married??" "Do you have a boyfriend?" "Are you looking to marry a Chinese man??" It's all about romance. Oh, and they all want to know if she thinks Jay Chow is handsome. [Parenthetically, I think he's really cute. Just my own personal opinion.] There is no garbage can in her classroom - just a corner where people throw garbage. It matches the rest of the city. :)

The other day, Hannah was teaching, and she was saying something about somebody who was Taiwanese. Her students stopped her. "Wait, wait, wait. Taiwanese??? You mean CHINESE."

"No," said Hannah, with a little smile, "I mean Taiwanese."

"Taiwan is a province of China. They are Chinese."

"I'm pretty sure most of the world, and Taiwan, would disagree with that statement."

"Well, it's true."

"Let me ask you a question. Do you have to use a passport when you go to Taiwan?"

Uncomfortable mumbles of assent.

"Mmm-hmmm. I'll take that as a 'yes.' Do you have to have a passport to visit any other provinces in China?"

Silence.

"Gosh, I wonder why you would need a passport to go to just another province in China..."

It makes me laugh.

I'm sad that, when I finally meet some cute little American friends, I have to leave. But it still feels like the right decision to go, and I'm getting really antsy to get outta here. But I want to hang out with them a ton before we go. They're sweethearts.

Lasagne???

We met a dude who is refurbishing the apartment one stairwell over from ours. He is a Chinese national; his name is Eric. He has actually been living in New Zealand for ten years and just returned, so his English is impeccable. And he has that cute little New Zealander accent. He told me that he wanted to have my family over for lasagne after his apartment is finished. I said, "Now waiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit a minute. Where did you get lasagne??" He said he had to order it online and have it shipped over. I laughed.

But then he told me that there is some other grocery store, a little farther away then the 10-minutes-away Da Fu Yuen supermarket, that has a "huge" imports section. I was like, you have got to be kidding me. After all this time, NOW I find out there is a place with more imported food. Sheesh. Will I get a chance to head over there before we leave? Probably not. And it's okay. It's just ironic, I guess.

Chicken Noises in the Market

When I picked up some stuff in the supermarket for our American party that never happened, I wanted to get some chicken breasts. I just wasn't quite sure if I was looking at the right kind of meat. Yes, meat is very mysterious here. I obviously cook enough to recognize chicken breasts, but I really, really didn't want duck breasts. Duck is a big deal here, but I'm not a fan. I saw something that looked like chicken breasts, but I was nervous. The ladies behind the meat counter looked like they wanted to help. (The customer service in markets here is AMAZING. They hire wayyyyyyyy too many people, and they all just mainly stand around and wait to help you. And they get really excited if someone needs their help. It's a nice change from Wal-Mart.) I didn't know how to say "chicken," so I pointed to the breasts and made wings and went, "bock, bock, bock, ba-gock?" They nodded enthusiastically, then adding gestures to indicate those red things that hens have on their heads - what on earth are those called? I've never known. I nodded enthusiastically in return. So they wrapped the chicken up for me and sent me on my way. It was funny.

More Furniture

Those cute Hans brought some more furniture over the other day. It was before we knew we were leaving, and now I feel badly. But Ben's company is going to continue paying rent on the apartment here to hold it until Ben and his coworkers return. Then he'll get three roommates or so.

They brought two large lounge chairs and a desk for the boys' room. It was so sweet. Mrs. Han, of course, wanted to have some quality time with Gage. He loves her, so he didn't mind. And she learned something new to say to Sadie, "Hey, Sadie - WHAT'S UP???" Sadie and I laughed and said, "Good job!"

Professor Han said, "These from my HOME! Put clothes on them!" I was like, huh? And then I realized what he was saying. He wants us to take care of the chairs by putting sheets over them to protect them. I said, "Oh, sheets??" "Yes!" both he and his brother-in-law echoed at the same time, "SHEETS!!" I've noticed, in every home I've visited, the Chinese cover their furniture with sheets to keep it nice. And everyone but us has cool, comfortable couches. Big, Ikea-ish, very modern. I like them. They're cozy. So they have cozy couches and unforgiving beds. :) I would sleep on the couch every night if I had a bed like that.

UGG Mania

So Ben went down Stinky Street the other night, and there was a new booth in front of the post office. The gal was selling UGGs, for only 78 yuen a pair - that's around twelve dollars. He came home and told me about it, and I shrieked, because I had just been talking to my sis, Lex, about this. She and I had heard that you can get UGGs for really cheap here, and here was my opportunity. I knew what size she wanted and what colors, so I ran down there. They had four or five different colors and styles, but only one in the color Lex wanted. I bought them, took pictures of them, and sent the pictures to her. She was so stoked and told me to get another pair in another color for her. And then my mom asked for a pair. So I've been keeping this lady in business.

But then, last night, Hannah, a self-proclaimed UGG expert, examined them, and they're fake!!! Hahaha! They tricked me! On the heel, it looks like it says "UGG", with the authentic "Australia" underneath, but upon closer examination, it actually says, "UGC," but it's written kind of weird to lead you to think that it has a double g. And it says underneath, "Austkalia." They tricked me! Hahaha! But at least my mom and Lex got some warm, cute boots to wear this winter, right? And for only 12 bucks a pair. Not bad. Hannah has a friend in Beijing; she texted her, asking where to buy the cheap, REAL UGGs. She got a text immediately back, and I wrote the name of the market down in my China tourism book. When we get up to Beijing on Oct. 1st, we'll have all that first afternoon to do whatever we want, so Ben and I are thinking we will take a trip to this market and see what we can see.

Did I get some fake UGGs for myself, you ask? Nope. My feet are too big. I wear a size nine in the U.S., which is a size 41 here, and the buck stops at size 40. Sad, eh?

What's On TV

We really don't watch much local television. I've noticed that there are always two things on - cheesy soap operas, or dating game shows. There are, like, 12 dating game shows, and according to Hannah and Felice's students, everyone and their dog watches them. I think that's so funny.

We actually saw a claymation show for kids the other day. It had these animals from a few different countries. The cow was from France, wore a Napoleonic hat, and one hoof was a fork and one was a knife. I thought that was funny. He was leaning against a clay Arc de Triomph and chatting with another character.

If it's not smoked, it's crrrrrrrrrrrap.

I found this amazing salad on allrecipes.com a few weeks back - an Asian-style potato salad. I la-hoved it. One ingredient was bacon. I saw slabs of what looked like it could be bacon....ish, at Hui Mart. It just looked like it needed slicing. So I set out to do it, and to cook it in my frying pan.

So when you buy pork here, it comes with the skin on. You have to kind of be your own butcher. So it took forever to seperate the skin from the pork. And then to slice it really thin. So then I cooked it up in the frying pan, hoping to get that wonderful smell of cooking bacon into my nostrils, but it just smelled....really weird. I asked Ben what on earth was wrong with this bacon. He told me that it wasn't smoked beforehand. Ohhhhhhhhh. So that's the deal. I ended up still putting the cooked bacon in the potato salad, but it really didn't add much. I'm excited to try that recipe again when we get home, with nice, normal bacon.

We had a home-run recipe tonight - an Asian noodle salad from allrecipes.com. It had this peanut butter sauce, tossed with noodles and stir-fried broccoli, red peppers, and onions. It was fantastic. That's another keeper.

But let's be honest - I'm not going to cook Asian food again for several months. I'm all Asian fooded out. :)

It's Time to Graft in a New Head

Sooooooo, Dylan lost his afternoon pills that he takes for his ADHD. He still has his morning pills - the long-acting, gradual release ones. But they wear off about 3 p.m., and heaven help us when that happens. We used to have a respite, giving him his "homework dose," and now that those are gone, oh mama. Life is hard. Schooling is even harder, which didn't seem possible. There are many, many times per day that I really could punch him right in the face and feel good about it.

Tonight, we were attempting to read scriptures - we were reading in the Book of Mormon, in Jacob - is it chapter 4? That enormous chapter that has, like, 75 verses. The chapter about the olive tree. I've always thought that chapter could be whittled down to, like, 10 verses, and still say the same thing. It really would help.

Anyways, we decided only to read half the chapter tonight, because Dylan was literally climbing all over the couch. Ben muttered something like, "I wish we could graft a new head on Dylan's body...." I laughed and laughed. Ben's funny. It's true - the fruit of his head has gone wild and needs to be cut off and cast into the fire. Totally joking. I love the kid. I'm just trying to survive through one more week of schooling with him. And looking forward to when we can get his pills refilled. Like, the day we get home. Hahaha!

A Familial Epidemic

I don't know what the deal is, but we have been the Canker Sore Family for the past three months. Each of us constantly has a canker sore or two in his mouth. I cannot figure it out. In Idaho, I got maybe one per year? If that? What is the deal??? Poor Ben and I can't even peck each other on the lips right now, because we're both suffering with canker sores inside our front, lower lips. And Dylan and Sadie are always complaining of them. I have no idea what the deal is. Any thoughts??

What We've Learned

Last night, during family prayer, Ben was praying, and he said, "We thank Thee for the experiences that we've had here in China that have helped us learn more about ourselves." Later, I asked him what his deeper thoughts on that were, if there was anything in particular he has learned about himself, or about the kids or me. Here are the things he feels he has learned: 1) He says he has learned that it is a good thing for him to go to work and be away from the kids, that he needs a separation from them to be a better dad, that he doesn't have enough patience. 2) He says he has learned that our kids are not self-starters, as far as school goes. They are definitely not motivated students. That they need to be sent to a school and never, ever, ever homeschooled again. I concur.

This, of course, got me to thinking about what I've learned from my experiences here. The things I've learned here are humbling: 1) I'm more of a fuddy-duddy than I thought. I thought I was a bit of an adventuress. Turns out, I'm more of a homebody than I thought. I like to plant some roots and watch them grow, you know?? 2) I'm more high-maintenance than I thought. I'm picky. And a bit of a food snob. I'm snobby. Weird. I never knew I was snobby, but I guess I am.

So, um, this whole experience has made my opinion of myself much lower. Hahaha! But hey, it's good to be made aware of one's weaknesses, right? So that we can work on them.

Sooooo, that's what's been going on here in Baoding. We leave in about a week for Beijing, and I am thrilled. When people ask of me, "How was China?" I think the best response will be, "It was interesting." Because it really has been interesting. Has it been wonderful? Um, no. Has it been awful? Sometimes. Has it been great? Every now and then. So I think "interesting" will be a good response. :)

Oh, and when we're in Beijing, who will be eating at T.G.I. Friday's? And at the Hard Rock Cafe? That's right. Me.

Here are some picture-poohs of our recent adventures:

Mid-Autumn Festival at the Hans' house: http://utahben.smugmug.com/Travel/Mid-Autumn-Festival/19174889_HxjKzh#1494349561_bvjtw9t

Sadie's ca-razy morning hair: http://utahben.smugmug.com/Travel/Medusa/19175101_NVxn9N#1494371198_6CkVX8x

The seamstress on Bombed-Out Road, locals playing dominoes, and a rare glimpse at the mountains near Baoding: http://utahben.smugmug.com/Travel/Our-Neighborhood/18427834_JKNSgC#1494380269_Z56Nh97

More homeschooling science experiments and art projects: http://utahben.smugmug.com/Travel/Homeschooling-Adventures/18971928_L5Lbt6#1473142271_MsB3zsf

More furniture for our apartment, and funny signs Sadie made for the doors: http://utahben.smugmug.com/Travel/Our-Apartment/18427321_wQ6pj3#1494406636_zxpr7XW

A picture of Hannah - we'll add more pics of her and Felice soon: http://utahben.smugmug.com/Travel/Our-American-Friends/19175557_5WbDbg#1494416173_HfsZ4PP

The fakey UGGS - pretty convincing, if you ask me: http://utahben.smugmug.com/Travel/Shopping-Finds/18864864_jbZbP7#1494419393_9DQ4dsZ

Love,
Kar

Mooing in the Supermarket‏

2011-09-13T13:30:00.001-07:00

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

Throw that tooth up on the roof!!‏

2011-09-05T09:32:00.001-07:00

Hellooooooooooooo!!! La-la-laaaaaaaaaaa... (That's from Seinfeld.)

I hope all is going well for you guys back in May-gwah, as they call America around here. School is probably starting up, the weather is probably cooling down...I love autumn time.

Things here are good. Life is good when Kar has a kitchen. That's all there is to it. :) We continue to eat Americanized Chinese food, and I'm okay with that. We've found a few little parts of the local cuisine that are nice - they make these wonderful pita bread things down on the street - better than any pita bread I've had in the states. But we don't really like the fillings they like to put inside of the pitas. So we just buy the pitas plain, and then fill them with our own meatey-vegetabley mixtures. And it's good.

Losing Teeth

Sadie-Sue lost her second tooth last week. Here is what a bad mom I am - she lost her first tooth, like, the day before we left for China. And I was so stressed and busy and just..FREAKING OUT that I forgot to have the tooth fairy come to visit her and give her some money for her tooth. And then we left. Sadie kept saying, "But I thought the tooth fairy was supposed to take my tooth and leave money..." I blushed and said, "Well, maybe she forgot that night. And then, when she remembered, she didn't know where you had gone..." I'm such a dork. So we were eating one night, and Sadie picked this thing out of her mouth that I thought was a piece of rice, with this look of horror on her face. I was like, "Sadie, dang it, eat your dinner!" And then I realized that wasn't a piece of rice; it was a tooth. :) So we put it in a little paper cup next to her bed and I told Sadie that I thought the tooth fairy would remember this time. She did. And she left a little note, saying, sure enough, "I was sick that night you lost your tooth, and the next day, when I went to give you some money, you were gone!!" So she left $2 for July's tooth, and $2 for this tooth, but in yuan, so - 24 yuan.

When Summer and Maria came over two days later for Sadie's birthday party (more on that in a moment), she proudly showed them her gap. Summer later asked me what we do when children lose teeth. So I told her the whole tooth fairy bit. She asked what we do with the teeth. I told her that I don't know what other people do, but I just throw them in the garbage. :) I asked her what they do here in China. She said that, if the tooth was a bottom tooth, you throw it on the roof of your house, if you can. Because those teeth grow up, toward the sky. So you throw your tooth up on the roof and make a wish. If the tooth is a top tooth, you throw it into a water well and make a wish, because upper teeth grow DOWN. I asked her if there are that many water wells around - what do you do if there aren't any wells? She laughed and said, "Well, you dig a hole and bury the tooth." Interesting, huh?

Yelling in the Marketplace

The streets here are just...really LOUD. Not only do people speak pretty loudly, but in the afternoon or so, the street vendors get these loudspeakers out. And they have the loudspeakers where you can record yourself saying something, and then play it over and over again, nonstop. So they'll be like, "Come buy my scrunchies for your hair! They're really beautiful! Get them now, while they last!" or whatever, in Mandarin, of course, and they put those loudspeakers on top of their cart and push the "play overandoverandover again" button, and that's what we hear all night, until 10 or so. Sometimes Dylan thinks that there is music on in the other room, but it's usually somebody's loudspeaker, on repeat, yelling about their wares.

Joyless Line Dancing

There's this park thingey we've passed when we've gone to the far-away supermarket, Da Fu Yuen. In the evening, all of these ladies line up in four or five lines. And it's just ladies, and only older ones. And someone has always brought a boom box which plays some traditional Chinese song. And these ladies do this...line dance thing. Like we do to country music in the states. The dance doesn't seem really...Asian...to me. The moves are pretty bland - I could see anyone from anywhere doing them. But they line dance for hours out there. Once, we went to the store at like six, and we left at like eight, and there were these ladies, doing the same dance, over and over and over. And it cracked me up - it was just like how people watch/listen to fireworks here - with a totally straight face. They don't smile. This line dancing is serious business. It cracks me up.

An Answer to the Fireworks Question

The other morning, someone lit firecrackers at 6:30 a.m. I am not even joking. I was like, "You have got to be kidding me..." And then one night, there was this enormous firecrackers show, at like 9 at night. It was right on Party Street (what we call it), only maybe a block away, so our view was phenomenal. It was a really good show, too, lasting quite a long time. And they were the big old firecrackers like you see on the 4th of July in Idaho Falls. So I asked Summer the next day, "Is there some celebration going on? Why all the fireworks? Why the fireworks so early in the morning? And what was that fireworks show about last night?" She told me that, if someone is opening a new business, they light firecrackers to attract business. Interesting, huh? Or, often, people light firecrackers right after a marriage ceremony. So the thinks that, most likely, the culprits of all these early morning firecracker wake-ups are a new business opening about a block away. Funny.

This Time, a Real Playdate

So we have the coolest neighbors across the hall. I can't remember the names of the parents, but their daughter, who is seventeen, goes by the name of Candy. I asked her how she chose that English name for herself. She said her English teacher gave them a list of possible names to choose from, and that was her favorite one. The parents, interestingly, are both architecture professors at the university! Anyways, one day, they invited us over for Asian pears and the watching of a Garfield cartoon. Sadie was in hog heaven. I excused myself early, because they weren't running any air-conditioning, and I thought I was going to pass out.

So the neighbors have a neice/cousin who is Sadie's age named Tian Tian, which is the word for "sky." She was visiting her extended family and wanted to meet the little May-goren girl. :) She was too nervous to play by herself over here, and she doesn't speak a lick of English, of course, so Candy offered to be Sadie and Tian Tian's translator. The girls played with paper dolls for awhile, and then ran around screaming and laughing and tickling each other - Sadie's favorite pasttime. :) Tian Tian is ADORABLE. And she helped me figure out a couple of more words. She kept saying, "Jigga," which makes me laugh, because Lex is always saying, "Jigga what?" when someone says something she just cannot believe or whatever. Example: "I got into a car accident today!" "Jigga what??" So she kept saying, "Jigga," and finally I said, "Candy, what does 'jigga' mean??" She smiled and said, "This. It means 'this.'" So Tian Tian had been referring to this paper doll, or that paper doll, and she was saying, "this blah blah blah. This blah blah blah." So now I know. She was also saying something that sounds unfortunate to my English-speaking ears - "nigga." I asked Candy what "nigga" means - it means "that." Who knew??

Yogis

So, as you know, we've started homeschooling, and one of the requirements for the Idaho Virtual Academy is to do P.E. They mainly give you carte blanche on what you can do. So we try to shake it up - jumproping, playing on the big toy, etc. We just bought a basketball that needs to be pumped up, and then we can dribble the ball around and stuff - they have basketball courts at the university that we are allowed to use, but the hoops are too tall for the kids, you know... I need to take our new ball to the dude on the corner. His job is to pump up bike tires and balls. That's what he does for his living. Poor guy. So I need to pay him a visit. There are ping-pong tables at the university, near the track (which I plan on using daily, if it would ever cool down), and I saw ping-pong paddles and balls at the school supplies store the other day, so I think we might do that, too - play some ping-pong with the kids.

The other night, it was pretty late in the evening - too late to go outside for P.E. But we had to do our P.E. requirement for the day. So I decided to hop online and see if we could find some yoga videos. None of them would download or buffer correctly or whatever, but we did find a couple of websites that showed pictures of the poses, and how to get into and out of the poses correctly, etc. So we did that one night for P.E., and it was a big hit. We did it again a couple of nights later. We use our bedspreads as our yoga mats. We were doing that one pose - is it called the lotus pose? I think so. Where you are sitting, like, kind of cross-legged, and your hands are on your knees, facing up, index finger and thumb touching. You know the one. So we were supposed to hold that pose for a minute, so I was closing my eyes and breathing deeply and holding the pose, and Sadie whispered to me, "Mommy, are you listening to Jesus?" It was so funny. She is so cute.

Sadie's Birthday

Our little Sadie girl turned six on Aug. 31st. We had Summer, Maria, and the Hans over. I'm not as mad at Professor Han as I used to be, now that we have our kitchen in. I got another cake at our little bakery on Stinky Street - hand-picked by Sadie herself. Summer got Sadie a hand-held compact, which was sweet. And Maria got her a music-playing snow globe. The Hans gave Sades a barbie. My mom sent a package over with more paper dolls, and Littlest Pet Shop toys, which she plays with incessantly ever since, by the way. Gloria had given me a card with money in it to give to Sadie - it was in my suitcase and I got it out. Ben and I got her two things - a set of Baoding Balls - she has been begging for some for ages - and a real Chinese tea set. Every time we see those in the flea market, she just stares and stares at them and tells me how much she wants one. They weren't too expensive, so I just got her one. She adores it. The cups for tea are soooo teeny-tiny. And they come with this tea tray thing. It's wood, with designs on the top, and slats in it. And underneath is this drip-catching drawer. So when you are serving tea, if you drip, it goes through the slats and into the drip-catching drawer. She adores it. I'm sure she'll break at least one of the cups or pitchers or whatever before our time in China is over, but she is so thrilled about it.

Professor Han, in addition to Sadie's Barbie, brought some candy for the kids, and for Ben and I - a special treat. A can of peaches. They acted like this can of peaches was this huge delicacy. They made a big show of opening the can for us and dishing out several cups full of them for people to eat. You would have thought they had brought caviar and old wine over or something. It was so funny. I was like, "Wow. Canned peaches. Ooooh." We smiled graciously, and stored them in a tupperware for everyone to see how grateful we are, and we have eaten them.

After we had cake, Maria and Dylan made up a game with fans and balloons. You can't let the balloon touch the ground, and to prevent it from doing so, you blow it from underneath with your handheld fan. But you can't touch the balloon with the fan, either. They played that for, like, an hour. Maria is so cute. I told her she would make a great mother. She seems to really like doing active things - she's always jumping and dancing around. I love it.

Professor Han had brought his nephew, Mike, over. Mike is a doll. I was confused and thought at first that Mike is Lillian's brother. No, no, no, Prof. Han laughed. He's a nephew from a different sister. My eyes widened. "You have more than one sibling???" I asked. He chuckled and told me that he has THREE sisters. I asked how that was possible, with the laws here about number of children you can have. He said that law is only 30 years old, that he and his sisters were born before that law came into effect. I had no idea!

Professor Han's wife is awesome. Very down-to-earth and sweet. She brought us pictures that she had taken of Ben's birthday. Such a babe. She was wearing these ankle-length panty-hose with her dress. I've noticed that about women here, maybe age 30 and older - they wear ankle-high panty hose with their sandals and shoes. I think it looks so, so funny. I can see wearing those if you're wearing long pants that cover the tops of the anklets, you know? But they wear them with their miniskirts or knee-length skirts or whatever, and they look really dorky. But it's cute. Just a cultural thing, I guess.

Our Very Shady School Supplies

Well, we've had...one and a half weeks of school so far, and guess who still doesn't have their books? Us. Ben's company actually ended up sending them via DHL. There is a DHL office in Beijing. It took two weeks for them to get to Beijing. But then, because there were SIX of them, and they were heavy, they were under heavy suspicion. What are in these boxes? Are they full of contraband? Why so many? So first, we had to send a list of every specific piece in those boxes. I had to look up and copy and paste the list in an e-mail. Several books, some workbooks, science instruments, rulers, an inflatable globe, on and on. So we did that. So then they were like, "Ooooh, are any of the books banned???" We were like, "Um, not in the U.S...." So then they had this customs agent go and inspect our suspicious books. I'm not even kidding. Word on the street is that they were inspected and found worthy to enter China for reals. So we should get them hopefully by the end of this week. One of Ben's work associates is going to pick them up when he goes to Beijing next.

In the meantime, I've been trying to teach lessons without these books. Which has been really fun. Some things are available online, which has been helpful, but others haven't. I was lucky and found a grammar workbook that Dylan is supposed to be getting, online. And it showed the first 10 pages, if you click the "look inside" button of this web page where you can buy this workbook. So I was able to "look inside" and copy and paste the worksheets from Dylan's grammar lesson last week, onto a word document. Other things I haven't had such good luck with. So I do what I can. We don't have our literature books, but if the lesson plan is available online and tells us the names of the short stories or poems the kids are doing, I'm able to look those up online and find copies of them. So I"m making due.

It's interesting to see, close-up, what Dylan's and Sadie's strengths and weaknesses are, as far as schooling. I always knew Dylan enjoyed Math and was good at it, and that he wasn't a huge fan of reading, but I'm seeing more than ever how much he detests English-ey stuff. If he has to write three sentences in response to his history lesson, saying what he thought was interesting about it, he acts like I've just asked him to wash our entire apartment building using a pulley system of ropes. I'm like, dude. It's three sentences. It will be okay. We are reading Tuck Everlasting for his literature class, though, and he's enjoying it. So that's good. He just...takes more after his dad in his preferences in school - he's a sciencey/math kind of guy.

Sadie is definitely not a sciencey/math kind of girl. Dylan and Sadie take three classes together - the specialists at the Idaho Virtual Academy said that would be okay and still fulfill both kids' requirements with Idaho for the next year, and it would cut my time down considerably. So they both take 2nd grade history, 2nd grade science, and 2nd grade art together. It has helped, time-wise, but obviously, Dylan catches things immediately, and Sadie is taking more time to understand things. Because it's second-grade curriculum. So we do the lesson, and then Dylan takes the assessment online and usually passes with flying colors the first time. Sadie has to take each assessment two or three times before she gets it. Which is fine. I don't make it a big deal. I say, "Well, let's review this again tomorrow and see if we can ask you the same questions tomorrow and see how you do."

Sadie takes 1st grade math, however, and she really struggles with it. It's just not her forte. So I find us reviewing lessons two or three times in math, too, poor girl. And she just hates it. I know how she feels. She also really hates phonics. And boy, does that girl give me attitude when we're working on a subject she doesn't like. But when it comes to things like, "Is this a sentence?" Oh, she loves that stuff. She totally gets it. "Which of these words best fills in the blank?" That kind of stuff is easy for her. She has a natural talent for it. Like her mama. She and I are reading Ramona the Pest together, and she loves it so much.

I've been reading Vanity Fair by William Thackeray, and the other night, I hopped onto the iPad to read a few pages of it. I had forgotten to close out of Ramona the Pest earlier that day when Sadie and I had read. I was so tired that I didn't realize my mistake and just started reading Ramona the Pest. I read, like, three pages of it before I realized, "Hey, I'm reading Ramona the Pest, not Vanity Fair!" It was funny. I was sitting there, going, "Oh, that Ramona is just like my Micah..." and then I was like, "Why am I reading this?" Hahaha! I guess once a Beverly Cleary lover, always a Beverly Cleary lover.

Sadie's Bedtime

Sades has to share a room with Gage, and what we have to do is usually get Gage to bed first, and then wait an hour or so, and then sneak Sadie in there. If we put them in together, Gage won't fall asleep. So we try to put Gage down at 8 and Sadie down at nine, but sometimes that doesn't always happen. Sometimes we get Gage down at 9, and we have to wait until 10 to put Sadie down. I don't mind having her up the extra time. She's easy and self-entertaining. She and I will play a quiet game of "chest" or memory or whatever and it's usually really pleasant.

The other night, we didn't get Gage down until nine, so we were kind of hanging out, waiting for 10, and Sadie goes, "Hey, Dad, are you ready to put me to bed? I mean, it's your choice...but I was just wondering." I giggled. She was trying to say that she was tired, but she was being all passive/aggressive about it - "I mean, it's your choice..." That is so what I do when I'm talking to my kids. "If you don't eat your dinner, you can't have anything until breakfast. So are you going to eat your dinner, or are you going to go hungry until breakfast? It's your choice."

Taiwan - oh REALLY?

The other day, Summer was like, "So, do Americans think that Taiwan is a separate country?" I was like, "Um, yeah. It is, isn't it?" "Oh no! It's just a province of China. Just like Hebei." I was like, huh??? I later looked it up. From everything I have read, Taiwan is NOT a province of China, when you talk to Taiwan (or anyone else in the world) about it. When you talk to China about it, it is. I guess it depends on your point of view. It makes me laugh. It's like those funny propaganda-style news shows in the English language on Chinese television - "Oh, Tibet loves being under our rule. The Dalai Llama is wrong. We've made Tibet so successful and happy..." Yeahhhhh.

Gage's Walker

Gage is Mr. Walk-Along-Couches-and-Walls man, right? He's really close to walking. He has discovered that he can use his high chair as his own little walker device. It's wood, so it slides easily on our laminate flooring. So he pulls up against it and is off to the races. He walks that thing all over the apartment. He's such a mover and a shaker. And the kid is the best eater EVER. I had forgotten, after Mr. Weak Cheeks (Micah), that a baby could eat easily and happily. The kid PACKS IT AWAY. He eats as much as Dylan, at every meal. And he's chewing so well.

He Gets Free Stuff

People on the streets ADORE Micah. He's so shy, and when they try to talk to him or touch him, he looks down and picks his nose. We've talked about this. This doesn't make people less affectionate toward him - if anything, it makes them MORE affectionate toward him. The kid gets soooooooooo many free things from people. When I was buying school supplies, the lady gave him two free packages of stickers. When I was getting Sadie some wrapping paper for her birthday presents, the lady in the store gave Micah a free gerber daisy. When we were staying at the hotel for a month, one of the gate keeper guys drew these really neat pictures of planes and fighter jets and gave them to Micah as a present. He is a favorite. I love it. Nothing makes peoples' day more than when he says, when we are leaving, the Mandarin words for "goodbye" - "Tsi Chien!" They laugh and ruffle his blonde little hair and give him free apples, bananas, sodas, candy, etc. etc. etc. It's adorable.

Hazy

It's still pretty hot outside, but I can tell a difference - it's not, like, melt instantly into your shoes hot. It's more like, "Well, it's ninety degrees out here, but we can cope for a few minutes while we run down to the market." It's very, very hazy most days. You can tell if you are having a non-humid day, even before stepping outside, by seeing how hazy it is outside. The other day, it was surprisingly clear. I mean, I could see buildings clearly for miles and miles. I couldn't believe it. And there, on the horizon, were some MOUNTAINS! I was like, "There are mountains right there?" They were really relatively close, but it's so hazy that you never see them. I haven't seen them before, or since.

The other day, it was 4 o'clock or so - when the sun should have hit our eyes really bright as we were walking westward on Stinky Street. And the sun was right there in front of us, but it was just bright red. I couldn't believe that I was looking at the sun, and that it looked red. That is how hazy and polluted it is here.

Sparkly

We went to this alleyway by a different McDonald's to do some more cold-weather shopping on Saturday. There were tons of kids' clothing booths. I was hoping to find some, I don't know...normal clothes. Those hopes were dashed. Kids' clothes are so crazy here! Things still do not match each other at ALL. I was wondering if it was just that flea market, but no. It's everywhere. And everything has bedazzled this and sparkly that and sequins, sequins, sequins. Even on little boys' clothes. Micah picked out a shirt for himself that he is so in love with. It was cheap, so even though it's butt-ugly, I got it for him. It's clearly meant for a boy, because it has a picture of a little cartoon boy on the front, right? And it says, "Hip Boy" on it. So whatever. The long sleeves are covered in British flag pattern. The front and back are neon blue. And the cartoon boy is wearing these, like, gangsta clothes, with all of these sequins and bedazzled things and bright, shiny studs all over him. Micah calls it his Sparkly Shirt. In fact, he wore it for a day and a night and a day, and it's in the wash right now, much to his consternation. He went to the market with Ben the other night, and he insisted on wearing his Sparkly Shirt, even though it's actually a sweatshirt, and it was crazy hot outside. He's so funny.

All of Sadie's clothes that she picked are totally sequined and sparkly and just crazy. I've decided that I'm never going to find some plain jeans or any plain shirts for my kiddos, and to just go with it. Haha!

Ben bought me some cute, cute, cute little pageboy hats on Stinky Street the other night. They were only $3 each! Now that's what I"m talkin' about. I love them so much, and they're perfect, because I throw one of those on in lieu of doing my hair, and voila. Cuteness.

Well, so that wraps up this week's events. I uploaded pics of all of the things I just talked about (and other stuff) onto smugmug:

Pictures we took for our virtual ward directory - http://utahben.smugmug.com/Travel/Pictures-for-our-Branch/18865081_P2rP7W#1462266661_xwzqF3G

My cute new hats - http://utahben.smugmug.com/Travel/Shopping-Finds/18864864_jbZbP7#1462247594_Bm87z8Q

Sadie's Birthday - http://utahben.smugmug.com/Travel/Sadies-Birthday/18864581_bv3jWF#1462221290_Jr5CcfR

Laundry, Yoga, Tian Tian, and Firecrackers - http://utahben.smugmug.com/Travel/Our-Apartment/18427321_wQ6pj3#1420807863_thcSnBF

Alright, I have to go - Ben's on the phone with his work associate, Charles. I guess, because our school books are so scary, there has to be special documentation by someone in China to verify that the books are okay to enter China officially. There are only a few companies in China that offer that service. Are you KIDDING me????? Kill me now!!!

Love,
Kar

I HATE MY COMPUTER!!!‏

2011-08-28T08:51:00.000-07:00

Dude, I wasn't doooooooooooooooone. So. My mouse just goes all over randomly and selects random things by itself sometimes. I'm not kidding. It's been like this forever. It's a laptop, right? And I think that, if it sees a shadow from one of my fingers, it goes there. We've tried using a normal mouse, but then the laptop mouse won't turn off and allow the normal mouse to do its thing. It's crazy. And it really, really makes me mad.

So just a couple of more things to add. An appendix to my last e-mail, if you will. I was going to write about Ben's trip to Beijing. In that e-mail, it just says, with no period to end it, "Ben went to Beijing". Nice.

Mr. Smith Goes to Beijing

Kay. So Ben went to Beijing last Monday. He had to pay a company there to translate some architectural drawings from the states into Mandarin - just, like, the notes on the sides and all that stuff. But they wouldn't take a credit card number. Ben had to pay them cash. And they required him to go up and pay it in person. No kidding. So he and Jack headed up there. Ben arranged a meeting with the Chinese company he works with on this project, NCPE. Their main office is up there, so he wanted to meet with them regarding some of the LIES the guy down here has been telling.

So they got up there (they took the "bullet train," but it still took an hour to go 80 miles), got a taxi, drove for a zillion years and paid an enormous taxi fare, and delivered the money to the translation service. There is a mass transit system there - an underground subway - but Jack is really unfamiliar with it and was nervous trying to navigate it, especially since they had to have this meeting at a specific time.

So then they went to the meeting. The liar man was actually there, and he continued with his lying. But everything got ironed out in time. When Ben and Jack were leaving the meeting, Jack said, very naively, "You know, I think that man is using you as an excuse because he is not doing his work." Ben said, "Ya think??" Haha!

Then they got into another taxi and drove for a zillion years and found my western market. The sweethearts. It was very over-priced, so Ben only bought a few things. Baking powder, baking soda, yeast, chocolate syrup, and chocolate chips. We actually made pancakes the other morning, but we didn't have syrup. Ben tried to make some of his own with our sugar, but it didn't turn out very...syrupey. Maybe next time he goes up there he can find some maple syrup.

Then they drove for another zillion years, went to the train station, waited in a huge line for a zillion years, and finally got on the train and headed home. He didn't get home until 10 at night. Left at 7 a.m. and got home at 10 p .m. A long day. Most of it spent in a taxi.

Household Cleaning Adjustments

See? My laptop just did it again. It tried to make me type clear up by "Mr. Smith Goes to Beijing." My heck. Welll, you can't see that it happened. But you'll have to take my word for it.

Kay. So. Our kitchen does not have hot water. I think we would have to purchase a little separate water heater for the kitchen if we wanted hot water. And I don't get the feeling that Professor Han cares to put any more work into our apartment. So what I do is I get a big old bowl, go to our bathroom, fill it up with hot water, and bring it into our kitchen. Pour it into the plugged sink. Then do that two more times, then add a little bit of cold water from the faucet, and voila. I have warm water for cleaning my dishes properly. Sheesh.

So these bathrooms don't have any, like, shower doors or curtains or anything. The bathrooms are set maybe 2 inches lower than the hallways outside the bathroom doors. The floors are supposed to slant down to the drain under the shower head. "Supposed to" being the key words there. Our floor does no such thing. So it's a good thing the bathroom has that big lip by the door, because otherwise it would flood our entire bedroom every time we showered. So anyways, when we're done showing, there is a two-inch pool of standing water. So we have to use our floor mop and kind of sweep the water toward the drain. Sweep, sweep, sweep. Then it gets to the point, after a long while, that you can use the mop as a kind of squeegie. Sweep to the drain, squeeeze the mop. Sweep to the drain, squeeze the mop. What a pain in the arse.

They're Kids; They Don't Need to Match.

So with fall/winter quickly approaching, we've decided to start buying cold weather clothes. We didn't have space to pack both summer and winter clothes, so we planned to kind of buy clothes here. You gotta do what you gotta do - we had a flight luggage weight limit per person, and that was that. I decided that we should kind of spread the expense out into several weeks, buying one family member's winter clothing one week, another family member's winter clothing the next week, etc.

So I decided to take Gagey with me (and Summer, of course) to the flea market to get some clothes. I say "flea market," but it really is nice. Think Portabello Road. Or if you haven't been to Portabello Road, think several booths, all with new clothes that are, like, the price of Old Navy. And you got it.

I had to take Gage along, because their sizes are different here. They have baby size small, medium, and large. Then children's size small, medium, and large. And then adult's size small, medium, and large. Etc. I had no idea what to get for him.

They have tons and tons of adorable clothes. My problem is that nothing matches each other. And I've noticed that on the streets. Kids wear clothes that don't match. The adults' clothes match, but not the kids' clothes. It's bizarre. So I would find the cutest little shirt, and then look around for some pants to go with it - none to be had. And no plain jeans, either. All the jeans have huge, neon writing on them and fake paint splashes on them and stuff. Or I would find the cutest little pants, and no tops to go with them. I saw the cutest little Angry Birds pants. I had to get them. And then I had Summer ask the lady, "Is there a shirt that matches it?" The shopkeeper looked at me like, "Why does it matter if your kids match?" She halfheartedly pointed to some random shirt that did not in ANY way match the pants. I was getting really hot, and Gage was having a barfing day and had barfed all over me, and he was ornery, so I got just these few random things, none of which matched each other, and hightailed it out of there. I think I'll try to go back this week and see if I can find matching stuff, just all on my own. Sheesh.

Again, I am persnickity. I like clothes to match. If I get a Plants vs. Zombies shirt (Summer calls it Plants and Zooombeey. So cute), which I did, by the way, that is red, with a green plant on it, I want to find either some jeans for Gage to wear, or maybe a green pair of sweats. Or a black pair of pants. Or something. I don't want to put him in bright orange sweats with big purple English sentences with bad grammar! People here wear shirts that say English things on them all the time, but they're written badly. Like, I was telling my friend Nicole this - one girl I saw wore a shirt that I saw that said, "Done't leave me." Another shirt I saw in the store says, "Sports is life in the history." Just funny stuff like that.

Kay. So now I'm done with my e-mail for reals this time. Sorry so long, guys.

Peace out,
Kar

Chinese Siesta‏

2011-08-28T08:50:00.000-07:00

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!!!

Chinese Knives - 3. Kar - 0.‏

2011-08-21T20:15:00.001-07:00

Friends and fam -

How are you? I hope all of you are well.

The other day, we were at May Dong Low (McDonald's. But "May Dong Low" is so much more fun to say). Ben was ordering some food, and I was at our table with the kids. This one kid came up to us, and I was like, "Oh, cute. He is curious to see my blonde children." Which he was. But then he kept holding out two yuan to me - they're like dollar bills. I was trying to figure out what he was doing - is this kid trying to give me money? I thought. After he held out the yuan a couple of times, I finally was like, um, I'll take it if you want...but then he withdrew his hand. I was like, whatevs. He walked out the front door, and that's when I realized that he didn't have any parents with him. There were a bunch of bikes parked out front, and he started digging through the baskets of each bike. He found a coke, looked around, took it then ambled off. I realized that the kid was poor and had been trying to ask me for a couple of yuan, not give me a couple of yuan. I'm so daft sometimes.

That lady I met in our hotel a few weeks ago actually called Summer and arranged a playdate with us. So here's the deal - when she and I first met, she said that her daughter was 12. And I thought it was kind of weird that a 12-year-old would want to play with a five-year-old, but I was like, whatevs. But then I swear we ran into the lady on the street. If it wasn't her, it was her spitting image. And she was with a little girl that looked just Sadie's age. So I thought maybe she had said the wrong age, because her English was pretty halting (not as bad as my Mandarin, obviously). So then, when the lady called to arrange the playdate, Sadie got excited, thinking, "I get to play with that little girl my age!" So they came over...last week? Maybe the week before. Aaaaand...the daughter is 12. She goes by the name of Allan. I can't remember the lady's name. Mrs. Poay, or something like that. It was soooo awkward. We did our best to try to communicate, but it was really difficult. And Sadie was really upset that the girl wasn't her age. She was making it no secret that she was mad. I found out why Mrs. P_____ was at the hotel - she is studying for a big exam for her job, and she wanted solitude, peace, and quiet. Um, because a house with only one 12-year-old daughter - and a well-behaved one, at that - isn't quiet enough??? Hahahaha! I don't know; I think that's funny. So they were here for an hour, and it was agonizing for both parties, and that was the end of that.

Well, we got fan things for the bathrooms - it's so funny - the workers put them into the holes in the wall, but then they have these cords, and you have to actually plug them into an outlet. No outlets are close to the holes, so we had to get extension cords. And then we had to kind of drape the cords over the shower head and over the water heater thingey, down to the plug-in area. It makes me a little nervous - I'm worried we're going to get electrocuted mid-shower or something, but Ben assures me the cords are high enough. The one fan in the master bathroom seems to be really helping, but the kids' bathroom seems just beyond help. We have the fans running constantly in both bathrooms. Ben thinks he may be able to install his own P-trap behind one of the sinks, which I think will help. Every little bit helps, I'm sure.

So, a couple of nights ago, Ben cooked our first-ever dinner here! Our kitchen is finally in - I really need to take pictures of it. I was thrilled, and then I went to the store, and I got disappointed again. I wanted to make this Italian meal called Carbonera - kind of like spaghetti and meatballs, but in a cream sauce instead of a tomatoey sauce. It calls for Italian sausage. Couldn't find it. I found many, many types of sausage, but who knows what's in them? And nothing is in English. I did find spaghetti and olive oil, so I got those.

And then I was like, I need some french bread. No such thing in a Chinese supermarket. So I was like, "I saw a bakery down the street that says, 'Blah blah blah Western Bakery." So I walked down there, and nope, it's not really a western bakery. A whole bunch of crazy-arse crap. False advertising!!! So then I was like, "I can make my own bread. No prob." So I went back to the supermarket and looked for the baking aisle. There is none. I did find some flour, but I don't know if you use the same kind of flour to make those rubbery dumplings that you do to make bread. I just got some and hoped for the best. And then I looked for yeast. Nope. No one spoke English - my little friend that works in the noodle aisle must not have been working that day; I couldn't find her. I couldn't see anything that resembled yeast - I thought for a moment I had found it, but it turned out to be Sesame Paste, whatever the H that is.

Then I looked for some sugar. I did have the word for "sugar" in my Chinese/American dictionary, so I pointed it out to a lady, and she showed me to this table full of things that look like crystals. They actually pound the crystals, and that makes the small grains of sugar! Dude. They're in the freakin' stone ages! Luckily, the lady had pounded out some, so I bought it, and it was cheap, but it's a totally different texture and moisture than sugar at home. I wanted to maybe make a green salad, but there's no ranch here, of course. I looked for cheese to grate for it - no cheese. They had something called "morning cheese" that looked spreadable - I wondered if that was cream cheese, but I have no idea.

I actually found a can of Hunt's spaghetti sauce. Cue Handel's Hallelujah Chorus. And they sell corn on the cob down on Stinky Street. So I was like, we can do spaghetti and corn on the cob. And our oven has a toasting setting, so we made garlic toast - they don't have garlic powder, but they do sell lots and lots of garlic heads on stinky street. So we cooked garlic in butter, then took the garlic chunks out of the butter. It's not a good idea for Ben to have too much garlic - trust me on that one! So we put this butter concoction on the bread.

All this work for just one meal. My heck. I think I'd better just stick to Asian recipes from here on out.

Here's my question - when you boil corn on the cob, do you boil it for half an hour? I thought it was for ten minutes, but they sure didn't taste done. And then I realized that, usually, we grill our corn on the cob. So I have no idea how long to boil corn on the cob for. The spaghetti sauce was horrible. Hahaha! I did see some tomato paste, tomatoes, and tomato sauce at the store, so I'll just have to make my own sauce next time, eh? And the toast was alright. So, not a huge fail, but not fantastic, either. We'll get used to it.

We chucked the corn, because it was so awful, so yesterday, I went down to Stinky Street and bought some green beans. I was trying to figure out how much I owed the lady, and between she and I, we just couldn't get it right. We finally figured it out - 8 yuan for four pounds of potatoes and 4 pounds of green beans - that's like $1.30. Not bad. So I told her, "Toy po shee. Wa shwah da bo how." Which means, "I'm sorry; I don't speak well." And she and her two little veggie-selling compatriates just laughed and laughed. "Wa shwah da bo how! Hahaha! Wa shwah da bo how!!!" They thought it was hilarious that I could say that. People here are so cute.

I remembered the recipe for white sauce, so I made a white sauce (I totally guesstimated the measurements, because I can't find any cup measures, teaspoons, tablespoons, etc., and I actually succeeded!!!), steamed the beans, and put them in the sauce. And it tasted great. My kids were so excited!!! As was I. I baked some potatoes in our little oven last night to make hash browns to go with our eggs this morning. And now that we have a gas range, I can control the flame and not burn the crap out of stuff.

I'm very impressed with the cutlery here. Impressed/annoyed. I have chopped the crap out of my hands. Maybe all my knives in the U.S. are dull?? Maybe knives here are especially sharp? Like those infomercials you see on TV - "These Chinese knives can cut through this CAN!!" I got a little cheese/veggie grater and basically grated the crud out of my thumb, and then I've cut myself twice in the same finger with the same dang chopping knife. I actually dripped blood on my beautiful bedspread while trying to find some band-aids in my armoire. Sad.

Yesterday, for virtual church, we had sacrament meeting, and then they did Elder's Quorum. So I'm beginning to think that they kind of rotate. Because last week, it was sacrament meeting, and then Sunday School. So maybe next week, it will be Sacrament meeting, and then Relief Society. Who knows? They called a new Primary Presidency - they said they'll be e-mailing me soon. It's kind of funny to me - will they let me know about the primary program, which we can't have? What about a primary activity, which no one can attend, unless they drive for 20 hours? Hahaha! A woman from Shenyang spoke in sacrament meeting - Shenyang is up by North Korea. The girl's name is Shanshan, and she's actually a Chinese citizen - here's the deal - normally, Chinese citizens can't go to church with foreigners. But, because she's married to an American citizen, she's allowed to attend our branch, but he's not allowed to attend her local branch. She told a little bit of her family's history with the church - her mom went on a trip to the U.S. and happened to stop in Salt Lake. She visited temple square, and there were some missionaries there from China who spoke Mandarin and got her interested in the church. She was in the U.S. for a few weeks or something, so she took all the lessons and totally got baptized there, then came home to China. There was a branch in her hometown, with members, so she started going to church there, and they and she got her husband and the rest of her family interested in the church, and they all got baptized. This was like ten years ago. I've often wondered how the church is able to grow, with such strict limitations, but I think this is how it works - people go to the U.S., or to Hong Kong, or to Taiwan, or wherever, to work or go to college or whatever, and that's when they get the exposure. And then they come back and are allowed to establish branches here. The bishop told us today that Chinese members in leadership positions are allowed to go to Hong Kong or Taiwan for training meetings, so that everything is being done properly, and that there are area authorities from Hong Kong or Taiwan that are allowed to come in to China and attend meetings and strengthen members in that way.

Anyways, I thought that was interesting. Shanshan and her husband met at BYU-Hawaii when they were both going to school there. They married and lived in Utah for awhile, but there was something about her visa that needed changing or something, so they are stuck here for two years until that comes through. Then they'll be able to settle permanently in the U.S. I loved hearing her talk and testimony. Her husband was supposed to talk, but he was "sick." I was like, um, you can't sit on your couch in your jammies and give a five minute talk into your computer microphone? You're too sick for that?? Hahaha! Men, when they're sick, are ridiculous.

Ben is in Beijing today for a meeting, and I've given him strict instructions to find a western market that I know exists up there. He is to buy as much as he and his interpreter can possibly carry, and bring it back home. :) Shortening. Baking pans. Brown sugar. The works.

And then I think that, tomorrow, Ben and Summer will go and book that trip to the beach! Woot-woot! I'm ready to par-tay. We've also been contemplating another trip at the beginning of October - we have to leave China and re-enter every ninety days, so that will be our first trip out of the country. I guess Hong Kong officially qualifies as "leaving the country." So we could go there, or Taiwan, or Thailand, or Japan, or Korea...the sky's the limit! It's exciting to me. My sister, Lex, is coming during Christmas time - we're planning to do a week in Beijing, and then maybe a week outside of the country, because it will be about that time again, for us to leave and re-enter. I love planning trips.

Gage is having a little meltdown, so I'd better go. Love you tons! Write me, you punks! Hahaha!

- Kar

Like the Crowing of the Rooster‏

2011-08-20T16:56:00.001-07:00

Hey, friends and fam,

Something funny I've noticed here - people shoot off firecrackers ALL THE TIME. Well, let me take that back. Not all the time. Only, um, in the day. Which is weird to me. They seem like more of a nighttime thing. For the first couple of weeks, every time I would hear firecrackers going off, I would think, "Is it some kind of holiday??" And I would look it up in my leetle book. Nope - no special holiday has really happened, except for Chinese Valentine's Day. I think people just like firecrackers. Or maybe they use them to celebrate personal things with their family - job promotions, pregnancy, etc. Who knows?? I would say that the most likely time to hear random firecrackers going off is early in the morning. I guesstimate that maybe five out of seven days per week, Ben and I are woken up at 7 a.m. not by our kiddos (though sometimes that is the case), but by people lighting firecrackers. Ca-razy.

I've seen a couple of firecrackers lit mid-day, downtown or whatever, and people that are passing the firecracker-starter always stop what they're doing to watch the firecrackers. They put their hands on their ears and stare at the firecrackers popping. No smiles, no frowns, no eye rolling. They stop, they cover their ears, and they stare. Like strange robots.

They are a kooky people. But I'm really starting to love them. They are patient and kind and have great senses of humor (except when it's time to watch firecrackers go off - that's serious business). I'm a fan.

I guess I'm in a very magnanimous mood, because guess what got (halfway) installed today? That's riiiiiiiiiiiiight, our kitchen!!! Woot-woot! Professor Han called us last night and said, in his broken English, that he was coming today "to install." Ben said, "To install what?" Professor H responded, "Do-ay [the Mandarin word for "right"]. Install. See you tomorrow! Bye-bye!" and hung up. There are just sooo many things that need installing - fans for the bathrooms, an air-conditioner in the living room, our kitchen...we weren't sure what to expect.

Bright and early, he shows up with a guy who had an entire kitchen's worth of cupboards. The guy worked most of the morning installing them - I like them. They're very Ikea-ish. Professor Han just kind of hung out. And then he found out that Ben is learning Chinese Chess on our iPad, and that was it. The game was on. Those two played for, like, probably two hours. I see men on the streets all the time, playing Chinese chess. It's supposed to be really difficult. I have absolutely no intention of learning Chinese Chess at all. I hate regular chess - why would I take up Chinese chess? Ben is a chess lover, though, so this is right up his alley. He has actually started teaching it to Dylan, who is catching right on, in his normal, freakishly-smart kind of way.

So I'm not harboring as much Professor Han Hatred as I have had for the past two weeks. After the cabinet man left, some different men installed a fan thingey to blow air from cooking, out of the building, and they are supposed to be back to bring the stove and hook it up, and then some different guys to put on countertops and our sink. So we're getting there. I'm sooooo excited. I guess that, when people move, they take their cabinetry with them. Interesting, huh? They also take their hardwood floors with them. Pull them up and take 'em. Which is why, when we first looked at the apartment, the floor was concrete and the entire apartment was gutted.

Ben and Jack went and found some bathroom venting fans for our horrible sewer smell, and I'm very, very excited about those, as well. They are also to be installed tomorrow.

Ben also went with Summer to the travel agency to talk about maybe taking a trip to the coast for a few days! He can't remember the name of it, but it looks fantastic. I've been feeling an urgency to get out there and see stuff, but the weather has been so dang hot. And then it occurred to me - what better time than now to see a beach?? While it's warm. It will be perfect. Ben is waiting for a couple of days before he books it because of some weirdness with work here.

Kay, it's midnight, and Ben needs to talk to his dudes in Idaho now; I'll finish this tomorrow.

Alright, it's tomorrow. A man is sawing wood to make countertops in our kitchen and making a big ruckus. I'm holding Gage while I'm typing so he doesn't get in to all our kitchen stuff, which is in the living room while the dude works. I'm thinking his morning nap might not happen - it's too stinkin' loud.

You know, I don't want to get too excited, but yesterday and today, it hasn't been oppressively hot. Kind of nice. We'll see if it lasts.

So. The weirdness at work. I don't know all the details, but here's what I know - they haven't been getting the work site for the domes prepared. They told Ben's company that the site was ready, so we came here a month and a half ago, and nope, it wasn't ready. So, since we've been here, Ben goes over there every now and then to see if progress has been made, and nada. The company from China that is working with Ben's company was telling us that there was some kind of dispute with a railroad company or something, but Ben's interpreter overheard a conversation that indicated that the REAL problem was with some financial backing for the project. But they hadn't wanted to admit that to Ben's company. Well, apparently, the financial stuff finally came through a couple of weeks ago. And still, nothing has been happening over there. Ben's company has been mailing things over from the U.S. - a special foam and other things. Ben goes over whenever a shipment comes in and supervises the unloading of the supplies.

Ben's bosses have been in contact with the boss guy over here (Mr. Ju, who helped us move), basically saying, "Dude, why aren't you guys preparing the site?" And Mr. Ju is trying to blame the delays on Ben - "He's been unavailable to us." Which isn't true. Ben's over there all the time. They have his phone number and his e-mail, and whenever they ask him to go over, he drops everything and heads straight over. And then Mr. Ju was saying that Ben's company hadn't given him the drawings yet, but they have. And this foam stuff that Ben's company shipped over is supposed to be the foam they apply when it's warm outside, so when it starts to get cold outside, it will be no good, I guess. They'll have to chuck it. Which will be a big financial loss. And the company here is saying that they aren't responsible for that. And Ben's company is saying they are. They're throwing around "breach of contract" kind of stuff.

The other day, the main boss guy here, William, who lives down by Hong Kong, called Ben and said, "Hey, they're having a meeting today at the work site and they want you there." So Ben threw on his clothes, grabbed his interpreter, Jack, and went over. There is a main gate, and someone from the inside has to let you in, right? So Ben gets there and calls Mr. Ju, saying, "Hey, I'm here for the meeting. Can you let me in?" And Mr. Ju says, "I'm not there. I'm in Beijing. What meeting?" So Ben calls William and says, "Mr. Ju doesn't know about the meeting, and he says he's in Beijing." William says, "No, he's there. I know he is. Call him again." So Ben calls Mr. Ju again. "Are you sure you're not here?" "No; I'm not there. I'm in Beijing." And back and forth. Hahaha! So Ben sat at this gate for two hours. No one would let him in. And it started raining. The gate guys felt bad for him and Jack and let them into the little gate house thingey. Neeeeeeeeat.

I was wondering if Dome was going to throw in the towel and bring us home, but after a big meeting they had in Idaho yesterday, they decided to send Ben's boss over here a couple of times to kind of kick butt. If the job site hasn't been started with preparations in four to six weeks, we may get sent home and the project postponed. Will I come back here to China with Ben if all this happens - if we're sent home until the project is ready, and then it's time to come back? Hahahaha! I don't know... :)

So that is that. Fun, fun dishonesty.

So Ben was putting off the trip thing until they had that big powwow at Dome. Now that we know we're here for, at the very least, another six weeks or so, we can feel free to make some good plans. So here's what happens with the beach trip - we ride a bus for seven hours - that won't be fun, but oh well. Then we have half a day to play. Then we have the whole next day to play. Then the third day, we play all morning, then drive home all afternoon and evening. They pay for two meals per day. So, with the bus ride to and from, the hotel rooms for two nights, the beach stuff, and two meals per day, it's $80 for me, Ben, and Dylan. And I think maybe $40 for Sadie and Micah, and free for Gage. Touring is insanely cheap here. I love it.

And really, I think we'll end up staying here for the duration of the project. Don't be alarmed or assume we're coming home next month. I think things will get smoothed out. That's the feeling that I get. Neither company wins if everything gets abandoned now. I won't deny that the thought of coming home very appealing to me, but I want Ben to succeed in this project manager thing. And I do get more and more comfortable every day. It's not as hard as it was at the first.

Summer told me that she is the new rock star of Stinky Street. Well, actually, the street is called Nogda something something Cheah, but you know what I mean. The hole in the wall place where she has taken all of us to get our hair cut now gives her haircuts for free, as a thank you for all the extra business our family has brought them. :) When she goes to buy fruit or veggies, people are always like, "Hey, you know those Americans, huh? Have a free melon, on me!" So funny.

She and I went and got an oven the other day - the only ones we can find here are the countertop kind, about the size of a large microwave. It will have to do. The dial for temperature is in celsius, so I'll have to kind of convert that in my mind when I do my baking. They were sold out, but they let me buy the floor model for a teeny discount. I guess they take the rack and broiling pan thingey out of the oven when they put floor models out because people steal them. A lady said she would deliver those to me the following day - I don't know why they couldn't find them when I picked up and paid for the oven, but whatevs. She did deliver the innards the next day. So we're getting there. Soon I will be doing some cooking, and I'm excited about it.

Maybe about half the stores here have their signs in both Chinese and English. And the English interpretations of the business names make me laugh and laugh. One bakery is called "Taste the Delicious Cake." One clothing store I've seen is called "I Like Myself." Today I saw a children's clothing store called "Children's Shopping Paradise."

We had virtual church again on Sunday - for the first couple of weeks, we only had sacrament meeting - while the branch president was on vacation in the U.S. Now that he's back, we're having sacrament meeting, with Sunday School right afterward. The Relief Society president sends us a little e-mail every week telling us which lesson to read and study for Relief Society that week. I fell asleep during Sunday School, which always happens to me, whether I'm in China on my couch or in the U.S. in a classroom. I don't know what it is about that second hour of church that makes me so drowsy. I try so hard to stay awake, but I often fall asleep sitting up. It's so interesting to hear where people are from. A man and his wife spoke in sacrament meeting from Dalian, which is clear up by North Korea. The girl that gave the Sunday School lesson was clear down in Nanning, which is kind of by Hong Kong. That big group of 16 that meets in Chengdu every week for our virtual church? Chengdu is clear over by Tibet. We are all over the place. If the workers from Idaho ever get to come over here - haha - and if any of them are LDS, I have visions of meeting here for virtual church, and then eating home-cooked, American potluck afterwards. Ahhhhh. Can you imagine?

My clothes are getting enormous. But I don't think it's just me. I think it's from hanging clothes to dry on a line. Especially knit clothes. Without a dryer to shrink them, they just grow and grow and grow. :) Ben has this one red shirt that is starting to look like a shirt dress. I told him the other day that he could belt it and look really cute. :) Hahaha! I do think I've lost a little weight here, which is nice. But boy howdy, you bet I'll gain it all back when I get back home, and then some. I'll be like, "Ice cream!!! Mexican food!!! Numnumnumnum!" I'll probably get bigger than I was when I left. Like that thing that happens when someone is deprived of food for so long, and then they kind of hoard and overeat and stuff, because they're used to going without - like that. The kids have found Chinese snacks that they like, and we eat American fast food a lot, so the kids seem not to be losing weight. That's all that matters to me. We give them lots of fruit and hard-boiled eggs, etc. And the whole milk - they love that. I'm not a fan. So I'm thinking they're getting enough calories. And if I'm not, well, then I'll lose weight. And that ain't a bad thing. They're not sick of McDonald's yet, but I am. When Ben brings it home, I just say, "Eh, no thanks. I'll just drink a coke for dinner." The bread here is really gross and stale-tasting, but the kids are cool with it and like peanut butter sandwiches. When Ben is like, "Do you want a sandwich?" I'm like, "Eh, no thanks. I"ll just drink a coke for lunch." Hahaha! I know; healthy. I do eat lots of fruit, though, and I drink lots of bottled water, so at least that, right???

Kay, friends, I need to get going, but I love you tons and I'm working on individual e-mails to you.

Kissy, kissy,
Kar

Thunderstorm Redemption‏

2011-08-15T10:59:00.001-07:00

Hey, all you folks lucky enough to have a kitchen!

How are ya? We're doing aight. So. I have two things to correct that I've told you in the past - 1) The "hang ten" hand sign does NOT mean the number eleven. It means the number six. Oops. So. Jot that down in your memory banks. And, 2) Baoding has SIX million people, not one million. I wondered. I know that Salt Lake City has one million, and Baoding was seeming a lot larger than the Salt Lake area... turns out, it is! So now ya know.

So here is what you do if you are a country with 1.3 billion people - instead of sending out power bills to people, having them send you checks, etc., you do this pre-paid card system. So if a person wants power to their apartment, they buy a pre-paid card from, of all places, the post office. Don't ask me why. But you buy them and load them at China Post. Then you go into the basement of your building to this big row of things that look like credit card swipey things at your local grocery store. You find the one with your apartment number, you swipe your card, and voila, you have power. Within seconds. We learned about this the hard way a couple of weeks ago, when our power turned off, and we had nooooo idea what was going on. So, two weeks ago, we put a whole bunch of money on the power card, swiped it, and then....um, forgot about it.

Until last night at 10 p.m., when our power went out. We were like, Oh yeahhhhhhh..... we should have checked our credit card swipey thing to see how much money we had left before we ran out of power. And, obviously, China Post was not open at 10 p.m. on a Sunday night. So we spent a very hot evening in our beds. I was just....seething. Seething with anger. I was like, OH THAT IS IT! I HATE IT HERE SO MUCH! WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE????? I AM HOPPING THE NEXT PLANE TO THE UNITED STATES!!!!

But then something wonderful happened while I lay there in the heat, listening to Ben snore, grinding my teeth together. We had another thunderstorm.

I've told you about these thunderstorms here - they are ca-razy. I have never seen anything like it. Sooooo much lightning, it's like there is a strobe light outside of every window. And the thunder is striking, HARD, all around us. Every building has those lightning rods on top, with wires you can see leading from the rods and into the ground. And for good reason. I swear our building itself got struck once or twice last night. Each strike made the earth just SHAKE. It's amazing. And really cool. Micah woke up and was scared, so I lay with him and just listened and watched this storm and just felt...happier. I've always loved rain, and I've always loved thunderstorms. It put me in a better mood, and once the thunder and lightning subsided a little, Mikey fell asleep, and I got back into my own bed and was able to fall asleep, at, like, maybe 3 a.m. But I felt much more at peace. I guess I'm one of those Emo girls that loves rain, like in that song by Garbage, "I'm only happy when it rains." Hahaha!

Ben went out first thing this morning and loaded our power card with more money, so we are sitting in blessed air-conditioning once more. And we were able to boil some eggs on our really hyper hot plate for breakfast this morning. We had them with fresh mangos from the market. Things are looking up. A little bit. They'll look up more when I have a kitchen....

Lovies,
Kar

Pics of Gage's Birthday‏

2011-08-14T10:07:00.000-07:00

Hey, dudes,

Here are the pics from Gage's birthday: http://utahben.smugmug.com/Travel/Gages-1st-Birthday/18526196_T4L6hq#1430076463_3PJtdgb Oh that boy. What would we do without him? He's such a blessing in our family. A much-needed, laid-back Indian in a family of chieftains. He's the bomb dot com. And he's growing up wayyyy too quickly.

We miss you all and love you.

Love,
Kar