The Pasta Pot

by Amy

As we've probably mentioned before, our kids have recently begun attending a new kindergarten. This school is great for many reasons, one being that it's about a 2 min. walk from my building, and two being that it's really small so it has a great teacher:kid ratio. My kids love going and often ask why they aren't going able to go on the weekends.

Last week the teachers brought three turtles into the classroom. They vary in size, from a little bigger than a silver dollar to the size of a dinner plate, but, to quote Savannah, "They're all kids." Our kids have had a blast playing with those crazy turtles!

When asking the kids what they did at school one day last week, they all eagerly told us about taking the turtles to the "pasta pot." "Oh, really?!?" I tried to play along... "Where is this pasta pot? How big is this pasta pot?" But I never got any clues to what exactly they were refering to. When we got home and they told Sue all about it, she asked, "What's a pasta pot?" "Grandma, it's what you cook spaghetti in!"

Thanks, Savannah, that's helpful! Thanks to some pictures the teachers showed me, I discovered that the pasta pot is actually a shallow water fountain in our complex. Supposedly the turtles love to swim.

Home again!

by Amy

I'm home again and it's so great!! I can hardly remember a time feeling so loved as I did when I walked through that door on Saturday afternoon! The kids had made signs and cards, decorated the door (thanks to Grandma's help), and were full of hugs and kisses! Even Brad expressed numerous times that he was so glad I was back and asked me to never go away again!

My three day language class was great! I am so thankful that I was able to go and take it, but I was absolutely exhausted after it! Listening and speaking in another language for over 10 hours a day was way more than I'm used to! I have even been dreaming -- not in English -- every night since my first day of class. It's crazy!

My class ended on Friday night at 5:45 pm. I was scheduled to leave town on an 8:35 pm flight. I asked a friend who lives in that city what time I should leave the hotel to catch my flight. He recommended leaving at 7pm. So, instead, I decided to take my luggage with me to dinner at a restaurant halfway between my hotel and the airport. I got my dinner to go and was outside at 7:15 waiting for a taxi. At 7:35, after moving down the street to a huge intersection, I call Brad and ask him to pray that I get a taxi right away! I assume the big suitcase I had sitting next to me told all the taxi drivers where I was heading, and since many of them were getting off work, they wouldn't take me to the airport. I told several drivers that stopped near me, "I'll pay you a lot of money, just take me to the airport!!" I didn't work. At 7:45 I call my friend who lives in that city and ask him what I should do. He said that if I could catch a taxi right then, I should get there before the check-in counter closed -- 30 minutes before the flight takes off --8:05. But, I did not catch a taxi right then....

So, I called my husband and told him I would not be coming home that night. I wasn't' sure what to do, but I'd try to get a ticket for Saturday. He was clearly just as disappointed as I was. Then, my wonderful husband, said, "I'll take care of it. You go to you hotel and read a book and relax. Keep your phone on and I'll call you and let you know what to do." Whew! What a relief that was to me. I was already exhausted and over my limit, so I was happy to have him handle that for me. Sure enough, at about 9:00 Brad called. He had figured out how to get a partial refund for my unused ticket and had purchased a new one for me. So, I hopped on a plane at 8:15 Saturday morning. "(FYI - It took me 20 minutes to get from my hotel to the airport on Saturday morning.)

Oh, it was sooo good to be home. I was exhausted! I slept for almost 3 hours on Saturday afternoon and was still ready to go back to bed at 9:30 that night. Wow! What a trip! I'm so thankful for the things I learned from my class and for the wonderful family I got to come home to!

Whoops!

by Amy

While we were in a hotel a few weeks ago, I called down to housekeepping and requested an extra blanket/quilt for our kids. Our language is a tonal language, and if you don't get the tones just right, it can change the entire meaning! So, about five minutes after my phone call, a housekeeping guy promply came -- with a coffee cup in hand. I had tried to ask for a for a BEIzi (quilt), but he brought a beizi (cup) instead. We got a good laugh out of that one! Ugghh!! Will we ever get this language down!?!?

The Joys of Being a Foreigner!

by Amy


Being a foreigner definitely has it's drawbacks, but there are a few perks... For example, our Wal-Mart is on the second and third floors of a four story building. You can enter Wal-Mart from the second or third floor, but they only want you to exit from the second floor by the check-out counters. On the fourth floor, there's a fun arcade that our kids call "Chuck-E-Cheese." (not quite, but it's as good as it gets here!) Anyway, there have been several times on our way to the arcade where I've run into Wal-Mart to see if they have a particular item. But -- shocker -- they did not. Well, I don't want to drag the kids all the way downstairs to exit the store just to go back up again. So, I don't... I exit through the entrance on the third floor. As the greeter tries to stop me (speaking Asianeese, of course) I speak loudly and slowly in English, " I DID NOT BUY ANYTHING! I AM GOING UP STAIRS, NOT DOWN. THANK YOU, THANK YOU." It usually ends in both of us laughing and her letting me pass as my kids are already half way up the escalators....

Well, the other day we were having dryer issues.... We've been having dryer issues for about a year, actually. But, this last week I noticed a drastic turn for the worst, so since we were leaving town for a week, it was great time to have them take my machine away and fix it. I think Brad's mentioned before how difficult it is to find good laborers here ... they don't get paid much, and don't have much incentive to work hard. To make a long story short, we were not pleased with the worker and he knew it. After asking several times, he would not give us his name. So, while he was on the phone explaining to Leigh (my house helper), his repair plan, Brad took his picture, (to have on file if we need to complain about him.) He definitely wasn't sure what to think about that, but what could he say? Oh, the things we get way with by being foreigners!

Olympic Wall

By Amy

This is my last Olympic post, I promise! But, I have mentioned our "Olympic Wall" a few times, so, I thought I'd post a couple of pics.

I plan on taking most of the things that we made, minus the torches and big rings, and making an Olympic Binder. We spent a good three weeks making the stuff on that wall, so I'm just not ready to throw it all away - yet. I will say, I am ready for it to come down though, but Savannah really wanted Sue to see it, so it's staying for another couple of weeks.
This is a closer look at Savannah's tally sheets. Almost every day, I'd get the medal count online and have her add tally marks under Gold, Silver, and Bronze for the US and China. By doing this and counting them everyday, she learned how to count by 5s! Above the tally pages, is what we call the Jing-man. As you probably picked up by watching the Beijing Olympics, this was one of the symbols of the games. It is an artistic rendition of the Jing character in Bei Jing.
Here you get a closer look at our medals and torches. Our torches were fun! We made them out of coke bottles, foil, and foam and sparkly papers. They have been loved well and now look a little ragged! Our medals were pretty messy/glittery, but the kids had fun making them by working glitter into homemade dough, using biscuit cutters to shape them and baking them. We made 3 for the wall, and then 3 for each kid, including Clara and Chloe who came to play that day. I'm not sure if Rachel has forgiven me or not yet for causing her home to be covered in glitter by sending these home with her girls.
Finally, this is our map.... I often would find a map online and show Savannah where our new country was located and let her find it on our map. She did a great job!

I really enjoyed doing a big unit-type study like this, so if you have any other ideas of fun things that we could study and would branch into to lots of different subject areas (history, math, etc.) let me know!

And We're Off....

by Amy


Wow, with home schooling everyday and studying this crazy language many afternoons, I don't have much time to blog! This past week was a little extra busy as the kids did not go to kindergarten in the afternoon. We are actually changing kindergartens as one is opening in our apartment complex. Talk about convenient! If we walked to their old school, it would usually take about 20-25 min. to get there, maybe 5 min. inside and about 15-20 min. to walk home. I could stay home for about 1 hour, then it was time to head out the door to go pick them up. So, Brad and I would often trade taking or picking up. And, if one of us had to do both ways, we'd usually just sit in a KFC about 5 min. from the kindergarten and study. So, having them just across the parking lot will be great! It also will be nice because we've asked one of the teachers, who speaks English, to work on teaching our kids the local language. We'll see how that goes, but that's the goal! Also, since it's in a 2 bedroom apartment, they'll have about 15 kids & 4 teachers, not 30-40/class. So, hopefully it will be a good fit for our family!


Tomorrow morning we're off to that big city north of us. We're going with some of our other American friends from our town and will hang out for a few days together, then, we're picking Sue, Brad's mom, up at the airport! She decided to come visit us before her 1 year visa expired at the end of September. We're all super excited to see her! We'll take some time to shop and play in the big city before bring her back to our home. I actually will not be returning home with my family....Since Sue will be here to help Brad with the kids, I'm flying to another city to take a 3 day intensive language class. I'm super excited about this class! I feel like it will really help me communicate on a deeper level! So, I will be away from home for almost 2 weeks. I'm sure the blog entries will be slow coming.... Sorry!

Better to Race and Lose or Not to Race?

From Brad.

The answer to that question might be different depending on where you are from. This is a big difference between the Eastern and Western mindset. To be more specific: Liu Xiang, the Chinese 110m hurdles gold medalist in the 2004 Athens Olympics withdrew from the Beijing Olympics due to 'unbearable' pain. My question is, 'Was he really hurt?' This might seem like a strange question (or even impolite), but consider this.

When Chinese athletes (or students, workers, etc.) fail, they are inundated with an obscene amount of shame. For example when Wang Hao lost the ping pong gold medal match to a non-Chinese in 2004 his coach scolded him, “You made a lot of Chinese have their dreams broken.” An apoplectic Chinese media ripped him to shreds, demanding answers for his wilting under the stress. “I was under enormous pressure,” he mumbled then, an answer not nearly satisfactory for Chinese fans.

Again, when 7 year olds come home from school with average or low grades, their parents say similar things. When 13 year old gymnasts (oops, I mean 16 years old) fall down, they get to hear such motivational speeches for 4 years to 'help them succeed next time'. The thought is if you heap enough shame on the individual, then their motivation will be that much greater to succeed. Of course this is why suicide tends to be much higher in Asian countries.

Back to national hero Liu Xiang. Was he really hurt? Well, he was hurt last year, but had recovered and run many races recently. His times were good, but not nearly fast enough to compete with the world's elite. It was almost certain that if he ran, he would not win the race. Factor all this into the following stat (found on Yahoo), "Liu's dramatic withdrawal from the Olympics has cast a big shadow over a golden Games for hosts China. In a survey of more than a million Chinese carried out at the end of last year, the top Olympic dream was to witness Liu winning gold at the "Bird's Nest" stadium."

The Western mindset typically cares about the individual and maybe a small number of important people who are his/her biggest supporters. When he doesn't win, he feels the weight of letting himself down (and maybe them). The Eastern mindset knows he represents his family or in more high profile cases, his country. I can't say Liu Xiang was perfectly healthy and able to run, but given the above information, it wouldn't surprise me at all if he chose not to race in order to avoid 'letting down' 1.4 billion people.