happy birthday mama!

today (U.S. time) is mama lo's birthday! D and I caught her before going to bed last nite so we could wish her "shengri kuaile" and she was in a great mood, laughing and laughing...she said it was because she had just woken up and sang "happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday to...mee-eeee, happy birthday to me" and it made her very happy. awesome.

she is on her own for her birthday in SD this year...we are in china, r&h working in norcal, and daddy won't be home until friday (he's had to travel a lot since taking the job in rochester, commuting across the country from SD so that mommy can keep living there). but every indication is she's having a rocking birthday...she told us she was going to do whatever she wanted all day, starting by going to a class at the gym, then going shopping and buying herself a cake (whatever kind she likes). again, so awesome.

we all did everything we could...video, gifts, treats...and of course lots of calls and skyping to show our love (daddy also wrote a long lo family email, in a way only he can, in honor of her birthday). but in the end, she was already happy. she doesn't mind being physically alone, because she knows she's really not. her loved ones are happy and healthy, and she is too. selfless mommies are the best. i mean, she's awesome.

since the four of us kids (R, H, D and me) could not be with her on her birthday, we made her a video. props to R&H for the editing...underneath their EECS & finance/accounting veneer, my brother and sisnlaw are budding creative geniuses.

A Nation of Pyros

Xin Nian Kuai Le!

or..."Happy Chinese New Year!"

The other night we went to celebrate at our friend's place on the 27th floor. We had a crazy view of the fireworks in our city district. Think U.S. 4th of July fireworks show times 100! No joke, from about 8pm-4:00am we saw, heard, and felt fireworks! A ton of them exploded yards from the windows we were looking out.

A few days before the 14th, little tents popped up everywhere selling the goods.

I took these pics from my friend's window on the 26th floor!! No zoom used

Naturally, my buddies and I wanted to join the action. Here are a few fireworks we set off. Unfortunately the pics didn't turn out quite as well. At the bottom you can see the building our friends are watching from.

Here's a picture I took before most of the real celebrations began.

The fireworks were so cheap. We bought boxes of 4 rockets for about 12 USD each. And everybody was (still is!) shooting them off. I've seen multiple grandmas showing the 10-year-olds how it's done. It's hilarious! As Cindy and I joke: It's a nation releasing its inner pyro! I guess they did invent gunpowder.

CNY = dirty coats

I took a couple sweaters and our wool coats (smelling of smoke + pollution + miscellaneous unknowns) to the cleaners yesterday, and after going through the marking of extra dirty spots, the taking of my information, and the informing of total price, cleaner guy says:
okay you can come pick them up on the 28th.
me: Um, that's 20 days from now.
guy: Yeah, we go on vacation starting tomorrow.
me (in my head): (Are you kidding me? You're closed for 20 days?)
me: Okay...can I have them back?

The slowdown for Chinese New Year has officially begun. People have been clearing out of our part of Beijing and heading home. The cashier girl at melon mart downstairs has been gone for almost a week, meaning I actually have to look up the weather instead of having her tell me if it's going to snow, or be extra cold. Our favorite fruit & veggie sellers downstairs have gone home meaning we've been banana-less for three days and are quickly running out of apples. Good thing we're going on vacation on Monday, we (okay I) might not survive without fruit. :)

thunder, no lightning...kaboom

just a few minutes ago we heard a thunderous earth-shaking crash. then lots and lots of sirens and alarms going off at once. the most likely conclusion being a really really big car crash in the crazy intersection outside. we can't really see anything from the window, hopefully it's okay...

i "got into" my first real "accident" here last week. i was in the backseat on my way to the airport when the car i was in hit the back of a taxi...lightly, but enough to make both cars stop and pull over. after a quick discussion, driver A pulled out a wallet and paid off driver B with a wad of cash. i didn't even see any damage. i guess it's just easier that way?

we've been surprised that we haven't seen more...other than the occasional bike on bike accident, or bike vs. deathcab (these tiny "taxis" that hold only two people) skirmish. D explains it as an unspoken traffic hierarchy...everyone knows that the bigger guy always wins, so pedestrians yield to bikes who yield to scooters who yield to larger scooters who yield to deathcabs who yield to taxis who yield to trucks who yield to buses...and so on and so forth. our motto is always DBTB (Don't Battle The Bus). it's safer that way...

it's freezing, hence the impromptu dance party

the frequency of our occasional two-person dance parties has increased recently...egged on by pent up energy due to the total don't-want-to-go-outside freezingness, the acquisition of some little white and blue chinar speakers (50 kuai), and great playlist additions thanks to beijingdou and google.cn music (speaking of which, we'll miss you if you leave chinar, googly friend...sad week).

at the top of our chinar-is-cold playlist: Glee albums 1 & 2, Beyonce's Sasha Fierce, MGMT. please help us add to our list.

so close, and yet so very far...

i'm the first to admit i have a bad sense of direction...so bad that in the states, when driving to new places and uncertain of my way, i learned to go the opposite way of the direction i would naturally go by instinct. unfortunately, this did not always work as i knew i was tricking myself and thereby got extra confused. thankfully, D has a very good sense of direction. on our way to a wedding last weekend, we came out of a subway station i'd been to before, but he hadn't. the directions we had been given were to go north...he kind of looked around and went "i think that way is north." i had thought north was 180 degrees opposite to where he was pointing. sigh. had i been on my own, i would have gone in the complete opposite direction.

obviously, going the wrong way often happens when i'm on my own. this past week, i had a couple new places to get to on my own and...as to be expected, got really lost trying to find a new friend's house one night. and another time, literally went in and out of the destination subway stop four times before i figured out the right exit (the subway stops here have like 10 bajillion exits sometimes).

the thing is, i would like to think that here in chinar, it is not all my fault. sometimes it's just confoundedly confusing why things are built the way they are. this view, for example, was what i got coming out of a subway stop trying to get to walmart. the walmart sign is smack dab in the middle...


i knew walmart was off this subway stop but had never taken the subway before. every exit i tried to come out of, all i could see was a railroad track blocking me from the walmart. i think it would have been better if i couldn't see the sign at all. but it was there, and i was determined to get to it. so i kept popping in and out of different exits like a meerkat, trying the find the right one. i even asked security guards how to get to "wa er ma." they said, just go out and walk along the road, and you'll be there. so...although that made no sense based on what i'd seen, given that there is a big railroad track in the way, i dutifully popped my head out the exit and tried again. umm...yeah, the road didn't go there. i think he was just trying to give me an answer so i'd leave. finally, i studied the map of the station really hard, and tried going all the way through the subway stop (paying an extra two kuai as if i'd taken another ride). walked all the way through as if i was transferring to another line. went out the tiny exit and around the corner was a small wal-mart supercenter sign. VICTORY!!! i mean, it took going through another tunnel, up another flight of stairs, through a commerce area, through another tunnel, and up another flight of stairs before i actually made it to the store. but it was so worth it.

i took a taxi home.

p.s. D's last day of teaching for the semester is this coming Tuesday. He's been grading final presentation dialogues and some of them are hilarious. you should lobby him for a post...

What we now know...

Happy New Year! It’s been a year o’ lessons for us...about Chinar, about ourselves.  

Some of our top China-related learnings from 2009:

1. Stomach problems aren’t just for foreigners. The number one reason D’s students are late to class: “Teacher, my stomach was giving me trouble.” The number one reason D’s students ask to leave class: “Teacher, my stomach is giving me trouble.” The number one reason D’s students miss class: “Teacher, my stomach was giving me trouble.”
2. This is a highly-impersonal-yet-immediate-bff (best friend forever) society. Try not to feel offended, just introduce yourself. Don't be surprised if someone that doesn't know you closes the elevator door on you (literally!), refuses to help you, or fails to hold the door open for you and your scooter though you are just 2 or 3 feet behind. But also don't be surprised if, after meeting someone for the first time, they invite you over for dumplings and treat you like their brother or sister, inviting you to spend Spring Festival with them in their hometown. It's confusing, yet endearing, and once you get used to it, quite understandable. We’ve met such sweet-hearted friends.  
3. To go with lesson 2, there are a lot of people in Chin(ar). Duh, the country’s population is over 1.3 billion. Yes, we thought we knew that too. But living here, you realize the sheer MASS of people surrounding you on a daily basis, trying to get from Point A to Point B. Jostling you on the subway, narrowly missing your feet with their bikes, trying to get you to buy their stuff at the market (as opposed to the exact same stuff at the stall across the aisle), competing with you for taxis…it’s an adventure and sometimes you get pooped. It’s okay. Reward yourself with a 2 kuai McDonald's ice cream cone on the bad days, it helps.
   
4. Speaking of pooped…if you can get one main errand done a day, call it a good day! Early on, our friends cautioned us that getting stuff done here is not always straightforward, and can be exhausting…for cultural and language reasons, and also just purely logistical ones. We quickly learned the wisdom of this. Not to mention the fact that at home, “going out to run errands” meant stopping at several stores in our car, and loading the goods into the trunk. Here, we’re lucky if we can get the goods home from one store home on our scooter. It took us a long time to get used to just one big task a day (feels highly inefficient even now), but really, it’s a good rule to not make yourself crazy or dead. 
5. Night-showering is key here. We’ve both converted from morning-showerers to evening-showerers. It’s a necessity..
   
6. We take credit for granted. It took us a good two months to adjust to living in a largely cash-based, very “pre-paid” society. (More than once, I found myself without the means to check out at the grocery store...after spending 45 minutes winding my way around -- or bumping into -- people in the store.) Few people have credit cards, and the cards that are used are mostly debit. Electricity is pre-paid: we have to take a credit-card sized card to the bank, stand in line, pay cash to have it charged, take it home, call the building maintenance people to come and charge our electricity meter. Internet is pre-paid: we go to the bank, stand in line, pay cash into our phone company account, and in return our internet is not shut off. Gym memberships are pre-paid: a year, sometimes 18 months at a time. Rent is even pre-paid: six months, sometimes a year at a time (who DOES that?). The first time we paid six month’s rent in cash, we freaked out at how much cash we were carrying...I have never held so much money in my life. We dearly miss checks and credit cards… \
7. Socks just don’t get as clean when your washing machine only has cold water. All of our socks have taken on a slightly brownish tinge. Ick.
8. There's a reason Chinese people wear face masks everywhere, and it's not just for fear of H1N1. Think Air Quality Index (AQI) that’s off the charts... D’s taken to wearing the hard-core 3M masks with a little filter that my mom got us before we came. I sometimes wear a cotton one with bears and an ice cream cone.
9. There are ways around (almost) everything, as long as you know the right people. Unfortunately for us, this is not always the case. Which is why it took us 6 weeks to figure out the initial visa stuff. But still a lesson, nonetheless.
10. Just because you don’t get it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense. Be quick to listen. Slow to speak. (Sometimes out of necessity if you don’t know how to speak.)