yup, it would serve me right.

On our way to a friend's house yesterday, M and I passed a little girl in the sunday class D and I teach. We stopped to say hi (and wave excitedly...she's 4), exchanged "happy new year" with her dad, then went along our way. M mentioned that she'd seen the pair in the courtyard before, and each time, the girl was always babbling along, with the Dad patiently going "uh-huh" every 15 seconds or so. this is also the state of things in class...she's our master tangent-er. she's adorable, don't get me wrong, but requires a lot of attention and must take an infinite amount of patience at home.

C: [laughing] "watch, this is what my daughter will be like..."
M: ["hehe"-ing mischievously] "it would serve you right :p...that was what you were like when you were a baby huh."
C: "mmm...yeah. i talked before i walked. or crawled. i think i was pretty much an immobile blabbing blob."

Oh dear. Hopefully, D's genes will help ameliorate some of this.

(p.s. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!)

charlie brown in chinar christmas tree

lacking the delicious piney smell, but thankful to have found our little tree.

david's in the background downloading christmas music (and whitney houston (?) and maxwell...i think he got sidetracked in the search for pop christmas albums...)

missing home a bit more than usual this week. happy thanksgiving!!

sickie face in chinar

the two of us are down for the count. i'm running a temp and hacking a lung, although slightly more conscious than D. D's got enough yellow mucous to be bottled. wondering if the pollution's getting to us. air qual hasn't been all that great lately...

the sky at 2pm. you'd think it'd be a lot brighter.

fish poop air and a new appreciation for trunk space

today, we decided to brave the weekend crowds and scooter to the local wal-mart (wo er ma). we were in need of some household necessities...and also curious as to whether they might have christmas stuff.

we also wanted to get a humidifier, because it's so ridiculously dry here in the winter (seriously...you forget to moisturize one time and you're sorry).
D got to the display first and yelled over the sea of carts and heads..."you want one with a fish in it?" 80% of the humidifiers on display either had some type of Disney/princess/little bear theme, or was in the shape of a cute animal with bear ears. and they had fish swimming around in the water. at first, the novelty was fun (and as a marketing gimmick, it works...people were buying them left and right)...until i started thinking about the fact that fish have to go poo. and the poo gets in the water. and then the water is spewed into the air of your home. so if you keep a fish in your humidifier, you're breathing fish poop air. ick. and the fact that, by design, the water in humidifiers gets used up (example below...the water's really low in this humidifier, so the fish has to stick to the bottom of the tank to stay alive). with so many humidifiers on display and only one salesperson, i'm sure more than one fish has met its death by humidifier-water-shortage. poor fishies.

anyways, turns out they did have christmas stuff (yay!)...albeit fake and slightly gaudy (boo). but we settled on a baby fake tree, ornaments and two stockings for our first christmas in chinar. doesn't compare to our real, delicious-smelling pine from home despot last year, but it'll do.

and then we realized that we had a lot of stuff...a baby tree, a bunch of new guest towels, a humidifier, paper towels and TP, assorted miscellaneous household goods, groceries...and a scooter in a pear tree. we debated for a few minutes whether i should just taxi home with most of it while david scootered, but then we got determined.

somehow, i'm not really sure how, the two of us got all THIS...

home on THIS...

good little scooter. needless to say, we have a new appreciation for cars with trunk space.

playing with our food...

we made a friend...well two...here that like to say "deeleecioursh" for fun when something is, you know, delicious. i've subconsciously picked it up as i tend to absorb random words other people use, and decided to dedicate a post to stuff here that we find deeleecioursh. this is also to remedy earlier posts in which we may have alluded to the fact that we're not loving the food...still true about northern chinese food (at least for me), but there's plenty of other good things here, and even better that we are learning we can (try to) make.

the top 5 things we would encourage you to eat should you come visit us...
(we reserve the right to alter this list as the seasons change and/or write new posts on this as we discover new things that are yummy)

• hot pot (huo guo) -- the split pot kind, half clear broth, half spicy. this is most definitely worth it, esp when the weather outside is shivery. meat, veggies, tofu, fresh shrimp balls...all piping hot and so yum it makes us hungry just thinking about it. you can have it healthy, or not so healthy, but all of it is cooked to order with as much sauce as you personally like. just don't go too crazy on the spicy side or you may regret it later

• korean bbq -- oh my, it's ridiculously cheap, and ridiculously good. you can pay well under ten bucks a person at a relatively "nice" place for so much food there isn't enough room on the table. i don't even eat that much meat, so if i'm raving you can only imagine. it comes with all different kinds of soup and bibimbap and side dishes...all the side dishes you want (as long as you're willing to keep asking the fu yu yuan for them)
  

• kao yu (baked fish...if you translate it directly...but that SO understates its deliciousness) at the xiao chir (little eats place) -- our friends took us to this place down the street where appearances are deceiving...it's that place that had the fake flowers in the pringle/lays can vases. but if you order right, it's so worth it. for kao yu, you get this large buffet-sized pan of whole fish roasted with hot spicy peppers and green onions and ginger and veggies. kept hot at your table with a little flame under the pan. yum.
  

• peking duck (beijing kao ya) -- this isn't my favorite, but it's a must eat in BJ. D likes it, but is waiting for visitors to eat it as he can get sick of it with too much frequency. i'd go along too, for fun. i like the yellow ducky outside..

• take out / delivery -- okay, this isn't just one thing, but a lot of little dinky places deliver here (as long as they're in the mood or not too busy...nothing's standard). we often order from a place called moonhouse that makes yummy sammiches and salad with a korean tinge. also this korean place where you can get a yummy beef rice dish and spicy hot yummy soup for 20-25 kuai apiece (like 3 bucks). even mcDonald's will deliver although i can't figure out why you would want them to. D disagrees on this one.
  

we've also been experimenting more in the kitchen, spurred on by necessity (having people over, cooking for small group, etc.) and with encouragement from our more experienced friends. by experimenting, it's really like...this doesn't exist/requires a really far trip to an import store/is really expensive in chinar...what do we substitute it with? or even better...how do you make it? it's kind of fun to learn that a cup of heavy whipping cream combined with 1-2 tbsp of vinegar turns into sour cream. or that it's possible to "make" onion soup mix. or that salad dressing requires pretty near perfect proportions to get it tasty (i crave Brianna's blush wine vinaigrette every other day, D misses his Hidden Valley Ranch). last week, M&J bought little pumpkins and experimented (successfully) with roasting them for punkin soup and punkin pancakes, both of which we got to enjoy as well. the things you'd never learn at home...

one of our friends here has been learning to make granola, and generously shared a baggie with me. hearing that it's possible to make with find-in-chinar ingredients, i started experimenting. burned the first batch, but here's the second...not something i'd sell, or that could even be labeled deeleecioursh...but just decent enough that D and M and J are willing to eat it...if only to be kind :p it's not bad if you have it with yogurt.

baby, it's cold outside...

on Sunday, after a relatively nice (yet cold) Saturday that ended in gross amounts of rain, we woke up to THIS outside our bedroom window...

helloooooo November 1st. we'd been told by friends that October and May are the best months in Beijing, weather-wise, and that typically things get cold pretty fast. we just weren't expecting it to be THIS fast. after getting over the fact that it was, in fact, snow...and sending a few AHHH IT'S SNOWING WE CAN'T SCOOTER IN THIS texts to J&M...we finally started getting ready to venture out. you'd think after growing up in Rochester I'd be used to this, but it's been awhile. California makes you soft.

the snow's now melted, but it's still pretty cold...and the heat doesn't come on in our apartments until nov 15. as with many things here, heat for the entire city is govt-controlled. so we've been bundled like crazy. we didn't buy our tin of hot chocolate a day too soon...

My Birthday

cc went a little nuts. Ok, she went a lot nuts... The day of we went bowling with J&M in the morning. Paid something like 3-4 USD for shoes and 3 games!

cc was throwing so many Strikes it was suprising she'd get so excited with each one. ;)

At night cc took me to "arguably the best steak house in Beijing." I blew it and forgot to take pics! sorry. It was tasty!! :)

That was Thursday. On Saturday, cc had organized flag-football and made dinner for friends.

Here's our friends' daughter with my sunglasses. pretty cute.

cc let her take some pics. (Note the height difference in the angle of the photo :)

J made a bacon-cake: pancakes with bacon, covered in homemade frosting with bacon bits sprinkled on top. :) Thanks J!

Here's cc's 4-layered cake with homemade frosting. This was probably the best cake I've ever had. There are oreos sprinkled on top.

An impromptu game of Loaded Questions

Thanks to all of you who sent b-day wishes! It was really fun hearing from you!

Conclusions: We're really blessed, and really thankful for the friends we have. And I have a good wifey. :)

dc