As an update on Kevin's trip this past weekend to a nearby village...He described it as a total "China Experience" (which means one in which you sit back and kind of ask "What?!")! He went with several other Chinese men to a village with a population of 800. The funny part was that the mayor of the town (don't think that's his official title, but you get the gist) had decided that their village should have a golf course. Now, keep in mind in a country of 1.3 billion people where they have even limited the number of children you can have in an effort to cap the population a bit, land is a scarce commodity, and costs a small fortune, as you could imagine. Regardless, this mayor had built, according to his claims, more golf holes than any other golf course in Asia! There were 99 holes in this 800 person town!! The people of the village themselves were not frequenters of the course, but it is close enough to Beijing and the foreign population there to support the business, which is apparently doing okay because the same mayor now is wanting to build a baseball field. (I think just one, rather than 99!) I don't know that Kevin was able to add much to the discussions during the trip, but he did discover that he feels he still has a long way to go to be fluent in Mandarin and he had a few good laughs along the way as well!
He and the older three kids also had a great time at the movie, with the exception of it being a little bit scary for them (especially Karis). They were NOT the only ones in the theater, and the movie theater even had regular popcorn (not the sweet or crazy-flavored varieties that are normally the only ones available in China!) So the movie was a hit for everyone.
The rest of this week so far has been pretty normal. I did laugh about the chicken enchiladas I cooked for dinner earlier in the week when I thought through the process. Rather than being one of my fastest-to-prepare meals back in the States (and therefore one of my favorites!), my prep looked something like this. I happened to have some corn tortillas passed on to my by a friend who had gotten them from an import store in Beijing (something I haven't seen once since we've been here!). I used regular chicken from our market that I boiled and shredded. But to get "cream of chicken soup", I made my own (for the first time!). I know, call me Betty C. I added some seasoning to a milk and flour mixture, that I then added to chicken broth on the stove. But to get the chicken broth, I previously had taken the meat off of a rotisserie chicken and then boiled the bones on the stove for about an hour to make the broth (which is supposedly has an incredible amount of health benefits!). I added sour cream, but had to "make" my own by adding vinegar to heavy whipping cream and then allowing it time to sour. Oh, and I did have cheese, but needed to shred it as the only way you can buy it here is in a block. So the meal was delicious, but required a little bit more work than my typical Stateside chicken enchiladas! (And we won't even go into the process of getting chips and salsa. . .) :) What can I say, we're still "finding our new normal", and yet it is amazing just how normal it really is all beginning to seem. . .
The photo is of the kids playing together this week. They were having a pretend game where Karis was (of course!) the mom who was instructing the boys in where they should go and what they should do. Some things never change!
