Christmas Preparation

We can't believe that Thanksgiving has already come and gone! The older two kids only had a half-day of school on Thursday, so once they arrived home at noon (after I'd spent the morning baking in the kitchen with the younger two boys "baking" playdough along with me at the kitchen table), we rested for a short while then headed off to our friends' house to celebrate with a group of our western friends (there were about 24 of us in all). The very Thanksgiving-ish photo is of Hudson wearing a mask that was shared with him by his friend Andrew, one of the boys' favorite people here in Tianjin! We ate all the Thanksgiving regulars--even enjoying turkey that someone had found in Beijing.

On Friday we made a trek into Beijing to go to the international hospital. The plan was for Noah to get his 18 month old check up and shots, for the older three kids to get dental exams, and for all of us to get flu shots. The trip was a success, except for having to wait on the flu shots for the kids. They were required to return in exactly one month to get a second shot, and since we will be in the States then (woo hoo!), we had to put that one off. The photos are of the kids playing with some of the toys in the kids' waiting area (where I found, ironically, a sign stating "A quiet hospital helps speed recovery." Quiet! Not likely, at least not with my crew present!!) Kevin and I also loved having a Starbucks treat--even with holiday flavors (no peppermint here, but they do have a Dark Cherry Mocha and a Toffee Nut Latte that are both fantastic!). Oh, and Noah was so tired after the morning of travel and lunch before our dr appointments, that he ended up sleeping through half of his exam (not the immunization part, of course). It was the calmest dr. visit we've had yet!

On Saturday, we decided to stay indoors, keep on our pj's, drink hot chocolate, and put up Christmas decorations while listening to our favorite Christmas music. (What else should you do when it's 39 degrees outside and the wind is blowing the trees sideways?!!) We did get to enjoy Kevin braving the cold to venture out to the post office to pick up a much-anticipated package (thank you Rebers!) with fun baking goodies and toys for the kids.

I got to witness one of my favorite all-time interactions between the kids while decorating. Hudson came over to Karis and put her in a spontaneous bear hug with his arms around her waist. After first determining that he wasn't just trying to wrestle, Karis returned his embrace with her arms around his shoulders. The two of them just stood there for a moment looking up at the tree, as I was just finishing putting the lights on it. Karis let out a sigh, and said, "Hud, isn't the tree just beautiful?" in a wishful sounding voice.
Hudson responded with, "Yeah. I love you Karis. I'm gonna marry you."
Karis said, "Hu-ud, you CAN'T marry me. I'm not really sure why, but God says you can't marry someone who is in your family."
Hudson responded, "But dad and mom are married and THEY are in the same family!"

(Karis concluded the family by explaining that we weren't at first in the same family, and that is why they have both a G-Ma and G-Pa and a Nana and Papa.) It was priceless. What I wouldn't have given to have my video camera running!

We had a Chinese friend come by in the afternoon, and had the privilege of getting to talk about some of the deeper things of life as she struggles through some serious marriage and work problems. It's amazing how many opportunities there are here to be able to love people who are just looking for an ear and some sound counsel! Kevin and I were both blessed by our time, but also worn out, as our conversation was a good 2 1/2 hours long (luckily during the boys' naptime, or else it CERTAINLY would have been much shorter!)--and was all done in Chinese! (No, i didn't understand it all, but had Kevin there to fill in the gaps for me!)

On Sunday morning, Kevin taught at our fellowship, and I must say, did an incredible job. His message was the beginning of the Christmas series, so he got to talk about the passage in Luke 1 where Mary finds out that she is to be the mother of Jesus. His message was super clear, insightful, and challenging. It was his first time to do a full-length message at the fellowship, and I think the response was overwhelmingly positive. I even had one lady call me on my cell that afternoon to tell me how much it had impacted her! So the Rev Kev continues on.... :)

Birthday Party--kind of!

We tried to throw a little birthday party on Friday night for one of our good friends here, Jennifer, who is a teacher at the international school. The only problem was, we didn't have all the information we needed to be exactly accurate on the timing! She had told us her birthday last year was on Nov. 20, but that was actually based on the lunar calendar rather than our normal solar calendar. So we had a surprise set-up for her, with signs, balloons, cupcakes, a gift, etc., only to find out we are a little bit early this year! She's not even exactly sure when her calendar year birthday is this year! Isn't that crazy?! We all decided that you don't really need to have a good reason to have a party anyway, so everyone had a great time celebrating and eating strawberry cupcakes, but we did have a good laugh about the timing of birthdays here in China and how confusing it is to so many people because of using two different calendars (not to mention how many people I've met who have had mistakes made when they are renewing different id cards; leaving them with multiple birth dates on official documents. I have one teacher who has no idea when her actual birthday is, as she has three different records of it and her mom's memory is based on the lunar calendar and is not totally accurate!).

On Saturday night we had our last night with Kevin's dear friend, Lief for a while. He is headed out of town to do training with a new job he's just gotten--teaching English to kids! He will no longer be a professional baseball player, and is really excited about this opportunity to help open up his future. He's been looking and hoping for something else to do (besides just playing baseball), and feels like this is His provision for him. On Monday night he came over and the kids and Kevin and I taught him three kids songs in English (Wheels on the Bus, Hokey Pokey, and one other I'm blanking on now) along with the hand motions to go with them. We practiced for hours! Kevin and I laughed after he left that the best thing we could be doing at that time to serve him was to sing kids songs with him for hours on end! Hey, you never know... But his interview was on Tuesday and they loved him, so by Wednesday he had accepted the offer and is now beginning a month-long out of town training process. We're sad that we won't see him for quite some time, as he returns right before Christmas when we will already be back in the States. We're also wondering how this will affect the easy access Kevin has had with the baseball team, now that one of the players has left the team to go teach English (presumably due to Kevin's influence). There's a good chance that the coaches will put an end to Kevin's weekly English lessons there at the field, but we're sure hoping that it won't!

One of my best friend's husbands wrote a book (Donovan Campbell, Joker One) that Kevin and I have claimed a line from. He writes, "It was a solid plan, and it worked for about twenty meters." We like to think that we have a solid plan going here, but also realize that in reality, it may very well be more of a 20 meter plan than a well-working, long-term one! We're doing all that we can and lifting it up each step of the way; the rest is just not up to us!!

So two things happened this week that totally threw me for a loop that NEVER would do so in the States. One was a note home from Karis' school, giving instructions about clothes she has to wear for her Christmas school performance in two weeks. She is supposed to wear jeans (not a problem, thanks to G Ma and G Pa sending a pair this spring that fit!), and a dark, solid-colored shirt (with nothing on it). Sounds totally simple and easy, right?! Not so! In China, finding something without "bling" is truly next to impossible! There just is not Gap style clothing (meaning more basic) and certainly no Target or Wal Mart anywhere close by! I went to a local Chinese market that I've been hearing about having great factory-reject stuff that should be exported to the US, but came up totally blank. So Karis and I took off across town on Saturday afternoon while the boys were having rest time to our one hope--the H&M store that has recently opened this fall. We returned 4 1/2 hours later successfully, after having gone only to Starbucks, H&M, and a restaurant where I had ordered food in advance for us to pick up. And the duration of the trip was NOT due to our extended shopping time, it's just amazing how everything here takes so long! The lines for the fitting rooms, the lines for the check out, trying to catch a taxi, fighting traffic. I tell you what, living in a city of 11 million people is enough to make me long for the wide open spaces of my family's property in east Texas--and my own mini-van to get there in!!

And the other photos (besides the first two of Jennifer's bday celebration) are of Hudson with his pre-school teacher and my friend Natalie (and her daughter Jenda) who host the group of kids each day. The pic of Noah is him with Blaise, Natalie's little boy who is a month older than Noah and his good buddy at Sunday school!

On a humorous note, I had a totally awkward question asked of me this week--and it wasn't the first time to get it. While talking with a group of Chinese ladies at a store, they asked me which of my 4 kids was my favorite! I insisted (as best I could with my limited grammatical structure knowledge) that I loved them all equally and did not have a favorite. They informed me that this was just not possible, and insisted that I tell them which one I liked best! It was crazy! And I was so thankful that the kids did not understand enough to know what was going on; but talk about counter-cultural, where in the US we go to SUCH extremes to make sure every kid knows they are loved equally, etc. That just isn't the case here in China! If you are the favorite child (which normally doesn't apply, since the vast majority of young families here can only have one kid), then you know it and that is just the way it is. One cultural difference our family will never adapt to, for sure!

Off to awaken the sleeping dragon (that would be Noah, our child known throughout all of Tianjin for his "large temper and disposition") and go play outside with the boys before heading to class myself. We're so thankful to have warm enough weather still to take advantage of lots of outdoor time! I have no doubt this winter will fly by compared to last year...

Alien Invasion!

So for those of you who have been anxiously holding your breath. . . here are the results of the baseball quiz from the last post!
1. Rickey Henderson--LF
2. Michael Young (or Schmidt; he like them both!)--3B
3. Joe DiMaggio--CF
4. Chris Carpenter--P
5. Alex Rodriguez--SS

So how'd you do? This past week Kevin and Sam had a few more guys come for the first time, so there are a few more names added to the list. They had another smashing success during the English class, and we've been encouraged by the relationships that seem to be deepening due to the time Kevin has with them on Tuesday afternoons. We're hoping to have some sort of a Christmas party for them in December before we leave town, and are hoping we have a better turn-out than our previous attempt to invite these players into our home! We're still realizing how different this group is in general compared to our teacher friends who we spend most of our free time with. As far as language and culture go, they are definitely what we consider more "hard core" Chinese, making it harder to break into their world and more difficult to communicate with (not proper speech or dialects like we've been studying). Pretty different from our teachers, who are also all Chinese, but have spent a decent amount of time around westerners due to their job of teaching English. So after Kevin and I talked last night, we agreed that the athletes, while more difficult to build relationships with initially, sure seem to be strategic for us in the sense that they really don't have any other outside influence coming in to meet them where they are and encourage them to seek out things of significance. We're so hoping we have the opportunity to be that voice!!

The first two photos are of the team practicing using these sticks that they were having to jump over. Kevin found it amusing!

This weekend was a blast. We went to McDonald's for breakfast on Saturday morning and let the kids have the run of the place for an hour, entertaining the relatively small crowd of Chinese people who were there. It was cold and windy, and our crew is up early, so there weren't nearly as many people there as usual. Normally, we either can't find a seat for all 6 of us together or we have to wait for quite some time until somebody sees me standing there long enough to stop reading or working on whatever they're doing and get up from their table (the concept of fast food in China is quite different--most fast food chains are treated more like Starbucks where people sit and linger over their meals, or don't even order at all but just kind of hang out there!).

Saturday night we had a group of 12 teachers and a few other national friends come over to have a dinner and movie night. The plan was to watch the Mel Gibson movie "Signs", so we decided to do an alien theme. The kids spent the afternoon making decorations (stars and planets to hang out the walls, alien faces to put on the tables). We ordered a bunch of jiao zi from a nearby restaurant and I fixed several vegetable side dishes, as well as cookies and brownies to go with our fruit serving for dessert. Kevin planned out two games for entertainment--the first was a UFO toss (using a frisbee and our basketball hoop) and the second was for our friends to divide up into two teams (boys and girls) and dress up Eli and Hud as aliens. It was hilarious! We had purchased a bunch of random supplies earlier that day at the super market, and we were so impressed with how cute the boys looked when they were finished! The only problem with the evening was that the movie was not a good copy, so we eventually had to take it out and switch for another one. It was a little disappointing, as Kevin and I had spent some time preparing questions and practicing the Chinese vocab to go along with the originally planned movie, so we had to scramble a little bit for the discussion aspect. But we're trusting that in spite of our change in plans, He knew what was going on and was not thrown off by the whole thing like we were! We are certain, at least, that everyone seemed to have fun and get a lot of laughs at our little martians running around the house!

Covering Up for Winter

I was so sad this week to see the work beginning--men and women in the medians and on the sides of the road in the (small!) grassy areas, working to build wooden frameworks around the limited amount of landscaping that lines the major roads of Tianjin. After building the somewhat rickety wooden frameworks around the bushes and some of the trees, they then cover the greenery with a heavy green plastic, I'm assuming with the goal being to protect the foliage from the cold and the strong winds that Tianjin has during the long winter months. I pulled over on my way biking to class to get a quick shot with my camera, much to the amusement of the men working! But it made me a little sad; any natural green that we still can see is unfortunately on it's way out until the warm weather returns (this year it was in late April). But, I must rejoice with thanksgiving that this year has been SO much warmer than last! Our heater has not turned on yet, but we are only a week (and one day) away, but have yet to feel like we have been really cold while indoors (which is vastly different from last year when we bundled up in our warmest fleece before crawling under the covers at night). So no complaints here, only a lingering sad feeling that the dreariness of winter is just around the corner for a spell...

On that note, one of the things Kevin and I remain intrigued about as far as cultural differences is the hot/cold emphasis in Asia. While walking Hud to his pre-school class this week on Tuesday, I had a woman literally pull a u-turn to run after me, insisting that I make Hudson pull his pant leg down so that the one and a half inches of his leg that was exposed would be covered. After realizing that she was not going to leave me alone until I complied, I did tug his pant leg down so that no skin was showing, laughing with amazement at her fear of the (what I considered) relatively warm weather. Karis caught a fever virus this week, and ended up staying home from school for several days. When our ayi came one morning and I explained that Karis had a little bit of a fever, her immediate two questions were about how she had been dressed while outside and what cold foods she had eaten. One of my teachers this week, who is Chinese but married to an American, asked me about temperature differences in the US and if I was concerned about keeping on air conditioning during the summer months, and if the temperature changes between being indoors and outdoors would be harmful to the kids' health. I explained to her that we just don't think of it as being a big deal; especially compared to how they think of temperature here, where literally the first thought about illness or any health issues is all tied to hot/cold things (temp or food, mainly). My teacher explained to me that she, too, was fussed at by some neighbors this past week because she had socks but not shoes on her 7-month old daughter while she was in the stroller. The concern of the neighbor was apparently that the cold air would hit the child's feet and could that way enter into her body, causing sickness of some sort as her internal balance would be thrown off. After over a year of being here, I'm still amazed at how different the thinking is in so many different ways!

The picture of Karis with the sausage is her working on her Chinese characters with Kevin's help--they were using our breakfast to write "huo" or fire in Chinese HanZi! Thought it was pretty creative...

One other major difference that we continue to seek understanding on is that of how friendships work here. We realize that we have been so blessed by the friendships we've developed over the last year, but we're continually amazed at the warmth of the feedback that we receive from our Chinese friends here--how many of them will refer to us as their "best" friends, or "jia ren" (which is basically, family members). While we feel a closeness to so many of them, too, we feel that we are in a different place, being isolated from family and friends of our own culture, making it seemingly more natural for us to develop these kinds of deeper bonds. But while the relationship emphasis here in China seems to be on very small, intimate circles of friends and family (rather than broader scopes of friends or acquaintances that are more typical of western relationships), as we ask others who have been here longer than we have, it seems that along with these tight relationships comes a sense of duty or obligation that carries a heavy weight with it as well. It seems like this sense of duty and obligation, while allowing for a sense of security, also has some negative aspects to it as well. We had a friend explain to us this weekend that if we are offering friendship, welcoming our Chinese friends into our home (which is a huge expression of being "in" with someone, making it to their inner circle of friends), and yet not having the expectations that typically come with those relationships, they can feel the difference, and the freedom that comes with those friendships. So we're hoping that this is the case--that these friends that we are making and trying to love and serve see us as a "safe" place to come where little is expected or required, and that this is the reason for the warm reception we've been receiving. I'm sure I'll have more thoughts on the matter over time as we try to investigate further and have more time for experience to accumulate...

Kevin had his first English class with a group of baseball players this week--and it was a smashing success! (At least, as far as he could tell, it was!) He had 9 players come (including one coach), and two more who wanted to but were unable, promising to attend this next week instead. They started off with basic information on how to introduce your self. Kevin and our friend Sam (who is joining him as teacher) collaborated to give the players English names, which of course, is as fun as it sounds. I thought their method very creative; they allowed the guys to pick names from a group of famous baseball players who have played in their same positions in the MLB over the last several decades. So for those of you who are baseball fans, here's your pop quiz. I'll give you the first names of the players and their positions and you can see how many you can match up with their MLB counterparts:

1. Ricky--LF
2. Michael--3B
3. Joe--CF
4. Chris--P
5. Alex--SS

Stay tuned for the results... :)