Another first for me today. I was waiting out in the road when the taxi that I hailed pulled over and asked, "Ni qu nar?" (or "Where ya going?" in English translation). You can imagine the shocked look on his face when I immediately responded, "America!" (in Chinese, of course!). I'm not sure if he or I was more surprised, and I quickly laughed and corrected my mis-speech, telling him rather that I wanted to go to E Mart, the supermarket close by. I would like to think that my mistake was due to the fact that I had just been chatting with a few men while they fixed the flat tire on my double stroller and they were asking similar questions (about where I was from, what I was doing here, did I really have four children, etc.), but Kevin suggested that maybe my response to the taxi driver's question was a subconscious homesickness coming out! Hoping it was the former, as I've been feeling more emotionally stable and well-rooted here in China more than ever!!
While I was waiting for the repair man to fix my tire I was visiting with a grandmother watching over her 3 year old. By the way, I was overjoyed to find the repair man. This particular man can be found almost every day underneath the bridge near our home with his 3 wheeler filled with bike repair gear, but for awhile now he hasn't been around. I'm guessing it's because the weather has been so cold. As best we can tell, he lives under the bridge with his gear? When he finished repairing and replacing the inner tube of my tire, I was all too happy to hand him the 20 kuai (less than $3) he asked for without even bargaining! Anyway, I cracked up while visiting with this grandmother as she was trying to figure out what in the world I was doing with a stroller so large (it's my double jogging stroller that I just brought back from the US with us in January, and use to walk both boys to Hudson's preschool which is a couple miles away two mornings each week). I was explaining that I had 4 kids, and she interrupted, asking if I lived at Yang Guang Yi Bai (our apartment complex, which houses supposedly 30,000 people. That's right, I typed correctly! 30,000! Guess that's not so strange when you consider it's a city of 11 million....). When I told her I did, she immediately knew who I was, asking if my oldest was a daughter about yea high and then several small boys... It was so funny! Gotta love the celebrity status that comes with having multiple kids within a country that has a one-child policy!
Our past week has been great. We had temperatures that got all the way up to 50 degrees Fahrenheit up until Friday (when it snowed and dropped down into the teens once again!). The kids haven't seemed to mind though, and we've had fun playing outside in the snow and inside on the Wii (on those afternoons that I just wasn't up for the "bundle up and still get freezing cold hands" routine! We had friends over on Thursday night (you can see Leif and Ying Ying in the picture with the kids), and the kids were all too happy to snuggle up on the couch with them to finish watching their movie before the grown-ups had their dinner and talk time.
It was also our ayi's birthday on Thursday, so we celebrated with cupcakes and gifts the kids had made her, and gave her a store-bought cake that she could take home as her birthday present (we asked around to make sure, but this is culturally appropriate here in China to give a cake as a present!). When she came back on Monday she told us that her family had all come over on Saturday (which is their normal weekend routine, as Ayi is the one who is the main caretaker of her mother who lives with them), so her whole family was able to enjoy the cake. The funny thing was that she told us they were all so surprised because none of them knew that it was her birthday! We're not sure if that's just because birthdays aren't celebrated as much here or if it has to do with confusion over the dates because some people celebrate based on their actual birth date and some by the lunar calendar?
Another funny cultural realization I had from my class time this week: calling a person by name. I remember asking my first teacher here what I should call her boyfriend when I met him. She was stumped by my question! When I asked her what she called him, she responded with, "I don't!" I was so confused, and therefore pushed the issue, certain that at some point she had to get his attention. She explained that when she did have to call to him directly, which rarely happened, she would use his full name (last name first, then first name, which is usually two words. For example my Chinese last name is Zhou and first name is Ai Lian, so people here call me Zhou Ai Lian when they call me by name! I figured that surely this was just a strange idiosyncrasy of my teacher, but have since realized that it's true across the board--Chinese people rarely call one another by name, even in a husband and wife relationship! So how do they refer to one another, I ask? Within a marriage, you refer to your spouse as "lao gong" or "lao po" (which translates into "old worker" or old man and "old woman"--regardless of age!). And then once you have kids, you usually refer to your spouse as "so-and-so's Ma" or "so-and-so's Ba" (which is short for Mama and Baba, or mother and father). How crazy is that! I'm trying to imagine calling to Kevin across the house with "Zi Xuan, Zi Yang, Zi Hang, Zi Nuo de Ba!" just to get his attention! Think I'll stick with "Kev"!
Kevin has resumed his work-outs with the baseball team, and is really encouraged by his relationship with the Chinese coach who has just returned (he was gone all last year "on loan" to a Japanese team). He had Kevin coaching the pitchers today, which he was thrilled about, because he feels that they are lacking some basic instruction on how to use their whole bodies properly in order to maximize their potential as pitchers. The coach was obviously happy with Kevin's coaching, and even asked him to travel with the team this season, which supposedly begins in April! We shall see what fun stories lie ahead with baseball travel adventures.... :)
While he was at the team's practice last week he took this great picture of their training regiment--pushing a truck with no wheels while the coach sat on top! I laughed out loud when Kevin told me about it and showed me the picture, but he defended their concept, stating that the players were certainly getting a full-body workout in the challenge of moving the vehicle! I'm kind of guessing that the players Stateside who are in spring training as we speak aren't experiencing the same type of work-outs that we're seeing here...
