First Anniversary!

our "lake" in the mountains

We've made it!  Now over a year here in our new city out west.  And we all agreed that definitely called for a celebration!  We had a family meeting and decided that we still should keep celebrating our original anniversary of when we first came to China (Sept. 3 or 4, depending on if you look at it as when we left the US or when we arrived in China!  And depending on which day works out better with our schedule to do the proper celebrating such an occasion demands. :)  So since this NEW anniversary celebration falls on March 24 and the two anniversaries are about 6 months apart (and since the kids have another excuse now to play a family party), we decided to begin the annual tradition of celebrating our XJ anniversary, too.

So what did we do?  Well, unfortunately not much.  We had big plans originally.  I canceled afternoon classes (including Chinese with their tutor, which they are doing 4 days a week now, so a day off is a huge relief; nothing wears out the brain like studying a foreign language!).  Their first request was to go to the zoo--where we've never been.  But since it was still so cold here (not getting up over 45 or 50 degrees), we were informed that most of the animals would still be kept in the indoor facilities.  I wisely had a friend (who knows Karis well) recommend that we wait until the animals were relocated outside, as the indoor facilities are pretty heart-breaking and pathetic.  So our next plan was to go to an aquarium that we heard was pretty good.  I must admit that this struck me as hugely ironic, being as our city is known to be the furthest city from any body of water in the world!  What better place to have an aquarium?!  Now the fact that one of the main features is a mermaid show--that's right--a mermaid show, maybe speaks a bit to the variety of marine life that is housed at this particular aquarium.  But in spite of Kevin's and my hesitation, we decided it would be a fun adventure and undoubtedly provide quite a few laughs.  But alas, the best laid plans of man....  Kevin woke up the morning we planned to celebrate with a high fever and body aches all over.  Thankfully his virus only lasted about a day and a half and no one else caught it, but he was under the weather enough to not be able to go and the kids certainly didn't want to go without him.  So we went to Plan B (or is it now Plan C?).

our kite

We still skipped afternoon classes and the kids and I walked to our favorite western restaurant and they each got milkshakes.  It would have been a great conciliatory celebration, except for the debacle on our way home.  I let the kids run ahead of me when we were a few minutes from home so I could grab the lettuce for our salad that night and a ton of chicken for our Easter celebration we were hosting that weekend.  While the boys ran around outside in our courtyard, Karis took the keys to let herself into the house (haha!  it's an apartment, but in China since we're all in apartments, you can call it a house).  Unfortunately, she took our previous encouragement to put a little more muscle into turning the key in the lock to heart, and accidentally broke the key off in the lock of the front door! I arrived at our doorstep to find her sobbing, so upset at the mistake, freaking out at what to do next.  I banged on the door, which my sleeping, sick husband did not hear from bed.  Then I called him and he came and we developed a plan through the closed door (he was locked inside at this point and we were locked out--with 24 chicken breasts and a head of lettuce in hand).  He was able to take apart all the locking components from inside enough for me to be able to shimmy the broken part of the key out of the lock and get the door open.  We decided (a bit cynically perhaps) later that night that our day was a pretty fitting anniversary celebration!  We like to describe our general feeling throughout the week that "XJ fights back"--it feels like we get kicked in the gut pretty regularly and need to just keep on plugging on along!  We did get to make up the celebration later that week....

And I did make some fun new discoveries!  The kids always plan the menu for our anniversary celebrations, and I've just figured out how to make ricotta cheese, so we had lasagna!  It's amazing how simple it is to make the stuff; I didn't dare attempt doing one more thing from scratch, but this one is so easy that lasagnas might become a regular staple around our house.  My dear friend in TJ who sends us care packages pretty much every week with the import products we can't get out here had sent me both cheesecloth and lasagna noodles, so I was ready to go.  And after you use milk to make the cheese, the leftover milk (called whey, for those of you who are as clueless as I am) can be used in all sorts of baked goods in place of water (like homemade breads, which we do a lot)).  It's supposedly really healthy and adds a fluffiness to baked goods too.  And I had an abundance of mini marshmallows that needed to be used since our hot chocolate days are winding down, so I made the kids' favorite rocky road brownies that have melted marshmallows and icing on top.  I think I'm not used to such sweet desserts anymore--I could handle about a sliver and then had to hand the rest over to my sweet-toothed family to devour!

giving a ride to a friend's daughter

A few days after our attempt at an anniversary celebration, we were able to escape to the mountains unexpectedly.  We found out at the last minute that Kevin couldn't use the baseball field he usually does for his Saturday afternoon baseball clinic.  So since there wasn't time to find an alternate location, we decided to head for the hills.  We threw some peanut butter and crackers and apples in a bag, grabbed the boys pocket knives, and ran out the door.  It was a great day!  In spite of the fact that the roads up to the mountains were largely shut down still, we were able to make a great play place.  Granted, it was pretty much all dirt and rocks, but the kids were in heaven.  We bought a kite along the side of the road on the way and spent the day hiking of ravines and running down the dirt roads trying to get the kite in the air.  When we first arrived at the head of the road where we usually are just entering the mountain park area, we found huge mounds of dirt and rock, barricading the road so you couldn't drive any further.  Waiting there was a herd of Kazakh horsemen, ready to lead you on horseback to the more aesthetic part of the park (for a price!).  After walking up the road on foot, I'm not really sure why the road was closed off.  I will admit to being a bit suspicious that maybe the roadblock was intentional--a ploy to force the callow tourist to get a lift on horseback.  Pretty clever if that was the case!

The next day we hosted an Easter gathering for our foreign friends here in town.  We had a sweet time of fellowship and food.  I was thrilled that the marinade I'd found on-line to tenderize the chicken worked pretty well (it is mainly comprised of egg whites and rice wine), making the chicken not nearly as tough as it's known to be out here!

Dear friends from TJ

This past week we had two guests from Tianjin come to visit.  The first grade teacher at the kids' former international school (she taught 3 of my 4 kids) offered to spend her spring break here with us just overseeing our homeschool day and helping out as she could.  She's also considered the dyslexia specialist for the school, so I was of course thrilled to have her eyes on my "classroom" to give me feedback and counsel.  The other friend who came with her is the oldest daughter (11th grader) of one of my dearest friends.  This young woman is incredibly mature and was an excellent travel buddy for our teacher friend, as well as a gift to our kids to have her company and creativity in play!  So we spent about 2 1/2 days doing school as normal and then of course had to get out of town and show them the grandeur of the mountains we love so dearly.  They ate it up.  And this time we went to a more scenic location that we discovered wasn't technically open yet either.  We were able to drive into the park and then had to park our car.  The place we were trying to get to was another 13 km (about 8 or 9 miles!) uphill!  Thankfully, we found another group of Kazakhs, this time with cars, who we were able to hire for a ride up and back down.  Once we arrived at our destination at the top of the mountain, we didn't see another person the whole time we were there--which was about 3 or 4 hours!  I don't know when I've had that happen here in China before.  The peaceful quiet was truly refreshing for my soul.  I'm not sure if I'm just getting older or if it's China, but man do I relish any moment of quiet I happen to come upon these days...

one of my 4 monkeys (in a neighbor's courtyard)

This week has felt especially full with many of our friends in our community coming and going.  We have two families who have been Stateside for 3 months or so returning, and two more who are leaving.  Because getting food here (both the actually finding of it and the preparation) is so challenging, there is never a shortage of food needed during these times of transition, so I've been busy in the kitchen trying to help lend a hand where possible.  We've had guests or delivered 2 meals and some banana bread already and have 2 more to go before the weekend is over.  I'm thankful that we are at the stage where I have such good helpers!  Karis made her own batch of no-bake cookies (no eggs so you can eat the raw cookie dough) and Noah is more than happy to help me peel carrots and potatoes--for a price!  (But he's cheap--I can get him to do about 8 carrots for 1 kuai, which is about 1/6 of a dollar!)

So spring is in full bloom here.  The weather has been beautiful (although it's cold enough today that Kevin came home looking for his long underwear that have been packed away under the bed again!).  The kids have been loving getting to be outdoors, the snow has melted, and we've even got grass growing now (in a few small spots anyway) so they're not coming in as covered in mud as they were.

***News flash:  I'm having to amend that last paragraph already!  While walking home from the coffee shop where I was writing this entry, I made a sad discovery.  The powers that be in our apartment complex are obviously pretty intent about keeping kids off the grass here at all cost.  The largest area that the kids did have to play--usually soccer, as that is the most popular sport here--has now been barricaded off with a line of large bushes!  They not only lined the whole perimeter with the impenetrable foliage, they also put a big one (not pretty, though) smack-dab in the middle of the "field"!  So sad.  Seems like surely they could sacrifice the grass in one small plot to allow the kids a spot to play.... :(

We're winding down with school--only about 5 weeks left in our curriculum (but don't tell the kids that!).  We'll continue with a bit of a summer school schedule here, too, mainly focusing on language.  The kids are making such progress with their Chinese that we'll keep going through the summer, only dropping down from 4 days a week to 2.  The kids and I also are looking for a tutor to teach us all together (since we're all beginners) the U language that is so prevalent around us.  We're all ready to start understanding more of what is going on around us!  That's about it from our end, but I'm sure I'll have more adventures to report in no time. :)