Lovin' It

We have a new family goal in the Joseph household--a regular attitude of thanksgiving.  We've determined that the secret to joy really is in being able to enjoy Him and the gifts He's given, so we're trying to practice more as a family what that looks like in our daily lives.  Most of the time it's the little things:  the fact that the water turned back on again this morning just in time for me to get a shower in before I had to walk out the door to go to school (one my students should be thankful for, too, especially since I didn't make it to the shower yesterday!), the sky being clear enough for 3 days in a row to see the sun, having enough blankets to bundle up and stay warm in spite of the fact that it is FREEZING in our apartment and we have no heat any longer (turns off around the country on the 15th of March), enjoying a bag of peanut butter M&M's that came in a care package...

But we're also seeing His goodness in so many of the BIG things, too.  Our family is thriving--in spite of so many factors that seem so unstable so much of the time and are so out of our comfort zone.  Right now, my husband is at a McDonalds' studying yet ANOTHER foreign language with his newly-found tutor.  Not that he feels that he has totally mastered Mandarin in less than 4 years, but he longs to speak the heart language of some of the minority people group friends he's made; and they ain't speakin' Mandarin!  I'm amazed at His grace and Kevin's faithfulness to push himself to study with the limited time he has.  My kids are all at a school where they are taught Truth; Noah was able to come home and act out the entire Easter story last week (complete with the explanation of Jesus being wrapped up in toilet paper and stuck into a cage--at least he got most of the story correct!).  I have the opportunity to teach a rebel group of high school sophomores the basics of English literature and composition, and I absolutely love them and the job itself--and this coming from a very content stay-at-home mom!  Our friendships here have deepened to the point that we have true heart connections with our Chinese friends; not just the surface-level stuff, but true mutual-encouragement and refreshment (with the fatigue that of course comes with trying to communicate in a foreign tongue).  We are getting to do what we were "made to do" in our eyes, and we are paradoxically drained and refueled all at the same time by the opportunities and the pace that we're trying to maintain.  The challenge remains to respond to the tension between pushing ourselves to true dependence on Him and yet knowing our boundaries and when we are nearing the danger zone of burn-out.

The past few weeks we've started back up with the parenting study that I had led previously.  I took last semester off, thinking that trying to handle that along with my teaching load might be too much both for me and for the family.  But after a semester to get into the swing of things, Kevin encouraged me to jump back in.  I have one other foreign friend helping me, and this time there are two other Chinese women who we are trying to help train for leadership.  It's been incredible to meet with them separately each week to get feedback; their cultural insight has been invaluable to myself and the other leader in terms of helping us see things that I don't think we ever would have considered before.  I will never cease to be amazed at the vast cultural differences between the Asian and the Western mindsets.  It seems like our study is going remarkably well, no doubt largely due to the fact that the two Chinese women have been so honest and so influential
 in helping us steer the ship! The other photo is us celebrating a good friend's birthday--with a wonderful cake that I bought rather than made due to the fact that I only discovered it was his birthday about 1 hour before he arrived at our house!  Thankful for a nearby bakery that actually has really good cakes.... :)

We only have a 3 and a half day week, then a week-long break for spring break.  We are all so excited to have a little break from the routine, and we have our lists made of things we can't wait to do with Nana (my mom) who is coming in town.  The kids have been thinking of all their favorite things to do and places to go in the hopes of getting some one-on-one dates in with one of their favorite grandparents.  We'll have my mom here for 2 weeks, so we're planning on making the most of it, and hoping the weather allows us to spend as much of it outdoors as possible!

Our first day of spring was March 21--and would you believe we had INCHES of snow that day!  We awakened to find a thick layer on the ground, which didn't last till noon thanks to the sun being out that morning.  But the kids had a ball seeing snow on the first day of spring, and the photo is of them walking across the school grounds to get into the building.

We also had the super-fun blessing of some of our dear friends coming back from the States for a visit.  Our first 2 years here some of our closest friends were the Thorpe family members.  They babysat for our kids and invested in our entire family is such a special way!  We have missed them dearly the past almost-2 years they have been gone, so we were thrilled to have them back in Tianjin this past week to play and re-visit old friends.  It made the timing of life here seem so strange, almost like we are living in a flashback; hard to believe that we're going on 4 years of life as ex-pats. 

Out My Window

We are so thankful to say that our weather has warmed up TREMENDOUSLY over the last few weeks!  We've even put away our long underwear (most days) and I'm trying to remember which suitcases stuffed under the beds contain which warm-weather clothes (there are no closets here, so we do what we can to find storage space).  We did make the most of the last big snow we experienced; the photos were taken right before Chinese New Year (the beginning of Feb) out of my kitchen window.  Eli was down in our courtyard and rolling huge balls of snow to make our apartment community's largest snowman!  It was a huge hit with all the neighbors, and he stayed occupied literally for hours on his project (he made an entire family by the end of the day).  Each time I looked out the window to check on him I could see our neighbors gathered around to admire his work.  Pretty precious!

The next scene is also taken from our kitchen window--this one with the photographer (which would be me) being MUCH more irritated at the time it was taken.  Our apartment community (which supposedly houses either 30,000 or 300,000 residents; we've heard both numbers!) has enacted a new policy of not allowing anyone who is not authorized (meaning hasn't paid their monthly fees and received an entrance card) to park in the underground parking.  The result:  every courtyard, sidewalk, and street has now become a parking lot.  It has made it unsafe for the kids to run around on the sidewalks unsupervised and has made squeezing through the narrow streets (especially in the morning) nearly impossible.  It is not uncommon at all for me to have to jump out of the car in the morning to help guide Kevin as he drives, instructing him on how many centimeters he has to make it through a narrow opening between 2 cars.  There has been so much frustration in the community about the new parking rules that several garages have had the mechanical arms broken off that are intended to keep vehicles out that don't have the proper card.  We remain curious about how long it will take for people to either simmer down and pay for parking or to have some other change in the policy that would alleviate some of the (obvious to everyone) problem in the community.

I've mentioned several times before about the expectations that go along with relationships here in China.  As our circle of close friends widens, so do some of the expectations for our family.  At the end of the Chinese New Year celebrating there is one final day (the Lantern Festival) that has lots of traditions that goes along with it.  A good friend of Kevin's called us that weekend and was adamant that we get together with him; but of course our schedule was pretty full already for that weekend (we talked to him on Thursday).  He was persistent in inviting our whole family to his apartment (which he shares with his elderly mother) for them to prepare dinner for us.  The last time Kevin, Noah, and I had lunch there, it was a multiple-hour event (Chinese cooking is only done over a stove in a wok, so you have to complete one dish at a time if you only have one burner, which is the norm, and when you have guests you'd better put a LOT of different dishes on the table if you want to be polite).  And the apartment was so small, that even with only 3 of us there, we still had to sit on the mother's bed to all fit close enough to the coffee table to eat.  And now he wanted all 6 of us to come for a holiday dinner that he would prepare for us. Uh-uh.  I put my foot down on that one, quite certain that it would undoubtedly push me over the edge trying to keep the destruction to a minimum that was certain to ensue from having my four wild ones contained in that environment for any length of time!

So the alternative?  Having them on our turf.  I (somewhat grudgingly, I must admit) insisted that they come to our house instead.  I didn't totally take into account how much preparation I was asking to do:  being a holiday, hosting in our home, and having an elderly Chinese woman (more traditional in expectations) in our home for the first time were all complicating factors for me--who normally has Sunday dinner as our order-pizza night, so I can have Sunday afternoons to rest and have some down time.  Not this week!  I had a very helpful husband, but still ended up spending all Sunday afternoon getting enough food prepared to make our friends feel welcomed and loved.  I think we pulled it off okay, but I was definitely ready to crash when they finally headed home and the dishes were sitting on the drying rack.  The night (and Chinese New Year celebration) ended with LOTS of fireworks that we could see out of all of the windows of our 10th-story apartment; so many and lasting so late into the night that a few of the kids had a heck of a time falling asleep in the midst of the thundering booms.

The next cultural doozie came the following week.  Kevin came into the kitchen with a sheepish look on his face after receiving a phone call.  He was meeting a group of local friends the next night, and evidently one of those friends had called, partly to request that I send some homemade cookies for Kevin's friend to give to HIS friend--who somehow has eaten my cookies and is a fan.  So thankfully I had some extra dough saved up in the fridge, but the whole time I was preparing and baking them I kept laughing to myself and wondering, "Where are we that a person would call and request cookie to give to their friend--just because they like someone's cooking!"  I was trying to imagine anything like that ever happening in the States, and have yet to come up with any plausible scenario where that would be acceptable!






Kevin's last week has been a busy one.  He was talked into playing in the basketball game at school where the Varsity team took on the faculty.  Kevin only stayed for half of the game, as we had another commitment that night, but he still managed to be the high-scoring player on the "old folks" team!  The students were quite impressed (and a little confused; several of mine kept asking questions, saying "I thought he played baseball?" and thinking that meant that he probably didn't play much basketball).  Then this morning he was the guest speaker in Noah's class.  They are talking about sports, and one of the other Argentinian kids in class has a dad who plays polo who came to speak earlier in the week.  Kevin was asked to come in wearing his uniform from his baseball days and talk to the class of 3 and 4 year olds about his experience playing ball.  Noah was quite proud, and he was really excited to wear "matching" Cardinals gear with his daddy!

When we went to Thailand a few weeks ago, I noticed that all 3 of the boys shoes were in terrible condition, with all of them literally having worn through the bottoms or split seems at some point.  So I found Thailand's Wal-Mart equivalent and went shopping.  Now China is known for having terrible quality, but I'm starting to think that Thailand maybe ought to be lumped into that same category of "shoddy work."  Hudson has had his new shoes for 2 weeks, has worn them almost daily, but only for about 2 hours total each day (while they are at school, the littlest kids all have special school Crocs that they wear; all guests are also required to either wear guest slippers when they enter or else put fabric covers over their own shoes; this ensures that the floors which have carpet stay clean as the kids sit on the floor, and is an excellent commentary on just how dirty the streets of China are and why Asian culture demands shoe-removal upon entering a home).  His shoes have totally fallen apart!  He dumped about a pound of sand out of his shoes yesterday before putting them on again, the sand having been collected through the holes in his shoes while he was playing in the sand pit during recess.  He's now begging me to find him another pair that doesn't have quite so many holes, poor guy!

I promise that it's not just that I'm the cheapest person in the world that my kid can't have shoes without holes; it's just REALLY difficult to find things here that the rest of the world considers "easy to locate."  There are lots of shoes to be found, but finding one that doesn't have some weird fashion design, that is decent quality, affordable (mainly due to the one-child policy I think, kids' apparel here in China is ridiculously priced, and parents are willing to pay it!), and doesn't require shopping in some dark alley market is rare.  It's hardly ever as simple as walking into a mall or a Super Target, knowing the size, and getting something you can count on being able to survive at least a few weeks of wear and tear by a kindergartner.  So you can understand my excitement--equivalent to a kid on Christmas morning--when I found not one, but TWO pair of jeans at a newly-opened Gap!  I've mentioned before that our clothes take a beating here in China.  Not sure why, if it's the water or washing that's tougher on them, or maybe the fact that we're riding bikes a lot and putting strain on our seems, etc., but we seem to regularly have knees ripping out of our pants.  So my favorite jeans are all non-wearable in most settings now, so I've been hoping to replace them somehow.  I was able to find 2 pair, the same style, but 2 different sizes (one to wear with my long underwear underneath and one for those days warm enough that they aren't needed!), and didn't even have to pay an arm and a leg (I've found that although I've been to a Gap store several times before while here in China, usually the prices are almost double what they are in the US, making it really hard to justify buying much).  My ecstasy over my new jeans has prompted many discussions between Kevin and me over how thankful we are that we recognize how living here in China makes us truly thankful for so many little things:  jeans that don't have knees ripped out, shoes that aren't split at the seems, the bag of pretzels I found at the import store this week.  It's neat to see the balance--the things we feel that we sacrifice culturally (giving up my Sun afternoon to cook when I'd rather not, making cookies for a friend of a friend, etc.) are definitely worth the effort when we look at the many ways our family is blessed by living as we are!

Chinese New Year Holiday

The last week and a half our family has spent being even more overseas than we usually are!  Ha!  If that’s even possible….

We’ve added 3 more stamps to our passports, and realized in the process that we need to add more pages to them before any more international travel (so a trip to the US Embassy in Beijing looks to be in our future; one more first for the Joseph family).  I decided to try a slightly alternate flying route than we’ve taken before, largely for the sake of curiosity.  But it seems like no matter where we go, the travel always just seems to be LONG and exhausting. 

So last week on Wednesday, our family rode the bus to school (rather than driving our car, as we didn’t want to leave the vehicle at school for 2 weeks), I taught my English class for 1 hour while the kids made an appearance in their respective classes, then we threw on our travel clothes (it was China Day at school, so we were all wearing our most Chinese-ee outfits, which were not my first choice to show up at the airport in) and waited for our driver to give us the ride to the airport, who was 45 minutes late!  Ahh!  We managed to make it to our flight on time, largely due to the fact that it was delayed a good hour and a half.  We then eventually made the final destination (at least for the first day of travel), which was Bangkok, 13 hours later, after passing through Korea on the way.  Here are a few of the highlights from the travel:

·      Karis asking the flight attendant for “cha” during the beverage service (this is Chinese for tea); this was not even being served at the time, but the flight attendant was so tickled that she went to the back of the plane to bring her a steaming cup of it

·      Hudson overhearing 2 restaurant workers at the airport in Seoul speaking Korean; upon hearing their speech, he enthusiastically informed me that they were speaking Korean (which he hears a lot of from his classmates at school); I then continued by explaining to him that them speaking Korean made sense, as we were actually in Korea; the look on his face as this realization sunk in was pretty priceless

·      Quizno’s sandwiches—discovered in the Seoul airport and purchased (and eaten!) in spite of not being hungry AT ALL, but rather just thrilled to make such a splendid serendipity

The second day of travel was MUCH easier.  It only required a 20-minute ride to the airport and a 1-hour flight before we arrived in Siem Reap, Cambodia.  We had another family traveling with us, and we made it through that leg of the journey as painlessly as could be expected.  I guess I should add that the van that picked us up from the airport was a not what I’d call the latest model, and we ended up stalling on the side of the road before reaching our hotel.  We all sat in the van, sweating, for about 5 minutes while the driver tried to cool the engine by pouring a bottle of water over it, with us laughing that whole time about how there was a time when that sort of minor inconvenience would have rattled us all a bit.  As it was, we ended up getting to ride in several open-air tuk-tuks, which are basically motorcycles with bench seats and a cover over them on the back; this also happens to be the kids most preferred mode of transportation while we are in Thailand (and now Cambodia, too!), so it ended up being a win-win (almost!).  We spent the next several days getting to learn more about Cambodia culture and visiting with friends.  It was informative and refreshing in many ways.

I had one afternoon of down time that I used to go on a quick walk through the neighborhood of our hotel, and I discovered a charming (if quite muddy and polluted-looking) river that was nearby.  On my walk I was struck by how little I understand of the Cambodian culture.  As I walked, men regularly called out greetings to me.  My immediate reaction was to avert my eyes and pretend I hadn’t heard them; in Chinese culture this would never happen.  If a man was so bold to make eye contact, much less call out any sort of boisterous greeting, you could safely assume he was either drunk or being inappropriate to some degree.  But what if the Cambodian culture is much more like the Latin American one, where it is common and even polite to greet anyone passing by with enthusiasm?  I found myself laughing at the quandary I was in, and even more amused at how uncomfortable I was with my lack of understanding and ignorance of how to handle such a simple inter-personal interaction that is so seemingly innocuous as a greeting.  I guess the good news is that I have definitely grown in the area of cultural sensitivity!  I no longer am content to live in oblivion about how what I’m communicating both verbally and non-verbally might be being received based upon the culture and context I am in. 

We had one afternoon off to go explore the city, so we had an absolute blast letting the kids help in setting the agenda.  They had discovered several tanks filled with small fish; the tanks were designed with benches on top of them so that you would sit and dangle your feet into the tanks, allowing the small fish to literally eat the dead skin off of your feet.  We’ve seen this before on previous trips to Thailand, and the kids have always wanted to participate in this obviously touristy activity, but on this trip we finally agreed that the price was right (less than a dollar) and that it would constitute a fun family activity.  So we all fed the fish for a full 10 minutes, with quite differing reactions, depending on the family member!  Hudson made it maybe 15 seconds before he decided that the fish were biting him too hard; Eli, on the other hand, would have actually put his face in the water to let the fish nibble if we’d given him permission to do so!  Kevin and I were squirming and squealing for the first 8 minutes until we finally got accustomed to the snake-like feel of fish swarming between our toes and all around our ankles.  The seemed especially to prefer my heals and feet, which was good support for me in convincing Kevin that he obviously needed to be sending me out to get more pedicures than I am currently in the habit of getting!

After our fish-feed, we took another tuk-tuk to the night market, which is also the area of town with the majority of restaurants.  We LOVED our meal of Mexican food, and enjoyed doing some souvenir shopping as well.  While we in the market shopping, we ran into an adorable, skinny, probably 8-year old little girl with her 1-year old baby sibling worn in a sling over her shoulder.  The little girl came up to us, asking me to buy her a bag of expensive chocolates that were at a stand nearby where we were standing.  Looking at her rotting teeth and skinny arms and legs, the mother in me revolted at the thought of buying her such a non-nutritious snack.  But I couldn’t find anything else that seemed a healthier option.  So as I was looking, I asked if I could get a picture of her standing with Karis, who was trying to get her sibling to interact with her.  The little girl immediately responded with, “Picture—one dollar—one dollar only.”  I had no US dollars on me, and was shocked at how boldly she had answered.  I reached into my wallet and pulled out what little Cambodian cash I had, but it was obviously LESS than the $1 fee she required; so she forcefully exclaimed that it was not one dollar and quickly walked away.  Karis and I both stood there for several minutes with shocked looks on our faces.  I still don’t understand why this little girl was not willing to accept the money I did want to give her; I realized later it was close to $1 (about 75 cents), but I figured she had a story.  Was she keeping the money for her family?  Was it for something or someone else?  Was the baby she was carrying in the sling even related to her?  Was the whole thing just a racket?  Was there some significance to US dollars as opposed to the Cambodian money?  It was all a mystery—and still is!  We did run into the little girl in the same spot about an hour later, but this time I had found a stand that sold somewhat healthier food items (like dried fruit).  Karis and I ran back and quickly purchased some to bring to the little girl, for which she said a curt thank you and stuck in a bag before quickly continuing on to pursue the next tourist passing by her patch of ground.  I couldn’t help but think on His sovereignty over all things, over all people and situations, over all of the families we are born into and the lives that we lead, as I walked away thankful for the one He has blessed me with.

I continued this vein of thankfulness for His blessings throughout the week—particularly thankfulness for life itself!  Eli came up to Kevin and me at the breakfast table one morning while we were in Cambodia, surrounded by a group of his friends, and grinning from ear to ear as he held forth his trophy—a large frog he’d found in the outdoor dining area of our hotel.  The kids all had a blast playing with the frog for the next 10 minutes until it made its fortuitous escape. It was only after the frog’s escape that we learned, according to one little girl in the group who spoke Cambodian and happened to hear some of the staff talking amongst themselves, that apparently that kind of frog has a poisonous coating on its skin!  We of course had the kids wash their hands thoroughly upon this news, but I still kind of held my breath, hoping that we wouldn’t see any negative repercussions to the kids’ handling of their morning toy.  So far, so good, as no one has seemed to be any worse for the poison that may or may not have been a reality!

I also ended up sick to the point of wishing that my life might just end the day before we had to leave Cambodia.  As far as I could tell, I ate something that did NOT sit right with my stomach, and I had to spend the last day of time with our friends in bed all day, feeling like I’d been hit by a truck.  I was sooooo incredibly thankful that my system finally righted itself, and literally just in time, as we had another day of travel ahead of us to get to Thailand, and I didn’t even have to make any trips to hospitals or other medical facilities in the process.  My one regret, besides missing time with friends that final day and feeling so crummy in the process, is that I failed to check through our laundry bag that Kevin picked up from the Laundromat that was just around the corner where we had dropped off some of the clothes we needed to have cleaned; I didn’t discover until our arrival in Thailand that several of the long-sleeved and long pants clothing items had not been returned, so I’m actually off on an afternoon adventure of trying to find some suitable clothes for those who are now missing them so that we can be appropriately dressed for the sub-freezing temperatures we’ll be hitting upon our return home!  There’s a decent chance I’ll end up with some boys in sparkly pink sweat pants for our flight back to China…

                        . . . . . . . . . . .

So no sparkly pink sweat pants, but I did end up selecting 2 of the only 2 choices for long pants for the boys!  Noah will be donning a stylish pair of red skinny sweatpants (which he loves, because they have a Ben 10 logo on them) and Hudson will be wearing a pajama shirt (which he loves, because it is Batman).  And I actually found tennis shoes for the boys, as all 3 of them had their current pair splitting at the seams (I think they have worn them enough out in the snow that it weakened them in places that normally aren’t a problem!).  The interesting thing to me was that amongst racks of girls’ shoes, they didn’t sell a single pair of athletic shoes—they were all cheaply-made sandals or flip flops.  I suppose it’s like it used to be in the US, where girls only have more dressy or casual options for footwear, rather than the selection of athletic wear we’re accustomed to. 

Our days of rest and relaxation here on the beach in Thailand can best be summed up, as cheesy as it may sound, as an oasis for our family, both on the emotional, physical, and spiritual level.  Our bodies have time to clear the junk out of our lungs, and for the first time in months none of us have a nagging cough in the morning when we awaken.  We have a break from the cultural stress that is to be expected when living cross-culturally.  We have quiet (at least when we take turns watching the kids and escape for a brief walk on the beach)!  I was astounded at how few people I saw as I took advantage of just such an opportunity a few days ago.  I walked for half an hour with only the sounds of nature buzzing around me: birds chirping (a rare sound to my ears, indeed!), the ocean waves rolling in; the odd variety of horned cattle and chickens rustling around in the brush near the dirt road I was on.  It was beautiful!  And we have the time away from life’s responsibilities to truly be able to be still and reflect.  To be honest, this time of reflecting is not something we’ve been out of practice on recently.  I regularly wonder if our family is unique in how much time we spend asking questions about where we are and if we’re doing what we’re supposed to be.  Not in a bad or anxious way, but it feels that we are in a constant state of re-evaluating if we are being called to move elsewhere, be spending our time doing something different, or investing in people that we haven’t paid close enough attention to.  I’m thinking there’s a good chance that a lot of this has to do simply with our lifestyle; the fact that we live in a place where the needs are so great, the community itself is so transitory, and even our visa (and therefore ability to stay here) is so unstable.  Anyway, Kevin and I have both sensed a sort of numbness during this last leg of our journey, and I kind of think it might be because we just need to focus on being still, enjoying Him, and allowing the questions to be answered on His timeline rather than our own.  A good place to be, but not exactly one that comes naturally to either Kevin or me, who would much rather have all the answers and the 10-year plan all mapped out!  My solution:  early morning time with Him, an hour-long foot massage during rest time in the afternoon (which you can get here for under $10 and feels divine!), and enjoying a coconut milk shake with the kids at the pool after dinner.  Ahhhh.  One more day before we head back to the real world!

 

To sum it up, some of my favorite moments from our week of vacation:

·      Taking a 20-minute boat ride to Monkey Island to feed the wild monkeys there, making it back with none of the kids getting bitten or mutilated in any other form by the enthusiastic wild things, and seeing a dolphin on our return trip

·      Finding new discoveries every day on the beach—everything from a dead baby stingray to tiny jelly fish (which we caught in our buckets) to countless crabs of all types and varieties

·      Seeing the kids LOVING every minute; Karis making friends with every other kid in the pool and Eli designing a trap to catch the school of small minnows on the beach in order to put them in his bucket to feed his crabs; Hudson laughing and smiling the entire time he was digging in the sand and going down the pool’s slide; Noah delighting in every sign of nature that passed by, insisting that any bird with color on it was a parrot (he only ever sees common sparrows and an occasional Magpie while in China)

·      The load of fish that the kids and Kevin caught on an early-morning (5:30am) fishing expedition; we had the restaurant here at the hotel cook them up and had fish for lunch that day!

·      Eli and Hudson not having any major negative health side effects after being eaten alive on the beach by these tiny blood-sucking gnats; I did have to make a run into town to buy another tube of ointment to put on them to try to stop the itching and I spent a good portion of 3 days explaining to other concerned-looking parents that my boys did not have some strange, contagious disease, but had merely been brutally attacked by an insect I’ve never seen before

·      Noah, after throwing at least 3 fits before noon at the mere thought of having to take a nap, laying in bed and saying, “Mom, thanks for making me take a rest.  I really am so tired.”  Not what I was expecting from my three-year old!

Tomorrow we start the return trip home.  We leave the beach at 7am for a 3-4 hour drive to get us to Bangkok, then fly for about 7 hours to Seoul.  We’ll spend the night in Seoul, then fly the next day for about an hour back to Tianjin.  We should arrive around noon on Wednesday, have the afternoon to unpack some bags and get ready for school that starts up again on Thursday.  Hoping we don’t have too many obstacles to getting back to Tianjin when we’re scheduled, or we might have a tired crew come Thursday morning when it’s back to the grind!  For now, I’m just thankful that Noah at least can’t wait to hit the road and start the traveling so he can wear his new clothes!

Cross-cultural laughs

I awakened early this morning and should be using this time to get some papers graded, but couldn't resist grabbing a few minutes to jot down a few of the more funny cultural moments from our party yesterday.  I love the adventure of living in China!

I've got to start off by saying that my kids, once again, rose to the occasion of a somewhat challenging event for them.  We spent a full 50 minutes in the car on the way to our friend's party, as we had to drive through Tianjin traffic to pick up a blind couple Kevin has gotten to be friends with.  Karis entertained us for most of the drive by singing Taylor Swift songs (without the music of the CD in the background, but rather the back-up singing that her 3 younger brothers provided from the back seat).  Our friends loved it!  We arrived to join a group of about 20-30 (depending on the ebb and flow of the guests) at a relatively small apartment.  We had a really fun time playing "get to know you" games (which all centered around being able to remember people's names after they had introduced themselves).  This alone was hilarious, as I, between trying to keep the kids seated and quiet and STILL not having Chinese names be easy to recollect for me, did not remember ONE single name of the 20+ people who were introduced!  Luckily, Kevin came through big time for us, and when either of us were called on in the game to answer, he was able to make a joke out of it (usually by naming either a really famous Chinese person or using an incredibly common name--like Wang--to get a laugh out of the whole group).  We also played some fun group games, like you can see in the picture of passing a pretzel from one straw to another that was being held in the mouths of the competitors.  Our friends loved it!

After the games, we had a time of singing praise songs, then watched a video, and had several performances by those in attendance.  The video part was humorous (to me, but not to those watching it).  My kids endured the entire 30 min of terminally-ill patients talking in Chinese about their beliefs and the hope they had, sporadically coming in to where I was helping prepare food in the kitchen to check in with me.  The kitchen was incredibly small, with literally only enough room for myself and the hostess to be in there at once, and then only if we were willing to be bumping rear ends the entire time as we faced opposing counter-tops to chop and wash the food.  So whenever one of my kids came in, the sweet hostess, a single western gal about my age, got visible flustered at their presence!  At one point, she was encouraging Noah to return to the movie, at which he replied honestly that he was bored watching the movie.  She responded to him with, "That's okay!  Just go in and you can pray for them."  Great thought, but I couldn't help but try to hide my raised eyebrows and chuckle as I thought of my 3 year old sitting quietly for 30 min watching a video in a language he doesn't really understand, all the while praying for the hearts of those who were listening!  I figured this sweet girl was either deceived about the spiritual maturity of my kids, was out of touch with a typical 3-year old's attention span, or was more flustered than I could tell by her hostessing duties!

One of the highlights of the evening was Kevin and the kids telling a baseball story.  They all dressed up in their matching Cardinal uniforms and stood with Kevin while he told, using repeating hand gestures and active motion, the story of his baseball career (at least an abbreviated version that takes about 1 minute).  He has the kids go through the part of the story that talks about how many hours he practiced, lifted weights, how much he traveled, etc., before he finally made it to the Major Leagues.  The kids sit down after the interactive part, then Kevin shares a brief portion about how on his Major League debut, he was waiting in the bullpen for the call to go into the game and pitch when a sunflower seed got caught in his throat.  As he was still trying to dislodge the seed, he got the call to come into the game!  He shares how as he was standing on the mound at the climax of his baseball career, after working so many years to accomplish his dream, all he could think of was that he was going to puke all over himself just because of this small seed that he couldn't get rid of.  He then goes on to share about how easy it is for things of this world to be shaken by something as small as a sunflower seed, and thus the importance for our foundation to be on something that cannot be shaken.  Both the story he shared with this group of athletes (those who were at the party) and the performance by the kids went over seemingly well with all who were there, and the kids love being involved in that kind of thing (and they were rewarded with the promise of getting to set off fireworks later tonight!).

We made it about 3 hours before the tight quarters and lack of a nap for Noah started to make my boys get close to the "explode" stage.  (Not sure if any of you with high-energy little ones can relate to this; when the tension is building and you are just buying time before something gets broken or one of the kids implodes???)  I made a polite exit with the 3 boys and Kevin stayed on to enjoy the rest of the party with Karis (he needed to drive our blind friends home).  Noah, Hud, and Eli accompanied me to a late dinner at Papa John's (which has recently opened up near us; funny though, they won't deliver to our apartment as it is too far away; they only deliver within a one mile radius of the store, and our apartment is about 2 1/2; we find it pretty humorous that our area is so densely populated that a business can have more business than they can handle by limiting their delivery distance so much!).  The boys got out their extra energy by racing up and down 2 flights of stairs that were lighted outside the restaurant as we waited for our pizza.  After we ate, Eli suggested we see how far we could walk rather than taking a taxi home.  I was ill-prepared for this, as none of the boys had their hats or gloves, but we stuck our hands in our pockets and managed to make the 2+ mile walk home (it took us an hour!).  They had fun running in the grass as we passed by Trash Mountain and hiding in the "jungles" we discovered on the way (shown in the pics).

Meanwhile, Kevin and Karis enjoyed the craziness at the party!  Kevin came home to tell me of one of the more awkward moments--a sort of pole-dance (minus the pole) by one of the girls in attendance!  It is pretty normal at these parties for each of the guests to take a turn on center stage, performing something they are good at.  So we heard different musicians, vocal choruses, and then a dance.  This young woman turned on a song from someone's phone and gyrated for several minutes in a way Kevin described as "Even though I've never been to one, it's what I would have imagined goes on at a strip club, only with clothes on!"  I asked how Karis and the others responded.  Apparently there were some high kicks and other gymnastic type displays that Karis was impressed by, and the majority of the young men spent the time focusing on the young woman's wriggling rear end, but Kevin says he was too busy averting his eyes and feeling embarrassed to notice much more!  Wish I could have been there to more fully appreciate the unexpected....China parties.  You gotta love 'em!

These final 2 pics are of the kids and their impromptu performance when we had guests the other night.  Once again, a Taylor Swift song performed as Karis informed Eli that they were "never, ever getting back together!"

Snow for a few more days...

I never thought that weather could have such a profound impact on my life!  These past few weeks have been COLD--with only the last several days getting above freezing.  But the real kicker has been the "smog," as our Chinese friends call what we prefer to more accurately label "pollution!"  And I really shouldn't be complaining at all; we had the first day of seeing the sunshine today--and let me tell you--it was glorious!  Now in order to be able to see it, we had a strong wind that blew in, thus blowing out our usual canopy of gray that seems determined to suffocate all life beneath.  But the wind won out, and we gladly donned extra layers to embrace the chill in the air in order to play outdoors longer than we usually would care to be.  We kept encouraging the kids to run and breath deeply, rather than our usual jokes about holding our breath whenever we are in the open air.  What is so shocking to me is how much the general atmosphere of pretty much any location is altered by having the clear sky and visible sun.  My class of students, the neighbors I pass on the way to the market, even my own demeanor has a lightness to it that we haven't felt much these past 3 weeks. 

We have been blessed by an incredible amount of snow this year.  I forgot to count how many days, but I think it's been about 5 days in the past 2 weeks that we've had a significant layer of snow fall.  Our first major dusting happened 2 weeks ago when we went to Beijing to meet up with Kevin's cousin who was in town for business from the States.  It was SUCH a blessing to have time with cousin Tommy!  We never cease to delight in being able to share with loved ones a bit of our life and the culture which we are so absorbed in now after 3 and a half years of life in China.  Tommy  spent the day visiting a few of our favorite tourist spots and humoring us as he listened to some of our stories about what life is like for us living as foreigners in a "strange land."  It was totally refreshing to us to have the time with family; and he even came armed with gifts for the kids--so they were on cloud 9 and are definitely major cousin Tommy fans!

Speaking of cultural differences, we just finished having another jaw-dropping conversation with one of our closer friends here about business in China and the bribery that is so normal to encounter.  He used to be a professional baseball player in town, and he was explaining how the team was never as good as it could have been because the players who got the most playing time were those who paid off the coach the most.  He was very matter-of-fact about the whole thing; there was no sense of resentment or frustration in his tone.  But he was telling us how he wished it could be different for the sake of wanting to see how good a team (in baseball and other sports) China could produce if those players who were truly the best were the ones allowed to play.  He was also telling us about the pressure at his current workplace (he's teaching English to little kids) because his boss just hung a huge sign outside the building that the government has decided is not attractive.  Because their building is so close to a large government one, they have asked the English school to take the sign down.  But the cost is exorbitant!  Approximately $10,000 to hire the equipment and manpower needed to remove it.  So rather than just removing the sign, our friend's boss is in the process of trying to build "guan xi" (relationship) with the right people who can decide that the sign does NOT need to go. And this is done by inviting the "right" people out to eat, then paying them off under the table.  The complicating factor is that you never know for sure if you're inviting the right person who has a high enough statues to truly pull the strings you need pulled.  So you might pay off one person, but then have to go 2, 3, even 4 levels higher before you're really in the clear.  And what's even more shocking to me is that this bribery system is really in play in pretty much every market place we've encountered--even the educational system.  I have had several moms talk with me about how to handle the pay-offs that are expected to be given to their kids' preschool teachers!  It starts that early; and if the teacher is NOT paid off, supposedly the chances of your child being treated fairly are pretty much slim to none.  Not what most moms want to hear, especially in a society where education is really the most important thing in one's life.  So how does one navigate in this culture that requires so much of what goes against every cultural idea of justice that we Americans hold so dear?  Still in process on that one...

On a lighter note, we've had some fun on our weekends as of late.  We even made it to a new shopping mall that has an indoor ice skating rink!  Our dear friends Ying Ying and Michael went with us, and I was VERY thankful for the extra hands, as having 4 kids on the ice (3 for the very first time) was about as much as my 2 hands could handle.  We miraculously made it through with no major falls and no injuries.  Noah made one full lap before he decided he'd had enough (actually, he wanted to quit after about the first 20 yards, but I convinced him to remain skating with the flow to make the complete circle to the nearest exit); Eli and Karis loved it, and Hudson had fun clinging to either myself, Michael, or the wall for most of the hour.  It was a fun get-away for our family, and almost made us think we were back at the Dallas Galleria for the afternoon!  (Oh, we even found a Subway in the mall for lunch, completing our "back to the US" nostalgia.)





We only have 2 days left of school, then we're out for a 2-week long holiday (the Chinese New Year).  We're going to make the most of our 2 weeks by doing some travel--first to Cambodia, then on to Thailand.  We're truly counting down the days til we can hit the warm weather and sunshine!  The bags are packed already and we've got a packed weekend trying to say goodbye to all our Chinese friends for the 2 weeks before we go (it's kind of like Christmas to them, where it's really important to spend time with your closer friends to celebrate this time of year).  We have a 6-hour long party tomorrow that we're attending with the whole family (it's a party friends of Kevin's are hosting for some of the professional athletes in town), so we're hoping to turn in early so we can get rested and geared up for what is sure to be some Chinese-ee craziness!

Small Changes

 It's amazing how the littlest things can make a big difference sometimes.  Since the beginning of the new year, the traffic laws in town have changed.  They have new laws with increased penalties for those of us who drive cars, and man, has it made a difference in traffic flow over the past 10 days.  There are cameras all over (which you usually don't see) that take a photo of your vehicle, and now not only do you get a ticket if you go through an intersection on a red light, but you get one if you go through when the light is yellow.  You also get one if your wheels touch the line at an intersection (like you've gone out too far into the intersection).  You wouldn't think such small things would affect traffic flow, but it has made driving here a most-frustrating experience!

Last weekend, I drove the car to pick up Karis from playing at  a friends' house.  I usually would have ridden my bike, but it was cold and windy, so I opted for the car instead.  It took me a full 40 minutes to return home a distance of 2.5 to 3 miles!  We started back up at school again this week after the Christmas holiday, and instead of taking us the usual 40 minutes to drive to school, we finally arrived after an hour and 15 minutes of driving, with both Kevin and me being late to teach our first period classes (and the kids obviously late to attend their own classes, too).  So we're not sure quite what adjustments to make, other than we're having earlier mornings and trying to give ourselves more time to make it to places.  But we're also hoping that cars on the road will either loosen up again or that the traffic flow will return (at least somewhat) to how it was before this new year's panic ensued!

One of our highlights from last weekend was Kevin and me celebrating our 11th wedding anniversary!  We took off for the evening to a fun Japanese hibachi grill restaurant and then even spent the night away in a hotel.  We had friends watch the kids, and I'm not sure who enjoyed themselves more, them or us!  I must confess that one highlight was an uninterrupted nights' sleep.  One of the kids has had a problem with bed-wetting for months now, so we've recently tried using a bed-wetting alarm (which should wake them up at night when they go to the bathroom, with the intent being to condition their body to awaken on their own before they have to go).  It's been 2 weeks now, and let's just say that his body is still not conditioned!  I'm getting pretty tired of being awakened 2 to 3 times each night by a blaring alarm to change sheets, underwear, and pj bottoms.  Hoping for all our sake's that we see some progress--and soon!  These early mornings are feeling earlier and earlier....

We were saddened this week by a series of events with our ayi, who we consider to be like family to us.  We invited she and her entire extended family to come over for dinner this Saturday night.  We thought she agreed and was okay with it, after MUCH persuasion on our part that it was not too much trouble and that we really wanted time with all of them (there are about 12 of them in her extended family who get together every weekend to share meals together).  During the conversation, she shared that she had previously been embarrassed to let us know that she and her husband had separated right after she started working for us (no connection to them breaking up and her starting to work for us), which was 3 years ago! We couldn't believe that they hadn't been together in all that time, but think it is a very much a cultural thing, as divorce or separation here in China are very much looked down upon.  And then the next day, we discovered that her family was not willing to come over this weekend after all.  There were several reasons given, but we think the bottom line is that none of them have every had any interaction with foreigners, and they are too embarrassed to do so.  Kevin and I have honestly been so sad about this, as we truly consider our ayi part of our family and have recently had such barriers between us come down (as far as we can tell); so to not have this access into her world and this other part of her life has really saddened us.  We're hoping to try to initiate again, but are asking other friends here about how to do so in a way that shows our love and desire to pursue them, yet doesn't put undue pressure on her or her family to respond to us.

The air pollution today is so bad that we received notice that none of the students are allowed to have any outdoor activities (PE, recess, etc.) and that as teachers, we are to report immediately any students who are seeming to have respiratory issues throughout the day.  It's 3pm, but it looks like it is just after sunrise, due to the hazy dull glare of the sky; the sun is no where in sight.  It's days like this that I both wonder what in the world makes today any different and so much worse than other pollution days, and also forces me to lift of prayers for protection over the lungs of my family as we have no choice but to inhale at least a little bit!

With the coldest part of the winter upon us, the ice has once again frozen solid near our apartment, and it is thick enough for the kids to look forward to dropping their school bags and "skating" a bit in their snowboots on it when we pick them up from the bus stop.  It is truly a highlight!  Lots of our neighbors pass by, some with looks of bewilderment, as my crew races around the thick ice laughing and having sliding competitions.  It's the little things that make the cold we've gotten so much more accustomed to seem bearable.

Our Trip

Day 1

LOTS of travel!  We left our apartment at 1pm, drove the 50 min to the airport (such a blessing to be able to leave from Tianjin rather than drive the 3 hours to Beijing!), then began the long flight west.  Our flight was scheduled to be 6 hours, including a one-hour layover in a city we’d never heard of (which ended up being in Inner Mongolia; there was as much snow on the ground around the airport as you’d imagine in a place called “Inner Mongolia”!).  However, due to “bad weather” in Urumqi, the city we were trying to eventually arrive in, we had to circle the airport for a little over an hour before landing and walking through the snow to the shuttle that would eventually land us on dry ground in the middle of a COLD dessert.  It was 10:45pm by the time we got our luggage, 11:30 by the time the taxi driver got us to the hotel, and midnight before kids were in bed.  It was a long day, but besides the extra hour of flying due to the snow and fog and the arguing with the taxi driver for most of the drive to the hotel because of how many people we had (he thought we should pay double since we had so many people, in spite of our insisting that this was only ONE taxi that we were in, not two requiring double gas and double drivers), we arrived no worse for the wear. 

Day 2

The kids slept in!  But in spite of the late hour of them (and Kevin and I) awakening, it was still dark outside at 9:30am when we finally opened up our hotel room curtains.  We were shocked!  We’d heard that the daylight hours were much fewer here, but we didn’t know just how extreme it was.  We got dressed and headed out to explore the city; but I should add that the “getting dressed” process was not nearly as simple as I make it sound!  We had to bundle up in a way that we’ve never done before.  I donned my best friend’s borrowed furry long underwear pants.  That’s right—furry long underwear.  And let me tell you, it is  a beautiful thing!  If there’s one thing Chinese people know, it’s how to layer your long underwear in the cold.  The kids all have ski bibs and face masks (picture what you saw when there was the SARs outbreak, only with cute-sy designs like duck bills and floral prints to dress them up a bit), along with countless scarves, gloves, boots, and hats.  The process requires all hands on deck, and the kids were rewarded for their patience in the process by getting a mint to take for the road. 

We trekked out into the snow, found a Kentucky Fried Chicken, and ate brunch (it was 10:30am).  The time here is a tricky thing.  There is Beijing time and local time, which the minority people groups all follow that is 2 hours earlier than Beijing time.  So we thought it was 10:30am, but it was probably 8:30am to most of the people around us.   I still can’t wrap my mind around this time distinction.  In just our 2 days here I’ve seen how it affects so many areas of life.  Every time you schedule something, you have to specify BJ time or local time.  And if you are meeting with someone from 11-2pm (like we did today), you don’t know if you should plan on eating lunch with them or not.  If you’re like us, then 11-2 means lunch time, but if you’re on local time, your kids have just awakened and you think it is 10-12 noon, so not necessarily time to eat a meal!  Talk about confusing!

We ate a meal at KFC and then took off walking to explore some of the city.  We intentionally found a hotel in a part of time that is known to be a melting pot of the different people groups and cultures that are represented here in this one city.  What we saw made us feel that we were in a different country.  We passed so many people on the slippery roads (every sidewalk, unfortunately, was a road rather than just a place for pedestrians to walk) and they looked so different from our Han friends that make up the majority of the people in Tianjin (and China, for that matter).  The people, the languages, the way they were dressed, it was all foreign-feeling.  There were quite a few who did look like “typical” Chinese, but just as many or more who had a Middle Eastern or Turkish look.  There were even some who looked almost Russian in their dress and facial features. 

 

We asked several people how to get to a local market we’d heard about, and had a heck of a time getting there.  At one point, we were told to cross the street.  But you don’t do this by walking through the intersection, but rather by going underground at an entrance that looked like a subway entrance.  Once you are underground, the paths become a labyrinth of rows of vendors of all types of retail merchandise.  It was amazing, like an underground shopping mall with kind of an eerie feeling and a way of leaving you totally disoriented as to which way you are trying to go.  We emerged at one point, certain we’d made it “across the street”, only to find ourselves at another doorway that was literally 20 yards from the one we’d entered 10 minutes before, and still on the same side of the street!  We laughed and had another go of it, this time successfully emerging at the desired location, whooping and hollering in joy with the kids at our small success!

We made it to the market, cold and with whining kids after the 30-minute walk in the cold.  We managed to explore for a brief time, finding a new treasured Spiderman stocking hat for Noah.  After that we decided to go on a hunt for a place to eat lunch.  What we found upon discovering a row of restaurants shocked me in a way I was not expecting.  On the side of  one of the restaurants, we saw them pulling apart the carcass of a freshly slaughtered animal—I think it was a goat or sheep.  The Chinese word for the two animals is the same, so it’s hard to distinguish between the two, and this one was so long-haired that it was not a variety of either that I was familiar with.  But the way the 2 men were pulling the thing apart and separating the different parts—I’ll spare you the details.  But it was fascinating and disgusting all at the same time.  And the kids were totally intrigued, with Karis being pretty grossed out by it.  We were still able to find a restaurant (not that one!) and managed to get the kids to eat food that they were NOT excited about before catching a cab back to the hotel and imposing a mandatory rest time on everyone (we were all at the fall-apart stage at this point).  Overall, we were struck by the vast differences we felt and experienced between our city and this one we were in.  Even communicating is more difficult, with the accents being so thick when people around us did speak Mandarin.

After our rest time, we had fun playing at the hotel indoor pool, although it was quite cold, and enjoyed a dinner at the hotel restaurant.  We finished the evening up with a movie night and an early bedtime, kids spread out on the small amount of floor space in their sleeping bags.  (Chinese hotels usually have one king sized bed or two smaller beds, which are smaller than American-style double beds.)

Day 3

The kids slept in again.  It was either 9:00am or 7:00am, depending on whose clock you are going by!  Kevin found a convenience store nearby to get some bread and yogurt for breakfast, and then we began the bundling up process to go outside and play in the snow.  The kids stayed warm for over an hour (can’t say the same for myself, as I was merely overseeing the activity rather than taking part in much of it myself) building a snow fort in the enormous drifts of snow that were in the huge public courtyard across the street from our hotel.  We had many passersby stopping to admire their work; some to fuss at us for allowing some of the snow to spill off the pile onto the cleanly-shoveled paths and others to marvel that we had 4 kids so close in age and none of them were twins.  We ran inside to change some clothes (Eli’s shirt sleeves that were exposed had actually frozen as they had gotten wet in the snow and then frozen in the sub-zero temperatures) and warm up for about 15 minutes before we had a time set to meet with some new friends here in town.

The friends were actually friends of friends who we had been emailing with for the past several weeks.  When we first met several of them face-to-face, it ended up that two of them were friends who I knew while in college!  Talk about a small world; who would think we needed to go to far western China to connect 12 years after last having seen one another!  We spent the afternoon meeting with others who have lived here for quite some time, asking questions about life here in Urumqi as an ex-pat.  It was incredibly helpful and the kids had a ball getting to go to one of the family’s homes and play with their kids (and their toys)!  We were all a little ready to get out of the hotel for an afternoon and have a change of scenery that was indoors and provided heating.  Another benefit to meeting with these new friends was getting some names of places that were helpful—like a pizza place close enough to go get dinner and a Mexican restaurant that we plan on going to tomorrow that is a little distance away, but in an area of town we were hoping to explore while here. 

 

Day 4

Our final full day to explore the city of Urumqi was COLD!  I couldn’t get on-line while we were there to check the temperatures, but based on how it felt while outside, it was definitely our coldest day of the trip.  We started off the morning with the older 3 kids really wanting to go outside to continue building their snow fort.  Kevin graciously offered to take them out while Noah and I stayed inside to read and color (Noah’s choice!  He was much more content than the other kids to NOT spend any more time in the cold than he needed to.)  Kevin lasted a full hour in the cold with the kids in the courtyard with the older 3 before they came in to warm up briefly before we headed out to the Texas Café for lunch.  We arrived only to discover that the restaurant didn’t open for another hour and a half (it was on local time, rather than the BJ time we expected), so we had some time to kill. 

We’ve found one of the more difficult elements to living in China is that there just are not that many places you can go and “kill some time” comfortably.  In Dallas, you have your pick of malls with indoor play areas, fun restaurants with kid-friendly atmospheres, even coffee shops all over that you can nurse a warm drink and have a comfortable seat for as long as you’d like.  Not so in China.  Pretty much everywhere you go is crowded with people, difficult to find a seat, tight quarters if you do get to sit, usually pretty dirty, and generally just hard to come by.  This was the case in Urumqi, too.  So we walked around outside as long as we could trying to find some venue that could fit 6 foreigners, some with more energy than just a sitting-still location would accommodate.  We came up empty-handed, but finally got so cold we bustled through a door to a second-floor fast food-type restaurant that had enough chairs for all of us.  We were hoping for hot chocolate to aid in our thawing-out process, but had to settle for ice cream when we discovered that all of the hot water, and therefore any hot drinks, in the restaurant was not working.  The kids miraculously stayed entertained by each of them coloring on 2 pieces of paper that I pulled from a small pad I had in my purse, sharing a pencil Hudson had found outside in the snow during our trek , and making paper airplanes with their papers when they’d finished their artwork.  The had a mini-competition with the airplanes to see who could hit the target on the wall, then we headed back out in the cold to head back to the restaurant where we knew good ole’ Tex Mex food was awaiting; not totally warmed up, but at least with the kids having non-growling stomachs due to the pre-lunch ice cream treat!

After a fun lunch at this restaurant owned and run by Americans, we walked back to the hotel.  The kids begged to go back out in the snow again, but Kevin and I decided we needed to warm up some, so we convinced them to return to the swimming pool instead.  Can’t say that it was much warmer there, so after an hour of some shivering and blue lips we went back to the hotel room.  One of the things that interested me in the pool was how the adults there were doing laps.  Rather than staying in one lane (that was marked, the same as you see them marked on the bottom of pools in the US), each of the swimmers was swimming in a circle around the entire circumference of the pool.  It was really quite amusing, except that this left the kids very little area to play where they were not in the way of the lap-swimmers.  (If the kids played in the center of the pool, it was too deep for them to reach; so not ideal for Hud or Noah.)  At first I was a little anxious about them being in the way of the swimmers, but finally decided that I should relax and let the swimmers figure out a better plan of taking up less of the pool area if they were worried about the kids (which they didn’t seem to be!). 

Kevin braved the cold one more time with them to head back out and complete the finishing touches of their snow fort, knowing it was their last chance to do so.  Then we all took off for a dinner of hot pot at a nearby restaurant we’d discovered while out and about.  The kids had a ball getting to pick out their own dinner then cook it in their own pot in front of them on the table.  It was all going well, until Hudson’s pet mini-octopus that he was eating/playing with was dropped.  When he reached out quickly to try to grab it and put it in the pot again (it was dead, so there really was not concern about it getting off the table and away from him), he ended up touching the pot with his arm and got a small, but very painful burn on his forearm.  He recovered quickly and his main concern again became his octopus.

The other picture of Eli is him with lychee fruit, which Karis loves to eat and Eli loves the challenge of getting open!  They make a good team…

Day 5

Another day of travel!  We made it back home, this time without any extra circling in the plane, PTL.  We had a much earlier flight, so we had an early morning and no problems on the journey.  We thought we were giving ourselves a large cushion of time to get to the gate at the airport, but ended up having a lot more steps at the airport due to them having incredibly high standards for security.  When we arrived in Tianjin at 3pm, it was soooooo nice to be able to walk out to our car in the parking lot and drive ourselves back to our “big” house, as Noah kept referring to it (as compared to the small hotel room we’d all been sharing).  We didn’t realize how much that one difference of not having to wait in a long taxi line and haggle over how many people we could fit, how much we were willing to pay, etc., would make a difference in removing the stress of that final leg.  We arrived home, thankful for our home and the warmer temperatures (all the way up to 30 degrees Fahrenheit!). 

Overall, our trip to Urumqi was incredibly helpful.  We really enjoyed the people we met there and seeing the city.  We decided that while we were not particularly looking for Antarctic-like climate to move to, we could survive there if we are supposed to.  We were encouraged by the work we saw being done and blessed by those who are laboring there.  But no “answers” at this point for our family, as far as a firm direction to try to make the move there ourselves.  It will, however, be at the front of our minds as we go into this next year, with the plan to continue to be open to making such a huge transition and willing to go should the doors open to do so.