At one point, Kevin walked into one of the rooms upstairs in one of the houses at the facility to find one of our "problem" students in class (Kevin and I both teach the sophomores, so we have a lot of the same students) standing next to bed of a small child who was literally too weak to be out of bed. Our student was just kneeling there holding his hand. Kevin came back to find that same student in the same place quite some time later; just holding the child's hand and talking to him some. I'm realizing how far I have to go in understanding so much of what goes on around me (in this case, as in most situations involving our school, this is all pertaining to the Korean culture, as about 80% of the school is made up of Korean students). But I'm liking what I see!
One awkward moment this past week of engaging with other cultures happened during our annual 3rd grade mom's luncheon. I had helped coordinate a luncheon for all the moms of 3rd graders, and these meetings are always a hoot because of the crazy cultural no-no's that seem inevitable. The debacle from the 1st grade mom's one last month was the restaurant; the 3 American moms who were there were literally the only ones who touched their food! The other 27, comprised of Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Singaporean, and maybe even some more I've missed, all hardly touched their food! Of course, we were eating at one of the few Western restaurants in town. Oops! Any way, while at this week's luncheon, the Korean mom I was talking to was trying to be kind by giving me complements. But the complements continued, and continued, and were so direct that my squirming was turning into blushing with nothing I could do about it! She was going from complementing me on how pretty I was (and she was going through all my facial features--my "big" nose, my "big" eyes, my pretty skin, etc.) to then going on about how handsome Kevin was--how tall he was, how big his nose was, etc. It was truly hilarious! I kept reminding myself, "She's really offering me complements. I shouldn't be so completely uncomfortable! And remember, no crawling under the table...." And the even funnier part is that so few of the moms speak English, that we all usually resort to speaking Chinese in order to communicate, even though most of them don't speak that as their native language! Those American moms who haven't studied the language as much usually just have to settle for smiling and nodding; hmm, that sounds kind of nice in comparison to my reception of undue praise I received at this last mom's engagement....I might need to adopt that approach myself at the next mom's luncheon.A few of our funny Chinese cultural moments over the past few weeks--Kevin was driving a new friend of his home one evening, a guy who played volleyball here and now is coaching. The guys was really excited to share with Kevin about a young woman he'd been set up with the previous weekend by a mutual Western friend of ours. The young woman works at the international school, but the guy didn't know her English name, so he was trying to describe her to Kevin so he would know who she was. His description went something like this (in Chinese, of course): "She isn't a teacher, but she works with the elementary kids. She's kind of fat." Kevin had to hold back his chuckle as he wanted to respond, "And this is how you describe a girl that you like?!" A little different than a typical American guy's description of his latest crush. And the differences continue. It's been fun to see this couple. They literally just met within the last 3 weeks, but because they were both so highly esteemed by the mutual friend who introduced them, whom they also both think so highly of, they literally jumped right in to talking about marriage in their first week of knowing each other. I don't think this is totally abnormal here, especially for those who are like-minded. If someone says, "You should really get to know this person," they take it really seriously. So many of our friends have met their spouse through set-ups by friends or family members who they trust. It's not like they are arranged marriages, but it's the closest thing I've ever seen or experienced.
Another challenging moment for me was during our Thanksgiving celebration with a group of our Chinese friends. On Thanksgiving day, we had 29 western friends over to celebrate and feast with (including kids). It was a packed house, and we had about every square foot of our living room filled with tables and chairs. The picture of Karis and Noah on the stairs is of them in their Thanksgiving costumes. Karis helped us all become either Pilgrims or Indians (the boys costumes coming complete with life-sized throwing spears--a selling point for getting Hud and Noah involved in the action). She even went to the trouble to sew (a new hobby of both hers and Eli's) an apron and bonnet for me--the lone Pilgrim of the group. The following week, we celebrated with our Chinese friends, and it was neat again to see how much we've changed in our thinking over the past 3 years. I was not surprised at all when the one other person who was helping bring food (this time it was a group of 14 adults and only my 4 kids) called the morning-of to let me know she would be there an hour and a half late. It also wasn't a surprise when another one of the girls called the morning-of to say she was bringing her husband and her daughter--and that her husband wanted to cook for us--in my kitchen--right before I was trying to serve dinner (now, solo) to 18 people. I told Kevin that this one was going to stretch me. And it did! The husband showed up with his partially prepared jiaozi (dumplings) in hand, took over my kitchen for 45 minutes right before I was trying to serve dinner, and scraped the crud out of my non-stick skillet in the process of making only enough jiaozi for each person to sample one (for those non-jiaozi eaters, one is NOT enough to even count as one dish on the table). I was cracking up (thankfully, rather than crying), and Kevin consoled me by assuring me that I could buy a new skillet the next week to replace the one our new friend ruined by using the metal spatula. Hmmm, guess we can always use an excuse to make a new kitchen purchase, right?
The other photos are of the boys getting their first "real" hair cuts! Kevin took them to a place here in our apartment community, as I've been too busy to take the time to groom my children properly. He said they did incredibly well, and wondered if maybe they were a little scared by the whole thing because of just how still they sat during the whole process. Hair cuts here are so cheap (the boys were each the equivalent of about $4) that Kevin thinks this should be our "new normal" during this busy season of life.
So the big thing we've been pondering over the last few months is also connected to our going "deeper" into the onion. We have been asking if we are where we are supposed to be, or if we should be pursuing a change. We are LOVING where we are and what we are doing, but we also want to be sensitive to his leading and the fact that there are a lot of needs all around us. So we've been asking big questions, and don't have a lot of answers at this point! But what I can say is that we are on a fun journey of exploring possibilities--specifically of making a move to another city out west. This would be a bigger move geographically than a move from Washington DC to LA, and a HUGE difference in culture, language, weather, etc. I looked on-line today to find that the high temp today is 16 degrees Fahrenheit and next week it drops to a high of 2, and a low of -16! That's right--negative 16 degrees Fahrenheit! And we're going there for a "vacation"! We leave the day after Christmas and will spend 4 days there exploring the city, largely to see just if we can survive in that kind of weather and in the environment, which is known to be incredibly oppressive and vastly different to our home here in Tianjin. I'm sure I'll have more info and pictures in the near future.
