Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Yesterday morning at 6:45 a.m. our doorbell rang. Both of us still fast asleep at this time just pushed it to the back of our mind and thought, "if it's important enough...they'll come back." A little less than an hour later, it rang again...still too early for us to do anything about it. We went about our business of a normal Sunday morning here and then that afternoon our visitor returned. It ended up being Mr. Li, our grandpa-aged neighbor from downstairs who thinks Brandon is the coolest person on earth. Brandon answered the door delighted to visit with Mr. Li again, but the conversation went as it usually does with Mr. Li. Since Mr. Li is an older man his spoken language is nothing near the "Standard" Chinese that we are learning. It doesn't sound chinese at all to us actually and we like to call it "Mr. Li Hua" (or Mr. Li Speak). Anyway, he's one of the many locals here that when you don't understand what they are saying they just get louder and get closer in your face. Only, Mr. Li likes to add a little spittle into his sentences as well. Anyhow, the wonderful neighbor who we really have come to enjoy (Even though we can't communicate with him) came to inform Brandon that someone attempted to steal Brandon's bike at 5 a.m. this morning. A few questions came to mind:
Who steals a bike at 5 a.m.?
Who is awake at 5 a.m. to catch a bike thief?
Who steals a bike worth about 15 dollars?

Regardless of the unanswered questions we had, Mr. Li urged Brandon to go down stairs and take a look and then encouraged Brandon to store the bike in his storage room for the time being.

Another example of the neighborly conduct...

The other day our light bulb went out in our living room. I promise we're really not all that helpless... we can change a light bulb on our own. But one of the great things about the apartments here is that most of the ceilings are 12 foot ceilings. (or something close to that since they don't use FEET here) We tried several acrobatic feats of reaching the light bulb fixture, to no avail. So we went to a few of our neighbors to ask if they have a ladder. Our upstairs neighbor (you might remember him as the one who brought the reporters to the Christmas party!) said that we didn't need a ladder and then brought down a little stool with him. And then he attempted something that should be accompanied by the subtitle of "Do not try this at home."
He stacked a few chairs high, put his little stool on top of those like he'd done this a million times, reached the light fixture, pulled out the bulb, and told us exactly where and what we needed to go do.
So we went and bought the new light bulb, came back, and even though he told us to come get him when we got back, we attempted the life-threatening feat on our own and this time succeeded.

What would we do without our helpful neighbors?

It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Springtime

Springtime is here, and accompanying it are a few welcome changes:

Our "drink lady" is back! ...meaning we can once again get our favorite Strawberry slushy type drink. mmmmm

All of my maternity clothes are short sleeves, so I can finally stop wearing Brandon's long sleeve t-shirts.

They are selling ice cream once again at Fu Mart now! Which also means our favorite Hot Pot restaurant is giving away the free milk flavored pops after our meal.

People are more eager to hang-out outside now that it's a little warmer. It's always interesting seeing their activities.

Work is resuming at the much anticipated Wal-Mart (expected arrival date: Winter '07)

We can buy all kinds of wonderful fruit...which really is year round here, but it seems to have gotten a little better lately!

Something about the breeze of Springtime sends all of our pollution in another direction...which means sunny, clear skies. Hooray for wearing sunglasses again! (which also means the welding masks are back)

McDonald's is now selling breakfast here! Not sure that this has anything to do with springtime...but nonetheless a good ole hash brown & sausage mcmuffin is always welcome!

Brandon bought a bike a few weeks ago, and now that it's getting warmer outside he's a little more excited about using it!

Also accompanying springtime are a few not-so-exciting changes

The warmer weather seems to intensify some of the odd smells on the streets.

When the men here get a little too toasty for the shirt they are wearing, they pull it up to just above their belly in order to let a little breeze cool their stomach off. Once my belly gets a little larger, I might think about joining them! :) hmm, ok, maybe not.

The palm readers & fortune tellers are manning their posts again. There is a street here where there is almost always 7-8 of them lined up waiting for gullible prospects. This man is reading the lines of the lady's face to tell her future. (or something...we're not too familiar with the process.)

Overall, the good tends to out-weigh the bad so we're excited about this warmer weather. Plus, it reminds us of when we first arrived here and has renewed our excitement about getting out among the people!

17 and a half weeks

To compare the new picture with the 14 week picture click here

We want more green!

It Stinks

Every now and then our bathroom gets a terrible smell that literally makes me gag when I go in there. It's something coming up from the four drains spread out across the tile floor. We haven't figured out exactly what is causing it but it drives me crazy.
Today one of our local friends came over right as the smell was beginning to emanate from our bathroom. So, we thought we'd ask him if he knew where this awful scent was coming from and could disperse any Chinese wisdom upon us as to what we should do. His solution?
Light a candle. Buy some air spray. Close the bathroom door.
In other words...cover it up!
We're finding that this is what makes sense to most Chinese people. Instead of cleaning up the food on the floor in the middle of the restaurant...just place a rug over it and call it good. Just cover it up!
But then I started thinking. Covering things up really isn't just Chinese logic...it's human logic. We tend to cover up a lot of our screw ups.
Blame them on other people.
Pass them off as idiosyncrasies.
Or try to make ourselves better in order to seem like nicer human beings.
Which I guess is the same as lighting a candle in order to cover up the nasty stench.

Easter, or Resurrection Day (as the Chinese so appropriately call it), has come to mean a little more to me this year because of our friend's logic.
Praise God that he's given us a way to wipe all that clean instead of feeling like we have to keep covering it all up. Praise the Lord that he forgets and doesn't keep a tally of all our screw ups. Jesus' death and resurrection gives us all a whole new chance so that we don't have to keep "lighting candles" to cover up all our stink.

So Happy Resurrection Day everyone...a little late. I hope this year you see the most important event on our calendar as his way of giving you the chance to be free from your screw ups.

陈博睿打篮球

Last Friday Brandon played on the foreign language student's basketball team at our University. The team consisted of Brandon, one of our whitie friends, 6 Koreans, & 1 Chinese guy (not sure how he ended up on the foreign student team...but they were grateful!)
They didn't do so well in their first game against some really tall Chinese dudes, but they've got 2 more coming up this week and we're hoping they do a little better!
Here's a picture of his team with the team they played. I would try to tell you which ones were his Korean team mates and which ones were the guys they played, but that would just confuse you! :)
By the way...according to the Chinese clothing measurements, Brandon's jersey is a 5XL. We thought that was kinda funny.

Here's a video of some of the action. The little english voice you hear in the background is our friend's son cheering Brandon on. Any other girly voices you hear squealing or cheering are our Korean classmates! They were so excited about the game!


Here's another video of a part of the game that I thought was particularly funny! One of the Korean guys throws Brandon a huge pass almost in expectation of game altering "alley oop." If in some miraculous fashion Brandon had pulled it off, it would have been awesome! Brandon's team is in blue.

On Stage

A photo to go along with our previous post!

Lost in Translation...

To summarize this post I could just say that the Chinese idea of speaking about a culture is completely different than the American idea. But you know me, I'm not really good at summarizing. I like going into detail. So if you don't like details you can stop reading now...because this may be a fairly long post. here goes...

Last Thursday evening we got a call from one of our teachers from our University. She asked us if we'd like to attend a class Friday evening to speak on "American life." I asked her a few questions...

Me: "What time?"
Teacher: "About 7 p.m. for about one hour."
Me: "What class?"
Teacher: "A class of students who are studying English and just want to learn about foreign culture."
Me: "Ok. Let us think about it and we'll tell you tomorrow."

We've turned down opportunities like this in the past just because we haven't felt it absolutely necessary in accomplishing our "goals" set out for reaching our city. We also weren't real excited about doing it because we were going to be in language class from 2 p.m. until 6 p.m. that afternoon and knew our brains would be pretty fried by the time 7 p.m. rolled around. But, since we'd turned them down so many times we thought it might be nice to agree to "talk about our culture" & to meet some more students at our University.

So the next day we told her we'd do it. She said that at 6 p.m. after we got out of language class we'd eat dinner with all of our chinese teachers and then prepare for the class. So at 6 p.m. we ate some delicious food with all of our teachers and then started to go over some of the questions that the students wanted us to talk about and some of the procedure for the evening. Much to our surprise, this was not going to happen in a small classroom of 20 or so students like how we originally thought. No No. This was going to be in front of about 300 students in an auditorium where we'd be seated on stage with two Korean students as well. We were quite shocked!! But at the same time not at all surprised because it just figures that something like this would somehow be lost in translation!

So we're ushered over to the largest auditorium on campus where they quickly take us back stage, put Britney Spears-type microphones on our heads, & teach us some of the vocabulary we'll need to know for some of the questions they were going to ask us. The big production began with a performance by the Martial Arts students which was really cool. And then we were brought on stage.

We thought we'd be talking about the differences between American University & Chinese University, or hobbies, sports, holidays & family customs. There were a few questions that barely skimmed the surface of those ideas:
"Tell us about April Fool's Day." & "How does an American lose weight?"
First of all...I could not have been more disappointed with the April Fool's Day question because out of every holiday they could have asked us about they chose the one that if deleted from the calendar it would virtually go unnoticed. Christmas? Easter? even Thanksgiving? nope...didn't mention it. Anyhow, we did our best to educate them on this pointless holiday. They didn't really understand the idea anyways and just said, "So basically it's just lying." We just said "yes, pretty much."
And then all we said about Americans losing weight was that we're pretty much the same as any other human on the planet and we lose weight by eating less & exercise. I'm not sure what they were expecting from that question but oh well.

The evening was fun though. They attempted to teach us some Tai Qi and even made us stand up and try some of the difficult positions. As a joke we both posed in the traditional Karate Kid stance...they laughed but we're not sure if it's because we looked stupid or if they've actually seen that American classic. Again...another thing that might have been lost in translation.

One of their favorite things to talk about the entire evening was "tongue twisters." They asked us if we could do one in Chinese...which we've yet to master. The Koreans sure were good at them though. And then they asked us to teach them an English one. So I did the "How much wood could a Woodchuck chuck..." one. They went through it slowly with me and did pretty good! But then they asked me to translate it. When I couldn't translate it they brought a teacher onstage to help me translate it. We seriously spent about 20 minutes just trying to imitate a woodchuck because she had never heard of one and well, we've never had to act out a woodchuck before. So after deciding that it was completely futile trying to translate this tongue twister, they gave up.

The questions were about all kinds of things ranging from food, movie stars, & songs (at which point we sang the first stanza of Amazing Grace...in english of course).
We ended up being there long past the hour limit the teacher said it would last. I think we walked off stage about 9:45 p.m. But it was worth it and it will definitely be something we won't ever forget. Our brains were completely exhausted from thinking, listening, & speaking in Chinese for eight hours straight...with little to no english breaks inbetween (unless you count me looking at Brandon and asking him, "Is it Peter Piper picked a pickled pepper?")

To cap off the "performance" as soon as they dismissed everyone to go home, and the audience lights lit up, some background music came on. And oh yes...it was none other than the Theme Song for Indiana Jones. I mean...what else would you play?! It was great.

April's Birthday!

April had a great first-birthday-in-China. On her birthday we invited over our teammates & some local friends to eat cake & ice cream. It was a great day and will definitely be remembered!
Sorry, we didn't actually get any pictures of her on her birthday but here's Elijah enjoying the food table!

Don't be fooled by the fancy two layer cake. It's only done out of necessity! (the largest pan that fits in our oven is 9 inches!)

We spent the day relaxing and recovering from the previous day (see future post). April got a great birthday surprise when we discovered that Silver Plaza (a supermarket near our apt) is now carrying Frosted Flakes & Corn Flakes! In our first visit we bought out all that they had! Hope they get in more!