Two Months!

Today is our two month anniversary of being in China. We can't believe how quickly the time has passed! Over the course of the last two months we've kept a record of quotes that we've entitled, "Things we never thought we'd say." As a tribute to the two month achievement, we thought we'd post the best of "Things we never thought we'd say" and their accompanying story.

1. "I've already got a husband, but thanks anyways."
I said this one after a nice lady in a furniture store offered to help me find a suitable husband in our city. Actually, since my chinese isn't quite up to par it came out like this, (pointing at Brandon) "My husband. Thanks." (smile and quickly walk away)

2. "Those are the people waiting in line for eggs."
Eggs here are sold a little differently than back home. Lots of people stand in a really long line in order to get up to the front and tell the person how many eggs they want. At that point the cashier person turns to a big crate full of eggs, grabs however many, places them in a plastic sack, ties it up, and slaps a big sticker price on it after weighing it. I guess it's cheaper to buy them that way rather than in the already packaged plastic cartons. After being informed of this strange phenomenon, we saw a really long line at Fu Mart and that's when I said to Brandon this quote.

3. "Man it's only 7:30. I'm ready to go to bed."
Brandon said this one. Not much explanation needed if you've ever experienced jet lag...

4. "Man those Germans sure can make Jam."
We actually can't take credit for this one. This one was said by our supervisor's wife, but we thought it was blog worthy. Trust us, out of all the jam here, the German's is the best!

5. "That tv almost got ran over by a bus."
It really did. It was a close call too. And not only did the tv almost get ran over, Brandon & our supervisor were right there along with it. It was one of those slow motion moments where your adrenaline starts pumping and everything seems to be all blurred. They were safe though, and so was the tv. After the harrowing experience, Brandon calmly stated this quote.

So it's not an exhaustive list, but we thought you'd enjoy hearing a few of the random quotes we've uttered during the last two months. Though we tell a lot of strange stories about how backwards this place seems sometimes, and though most of the time we feel incredibly out of place...there's no where else in the world we can imagine being right now. Most of the time we thoroughly enjoy living here. We're getting to know our neighbors more and more and all the people we pass outside our apt. seem more used to us now.
This picture is of some ladies that are always outside near our apartment. They live near us we think. They especially like Brandon! :) Brandon asked to take their picture. You can see the one in the purple giggling.

If The Shoe Fits

Our baomu (house helper) came today. She comes twice a week (6 hours total) to help us do those pesky routine chores like vacuum, mop, dust, do the dishes, you get the drift. She's such a cool girl, an adult by the way for reasons we'll explain later in the story, and has great chinese so that makes her easy to practice with. Today she even made us some tasty banana bread! Mmmm yum. Anyways, not the point of the story. So she showed up today with a sack in hand from the local Silver Plaza (although a neat store, not quite as fantastic as the name might lead you to believe) She bought herself a pair of house shoes to wear while she's in our home so she doesn't track in all the stuff off the streets and carry it all over our floors. "How nice!", you say. I know! Then she takes them out of the bag and Brandon and I just about fell to the floor in laughter. Let me show you why:
(her's are in the middle, our's are on each side)

They may look like a 9 year old's pair of shoes but I assure you they fit perfectly on the foot of a 28 year old chinese lady. Need I elaborate more as to why we cannot find shoes that fit our feet in this country?

Call Us Crazy...

We've found a new appreciation for commercials. I know, sounds ridiculous, but when the only commercials you ever hear are cheesy "real-wood floors" commercials or the daily countdown to the Olympics, you'd appreciate a good commercial every now and then too. Our friend's blessed father mailed him a recording of a Monday Night Football Redskins vs. Vikings game. Though the game was a few weeks old, and though we knew the outcome, the MNF renowned song was music to our ears. Every other American in the world would have fast forwarded through those commercials, but man was it nice to see a huge red Chevy truck barrelling through mud again. Sad to admit it, but it really made it feel like Sunday with football all afternoon.

Feast your eyes upon...

In an attempt to keep you coming back to our site...we're dedicating this blog solely to pictures, no stories. (not that we've run out of them though!)

Brandon got some new sunglasses. He now prefers to be called Jack Bauer.


Here are our fellow Korean classmates (not all of them though). Our laoshi (teacher) is in the middle in the navy shirt. The guy furthest on the left is the one we think looks like Jackie Chan.

decide for yourself......

mmm hmmmm. We thought you'd agree.

This is one of our friends that does calligraphy. This beautiful piece is now hanging in our apartment. This is is Gal. 2:20-21

This is The Little Man Restaurant. Or at least that's what we call it because we don't know the name in Chinese. It's the closest thing to chinese fast food.

Lo and Behold...the foreign food aisle at Fu Mart. PTL for imported Del Monte Garlic & Herb canned spaghetti sauce.

Two New Arrivals!

First and foremost...
Brandon and I have a new nephew! Audrey now has a little brother Judah to play with. My brother's beautiful wife had him on the twelfth...though technically speaking he arrived on the thirteenth here, so don't think that won't be brought up on every one of his birthdays from here on! We've seen several pictures and he is quite the cutie. At this point I would show you a really cute picture of him but since I've yet to ask his parents if that's ok I don't want to go floating their new baby's picture all over the internet. You know how it is. Stay tuned for further updates on this new and exciting addition!

Second blog worthy update...
We have cheese! Now this may not sound so exciting at first but I assure you, try going six weeks without said sandwich staple and you'd be jumping for joy when Fu Mart started carrying it too. Monterey Jack, Cheddar (mild, tasty, & light), and even American Land O' Lakes individually sliced cheese. Here's how it went down: We were sitting around our apartment saturday afternoon studying chinese (as usual) when we received the call. Our supervisor had just made a quick trip to the local grocery store that is so gracious to carry certain tasty American items. He called to inform us of this new arrival and we literally stopped everything, threw on some shoes, and were out the door in less than five minutes. You have not lived until you have rushed to the grocery store, pushed some chinese children out of the way, fought off the Fu Mart saturday crowd, all to be able to stand in awe at the wonderful sight of cheddar cheese. It was such a glorious occasion that we took the camera...and I think this picture is safe to post, though it's not quite as cute as Judah.

Hopefully the image is clickable, just in case you wanted to enlarge the cheese. You can see the good ole American flag label flying below the Land O Lakes. That's so they know we're all clear about how hard they worked to get that cheese on that shelf. Notice how much cheaper the chinese "cheese" is. (liberal use of the word cheese)

By the way, just joking about that chinese children tid bit. There was no pushing involved...at least no pushing children anyways.

Basketball Differences

Yesterday Phoenix, our friend who treated us to the Chou DouFu, took us to play basketball at some public basketball courts. This place was crazy. There were sixteen half-courts each of which were covered up by a bunch of sweaty chinese men attempting to play basketball. On top of that there were just as many on-lookers who were waiting their turn to play. When we showed up everyone was obviously staring at us because we're whities but also because I don't think they've ever seen a girl play sports in person. It was literally like the circus had come to town because we quickly drew a crowd when we began to play. Phoenix, Brandon, and I were on one team with two other guys. We played five guys, two of which had one too many Tsingtoa beers. (Phoenix told me to "be careful" seven times before we started this mad-house of a game.) So we start playing, and let me assure you, talking smack sounds the same no matter what language you are talking smack in. I was not sure what this one drunk dude was saying, but I knew it wasn't too nice and probably something his mommy wouldn't appreciate. So I shot a three in his face, swooshed it (well it would have made that sound had their been a net) and boy it was all downhill from there. He started calling fouls on us for everything in the world. Well, if you know Brandon and I at all you know that we're just a tad competitive. (I mean we've taken typing tests to see who can type the fastest if that tells you anything.) Luckily before our temper got the better of us, we both noticed something: none of the guys we were playing with were showing any sign of remote frustration whatsoever, and right as we noticed this Phoenix comes to us and says in a slight whisper, "Oh, I am so angry." But by the tone in his voice, the way he said it, and his demeanor when playing we never would have thought he was frustrated. That's when it began to make sense to us...
You see, playing a pick-up game of basketball on street courts in America causes riots and gets people beat up. Things aren't like that here in China. You've probably heard of the ultimate chinese expression: 'saving face.' This term didn't make much sense to me until we played basketball yesterday. These guys weren't getting frustrated, or at least weren't showing their frustration. By slamming down the basketball or throwing an on-court fit would only cause them to lose dignity and respect (amongst the basketball community I guess, I don't know). At least that's what we've chalked it up to anyways. The game was rough that day my friends, but at least we all came away having saved much face!

Of Jackie Chan & Ping Pong

We are official Chinese Language Students! As of today we've sat through four days of classes = 16 hours, 5 teachers, & 9 fellow Korean students.
Our first day of class we were scheduled to take Spoken Chinese and Beginner's Reading; 8 am to 12 pm. Knowing we'd have trouble with the reading course because, well, we don't know any chinese characters, we knew the speaking course would be beneficial so it sounded like an O.K. morning. So we get our classroom, which by the way is in the same building as the Korean student's dorm (interesting tidbit of information for later on in the story...), to discover we are enrolled in Beginner's Chinese with nine Korean students, all of whom speak some english and a lot of Chinese. Since they've been learning characters in their own language for all of their life they've pretty much mastered Chinese characters as well. So of course they along with all of our teachers are baffled that we can't read chinese characters. The first class might have been more beneficial had we not been on the wrong page for the majority of the class time. We just thought we were having trouble following along, only to discover when called upon to read the chinese characters that we were on the wrong page. The Korean's, though really nice and helpful, unfortunately are at the maturity level of a 14 year old so they just point and giggle and ask us if we know Tom Cruise (to which Brandon replied, "Do you know Jackie Chan?") The second class is being taught by a guy who doesn't speak any english, loves to talk about beer and has a tendency to ramble on about stuff we can't understand...but then again sometimes we can't really tell he's rambling because at this point it all sounds like mumbo jumbo. This class is the one that is by far the most pointless for us because it's all about reading characters. For the majority of the class he had the Koreans reading the same paragraph over and over. Then after they read through it 13 times or so he called on one of them to see if he knew it by memory, which of course he did. Then the teacher calls on Brandon to recite it from memory! (I guess it wasn't obvious to the guy that we didn't understand what was going on when we weren't reading it any of the 13 times) So then Brandon laughs and says, "Bu keyi." Meaning = No, I can't. And then in a desperate and pleading voice he looks at the teacher with puppy dog eyes and says, "Look, I just wanna know how to tell the taxi to turn left." And of course at this point all the Koreans just giggle and point.
It's not all that bad though. We do have three classes that will be really helpful and we just don't show up for the other ones because they'd be a waste of time. The Koreans think we're a bunch of slackers. However, we have managed to impress them with our food ordering skills and expertise in Ping Pong. We went out to eat lunch with all of them yesterday during which I mentioned that Brandon was a wrestling state champion. They now prefer to call him "Texas Champion" haha. Then afterwards we went back to their dorm/classroom building to have a little game of Ping Pong. I totally thought we were gonna get smoked, because everyone knows that Asians are killer ping pong players. Lo and behold...we Americans are moving up in the Ping Pong world. I now am the chosen favorite when we play doubles.
It's been an interesting week and we really have learned a lot in just four days. Yesterday I successfully had a 2 minute conversation with a five year old! woohoo!