Cup O' Joe

We live about 200 yards from Starbucks. Espresso frappuccinos and caramel machiattos are at our fingertips nearly any time we want one. That is...if we're willing to foot the bill for it.

That quickly got too expensive for our coffee budget. Plus, a pound of coffee beans at Starbucks in China is about $30, so even doing a coffee drip at our place felt expensive.
With Brandon's three-cups-a-day coffee habit, we had to figure out something different.

Enter: Brandon's newest hobby, roasting his own coffee beans.

On those rare evenings where we collapse into the couch after the kids are in bed and I Pinterest it up, Brandon researches roasting coffee beans. Thank you youTube for educating my husband on the mechanics of coffee roasting, brewing, and all things caffeine related.



So for his Christmas stocking I surprised him with 15 pounds of green (un-roasted) coffee beans from Sweet Maria's.* What I did NOT surprise him with was the $1,000 drum roaster he had his eyes on...because he'd already figured out a cheaper way we could roast our own beans.
Remember those old-skool air-popper popcorn machines? Thanks to taobao, we ordered one for $10, and thus, his new hobby was born.



That's one passionate-about-his-coffee, good-lookin man, roasting Rwanda coffee beans. (one of our favorite flavors!)



The orange bowl is for catching the chaff so it doesn't fly all over my kitchen. 2-3 minutes in the air-popper and your coffee beans are roasted...don't forget to turn on your vent hood!!



Dump em out into a metal strainer to let them cool off and get ready to roast yourself another batch. The golden flecks are the chaff, which are tasteless and a byproduct of not having a $1000 drum roaster. :)
After they're cooled off, store them in a sealed, cleaned, leftover strawberry jelly jar (or whatever sounds more normal to you.)
By morning time they'll smell delicious and you'll want to coat them in chocolate and eat them straight up.



When you wake up in the morning, put a scoop of the beans-of-awesomeness into your hand grinder, or if you're fancy shmancy, a machine grinder.



Poor your coffee grounds into your Aeropress...



Poor hot water (205 F to Brandon's exact specifications :) over your beans and stir around gently with what else but a chopstick.



Cap it with the Aeropress, and let it sit and brew for a minute or so. While it's brewing, don't forget to revel in the magic of these moments.



Grab your camera and take a picture of your youngest.



Now that your cup-of-gold is almost ready, press it into your favorite mug.



Add a splash of milk and a dash of sugar, and let your morning begin.

That, my friends, is an awesome hobby for your husband to enjoy!

*We enjoy buying from Sweet Maria's because we think they're coffee tastes great but even more so because they go above and beyond Fair Trade standards. You can read about their "Farm Gate" standards and the measures they take to make certain that the people they buy coffee from are being paid and treated fairly, or even more so. Because the coffee trade is often supported by child or slave workers, we enjoy contributing to a company that does its part to practice Fair Trade and invest themselves in the workers where we buy our coffee.

Friday Foto

I'm so smitten with this boy.

One day we went to the zoo...

At least once a week, Salem asks me to read this book to him.

Danny and his Dino friend wander all around the city. During their day together they visit the zoo. But at the zoo,

"Everybody came running to see the dinosaur. Nobody stayed to see the lions...Nobody stayed to see the elephants...Nobody stayed to see the monkeys...And nobody stayed to see the seals, giraffes, or hippos either."


Then the zookeeper kicks them out of the zoo because no one was watching the animals.

Today, I identified with Danny and his Dinosaur.

We have a pretty great little zoo here so we took advantage of one of the first pretty spring days and headed out to enjoy the sunshine. Our plan seemed perfect. It was a Sunday, but school was still going on because of some different holiday rotation this week.
Ahhhhh...a nice, peaceful, zoo. A seriously absurd thought in a city of 6 million people.
None the less, our hopes were set high.



As we pulled up to the front gate, a sea of turquoise stretched out before us.



Yes, apparently every elementary school within 374 miles decided to take a field trip to the zoo that day.

We forged on. Pressing past the crowd. Which was hard work as every 4th grade student was determined to practice their best English "Hello!" with us as we walked past.

As our Foreign Novelty wore off, the students turned their attention toward the rickety carnival rides, giving us opportunity to make our escape toward the back of the zoo. The zebra and giraffe exhibit.



Two things about this picture:
1. What you don't see pictured are the 7 university aged girls snapping pictures with their cell phones of Brandon and the kids. This is why I may never have another picture with my kids looking toward my camera. With 8 cameras pointed at them at almost any given moment while in public, they get fairly confused about which way to look.
2.  Chinese people are starting to get smart about their signs. We can occasionally play the dumb foreigner card and say, "But I don't understand!", when they point to the sign that tells people not to sit on the rock. Now, they're including pictures. Apparently, we were still trying to play the dumb foreigner card for this picture. There goes the foreigners, setting a bad example for the rest of society.

This next picture is where I identified most strongly with Danny and his Dinosaur. We were standing along this fence watching some enormous reindeer...truly they were gorgeous. And when I looked to my right and left, I noticed we were the only ones watching the reindeer. Everyone else was watching us.



"No body stayed to see the reindeer..."

As if we weren't drawing enough attention, we decided to throw ourselves up on top of camels and draw an even larger crowd.





That picture makes me laugh because there's not a single soul in it beside me, Salem, and Mr. Camel. And that's exactly the opposite of how that day went.

As we walked away from the camels, so did the crowd.

"And no body stayed to see the camels..."

We didn't get the boot out of the zoo fortunately,

"but we did have a wonderful day!"

A Story about a Mustache

Want to know one of the great things about living in The Big Chicken?!?

"Sure!!!"  (that was you... you're so enthusiastic! thanks!)

Taobao! Ahhhh, blessed Taobao. One of these days I'll write a poem dedicated just to you, Taobao.

It's kind of like eBay. Minus english. Plus the bootleg purses, shoes, etc...

There has been very little we've been unable to find on Taobao. Our purchase list is growing longer by the day... cinnamon, cheerios, J. Crew jeans, Stride Rite shoes, Fisher Price toys, a swing, butterfingers, a laminator, a stick horse, even our fridge! and the list continues.

We've had a few issues here and there of me not reading (hello, Chinese characters!!) the fine print correctly. Like the one time I thought I was ordering a pack of baby spoons for 7 kuai and they ended up sending me one. Oh yes they did just open that package right on up and send me one plastic purple spoon. 

Seriously, we're not hurting over here, thanks to good ole Taobao.

Our most recent purchase was 60 (yes sixty) plastic Easter eggs. (linky there for our expat friends! the trick was to search for them without the 's' : easter egg  :) Those aren't something we can jog over to Wal-Mart for over here. So Taobao came to the rescue.

The Easter eggs came and they're perfect. Just as ordered, which like I mentioned above, is occasionally a gamble. 

But tossed in with the box of eggs was a true gem. Something that even if I'd been trying to find one on Taobao, I'm sure I'd come up empty handed. It turned in to hours of fun. Well, ok maybe hours is an exaggeration. But until that sticky-ness wore off, we were rolling in laughter.

I told Eden she was way cuter with a mustache that Tom Selleck or Super Mario.

She didn't get it.

Thanks, Taobao, for all the smiles you've brought our family!

Chen Yue En

陈悦恩

It's what Eden is called every day at her preschool. It's how her friends and teachers know her. The boy at school she now says that she wants to marry when she grows up... it's what he exclaims when she walks in the door Monday thru Friday.

When our Chinese friends helped us pick out her Chinese name four years ago, I was very casual about it. I didn't put much thought into it, honestly, nor did I really care what Chinese name they came up with. In my world, she was Eden. She always was Eden. She always would be Eden. Egocentric, that was me.

And now, the vast majority of people that Eden sees every day refer to her as Yue En, instead of Eden. 

I'm a pretty terrible person about it too. I catch myself thinking, "ugh...that's not her name...why can't they just call her her real name?!"  Or when someone says something about her to me, and I find myself wondering who the heck they're talking about. Or like last week when I called up to her school to chat with her teacher and introduced myself as, "Eden's mom." but then had to correct myself when she wasn't clear of my meaning and had to say, "Yue En's mom."

I get this egotistical chip on my shoulder about people referring to MY daughter with a different name than the one I gave her when she was in my tummy over four years ago. More like a boulder really.

A gigantic, heavy, grey, ugly boulder. That's weighing down my shoulder so much so that it's beginning to smother my whole body.

Fortunately, God grants my four year old some wisdom on occasion to speak truth into my life. To help redeem me. To help knock the giant grey rock of my shoulder. To dropkick me into place.

It was simple really. We were outside playing and a neighbor came up to chat with us.

After the usual first few questions of... "Where are you from? Are all three kids yours? Do you watch them all by yourself? Is your baby wearing enough clothes?"... She turned to Eden and said, "What's your name?"

Eden replied in an upbeat tone, "Eden!" Then she sheepishly turned to me, grinned, and covered her mouth like she'd made a mistake and said, "hehe, I forgot." Then turned back to neighbor lady and said, "Wo jiao Yue En!" (call me Yue En!)

It was the first time I've heard her say the full sentence in Chinese. It was the first time I've heard her say her name so proudly. She was owning it.

My giant boulder came crashing to the ground in a million little narcissistic pieces. Outwardly, I was pleased that my daughter was so proud of her Chinese identity, that she was finding a place in this culture that is so foreign to me but that is home to her. 

Inwardly, I was cut to the core in realization of my self-absorbed thinking. 

It's a hard journey for me to overcome my small world view. It's difficult for me to get over the fact that my daughter's upbringing is going to look night and day different from mine. It's hard for me to accept that Eden will grow up dodging pee puddles on sidewalks rather than dodgeballs in elementary school.  I worry about her learning so many Chinese characters but never getting to lay on the trampoline at night and count the stars.

But slowly, much too slowly I'm sure, I'm asking the Lord to change me. To eagerly accept this world that Eden calls home. To try to see it through fresh eyes, her eyes, His eyes, and find joy in it rather than weird. 

Her eyes light up when she tells me about seeing a street seller strangle a chicken and getting to see the blood drip from the chicken's neck while he butchered it for their preschool's lunch. What I find disgusting and weird, she finds fascinating. This will be her normal. It will be vastly different from my normal.

And her normal will largely be as Chen Yue En. 

Proof we were in a tropical climate...

Please tell me I'm not the only parent out there who has problems making family photos happen.

Add to that the difficulty of having to order matchy-matchy shirts online for the boys and get them shipped across the ocean to us...I'm just down right pathetic at it, really. To my credit though, I did make Eden's dress to match the boys' blue shirts, so I do have that going for me.

So when we were two days away from coming home from our Thailand trip and I remembered the matchy-matchy shirts in our suitcases, we threw them on the boys real quick, put Eden in a dress and stepped outside to do the obligatory family pictures. (well...minus me and Brandon...see? I still haven't quite mastered the art of family photos)

And they're such cute kids, even if I do say so myself, that we really should do this more often. 

Because it's so much fun to say over and over for 30 minutes:

"Salem, look here! Salem, don't choke your brother! Eden, smile! Caleb...yoohooooo!! CALEB!!!  Eden, SMILE! Salem, Salem, hey SALEM, look up! Salem stop smashing the ants! LOOK UP! CALEB!!!! yoohooo!! look at mommy!! CAAAAAALLLLUUUUUUUUUUBBBB!!! 

I'm sure Brandon really enjoyed dancing behind the camera as well. 

ahhhhh....yes. We'll be sure to do that again reeeeeeeeel soon.

None the less, with my rapid-fire finger, I captured the 2 nano-seconds that all three of them were simultaneously looking at the camera.

I love that one because it captured Caleb's trademark confused, wrinkled brow look. He almost always looks a little peeved with the world.

So there you have it. Bare feet in grass. Tropical climate. Proof we didn't just hang out in the hospital the whole time down south!

Not My Kind of Vacation

Nebulizer.

It sounds scarier than it really is. It sounds like a taser gun. Or some sort of Star Trek force field.

The Nebulizer. [neb-yuh-lahyz-er] (noun) - The evil villian who lives on planet Galactus that seeks to destroy earth with his force-field-shooting taser gun.

Obviously, my medical background and education is quite extensive.

Because when time came for his first nebulizing (is that a word??) treatment and it went like this...

I was quite relieved.

Caleb's bout with RSV, pneumonia, and whatever sort of wretched stomach junk that he had, booked us 5 exclusive nights in a Thai hospital. (if anyone is keeping count...that's his SECOND Thai hospital to book a stay at!)
So even though we only spent 5 days out of our 3 weeks in Thailand in the hospital, those three weeks were marked with hospital memories instead of poolside, sunny Thailand memories.

But really, with that smile in the picture, who cares what the surroundings are.

I've become quite fond of Thai hospitals, though. And when I say that...I have to be sure to include lots of pictures of the experience otherwise the average American back home envisions us stuck up in a straw hut with a mud-thatched roof in blazing hot Thailand.

To his nurses, he was "Boy Caleb."

To his doctor, he was "this kid."

Just outside his hospital window was the city's ancient wall and moat, and a country doing it's annual burning of the fields.

And now that we're back home and he's doing completely fine, we can look back on the experience and have a little chuckle about our crazy life...one that thankfully doesn't include taser guns and force fields.