A Few Pictures

It is Wednesday night. Tomorrow is the last day of our ten day rotation. We then have four days off (we normally would have three off, but this weekend we have Monday off as well). The school has our passports, because they are doing the work as far as getting our residency permits. Without our passports, we cannot travel long distances, because it would be hard to rent a hotel without them. So, our plan is to do some small day trips to neighboring cities, including Shanghai, and just to spend a day or two checking out some of the sights in Changzhou, as well as getting some shopping and work done.

I have to do some more chemistry reading tonight, electrochemistry again, but I wanted to show some pictures first, in case there were no posts over the long weekend (I will still try to do at least one).

Here is a picture taken from the 4th floor of our school, near my office. It was taken at 8:45 a.m., and it is a picture of all of the Chinese students lining up for their morning exercises. Classical music plays over the school's loudspeakers as the kids do stretching and calisthenics for about 10-15 minutes. Our school uses classical music for everything. When the "bell" for class rings, it is not a bell but a recording of a symphony by Mozart. When the class ends, Bach may play for thirty seconds or so. It is pretty nice. Also, at around 2:00 p.m. each day, a voice comes over the loudspeakers for 4-5 minutes, again accompanied by classical music. I asked my lab assistant what it was, and she informed me that it was directions for eye exercises, to keep people awake and alert. I have not yet seen anyone doing them.

Here is a good picture of Etain swinging in the park that is about 7-8 blocks from our apartment.

Yesterday, we had to get more passport-type photographs taken, for all of our residency permits and teaching certificates. The photo lab was a next to a family-run engraving business. The mother and daughter were out front, and the girl stopped to pose for a picture with Dan-man.

Here is a picture of Evelyn just after falling asleep tonight. As you can see, compared to the previous picture of the girls' room, we bought her a new comforter, which she uses as a mattress pad. She was sleeping on a thin sheet directly on the mattress (China does not have fitted sheets), but she kept kicking and wiggling throughout the night, and every morning the sheet would be wadded up in a corner and she would be directly on the mattress. This should stay in place a lot better, along with being more comfortable and cleaner. We bought it tonight at a small storefront that sold household furnishings, such as bowls, pots, fans, and sheets. At the MegaMart, this would have probably cost $15. We were able to get two of them (the other is on Dan's bed), for $11.

Evelyn does not necessarily need to be in her bed to relax. Here she is striking a similar pose while watching Ratatouille. The DVD player that we bought, which is hooked up to our TV is not working right. It went out the other day, but I was able to find the button on the remote control that corrected the problem. This time, I cannot find that button (they are all Chinese characters), so we will have to make due with the portable DVD player until our nanny, Stacey, can help us out with the remote tomorrow.

After we got our passport photos yesterday, we walked home from school. It was a much shorter walk than I had thought, the whole family could have easily made the trip in 25 minutes. The only problem with any long walk is the humidity. It is darn-hot out now, about 33 degrees Celsius. The worst part, though, is that we are in monsoon season, and there is a dampness in the air. There have been plenty of days where there is no breeze, and if that is the case, you are sweating if you walk a block. Considering I walk about a mile when I take Dan to his school and then head to my school (after getting off a bus with no air conditioner), it is pretty obvious to my students that I am a foreigner (my shirt is stuck to my body and they are all cool and collected). In my first class ever as a teacher, the first thing that anybody said to me was, "You look hot."

Anyway, on our walk home, we stopped at a place called Muslim Noodles (there's nothing like a steaming hot bowl of noodles to cool you down after a long walk!). We bought a beef brisket, which was ok, beef skewers, which were great, and a large bowl of potato noodles with pork, which was very good as well. The meal cost 14 quai, or about $2, and we had a few leftovers.

Here is Evelyn enjoying one of the beef skewers (these are actually probably lamb).

Well, apparently we found a food that Evelyn really enjoys: meat-on-a-stick. Tonight Jane ran to the store and to a dumpling restaurant next door. Here is Evelyn eating, this time a chicken skewer:

Here is young Etain, waiting for Evelyn to drop her food. Most of the time, Etain consumes about 30% of Evelyn's meal (straight off of the tray, oftentimes to Evelyn's annoyance). [If you enlarge the picture, you can really see Etain's new pearly white].

Here is what we bought for dinner: two chicken skewers (for Evelyn), and 24 dumplings (called joudzas). The joudzas are filled with vegetables and pork and beef sausage. They are very good, especially with soy and pepper sauces. This time the food cost about $2.50, and it fed us all.

We hope things are going well for all of the readers. Things are going well here. We will try to collect stories and pictures over the 4 day weekend, and we will let you know all that happens.