More Weekend/ Random Pictures

In addition to going to the park and going downtown this past weekend, Jane and I also went to a party at some co-workers' house. Three young guys, one from England, one from Australia, and one from Wisconsin, share a house. Stacey came over and babysat the kids. We ended up going out with Jenny, one of the main directors who lives next door to us. We stopped at a small restaurant along the way, sat outside and had a few beers before we headed to the party. Our beers were served with warm peanuts, which we ate with chopsticks. I am getting pretty good at using them. Also, because all of the bottles here require a bottle opener, a very old bottle opener was left on our table. I really thought the bottle opener was cool, and we did not have a good one in the apartment. (The bottle opener was the same as the one that Luke wears around his neck in "Cool Hand Luke", my favorite movie). I asked how much they wanted for it, and they said one quai, or about $.16. We bought it and have been using it ever since. Also, because the restaurant owner and staff (all the same family I assume) were so nice, we have eaten there twice in the past week.

We headed to the party, which brought me back about 10 years; it was like a true college party. The guys' house was in less than perfect shape, was definitely less than clean, and it reeked of cigarette and baijiu (which is a fragrant rice wine that costs less than beer, therefore being the choice of a drinker on a budget. They drink it with Pepsi, which smells to me like an amaretto sour. We stuck with beer, so I don't know what it tastes like). The party was fun, everyone was nice and it was interesting to hear people's stories about how they got here and what it has been like for them.

After the party started winding down a bit, people wanted to still go out. We decided to go to a club that the girls had gone to before, because they had a contact there who they thought was a manager. About 7 of us piled into a taxi, and we were greeted at the club door by our contact. We were rushed in, past the pay window, past the metal detector and past security (armed and uniformed guards). We were taken immediately upstairs to a VIP section. The girls wanted to dance, so they wanted to be closer to the dance floor. So we headed downstairs to the dance area, and a table next to the dance floor was cleared off (the people sitting there being cleared off as well). We were told to sit down, were given drinks, and were told to dance wherever, including up on the stage. I thought, "Wow, they must really want to show off that there are Westerners here." After about twenty minutes, a waiter-type came up to me with a piece of paper, speaking (of course) Chinese. I kept saying to him pigio, which means beer. He kept shaking his head and pointing to a number, which I thought was the price of a beer. Not understanding, I called Jane over (she had been on the stage dancing). It turns out that the guy was wanting payment for the VIP table, demanding that we pay him 1000 quai, or about $140. Our contact turned out to be a club promoter, and I assume he thought we were high rollers. He assumed wrong, and we left the club and headed across the street. The promoter, for the rest of the night, sent us text messages apologizing and hoping that we come back for just a drink.

The bar that we went to across the street was much more my style, as opposed to the loud dance music at the first place. It was an outside bar, with just a few tables set up alongside a garden, with beer being their only option. We had a beer there, wound down, and headed home.

When we got home, Stacey was asleep (she decided to spend the night). I went into our kitchen and found a can of beans with a bunch of puncture marks in the top. We realized that Stacey had never seen a can opener before. The next morning, I showed her how a can opener worked, and her response to seeing the can top pop off, word for word, was, "Who invented such a wonderful thing?!" Jane and I both started laughing, knowing that this was, in a small way, a miraculous thing that she had just witnessed.

Stacey headed off and we decided to go to the international hotel for their big Sunday brunch. As expected, it was very good. This time, they also had a clown and a babysitter, so for about 20 minutes, Jane and I had some time to ourselves. Here we are enjoying our champagne. Here is Evelyn enjoying some sushi. Also on her plate are shrimp. Evelyn's two favorite foods are shiguo (watermelon) and shrimp. The only problem is that shrimp here are served with head, skin and tail still on. It is messy to prepare them for her, and it takes a long time. You could easily spend 20 minutes peeling shrimp, with her waiting for every next one. I have just started eating the entire thing, head and all.

Here are some other random pictures, in no particular order. This is Etain having a bad hair day.

Here are Dan and Evelyn riding the merry-go-round at Pagoda Park.

Here are Evelyn and Etain atop the lookout at the park that is closer to our house. Right before this picture was taken, Etain was eating a bag of potato chips. She had chips all over her and all over her seat. A guy approached, commenting on the kids. He then noticed the mess that was Etain, and he began cleaning her up, throwing all of the crumbs on the wood beneath, which I assumed everyone did and therefore it was ok. We talked for a bit, me not knowing anything he was saying. The girls and I then walked away, and he began picking up all of the crumbs off of the ground. I felt horrible.

Here are the kids and I eating at Muslin noodles. It was a hot day, the restaurant had no air conditioning, and the noodles were in a boiling hot soup. Notice the sweat stain on my back. Also, notice the soda can in Evelyn's hands. It was full at the time, and it was the only cooling thing on the table. Soon after the picture, she threw a hissy fit and tossed the soda on the ground. She was freaking out, we were trying to discipline, and all I wanted to do was get home in the AC. I could just picture the people around us saying, "Well what do you expect with three kids." More likely, however, they were still saying, "Aren't those three kids cute."

Some other random notes:

--We now have Ju Jie as a full time nanny. It is working out great. The girls love her, and we do too. She does all of our laundry every day. This morning I woke up, took a shower and headed to my underwear drawer. To my surprise, all of my underwear were neatly folded and tightly packed into the drawer, such that pulling out underwear was like pulling a library card out of a Dewey-decimal catalogue. Jane noticed that her underwear was the same way. It was pretty wild to know she does all of that, but also pretty concerning to know she goes through my underwear drawer. Ju Jie has 4 kids of her own, who are all grown. Though she does not speak English, she and Jane can communicate. She also says everything in Chinese as it happens. If Evelyn picks up a leaf, Ju Jie says leaf in Chinese, and then points to a tree and says tree in Chinese. She says that Evelyn understands, or acts like she understands, everything she says.

--We got good news for Dan, he is moving up in school. He was in a Chinese kindergarten, taught fully in Chinese. Though he was probably learning more Chinese than anyone really knows, the classes had a ton of free time, and we were becoming concerned that he was being left out or getting confused with what was going on (he was the only non-Chinese kid). So, he is going to move up to Preliminary 1, which is like moving from pre-school to kindergarten. One of his teachers will actually be Jane. Now, instead of general Chinese free time, he will have distinct classes, including: English (with Jane as a teacher), Chinese, math and science, humanities, physical education and piano. His class will be in the school that Jane teaches in, so he will be a lot closer to us. Also, we think he will learn a lot more from the structure. Though most of the school is taught in English, he still will have Chinese classes, and we think he will get enough Chinese elsewhere to become fluent pretty soon. Everyone, including the principals of the schools and us, agreed that this was the best move for him. He is excited about it as well.

School is going well otherwise. Though we are busy for the next 10 days or so, afterwards is the Chinese National Holiday, and we are off of work for 8 days. We are planning on going either to Beijing (where the Great Wall and Tiananmen Square are) or to Xian (where the terracotta warriors are). I'll try to include more posts before then, but those posts will definitely have a bunch of pictures.

Lastly, here is, I hope, a video of Evelyn walking down the sidewalk. I took this video using our digital camera, and it works fine on my computer. When I download it to the blog, it took forever. I tried to do it once before, and it would not play. If it doesn't work, I will keep working on it; I am sure people will like to see actual moving pictures. Ciao.