Dan's 5th Birthday

As most know, Dan turned five on February 12th, sharing this birthday with Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin. To celebrate his birthday, we threw a kids only party at our apartment. For me especially, it was really neat to see the diversity of the kids that showed up.
To the right are the kids sitting on our couch. From left to right, they are: Butumwe (who has a Zambian father and a Korean mother), Anetka, from the Czeck Republic, Julie, from France, Dan, from the U.S.A., Eliot, from France, Korbenian, who has a German father and a Chinese mother, and Kevin, who's mother is Chinese and who's father is American (of Chinese ancestry). As you can tell from the picture, they all got along great and the party was a success. A few of the kids go to Dan's current school, and the others go to his old school where Jane teaches.

Here are the kids playing hot potato, one of many games that were played. Anetka (it sounds like Anetta, the K is not pronounced) won nearly every game.

Here is Dan in front of his cake. Because he is allergic to eggs, he can not have a traditional birthday cake. His fallback cake is a rice crispy treat cake. There are no rice crispy treats here. Luckily, we recently bought a bunch of German cereal that was a lot like cocoa pebbles. We tried to find a normal bag of marshmallows, but we couldn't. The only kind of marshmallows that they have here are marshmallow candies. We bought a bunch of bags of those, and though Jane was concerned, they actually worked. The only problem was that his cake turned out to be pink (from the candy coating on the marshmallows). No big deal. All of the foreigners were very curious to taste the dessert. For the most part, I think the general opinion was "not bad". I guess it is just one of those tastes you get use to in America.

Here is Dan with Korbenian and Kevin. Korbenian and his parents live in the building next to us in our complex; his mom helped us rent our place. Kevin lives across the street, in the complex where Dan goes to school. When Kevin goes to America, he lives in Pennsylvania.

Here is Dan taking a whack at the Darth Vader pinata. Pinatas are also one thing that you can not get here. As a result, Jane made a pinata out of numerous trash bags and a coat hanger. Though one girl hit me in the thigh when she was taking her swing, overall the pinata experience went quite well.

Here are the kiddos scavenging for the candy that spilled from Vader.

Julie, the French girl, brought gifts for the girls as well as for Dan. Evelyn got a doctor set, which is probably the third one we have received since getting here. This one, though, had geeky doctor glasses. Evelyn has worn them consistently. I think they make her look a bit like Harry Potter.

Jiu Jie also brought Dan a set of little cars. Here she is posing with Dan and the girls. This could have been a good picture, but Etain sometimes doesn't understand that she is supposed to stay still for the picture. Instead she just starts walking towards the camera.

My mom also sent Valentine's and Birthday packages from St. Louis. Here is a shot of Evelyn wearing the Valentine's outfit that she received. The candy hearts were also devoured in about 5 minutes (mostly thanks to Etain though).

Dan was very excited about the Star Wars underwear that he received.

Here are pictures of Dan from his actual birthday, which was on a Thursday. For that entire week, we had great weather, so we walked about 8 blocks down near our old house. There is a great street that has a bunch of small restaurants. We ate hot pot, one of Dan's favorite meals. To the right is Dan with one of several movies that he received for his birthday. Yes, he (and Evelyn) are old enough to be into High School Musical.

Here is Dan at the restaurant (we ate outside) with his first birthday cake. This is a very traditional Chinese birthday cake. It is basically a yellow spongy cake with very light whipped frosting and fruit on top. It is very good. Dan only ate the frosting and fruit though. Everyone else took care of the rest.

The other thing that happened recently was that school started. It has been going pretty well. Jane has a very nice schedule this semester in which she is finished by lunch each day. The principal, Mr. Jiu, took all of the teachers out to dinner at a very cool restaurant in the country. We took a school bus for about 25 minutes. The restaurant was about the size of a football field, with several different eating areas. It was also decorated as if you were eating outside in an enormous treehouse. There were huge tree trunks and branches, both real and fake, all over the place. There was also a three story buddha carved into the side of a mini-mountain. Unfortunately, we didn't think that we had the camera until it was too late. Jane and I thought that the kids would really like it, so we may go back sometime. If we do, I will be sure to take pictures. The picture above was on our way out. This little kid kept staring at Jane, and then she got a kiss from him.

Here are Jane and I at the dinner, standing in front of some wood carvings of Confucius's disciples. The dinner was great, it was served family style and it probably involved about thirty different dishes. It also involved baijiu. Baijiu is a rice wine, like Japanese saki. Fortunately, the principal bought good baijiu. Good baijiu tastes like lighter fluid, but it does not have a harsh aftertaste. Bad baijiu tastes like kerosene with a hint of celery (I am serious about the celery, it is unmistakable). The taste of bad baijiu stays in your mouth long after you drink it though. I have only had bad baijiu once, after that I learned my lesson. It is the drink of choice of the younger teachers, mixed with Coca-Cola, but only because it is so cheap (I guess they can't spring for the 20 cent beers).

We have a three day weekend coming up but we have no big plans. If the weather gets any better we will surely get out and get some pictures and do another post. Until then, zaijian.