Our Apartment and Other Pictures

Ladies and Gentlemen, to start off this blog posting, I give you, the one and only... Evelyn!

These pictures were taken during and impromptu photo shoot the other night before bed, which is usually when the kids are in their giddy moods. Just earlier that day Jane and I were talking about taking some pictures of the kids to get them into modeling in Shanghai. These shots, especially the one where her arms are stretched out to her left, made us think that we had a good thought. Luckily we had the camera out that night, when she was looking especially cute. The next morning, Etain was playing with a small metal broom which had a sharp edge (not something she usually plays with). She whipped it around and put a nice scratch on Evelyn's left cheek. She has some healing up to do before she can put herself through college.

Here are some pictures of our apartment, which we have been in for about two months. It is still, for the most part, undecorated. There are two reasons for this. First, Etain climbs up on everything and pulls everything down. Any nice decorations would certainly have been destroyed by now. Second, there are, to our knowledge, two types of stores in China. The first is where everything is very expensive. The second is a store where a person randomly sells their stuff. These are stores that you have to bargain at, and you have no knowledge of the quality of what your are getting. Though you can get things much cheaper, it is exhausting, time-consuming work (haggling can take a very long time). We (Jane) simply have not had the energy to decide on a decorating scheme and do all of the purchasing yet. Still, the place is good for us. It feels like home, and it is light years better than our old place was.

When I decided to take these pictures, the camera was in my bedroom drawer, so we will start there. Here is shot one of the master bedroom, with a 'large' ledge area in front of the window. I think the plan was to get a bunch of plants for that area.

Here is picture two of the master bedroom, showing the wardrobe and entrance to the room.

Here is the master bath. The bathrooms are very nice. The showers have heat lamps, and it is hard to imagine living without them now that we have them.

Here is Evelyn and Etain's room. For the last few weeks, Etain has been sleeping horribly. For a while, she even slept in our shower (in her tent like crib (see a much earlier post), and with tons of padding). We then moved her into our room, but neither remedy helped. Just the other day we decided to put Etain in Dan's room by herself, and let Dan and Evelyn share this big bed. Etain finally slept very well. Dan and Evelyn slept alright as well, so, as I write this at 10:00 p.m., Dan and Evelyn are sleeping in the bed you see.

Dan's room is very similar, except that it has a very nice built-in bookcase/shelving unit across an entire wall. I took a picture of his room, but it was very dark. Oh well.

Here is picture one of our living room. The red carpet on the floor was our first purchase for the apartment; otherwise the place was completely furnished. On the right is the main heating/air conditioner unit. There is no central heating or air. This main room and each bedroom have units (the ones in the bedroom are smaller). I think they heat and cool the room just fine (as long as you can figure out how to use the Chinese controls). The floors are tile, which get extremely cold during winter. Each bedroom has wood flooring on top of tile to help with this issue. I have not seen carpet anywhere. As a result, everyone who comes into the house takes off their shoes at the door, walking around in their socks or in slippers provided by the homeowners. This keeps the floor from getting too dirty. Almost all of the homes that we have been in have a shoe closet immediately inside the door. The other day Jane said, "Just image how dirty our carpets were back home, with people walking all over them with their shoes that they wear outside." To an extent this is true, but it is much more fun to roll around on a carpet floor when playing with the kids compared to tile.

Shot two of the living room, just showing off the television, on which plenty of Disney DVDs are watched.

Here is Etain, climbing on the dining room table. The above picture of the television was taken while standing just a few inches from the table, so the dining room/living room is actually one big room separated on one side by a small partition.

Here is a shot of the entrance to the apartment. The table is out of view immediately to the photographer's left. The gray part is the front door, with the wood piece being the shoe and coat closet. You can also see the entrance to the kitchen. Our Christmas tree is set up in an area which we intend to use in the future as a computer desk/workstation.

Here is picture one of the kitchen. Not a lot of cabinet space. You can see our water cooler, along with the simple stove, microwave and convection oven. You can't really tell by this picture, but the countertops are pretty low, as they are everywhere. The sink is very deep, which means your back starts spasming after a minute or two of doing dirty dishes (by hand, of course). Every time Jane goes anywhere near the stove, she hits her head on the overhead hood. I guess this is her excuse as to why she doesn't hang out by the stove very often (I can say this because she is already asleep and I will be gone before she reads this).

Here is shot two of the kitchen, showing the mustard fridge and the sliding glass kitchen door. The fridge is pretty tiny, but it is twice the size of the fridge that we had at the old place. It often seems like it is just as cheap to go down the street and have someone else cook for you, so we eat out, weather permitting, up to 4-5 meals per week (we never ate out back home).

Here is the main bathroom's wash area. In this picture it is full of everyone's stuff, because at the time Etain was sleeping in our bathroom, which therefore never got used. It is now a bit cleaner. On the other side of the window is a full bathroom. You can also see the washing machine in the picture.

Here is a picture of the dryer. Off the living room we have a nice closed-in deck. It has clotheslines built into the ceiling, that raise and drop by turning a crank. The other day Dan and I sat out there and did some coloring, because the weather was so nice. Unfortunately, our family of five usually produces a lot of clothes to dry (which takes a while in colder weather). Thus, for the most part, the deck has been used exclusively a dryer.

Here is a shot of our Christmas tree. It is not quite as grand as the one we had back home, but it is decorated with home-made ornaments, so we like it. Everyone in the family got their own ornament, which Dan and Jane made. My ornament is a bubbling bottle. Some think it is a chemistry bottle, but most think it is a bottle of pigio (beer). Jane has been on a major yoga kick for the past month or so, so she got a yoga girl. Dan, per his request, got a baseball cap. Evelyn's ornament is a shoe with a big E on it, because she spends a good portion of her day getting into and out of different shoes. Etain's ornament is a big crab with a T on it, for Tanie. She gets a crab because, basically, for the past few weeks she has been a big crab. (She can print out a copy of this blog for future counseling appointments). Our nanny, and every other Chinese person spoil her so much. She then whines to mom and dad, expecting the same treatment, which she usually does not get. [I just proof-read this and realized that it sounded bad. It is all meant mostly as a joke. I don't want to make her sound like a bad kid, and especially not a kid with bad parents.].

On a different note, here is a picture of the Starbucks two blocks from our house. I think this is a cool building, right at the entrance of a park. I have never been in there, and I am told that Jane has only been in there once or twice. I include it only because I think it is prize-worthy photography...

This past Friday we did not have to work. Dan went to his school, and Jane and I then took the girls to our playground for a while. Here is Evelyn hanging on the bar before going down the slide. She will not go down without hanging first.

Here is Etain at the bottom of the slide. Luckily, our playground is intended for younger children (there is a huge playground in the park across the street, which is better for Dan), and slides are pretty short. Etain does not quite get the physics involved in a slide. Instead of sitting down and going down on her butt, or even on her stomach, she tries to walk down. We always have to be there to catch her and guide her down.

Here is a picture of Danny at his new(er) school. He has been there for about one month. It is easily the best place he has been. For some reason, on this day he decided to wear his formal school suit. He is pictured with Elliot, from France, whose mother teaches with Jane. They are the only two kids in his immediate classroom who are not at least half-Chinese.

On this day, Jane and I got off early so we each picked Dan up. His school is across the street from our apartment. Because Jiu Jie was watching the girls, we decided to head up the street to one of the Japanese restaurants. Here are Dan and Jane sitting at one of the sunken tables. Each of the tables were in their own rooms, which were secluded from the server's hallway by a traditional paper door. Jane ordered our food in half-Chinese/half-Japanese.

Here is Dan enjoying his sushi. It is tasty meal, and a fun alternative to the simple Chinese places that we usually go, but it is nearly 3-4 times as expensive. We just grabbed a few sushi rolls as an appetizer.

Here is a complete side note: Right now I am listening to our ipod while typing. The song that just started was "Beds are Burning" from Midnight Oil, a song from the mid-eighties. Not too long ago we ate dinner with an Italian couple and with a guy from Australia. The couple are our friends and they work for a mechanical manufacturing plant here in town. They were trying to convince the Australian to come work for their company. The Australian: none other than the brother-in-law of the lead singer of Midnight Oil. It was a special night.

To finish this post off, here are a few random shots:

Here is Evelyn, doing who knows what.

Here is Etain, looking cute in Dan's hand-me-downs. She and Evelyn are basically wearing the same clothes interchangeably. She is also getting her fourth tooth, two on top and two on bottom.

Here is Dan showing off his 'Star Wars' tattoos, which he, apparently, thought made him pretty tough.

Wanan, saichen, mintien jie. (good night, goodbye, see you tomorrow).

Random Pictures

Here, as the title indicates, are a few random pictures. We haven't been taking a lot of photos lately, but I promise to take more. Today I carried the camera around in my pocket all day, taking random photos. If I take more photos, I promise that I will do more blog entries. Here are Dan and Evelyn one morning before getting ready for the day. Evelyn, the shoe queen, was modeling a pair of Jane's high heels. Here is a picture of Dan and Evelyn in the morning. It is a pretty dark picture, but in the background you can see our Christmas tree. I will take some more picture of our apartment soon, with better light, to do an entire blog tour. In front is Dan, wearing Jiu Jie's bike helmet. She has a motorized scooter, like many other people. In this colder weather, people cover up a little more, and so Jiu Jie wears the helmet. I have also noticed that a lot of people put their coats on backwards. I see this all the time, and I have no idea why the do this rather than zip the coat up.

Here is Etain, eating her breakfast with the helmet on.

Here is Evelyn, again showing off her banana in the same pose that she did when we were in Qingdao. Gakie sent her this wool hat. As soon as she put it on, Dan said that she looked like my sister Kathleen. I don't know if it is because she actually looks like her, or if it is just because she was wearing a wool hat.

Here is another picture that I took that came out poorly. It is a picture of my AS level class, which is like my junior level class. The class is full of Chinese, Thai and Korean students. Out of 16 students, 1 is Christian. Even though there is a Christmas tree, he had nothing to do with it. Christmas here has nothing to do with religion (as most are concerned). It is only a holiday when Santa comes and gives gifts.

Here is my lunch at school. It is one of the better lunches that they offer. The orange is dessert. A piece of fruit is a good, traditional way to finish off the meal. To the right of the orange are rice noodles with carrot and chicken (I think?) slivers, soaked in oil and soy sauce. To the right of the noodles are vegetables. The vegetables are like spinach leaves, or collared greens. If you order vegetables at a restaurant, this is what you get. Again, they are soaked in oil. In front of the orange is a chicken leg. It is a very good fried chicken leg. The breading is very light. In front is white rice (offered at every meal), this time covered with curried potatoes and chicken. The also offered barbecued fish, with bones still in, which I was not into. Not a bad meal, especially being that it is free.

Here is a shot of the construction that I mentioned. This picture was taken out the window of my office at school. As you may be able to tell, it was a nice day. The weather has been really nice here for the past few days, reaching up to about 70 degrees. I think there are 8 buildings going up, forming one of many new living complexes.

Here are a few picture of where we live. I had to cover detention tonight so I got home a little late; as a result the pictures are a little dark. There are seven buildings in our complex. We are in building one, which is actually the farther building from the entrance. This is a scene from right inside the entrance. There are plenty of little ponds, fountains and walking paths. This is one that Dan likes to run over every day.

Here are the buildings of our complex. We are the very last one on the left. I would be willing to bet that 60% of the places are empty, though they still keep building. Constantly we hear construction going on, both in our building, in neighboring buildings and in other complexes.

As I am writing this I am watching "The Departed", one of the many DVDs that we have acquired since being here. It is right at a good part, and I am through for the day, so I'll end the blog at that. I will make sure, though, that the next entry comes much sooner than the last.

Real Thanksgiving

The last post started with a silly picture of Dan, so I will start this one with a silly picture of Evelyn. Here, Jane is reading "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus". Evelyn is listening intently. For some reason, she is wearing swimming goggles. I don't really even know why we have swimming goggles. Evelyn will often come out of her room wearing random clothing. Yesterday, she was parading around in a pair of Jane's high heels. Sometimes she prefers just a diaper with a pair of pink boots. She always keeps us guessing. Here is a picture of Dan sitting on our lovechair, talking to grandma. The kid was definitely given the gift of gab.

Finally, here is our Thanksgiving dinner, which Jane prepared. We had chicken (there is no turkey around here), candied sweet potatoes, steamed carrots and corn on the cob. It was very nice, first to get away from the rice and vegetables that we usually have, and second, to sit as a family and enjoy the meal together.

Dinner from a different angle, showing off the flower that I bought at a local flowershop. Flower is hua ("hwa"), which I learned after the fact. The word for 'this' is zhe (pronounced "jugga"; (I don't get it either)). How I communicate at a store is point to something and say, "Zhe, wo yao iga," which means "This thing, I want one." I also know how to ask "duo tsiao xien" (pronounced dwo schi-ow chi-en," which means "how much is it". If they answer slowly enough, I can almost always understand the price.

One thing that we were very thankful for at dinner was that Evelyn was healthy again. About 5 days prior, she threw up one morning, out of the blue. She then continued to throw up for the next three days. She couldn't keep down a drip of water, and she was heaving even when there was nothing in her stomach (something new for our kids). This concerned us, so we decided to take her to the hospital. There are no independent doctor's clinics around here, you go to the hospital for everything. I will try to tell of the hospital experience, but it will be secondhand, as Jane was the one who took her:

Jane first met with a doctor. They were concerned that Evelyn may have had a blockage in her intestines, so they wanted to do an ultrasound. If that was clear, they then wanted to put Evelyn on an IV for fluids. I say "they wanted to" because it is totally up to the patient as far as what gets done. Jane wanted the ultrasound, so it was ordered. Before the ultrasound took place, Jane paid for it in cash. They then did the ultrasound, which showed nothing unusual. Jane then decided to do the IV drip, so she paid for it and it was given. Jane said it was very matter of fact, like going to a store to buy your medical needs. The emergency visit, with ultrasound, IV drip and take-home medication cost about $28, paid in full. Evelyn did great the entire time, barely letting out a whimper when she was stuck with the IV. Here she is, getting her drip.

As you can see, she was not doing very well. The bruise on her forehead was from the day before she started throwing up. She was taking her coat off, but she could not get her arms out of her sleeves. As a result, her coat actually acted like handcuffs behind her back. She then tripped and fell flat on her face. I was certainly hoping that the fall was not the cause of everything.

Happy to report that she simply had some sort of bug, we think. After her first night in the hospital, she came back looking better. The next day, though, she was throwing up again. Jane then went back to the hospital that night (she says the hospital was a bit more of a madhouse that time). After that night, though, she woke up and was feeling and looking better. She has not thrown up since, and she is now back to her normal self. (It was a hard couple of nights, not only because she was sick, but also because we were breaking her of her pacifier. Now all of the kids are pacifier-free).

Here is a picture of the main lobby of the hospital, where everybody gets their drips. From what I understand, it is simply a huge room full of chairs and beds, with tons of sick people hooked up to IVs. No patient confidentiality here.

The weather is getting a bit colder, so we have not been able to go out as often as we usually would. As a result, there are less pictures on the camera. We decided to take a few picture of some of the food that we buy. I will describe the foods after the picture so you can try to guess what it is:

This is thinly-sliced lamb meat. The only beef that I have had here has been in a McDonald hamburger. There just are not that many Chinese cows hanging out around these parts. Lamb is common, especially in Muslim restaurants. Otherwise, pork is the standard meat. I was told that if you don't know what it is, assume it is pork. Chicken is also pretty easy to find, but boneless chicken is very rare. Today in our school cafeteria they told us that we were eating duck, which was very good (though I am not sure it actually was duck, it may have been lamb). If you ever get a piece of meat by itself (which is rare), it will always come with a lot of fat that needs to be trimmed away. Ground pork, which we sometimes get, comes in different grades regarding the fat content. I think in the U.S. we use to get 97% fat free. Here, the healthiest pork is probably 60% fat free, at the most. We used ground pork tonight to make hamburgers, vegetables and french fries. It was a great break from the traditional Chinese food that we usually have.

This one is not too hard, it is kiwi juice (I have not tried it). You have to get juices from foreign stores. There is a German store, an Australian store and a Wal-Mart. Chinese juices taste like flavored sodas. The orange juice that you can get cheaply at a Chinese store tastes like Tang, which they do still sell here.

This food is one of my favorites, seaweed covered peanuts. I could easily eat this entire bag in one night. Peanuts are a very popular snack item here.

Oddly, our computer is working pretty well right now, when I don't have much to talk about. So, I will describe what I eat in a normal day (feel free to stop reading now, I will not be offended). I try to get to school in time to eat breakfast in the cafeteria. Every morning they have fried eggs, rice porridge and hard boiled eggs. They also mix in boudzas and joudzas, which were described in a previous blog. Often there will be buns and cakes, usually angel food cake. It often seems like breakfast is nothing but eggs and carbohydrates.

Lunch, again usually at the cafeteria, consists of white rice, a vegetable and usually a stir-fry type dish. Different things are mixed in each day. Today we had duck meat (supposedly), eggs with tomatoes, and corn-potato fritters. Often there will be shrimp, chicken legs, chicken and potato curry, octopus and squid (both very chewy and not very good), clams and egg custard (which is inedible). They also often have Korean dishes, such as kimchi, which I usually do not like. Despite the tone of the paragraph, though, it is often pretty good.

Dinners out almost always consist of noodles or a rice dish. Sometimes we go to hot-pot, where you can get plenty of vegetables in a soup. Dinners have been pretty simple, such as peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, sausage (like polish sausage) and potatoes, grilled cheese, egg sandwiches, etc. We recently found a place that sells bags of boneless chicken breasts, so we will begin having that more often.

I would guess that I have 6-10 eggs a day, though I try usually not to eat the yolks. I am just now realizing that I have already written about a lot of this, so I am going to quit.

In the next post, I will try to talk abut our apartment, as we will have pictures of it decorated for Christmas.

Wan'an (Goodnight).

Thanksgiving

Here is a picture of Dan with pencils in his nose. I intended to do an entire blog about our holiday dinner that we had, but the computer I am using is so slow, I could only get one picture downloaded. Hopefully I can update it in about 7 hours or so. Enjoy.