Change in Weather

Hi all. Sorry it has been so long since posting. Today's weather was great, it was nearly seventy degrees. I am hoping the nice weather is here to stay. Yesterday was Sunday, which meant no work for us (we worked on Saturday). The weather was nice so we walked to a grocery store about 20 minutes from our house. On our way back, right in front of us a minivan turned in front of a scooter, which ran into the side of the van. It was a relatively low speed accident, and I didn't think much of it. Jane, however, noticed that on the scooter was a woman and her baby, about one year old. She ran over and helped them up, and both of them appeared unhurt. Jane then yelled at the guy to watch where he was going. He apologized, but you could tell that he felt 'inconvenienced' by the accident. Drivers here are pretty bad, many people have only recently gotten their licenses after never driving before. Couple that with the general feeling that they own the road, and there will be accidents. (It is really annoying, but it seems like if someone can afford a car, they are better than the ones who can not, and therefore they always deserve the right of way). Well, with everyone appearing OK, we headed home, took naps and played the rest of the day.
There were two other weird things that I saw. This morning I saw a couple walking back from the fruit stand, and walking behind them, carrying a bag of fruit in its mouth, was their golden retriever dog. There is nothing specifically Chinese about this, but it was a pretty amazing sight. Another thing was when I was walking to the bus stop. A cab driver pulled over to the side of the road, while his fare waited in the back seat, so that he could pee in the bushes. This is China.
St. Patrick's Day starts here in 5 hours. Jane has planned a night out at a local pub. I would say only one out of five hundred people know anything about St. Patrick or St. Patrick's Day. If we take any pictures tomorrow night, I will be sure to post them here. Regardless, here are a few random pictures from the past week or so.

Above is a picture of Jane and a few others whom we went out with the other week. The bald Chinese guy to her left owns DM Pub, a bar that we go to sometimes (He has asked her to drum up business for him). We went there and Jane met the other people in the picture, I believe the guy is from Switzerland. This picture was taken well after I left (I was feeling like I had the flu). We are going back to the pub tonight for St. Patrick's Day.


Here are pictures of Evelyn and Dan. With all of the toys that we have bought here in China, they still favor this old toy from the United States, in which they cook us imaginary meals.

Here is Etain dressed up like a pretty pretty princess.

Here is a shot of Evelyn acting tough. She is actually acting out a scene from "Annie", when Annie is about to beat up some boys for picking on her dog. In the movie, Annie makes this face and says "Anybody else... Then get lost". Evelyn does the exact same face and the exact same line. Very funny.

Here is Etain enjoying the nicer weather out on the playground in our apartment complex.

Dan went to a birthday party the other day for Anetka, the girl from the Check Republic who came to his party (pictured above at the far left). Dan wore his tie, since it was a special day.

Dan and Etain playing in our toybox. Last week, we did a spring cleaning of our apartment. The toybox received a major cleaning.

Here is a picture of the kids playing video games at an arcade in the mall in downtown Changzhou. It is very large, with an indoor skating rink and two floors of games. Dance Dance revolution is the most popular game. The people that do it are excellent, the dance for about a half hour without ever making a mistake.

Here are the girls hanging out. Evelyn is in one of her self-chosen outfits. Etain was halfway through getting dressed.

Here is a newer complex across the street from us. This picture was taken from inside our complex. We live in a pretty nice, upcoming area of town. As I think I mentioned before, Jane says it reminds her of Manhattan.

Here are the kids hanging out on one of the sculptures in our complex. Between the eight buildings are small lawns. Our kids like to play there, as they are some of the few lawns in Changzhou. I don't know if this is allowed, but they do it anyway.

This picture is not very good because of the odd lighting, but it is a picture of Jane and Dan buying fruit at the fruit stand near our house. This fruit stand is less than one block from our house, and we can see it from our kitchen window. Unfortunately, there is a canal between our place and this stand, and to get to it, we have to take a seven our eight block route to get to the bridge crossing the canal.

Well, the weather has been great for two days. It is about 75-80 degrees. Hopefully we can pack away our winter clothes for good. We will try to take pictures tonight and I will post again soon.

A Few Pictures of the Girls (Sorry, Dan-Fans)

I am sorry that there have not been many pictures or postings up here lately, but the weather has still been pretty bad. Today was the first day in about two weeks that it was not raining. It was still cold though. As a result, we have not been doing too many things that are picturesque. Here are a few shots that we have taken though. The other day Jane went to a ladies luncheon with about 15 or so women that are in her group of friends. Here is a picture of that, with women from France, Spain, China and Turkey. They ate at a Thai restaurant that we like, where, as you can see, you are served family style.


Here is the Transformer Bumblebee, dressed for a nice Sunday stroll.

Here are Evelyn and Etain playing with the fish bowl that they received from Grandma. It is one of Etain's favorite things.

Here is Etain enjoying her chocolate cracker sandwich snack.

Evelyn wearing one of her get-ups that she picked out.

Here is Etain showing off her big eyes, which are quite rare here in China. I think this is her "It surely wasn't me!" look.

Again, here is Evelyn showing off her fashion sense. She is wearing sunglasses which we received in a packet from Gakie today. (Colleen, Dan also received your birthday card on 3/3/09. He loved it. Thanks.)

Things are going well; we feel quite busy lately. I have agreed to teach extra classes during the day so that I can get a bit of overtime. I now teach chemistry, biology, math and reading. I also sit in on an entry-level Chinese class each day, which I am really enjoying. I can not speak or listen very well, but I like trying to understand the characters, so my reading and writing is (slowly) coming along. Jane has taken up some classes at Dan's school, teaching one or two hours per week. It pays pretty well, and it is nice for her to teach Dan, but I think it is a lot of work, both in class and in preparing for class (I could never teach little kids). She also gets called every once in a while to give seminars, which she is giving this Sunday on women's issues. On top of that, she is helping out a club nearby that is trying to cater to foreigners, she is talking with a company about doing some work in Shanghai, and she is working on making goods for a small business that she and I are starting (I also failed to mention that she is trying to organize a soccer league for foreign kids). It sounds like a lot, but that is the way she operates.

I am hoping (and for some reason personally expecting) that the weather will change next week. Once it does, we will be out and about a lot more, which will mean more pictures.

Until then, we wish you shenti hao (good health).

Random Pictures

The weather lately has been pretty bad here. It has rained for about four days. We are told that rain is actually pretty rare in this area. Today, at 1:00 p.m., the skies got very dark and it poured for about a half hour. One teacher in my office from the Philippines had never seen anything like that before; he was seriously scared that Armageddon was occurring.

We made it through, though, and I realized that I haven't posted any pictures in a few days. Here is a random assortment.
Here are a few shots of Professor Evelyn paying attention to oral hygiene.

The other night, a group of teachers found out about a bowling alley in town. It was a lot of fun. It was fairly inexpensive, so we will surely do it again. It is also nice that you can bring your own beer to the bowling alley. In the picture, from left to right, are Rod (from New Zealand), Lewis (from Zambia), Martin (from Australia), Amy (from China (Martin's girlfriend); Jenny (from New Zealand), and Jane and me (both from St. John Medical Center in St. Louis).

After bowling Jane, Jenny and I met other people at a club called Las Vegas. Here is a shot of the scene. Jenny and Jane are drinking a mixture of tea and liquor, which is actually a pretty weak drink. The other girl in the picture is a teacher at another school. You can see the large fruit basket on the table, which is a common purchase at bars. Usually what happens at a club is that the foreign teachers get together, and then some Chinese guy buys all of our drinks in order to hang out with us. At least that is what happened this night.

Here is Jane buying rice. We go to this store because it is the only one that has brown rice; every other store just has many varieties of white rice (brown rice is seen as dirty here, so it is not very popular). We bought roughly 9 or 10 pounds of rice for about $3.00.

Here is a shot of Dan holding up some bagged chickens' feet. This bag costs about $1.25. We did not buy it.

It has not been to hard to change from a very large house to a very small apartment. Usually, no matter where we are, the kids are only a few feet away. In this instance, when Jane was trying to watch television, they were only a few inches away.

Here is Evelyn, again wearing some random composition of clothes.

Etain, looking sweet and innocent (as she does from time to time).

Gakie sent some packages which we received the other day, which included birthday gifts for Dan and other gifts for the girls. Here are the kids tearing into the packages. It is always a treat when they arrive. (Sorry, this would not load straight).

Dan loved his Anakin Skywalker shirt. The girls liked all of their presents as well.

Well, that has been what has been going on in our lives. It is late here, and I have some new classes in the morning. I am now going to teach math in the Chinese section as well. I just got my book yesterday, and it is some pretty high level stuff. Hopefully it goes well enough. Adios.

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.

Learn to Count in Chinese

I have a few minutes before class so I will teach you all how to count in Chinese. If you can learn one through ten, you can easily learn one through one hundred. Here goes, with the number, the Chinese pinyin, and how it sounds in English...
(1) yi (sounds like E)
(2) er (sounds like R)
(3) san (sounds like san in Santa Maria)
(4) si (sounds more like su; say the wo in woman, but put a s in the place of the w).
(5) wu (sounds like it looks, like in woo-hoo)
(6) liu (sounds like Lee-you)
(7) qi (sounds like chee in cheese)
(8) ba (like a sheep says)
(9) jiu (sounds like gee-oo (like in oops))
(10) shi (sounds like the word sure).
So there are numbers one through ten: yi, er, san, si, wu, liu, qi, ba, jiu, shi.
If you can learn these, it is easy to move on, because the Chinese do not have any new words for the teens or words like twenty, thirty, forty, etc. All they do is combine these ten characters to make a larger number. For instance, the next number, 11, is shi yi (which is basically 10-1). Twelve is shi er (10-2). Thirteen is shi san (10-3). And so on up to nineteen: shi jiu (10-9).
The next number is twenty. In Chinese, twenty is er shi (pronounced R-sure). This means 2-10. The next number is 21, which is er shi yi (pronounced R-sure-E). So on and so forth. Thirty is san-shi (3-10), pronounced san-sure. If you can understand and follow this pattern, it goes all of the way up.
So quiz yourself:
What is
1. 37
2. 55
3. 28
4. 79
5. 83
Answers:
1. san shi qi (3-10-7), pronounced san-sure-chee;
2. wu shi wu (5-10-5), pronounced woo-sure-woo;
3. er shi ba (2-10-8), pronounced R-sure-ba;
4. qi shi jiu (7-10-9), pronounced chee-sure-G-you;
5. ba shi san (8-10-3), pronounced ba-sure-san.

This goes to 99, jiu shi jiu. One hundred is yi bai (pronounced E-buy). One hundred one is yi bai yi. One hundred eleven is yi bai yi shi yi. Nine hundred is jiu bai.
So even though I said that you should be able to count to 100, you should actually be able to count to 999 (jiu bai jiu shi jiu).

Time for class. Here is a quick picture of me trying to watch television.

Lantern Festival

Today is the Chinese Lantern Festival. Throughout the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), Buddhism flourished in China. One emperor heard that Buddhist monks would watch sarira, or remains from the cremation of Buddha's body, and light lanterns to worship Buddha on the 15th day of the 1st lunar month, so he ordered the monks to light lanterns in the imperial palace and temples to show respect to Buddha on this day. It then grew into a national tradition. Lanterns also sometimes have riddles written on them. If you can guess the riddle, sometimes the shop owner will give you a treat.
To the right is yuanxiao (you-wan-shao), or rice dumplings. They are the traditional food of the festival. They are, I would say, ok. Zhu Jie, our ayi, was kind enough to make some today, the girls are quite fond of them and Danny was served some at school today. They are extremely chewy, and the gooey dark stuff in the middle is bean paste (which tastes pretty good). The picture is a stock picture off of the internet, not something that I cooked.

The other thing that happens during lantern festival is fireworks. It once again sounds like a warzone. I am completely fireworked out. But the Lantern Festival is the last day of the Chinese New Year celebration so they should be ending soon.

Evelyn is usually our girl who does not like to wear clothes. Lately, though, she has been into clothes, and she acts like a model when she wears them. Here she is in a few of her get-ups; you be the judge as to whether she is fashion-forward or not:

Evelyn and Etain, often confused as twins.




Evelyn looking and acting too cool for the camera.

Um, no comment.

Evelyn wearing the ballerina outfit and red sparkly shoes she received in a package from Gakie. She got them a week ago, and the shoes have only come off her feet for bath time. She even sleeps in them. The other kids enjoyed their presents as well.

A few days ago Jane went to do a teaching seminar at a different school (a side project to earn a bit extra cash). Dan went along, and they both had a lot of fun. Here is Dan with one of the boys, whom he says looks like a Chinese version of his cousin, David Hack.

Here is Dan with the students and parents that Jane worked with.

Here is Dan showing off his newly-cleaned bookcases in his room. All of his Star Wars figures were neatly set up... for five minutes at least, until Etain wandered in there.

I also wanted to write something for my memory. The other day Evelyn went down the slide at a park and her hair was sticking up due to static cling. Dan said that she looked like Michael Spikal Phelps. It was pretty funny.

On Thursday, Dan turns five. We are going to have a party with about ten kids on Sunday, so there will surely be pictures then. Take care.

Red Light Green Light

Somehow this game ended without injury...