Well, we made it through our first week of school. Three students and two teachers all starting a new school at the same time, it was pretty intense. Don and I are both teaching elementary ESL (English as a Second Language). Teaching younger kids is different for both of us, and in some ways will be difficult to get used to. Well, hey, we’re parents, so we’ve been around younger kids before.
For me, the hardest part of the week was watching so many children, including my own, with lost looks on their faces. Unlike most American schools, with just a few new kids each year, many of the students had just enrolled after moving from their home countries. A lot of the students are from Korea, but also from the US, Australia, Germany, France, Taiwan, Sweden, and Finland, to name a few. And at the elementary level, most come speaking no English, the curriculum language, so the change is pretty wrenching. Imagine you are six-years-old and just left your home and everything you know, and your parents send you to school where you spend all day understanding virtually nothing. That is the experience of many of these kids.
I felt good, though, that I was able to help a few students to feel taken care of. I have two little French girls in my ESL class, and I was glad that I could speak some French (badly) to them, and they seemed to feel better for it. In another instance, a teacher was trying to talk to three lost little girls. Two looked pretty Scandinavian, so I took a chance and started speaking Swedish. Sure enough, one was from Sweden and she started to talk my ear off. The other two were from Finland and Italy. The girls didn’t speak the same language, but they were clinging to each other for comfort. It was sad and heartening at the same time.
At least my own children speak English. And yet they were having a hard time, too. John was obsessed with getting a printout of his schedule, which for some reason they didn’t give him for the first few days. I can understand his distress; he already feels lost and out of control in our move, and a printed schedule gives him some much-needed structure. Since he got the schedule he seems less stressed about school. By the end of the week, all of the kids were talking about the students in their classes, the countries they are from, and generally seemed a little less freaked out and a little more calm. Allyne is even trying out for the school play. It’s still going to take some time, but I’m sure they, like the rest of the new students, will eventually feel like they are part of the school community.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
I miss my appliances
I said I would write a post about the appliances and I'm finally doing it. One reason it has taken me so long is that our internet has been spotty or just not working. That situation, along with the state of our appliances has been making me rather frustrated. Don't get me wrong, I don't regret what we are doing. But American life has accustomed me to a certain amount of convenience, speed and efficiency, which are sorely lacking here. Just about everything I want to do takes at least four times longer than it did back home, whether it is logging into the computer, getting groceries, or doing the laundry. So follow along for a report on the machines (or lack thereof) that inhabit our home:
The sink. So small even one plate can't lay flat in it. Do I need to say more? Yes, I do. Dishwashers have revolutionized womanhood. There.
The oven. Don just used it for the first time tonight. It actually worked pretty well. So we can have our cookie fix now and then.
The refrigerator is tiny, too, but actually it hasn't been a problem. Mainly it means I can't overbuy, and the produce has to be used quickly, instead of languishing until it becomes soup. The freezer is on the bottom, by the way. I'm not sure why it is the same amount of space as the fridge part.
I actually like the stove. The gas burners get really hot, which is great when making Chinese food. Finally I get the temperature I want! But you have to watch things like sauces, because it's pretty hard to get the right simmer. We just have to get used to that. When I have my "dream" kitchen someday, I want one burner like these for wok cooking. The toaster is the first we've ever had (only toaster ovens), and the rice cooker is great. If you don't have one, go get one. I had one back in the US and I never want to be without one.
This is the TV in my and Don's room. We've never had a TV in our room before, in fact, we've pretty much been a one TV family until now . We get quality shows like the Mandarin version of the popular 80s sitcom "Growing Pains". Here we see Mike having a moment.
The TV in the family room. The cable is out, but we haven't bothered to report it because A: it's too much of a pain to deal with our "agent", and B: no one is particularly missing it, even though we could be watching the 24 hour Toy Channel, in which they talk about and show kids playing with...toys.
This is the electric AC/heating unit, and each room has it's own. So far, it works great to cool the house. We'll see how well it works in the winter. We may be stocking up on blankets.
Ah, the washer. A bucket that spins. No hot water, no special settings, no bleach dispenser, no timers, none of the great features I came to know and love on my washer back home (which I wiped with a diaper, I loved it so). This washer and I are tolerating one another, but it's not a happy relationship. Notice the size (the iron is on top for scale). Notice we are five full-size Americans. Notice the scowl on my face.
The interior. No agitator. The clothes are really just rinsed and it shows. At least the agent helpfully put stickers with English words on them so I could run the stupid thing. Sigh.
Don calls this the "Easy Bake Dryer" and as you can see from the size of the iron on top, it isn't an inaccurate description: the settings are "on" or "off", and you can't fit much in it. It enjoys a nice view from the laundry porch, though.
This is the dryer with three pillowcases in it. I tried to dry seven, but they just turned into a crumpled wad. To me, the point of a dryer is not having to iron anything. But to dry anything in this dryer without it wrinkling, the loads have to be small. Like one shirt.
Conclusion: I'm getting a maid. Yes, you heard me right. I've never wanted to pay someone to do our work for us but the reality is this: we are five people, in a small apartment, with two working parents, and sub-par or non-existent appliances. I can't spend my evenings running miniscule loads of laundry and ironing everything we own. So, let's give a big shout out to our machine friends who make American life enjoyable, doable, and downright civilized. Now go give your dishwasher a big hug from me.
The sink. So small even one plate can't lay flat in it. Do I need to say more? Yes, I do. Dishwashers have revolutionized womanhood. There.
The oven. Don just used it for the first time tonight. It actually worked pretty well. So we can have our cookie fix now and then.
The refrigerator is tiny, too, but actually it hasn't been a problem. Mainly it means I can't overbuy, and the produce has to be used quickly, instead of languishing until it becomes soup. The freezer is on the bottom, by the way. I'm not sure why it is the same amount of space as the fridge part.
I actually like the stove. The gas burners get really hot, which is great when making Chinese food. Finally I get the temperature I want! But you have to watch things like sauces, because it's pretty hard to get the right simmer. We just have to get used to that. When I have my "dream" kitchen someday, I want one burner like these for wok cooking. The toaster is the first we've ever had (only toaster ovens), and the rice cooker is great. If you don't have one, go get one. I had one back in the US and I never want to be without one.
This is the TV in my and Don's room. We've never had a TV in our room before, in fact, we've pretty much been a one TV family until now . We get quality shows like the Mandarin version of the popular 80s sitcom "Growing Pains". Here we see Mike having a moment.
The TV in the family room. The cable is out, but we haven't bothered to report it because A: it's too much of a pain to deal with our "agent", and B: no one is particularly missing it, even though we could be watching the 24 hour Toy Channel, in which they talk about and show kids playing with...toys.
This is the electric AC/heating unit, and each room has it's own. So far, it works great to cool the house. We'll see how well it works in the winter. We may be stocking up on blankets.
Ah, the washer. A bucket that spins. No hot water, no special settings, no bleach dispenser, no timers, none of the great features I came to know and love on my washer back home (which I wiped with a diaper, I loved it so). This washer and I are tolerating one another, but it's not a happy relationship. Notice the size (the iron is on top for scale). Notice we are five full-size Americans. Notice the scowl on my face.
The interior. No agitator. The clothes are really just rinsed and it shows. At least the agent helpfully put stickers with English words on them so I could run the stupid thing. Sigh.
Don calls this the "Easy Bake Dryer" and as you can see from the size of the iron on top, it isn't an inaccurate description: the settings are "on" or "off", and you can't fit much in it. It enjoys a nice view from the laundry porch, though.
This is the dryer with three pillowcases in it. I tried to dry seven, but they just turned into a crumpled wad. To me, the point of a dryer is not having to iron anything. But to dry anything in this dryer without it wrinkling, the loads have to be small. Like one shirt.
Conclusion: I'm getting a maid. Yes, you heard me right. I've never wanted to pay someone to do our work for us but the reality is this: we are five people, in a small apartment, with two working parents, and sub-par or non-existent appliances. I can't spend my evenings running miniscule loads of laundry and ironing everything we own. So, let's give a big shout out to our machine friends who make American life enjoyable, doable, and downright civilized. Now go give your dishwasher a big hug from me.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Dreaming
Well, it's 6 am and I've had yet another half-wakeful night. I really can't remember when I was able to just sleep right through the night, without my friend, Benadryl. I remember my dreams, though: one night I was in France visiting our friends but I couldn't talk to them; last night I was in some region of the world that harbors terrorists and I could travel through time and space instantly, yet I stayed there. Hmm, wonder what all that means. I haven't yet dreamt I was back in Arizona, as far as I know.
I just can't completely relax, and haven't in months. I am so proud of all the work we've done: researching the possibilities of this project, going after the jobs, landing the job in THE city in the world I wanted to live in most right now, making our house look beautiful to sell, getting the family here, hitting the ground running when we got here to make this place our home. And it does feel like home already. But even so, something in my psyche resents being yanked half way across the world. We have completely stepped out of our comfort zone, and I guess none of us really have our bearings yet, in spite of the fact that we are all excited to be here. So it's my job and Don's to create a new comfort zone for our kids so they feel taken care of.
And as for me, I'm going to invent my own comfortable place, because while I love it here, it's still too new. And it's not in Arizona, because while I liked it there, I also willingly gave it up, and, at least at this point, I can't go back. So my place is a cottage in Sweden, next to a small lake out in the country. No neighbors, just a porch to sit on in the evenings and look at the sun glistening on the lake, while eating cardamom buns and drinking hot chocolate. The cottage furnishings are right out of a Carl Larsson painting, and in the bedroom is a huge white bed, all white linens, soft white pillows. It's late May, so if I wake up at 1 or 2 am, I can sit on the porch, wrapped in a blanket, and watch the sky glow with the rising sun. And then I can climb back into bed, and sleep again, because I have nowhere to be, nothing to do, but be there with my family.
I just can't completely relax, and haven't in months. I am so proud of all the work we've done: researching the possibilities of this project, going after the jobs, landing the job in THE city in the world I wanted to live in most right now, making our house look beautiful to sell, getting the family here, hitting the ground running when we got here to make this place our home. And it does feel like home already. But even so, something in my psyche resents being yanked half way across the world. We have completely stepped out of our comfort zone, and I guess none of us really have our bearings yet, in spite of the fact that we are all excited to be here. So it's my job and Don's to create a new comfort zone for our kids so they feel taken care of.
And as for me, I'm going to invent my own comfortable place, because while I love it here, it's still too new. And it's not in Arizona, because while I liked it there, I also willingly gave it up, and, at least at this point, I can't go back. So my place is a cottage in Sweden, next to a small lake out in the country. No neighbors, just a porch to sit on in the evenings and look at the sun glistening on the lake, while eating cardamom buns and drinking hot chocolate. The cottage furnishings are right out of a Carl Larsson painting, and in the bedroom is a huge white bed, all white linens, soft white pillows. It's late May, so if I wake up at 1 or 2 am, I can sit on the porch, wrapped in a blanket, and watch the sky glow with the rising sun. And then I can climb back into bed, and sleep again, because I have nowhere to be, nothing to do, but be there with my family.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
New Blog
I don't have time to do my next post yet, but I'll put in a plug for Don's and my new blog called "What the Snack is That?" in which we review all the bizarre Chinese snacks we have been finding. And there are many. So check out our first posts at www.whatthesnack.blogspot.com . And I'll post again here soon.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Our Apartment
The dining room. The wall "art" has to go.
The living room, Allyne and more bad wall art. We like the couch, though.
Three of the rooms have huge window seats.
The kids are already using these as a place to nap. We're going to get someone to make seat cushions and pillows to make it even more bed-like.
The "atrium", actually a sun porch with a retractable clothes-line. We've basically given Emma carte blanche to put whatever plants in there she wants. She's pretty excited about it. So is the little old Chinese guy at the nursery.
Another view of the living room. Except for the plants and the Wii, everything you see in these rooms was provided by the school.
Emma at the desk in John's room, which is where all of us currently access the internet. That chair gets a lot of seat-time. We asked the real-estate agent for a wardrobe for John; the rooms don't have closets and John's has no wardrobe, either. She seemed to think the bookcase was sufficient. When I asked her where John should keep his clothes, she told me to ask the school. Sigh. Well, the school will have more leverage than we will on that anyway, so I'll take her advice and get them to talk to our landlord.
Allyne and Emma's room. We don't have enough hangars and we've already cleared two stores of their stock. Getting hangars for five people's entire wardrobe is not an easy feat. You can see laundry hanging in the atrium. Why we are air-drying our clothes will be apparent when I do my post on Chinese appliances.
This is the view from Don's and my bedroom window. Not bad, eh? The apartment complexes here all have gardens in the middle. We also have a little store in the complex. As the Chinese always say, it's "convenient". For some reason they love that word. Must have been in Lesson 23 of The People's Number 7 English.
Me and Don's room. We have our own bathroom, too. The beds are hard, like a box spring. I love it. The kids don't.
View from the kitchen.
Stove. They provided a toaster, bread, orange marmalade and tea. What do they think we are, British? We had to get our own wok and rice steamer.
The first dinner I cooked in the kitchen: Unidentified fish, which I couldn't get the fish guy to clean, even though he had just cleaned someone elses fish (I did it myself..mostly), grean beans and garlic, and rice. No one complained, so I consider it a success.
View from John's room. He has the best view with the canal and the city. We just look at the neighbors from our side.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
We've landed
Well, after 10 long months of working on this, we finally got to China on Monday evening. Here are some pictures to get started, with much more to come.
Our street: Xian Guo Jie. Or something like that.
Our apartment building. Count up four windows to the far left, that window is J's, and the two windows next to it are ours, too. We have windows on the other side as well, looking right into the apartments of our neighbors. Whether they are in their underwear or eating, we're all one big happy human family.
Lest you thought we were roughing it, here is proof we are not. This is the list of stores being build right next door (click on the image for a closer look). Notice we can't even get away from Walmart here. At least we'll have a DairyQueen to keep us happy.
A view of our apartment building, right next to the new construction. The canals are all over Suzhou, in the old parts and the new. Wish we had our canoe...
We took 15 bags with us. If you include our "personal" bags we carried on the plane, it was 22 items we had to keep track of. Notice our duffle bags from Larada's Army Surplus. John loved the military look.
Our street: Xian Guo Jie. Or something like that.
Our apartment building. Count up four windows to the far left, that window is J's, and the two windows next to it are ours, too. We have windows on the other side as well, looking right into the apartments of our neighbors. Whether they are in their underwear or eating, we're all one big happy human family.
Lest you thought we were roughing it, here is proof we are not. This is the list of stores being build right next door (click on the image for a closer look). Notice we can't even get away from Walmart here. At least we'll have a DairyQueen to keep us happy.
A view of our apartment building, right next to the new construction. The canals are all over Suzhou, in the old parts and the new. Wish we had our canoe...
Monday, August 4, 2008
Fortunes
Even though we'll be eating a lot of Chinese food in China, that hasn't stopped us from craving it while we wait. Here are some of the recent fortunes we've gotten this summer (and, yeah, I know fortune cookies are not Chinese):
“To be eighty years young is more cheerful and hopeful than forty years old.” – I got this one and I just turned forty. Does it imply that forty-year-olds are not cheerful and hopeful? I like to think I’m cheerful and hopeful at forty. I hope.
“The simplest answer is to act.” – Don got this one. Seems appropriate to our current situation, and reminds me of Don’s favorite scripture about “acting” and not letting ourselves be “acted upon”. In other words, we can make our own choices, we control our reactions.
“You will soon be crossing great waters.” – Another one of mine. I laughed really hard when I got it.
“Sometimes travel to new places leads to great transformation.” – John got this fortune. We were all happy he got it because he has the strongest reservations about our move to China. I’m not sure it helped.
“Your happy heart brings joy and peace where there is none.” – This one is mine. See, I am cheerful!
“Consider gain and loss, but never be greedy and everything will be all right.” – Not sure who got this one, but, wow, does this seem to apply to us right now. And, yeah, I think everything’s gonna be alright.
“Success is a journey not a destination.” – I think this was Allyne’s. Couldn’t agree more.
“Try your best to avoid arguing with your elders and superiors.” – This was Emma’s, and wow, did we laugh hard. Not ten minutes later she was arguing with Don, so I said, “Emma, what happened to the fortune?” She replied, “Mom, it just said ‘try’.”
“Past experience: He who never makes mistakes, never did anything that’s worthy.” – This is similar to something I’ve been saying to my perfectionist kids for years, and, more recently, I've been saying it about our move. One reason we are moving to China is Allyne really hasn’t liked her high school experience. Allyne asked me once, “Mom, what if we move and it isn’t better?” I told her, “Well, we can stay here for more of the same, or we can make a change and see if it works out. If we go, at least we’ll know that we tried.”
“Keep it simple: The more you say, the less people remember.” – Amen.
“To be eighty years young is more cheerful and hopeful than forty years old.” – I got this one and I just turned forty. Does it imply that forty-year-olds are not cheerful and hopeful? I like to think I’m cheerful and hopeful at forty. I hope.
“The simplest answer is to act.” – Don got this one. Seems appropriate to our current situation, and reminds me of Don’s favorite scripture about “acting” and not letting ourselves be “acted upon”. In other words, we can make our own choices, we control our reactions.
“You will soon be crossing great waters.” – Another one of mine. I laughed really hard when I got it.
“Sometimes travel to new places leads to great transformation.” – John got this fortune. We were all happy he got it because he has the strongest reservations about our move to China. I’m not sure it helped.
“Your happy heart brings joy and peace where there is none.” – This one is mine. See, I am cheerful!
“Consider gain and loss, but never be greedy and everything will be all right.” – Not sure who got this one, but, wow, does this seem to apply to us right now. And, yeah, I think everything’s gonna be alright.
“Success is a journey not a destination.” – I think this was Allyne’s. Couldn’t agree more.
“Try your best to avoid arguing with your elders and superiors.” – This was Emma’s, and wow, did we laugh hard. Not ten minutes later she was arguing with Don, so I said, “Emma, what happened to the fortune?” She replied, “Mom, it just said ‘try’.”
“Past experience: He who never makes mistakes, never did anything that’s worthy.” – This is similar to something I’ve been saying to my perfectionist kids for years, and, more recently, I've been saying it about our move. One reason we are moving to China is Allyne really hasn’t liked her high school experience. Allyne asked me once, “Mom, what if we move and it isn’t better?” I told her, “Well, we can stay here for more of the same, or we can make a change and see if it works out. If we go, at least we’ll know that we tried.”
“Keep it simple: The more you say, the less people remember.” – Amen.
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