Clip Show Round 2

So laziness has struck again, plus we've had about three different trips that I haven't recounted and it seems too late to give each their own separate post at this point.  That being said, here's Thailand, Chongqing, Lufeng Valley and Kunming in pictures.

Waiting patiently for our plane to Bangkok

New Years Carnival in Hua Hin

More carnival

More Hua Hin

Hua Hin train station

Up for sunrise

Eating sand

Riding the elephants

Feeding the elephants

Bathing the elephants

While they rode an elephant, I got to visit with her.  She must be the oldest elephant alive

At least in the pool he couldn't eat sand

Visiting a temple in Bangkok

More temple

We went from Thailand, to this....Chongqing, a city of 27 million where it's considered a sunny day when you can see your shadow.

This is a terrible picture, but it's funny because this was the last stronghold of the resistance against the communist regime so they've set up a special square and clocktower as a monument to communism.  If you look closely at the clocktower/monument thing, it says Rolex on it.  So-Communism, brought to you by Rolex. 

Friends in Chongqing

New Year's fireworks did little to improve the air quality

We were happy to get back to Kunming and see the sun again.  This is the kids at the Yunnan minority village.  

This is a Bai minority village

And a Dai minority temple

The real minorities in Kunming

A trip to Lufeng Valley (Dinosaur Valley)

This was some kind of evolution exhibition.  I guess we will all eventually evolve into multicolored frog-men

Out and about around Kunming

Enjoying and evening out with friends at Kunming's only Irish pub.

And since that photo brings me to last night's dinner, I would say I'm pretty well caught up.

Boredom and Lunch Tables

While I've encountered problems living in China these are NOT among them.  This is the first of a couple posts I hope to dedicate to the things I fear the most when going back to the US.  Boredom will be the first post, beating out my fears of not finding jobs, driving on a highway again, legal firearms, painfully bland foodand seasonal affective disorder.  

I'm not saying I don't have dear friends back home.  I'm also not saying there are no interesting people to meet.  I think there are just so many dear and interesting people that we have the luxury of choosing those who are exactly like us.  Having been homeschooled up until Jr. High, it wasn't until my first 7th grade lunch period when the girls started dragging desks around our homeroom to create separate tables that I realized I had to pick a "group."  In college it got even harder when I ended up being in both the Honors program and on the volleyball team.  The volleyball team tanned and partied with the basketball boys.  The Honors students clustered in the student lounge, studying and telling jokes about Descartes walking into a bar.  And I holed up in my dorm room and felt incredibly lonely, because you have to pick one, and those lunch tables just won't mix.  

This is the cool table...what makes you think you can sit here?

And I never stopped feeling like I had to choose.  Whenever I met new people, I felt like I was getting sized up.  Political views, theology, what I read, what I listen to, how much I make, what I'm wearing and whether or not my kids are gluten free.  It's like we're shifting the desks and dividing up all over again.  I'm just as guilty of it as anyone, having made my share of snide comments about everything from someone's taste in literature to what they ate for breakfast.  I even remember criticizing someone's favorite Thai restaurant.  At length.  Like there aren't bigger differences in the world that we need to worry about.  What I didn't realize is that if you stick with your lunch table group forever, you start running out of things to talk about.  You all shop at the same stores, read the same books and pretty much have the same philosophies about everything.  Maybe someone could take you out to a new restaurant except, oh yeah, you wrote that person off because they didn't know anything about authentic Thai food.  Mostly you just sit around agreeing with each other and slamming everyone who doesn't think like you.  How so-and-so must have spent a fortune on her dress ("sooo materialistic!") and so-and-so read Twilight ("soooo immature!") and so-and-so gave her kid a pop-tart for breakfast ("DOES SHE WANT HER KID TO DIE!?!? THE HUMANITY!!").  You have so much in common, in fact, there's no need to talk about much else.  When you can pick from 300 things to say that are going to be accepted by the group, why say the 1 thing that pops into your head that might cause a stir?

Why mention that you're lonely?  That you don't feel like there's anyone you can talk to about your real life.  That your unsure about your parenting.  That your unsure about your life in general.  That you wish God was more real to you.  That you really don't want to talk about all the benefits of breastfeeding.  Again.  That you gave your kid a pop-tart once and now you're afraid if anyone finds out, you won't have a lunch table anymore. 

I have three really good friends here.  One was a platoon leader that got a full scholarship to West Point and served two tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.  She's knows what she thinks and she's going to say it-lunch table etiquette be damned.  Around her, I don't feel like I have to pretend.  Another friend is from a hardscrabble neighborhood in Brooklyn where you couldn't pick a group that wasn't doing something or other illegal, so she's used to going against the current.  She doesn't spend a minute being insecure about her own choices and consequently doesn't waste a second judging others.  I feel no need to explain or justify anything.  Then there's my friend who went to Harvard and has a law degree and makes me explain or justify everything I say...because she honestly values my opinions and the reasoning that got me there.  She can't wait to talk to someone who thinks differently than she does because she knows it will help her to learn and explore and clarify.  It's the first time I've had to articulate everything I think so clearly and it's the first of many times I've had to recognize I hadn't thought through something or was just flat out wrong.  I actually have to think.  And be honest.  And be vulnerable.  I have to take ownership of my ideas and choices and feelings because they're actually mine now...not just "the group's."  Chances are that everyone won't agree with me.  And that's ok.  Because it gives us so much more to talk about.  

Which is why I really fear going back to the lunchroom.  Because I don't want to have to choose a group and I don't want to forever resign myself to an endless loop of breastfeeding and gluten conversations.  Because there are a lot of interesting people in the world with a lot of interesting things to say if it was a little more acceptable to just pick up your stupid lunch tray and sit down next to them.  

One year and counting...

After being nudged along by my wife to post a little something (just kidding, it was my turn), I decided to pre-emptively answer (just for fun...for me)  what I'm sure will be some of the most common questions we will be asked when we get back to the US later this year.

Question #1 "So what was it like in China?"

Really? Please. Think of something more creative, unless you have a couple hundred hours for me to explain, and you're gonna be buying the drinks. 

I'll indulge you anyway. China is a big, big place. 1.3 billion people and lots and lots of big cities and lots and lots of tiny, rural farms. Why people think it is all the same is beyond me. Just think of America: how similar are the cities and lives of people living in the hills of Tennessee with those living in Seattle? Well, Beijing or Shanghai are quite a bit different than Kunming. Among other things, the sun shines here. Think that's funny? It's not if you live in one of the enormous industrial cities like Chongqing. We visited CQ and it is miserable. If you can barely make out your shadow on the ground, its a sunny day. 

Kunming on the other hand, is about 10-15 years behind the rest of China in terms of development. For example, stoplights have been around this city of seven million for about six years but if you are on a bike or scooter, you can often simply ignore a red light. My kids are terribly confused. There are a lot of foreigners here and the year-round Spring-like weather makes it easy to stay. I've come to love it here and the people-foreigner and local alike-are so helpful. The wealth-poverty gap is simply gargantuan (picture a brand new Ferrari driving down the road next to a foot-pedaled garbage collecting bicycle ridden by a 50 year-old woman). I've never gotten used to that here. The guy outside my window right now collecting our community garbage looks 60. But nobody bats an eyelash.

Question #2 "Is learning Chinese (Mandarin) hard?"

Hmmm. Let me think about that one for a sec... 

Yes. It is. But you had better start counting your lucky stars because learning Mandarin is EASY compared to learning English. I've met so many bilingual people here it is amazing, and every time I remember how fortunate I am to be a native English speaker. I've done some English teaching here and as soon as you open that can of worms you realize how hard it is to explain when and why to use I, me, or mine or to teach a junior high kid how to use the correct verb tense in her second language. Even as you are teaching a given grammar rule, you are already thinking about all the ways you break that rule. English is endlessly confusing--even to Americans.

But yes, I can speak a little Mandarin. Enough to make locals laugh at me.

Question #3 "What did you eat/What was the food like?"

Once you eat local food in Kunming, American food seems disgusting, bland, and completely unimaginative (aside from the corn dog, that is pretty creative, and delicious). Granted, there are a lot of things I will never eat: worms, maggots, pigs feet, chicken feet, etc. though they are all readily available. Most food here is spicy, the vegetables are fresh, and it is simply amazing. Lots of rice? Yes. But you need it to tone down the hot peppers. Mexican food would be somewhat comparable in the sense that it is spicy and has a lot of vegetables, but the flavor is definitely unique. Most people here in Kunming eat boiled greens and rice or noodles with some veggies, often three times a day. Our helper makes the most delicious spicy noodle dish I've ever had. I really could eat it for breakfast. We think it is annoying to go out and buy food fresh from the market everyday. But Chinese people think it is disgusting to buy food and let it sit in your fridge for days or weeks. Hmmm...good point.

Question #4 "Living in  Southeast Asia sounds amazing. Tell me about traveling there?"

Sure, no problem. Imagine you want to go on vacation: Florida, California, whatever. So you have a friend take you and your family to the airport. So far so good. Same here. You are arrive at your destination after a two hour flight. Same here. You get off the plane and find your driver to pick you up and take you to your hotel...but now your driver doesn't speak English and is holding a piece of paper with your name (incorrectly) written on it. You whisper a quick prayer that this guy is legit before helping your wife and three kids into his minivan. You really hope he knows how to get you to your hotel because its 7pm and time for your kids to go to bed and your hotel is a two hour drive away. He does. I feel relieved. After you safely arrive and enjoy a week or so at your hotel on the beach (not so bad, I admit), its time to go back home. So again, time to schedule a driver to take us to the airport. Again, barely any English. Again, two hours. But this time, the driver takes us to the wrong airport in Bangkok. We obviously miss our once-a-day flight from BKK to KM.  That is how traveling goes, at least sometimes.

Question #5 "But seriously, what was it like to live abroad with three kids under five?"

Well, when we got here, a simple thing like going to get food was about all we could get done in a single day. When we got off the plane I could count the words I could say in Chinese on just my fingers. A few months in and after we were both working and had made friends with a couple of expats and their families, in a lot of ways it was just like living in the US. You work, you eat, you change diapers. With kids, you just aren't off hiking trails and taking night trains to Shangri-la all the time. Most of the time you are up all night because someone is sick, not because you are looking at the stars from some mountaintop in some far-flung paradise. 

One of the best things about being here is that we live so close to our friends and can walk over and just let our kids play. In the US, just seeing people you care about often involves a 20 minute trip in the van plus prep time. Here, its a text and shoes and the diaper bag and we are there. Its made me rethink urban living. I can walk five minutes out my door and have just about anything essential to life, and I'm in China. 

Yes, I said W-A-L-K. We've done a lot of that here. My kids are champs. My kids walk more in a day here than I walked in a month in the US. Even the old folks here can walk farther than Americans in the flower of youth. When we first arrived in KM and had to fend for ourselves and didn't know where to get food to make complete meals, it was like fat camp. We ate fruit, vegetables, and oatmeal because that was all we could wrap our heads around in a foreign place with some weird food. But now I love it. Can't even imagine driving again. We walk or bike or I take the electric scooter if one of the kids wants to come with me. Taxis are available of course, but buses are the preferred way of traveling if its just one parent for three kids. 

Living in Kunming has been an adventure as a family. Something we will always be able to remember and talk about and laugh every time. So many little things happened and so many places were visited that I am sad to think I will forget some of them. We've come a long way in a year from when we got on a plane in San Francisco. Eve and I look at each other all the time and say, "wow, we live in China." It's true, and its been amazing.

Why we took a quarter life retirement

I figure a year into our trip, it's about time to give everyone a little background on why we even came in the first place.  I can't speak for John, perhaps he owes everyone a post of his own, but I personally saw it as sort of a quarter-life retirement with a little bit of young life crisis and some gap year thrown in.  With 3 preschool aged children of course.  This doesn't really strike me as strangely as it strikes most, since most of my life has been done out of order anyway.  I was never one to follow predetermined structure.  Not that I didn't want to, lest you think I'm trying to paint myself as some sort of free spirit struggling to break the confines of societal expectations.  I won't say I love societal expectations either, but I've always craved them, like any good little neurotic co-dependent would.  Most of my life has revolved around grades and scales and stopwatches, but I'm one of those crash and burn types.  The type who starves themselves for 5 days and then binges on the weekend, or who gets straight A's the first semester, and drops out the next.  All told, I've dropped out of school 5 times, probably gained and lost hundreds of pounds and attempted to master no less than 4 instruments and 5 sports.  I've also written the first chapter of about 4 different novels.  Point being, I'd do just about anything for a pat on the back, which is probably why I couldn't stand the thought of NOT graduating college, even after I was married with a kid.  So forget the life plan where you graduate college, do your gap year, get married, flourish in your career, buy a dream home and then decorate a nursery.  We got engaged the day my husband started his first full-time job, got married 8 weeks later and were surprised exactly 9 months and 6 days after our wedding by a beautiful little bundle of colic, skin rashes and food allergies.  Did I say that?  I meant joy.  Bundle of joy. 

Anyways, since I was hell-bent on finishing college, but the only way to stop the bundle of joy from screaming was to make sure he was permanently attached to my boob, I wrote my final papers with a laptop propped up sideways so I could lay next to my nursing newborn.  Of course I couldn't stop there, because a walking inferiority complex is never satisfied.  Once the bundle of joy was old enough to start putting everything in his mouth, the screaming abated somewhat and I moved right on to graduate school.  Somehow part time turned into full-time and one bundle of joy became two and pretty soon I was the only student racing out of class to nurse my baby during breaks.  My husband had, in the meantime, moved his way from lowly barista to store manager, which meant he was doing pretty much the same thing (making sure you got your sugar-free no-whip, double tall vanilla soy latte in less than 97 seconds) only for 60 hours a week rather than 40.  By the time I was ready to graduate, bundle #3 was ready to make his way into the world, I was working way too many thankless and unpaid hours as a counseling intern who ended up organizing my boss' file cabinets far more often than I did any counseling.  John would leave at 3:30 AM to open the store and come back in time to pass off kids before I went to my internship or night classes.  I came back from night classes in time to put the bundles back to sleep for the 2nd or 3rd time with about 6 hours to sleep before they were up to greet the sun.  Then there was the fact that the resounding consensus I heard from every mom with 3 or more kids was that 3 children was where you descend into a murky mom-haze from which you won't emerge until all your kids can sleep through the night and fix themselves breakfast.  You'll apparently wake up after your first morning of 10 uninterrupted hours of sleep wondering who you are and where the last 4-15 years of your life went (depending on how many more kids you have).  One mom also described having 3 young kids as being the same as her natural labor-agonizing pain somehow tempered by your body's natural happy bonding drugs that it produces for these sorts of occasions.  I have had 3 all natural labors and, while they were beautiful in their own right, I have no desire to experience them for years on end.  Also, the whole dissasociative experience doesn't sound great to me.  Also, let's go back to the hubby's 60 hour workweeks and my graduate degree that gave me the opportunity to keep doing my thankless internship work for about as much as I used to make babysitting.

I didn't want to see John only while trading off kids so we could both work more hours than we wanted at jobs we didn't like.  I also didn't want to give up on work I know I would love if I got the chance to leave the file room.  I didn't want to miss the bundles' entire childhood because I was in a sleep-deprived mom-haze.  I also didn't want to give up working part time and never have a reprieve from the aforementioned mom-haze.  I didn't want to spend the kids' most formative years just "managing" them-making sure everyone made it through the day alive and fed.  I didn't want to turn down reading books and building block towers because I was walking the baby to sleep or dinner needed to be made.    

And like most things in life, there's always have an alternative.  We could have searched for an alternatives in the US.  There were definitely ways to slow down what we were doing.  We could have made a lot of tradeoffs, but instead we decided to think outside the box and find some way where we didn't have to give up any of our biggest priorities.

And I think it's worked.  John has had a chance to bond with the kids and has given me a chance to regain my self and sanity without mom-haze swallowing me whole.  We're a way better and more balanced parenting team.  We have the time and energy to take care of ourselves and consequently have the time and energy to be present and focused with the kids.  I never have to multitask and so I'm a mom rather than a manager.  We're so blessed in so many ways and being out of the US keeps us constantly reminded of that fact.  We've met so many amazing and interesting people and been able to see ourselves through the eyes of people who haven't known us our whole lives.  Also, it's 70 and sunny outside and I'm snacking on fresh pineapple and sipping water straight from a coconut.  In your face Chicago,

The rat race, the American Dream, keeping up with the Jones', or whatever else you call it....it's way over-rated.

Here's to doing life a little out of order.                    

White Christmas

Two posts in a month.  My Christmas present to you:)  I know, I've really outdone myself.

Mostly I just wanted to post a few pictures to complain about...

How pathetic our Christmas tree was:

How we moved to what the Chinese call "the City of Eternal Spring" and yet somehow managed to have the first subfreezing temperatures they've had in a decade and the first snow they've had in 15 years:

And how weird their Christmas traditions are:

1. Anyone dressed as Santa must always carry a magical staff.  Apparently because he has a beard they associate him with the only other bearded Western figures they know-Gandalf and Dumbledore.  We call him Sandalf.

2.  The only gifts they give are apples and they give them on Christmas Eve.  Because the word for Christmas Eve and the word for apple sound the same, so it only stands to reason.  The only wrapping paper they sell comes in 12x12 squares and is literally translated as "apple paper"

3. If you want to celebrate the Chinese New Year, you give gifts to people if it is "their year"  (this coming New Year is the year of the horse).  The best gift to give people? Red underwear.  Apparently whenever it is "your year" you must wear red underwear.  Every day.  All year.  So you need a lot of it.

The funny thing is, it's the best Christmas we've ever had.  So little stress and so much gratitude for all the little things, like Christmas pjs to camp out by the tree, 

friends to share Christmas with,

eating American food for the first time since Thanksgiving 

and our sweet neighbor who came over on Christmas morning to give our kids Sandalf staffs before he had to go to school.

That's not to say we didn't miss our friends and family back home...we love you all and hope you had a Merry Christmas!!

A day in China

Because I have a tendency to ramble, my posts usually end up on some tangential topic that has nothing to do with the purpose of this blog (not having to repeat the answer to "hey!  how's China?" to a gazillion different people).  So, here's a picture (with pictures!) of what day-to-day life here is like:

Our schedule differs from day to day, depending on my teaching hours.  Only one day a week do I actually have to wake up early to get to class, but it makes me have WAY more sympathy for when John had to open at Starbucks.  He had to get out of a big comfy bed in our warm cozy house to scrape ice off his car at 3:30 AM.  I have to wake up at 6:30 and it's probably easier to get out of bed anyways than to try to contort my body to keep it under the too short blankets (apparently I am a giant in China) and away from the steady drip leaking out of the ceiling.  Also, it's a constant 60 degrees, so there's no scraping ice off of my bike.

I do have to be a little careful what I touch and where I step as it appears most of my neighbors use their morning elevator ride to clear their throats and their noses.

Thankfully most of it ends up on this advertisement...they seem to have something against this lady.

I could ride my electric scooter, but I bike most days because it's good exercise and also because no matter where I leave the scooter parked, the garage attendant moves it to the farthest and most inaccesible reaches of the scooter dungeon.  My guess is that there's a little anti-foreigner sentiment involved since nearly every Chinese person thinks nearly every white person is filthy rich, so the Chinese people with really crappy jobs tend to harbor a little resentment.  The stereotype is stupid, but the resentment makes total sense.  The man has not only has to work 5 AM to midnight every day, but he and his family actually live there.  They've framed out a corner of the garage into a little room with two beds,

This is their grandma, who appears to live with them as well.  The mom is the one building a fire in the old pot

they cook their meals on a hotplate and their little boy just sits on a stool in the garage and watches TV whenever he's not at school.  Cohen and Winnie of course thought this made him the luckiest kid in the world, but they're slowly wrapping their heads around the fact that they are actually lucky to have a home/food/toys/family because it's not assumed that everybody does.  We had a discussion about homeless people the other day after seeing a man sleeping on one of the rails of the train tracks and I think their little minds nearly exploded.  ("Why does he not have a house?"  "When will he build a house?" "Where is his mama?").  

What doesn't make total sense is why the garage attendant doesn't learn that I always set off the alarms on at least three other scooters, knock one over and still end up needing his help to get out of the garage.  It would make everyone's life easier to let me park in the front. 

So, I usually end up biking.  The only downside of the bike is that when I bike, I get thirsty, when I get thirsty, I have to drink water, when I drink water, I have to pee, and when I have to pee, I have to use a squatty potty that has no door.  John thinks this isn't such a big deal, but I'm pretty sure any other girl will agree with me that it's a little weird.  If I were in the states, I would usually remind myself that no one cares enough to pay attention to me, but since I'm white, I actually am a novelty and people are pretty shameless about staring (or yelling "hello!" or asking for pictures).  I've learned to ignore it, in spite of the fact that it should be extremely offensive (what if I were to walk down the streets of Chicago staring and pointing at Asian people and yelling "nihao!"?) but it still makes things like nursing a baby or peeing without a door a little weird   

There's no way I could describe what commuting here is like, but I will tell you that in 7 months of work, I've been hit/hit someone else at least 6 times.  No one is ever really at a speed where it is really dangerous, but the most important rule of the road here is (and I am quoting a Chinese friend) 1. Never ever look anywhere but straight in front of you (this includes never checking your blind spots, looking both ways before you cross, etc.)  Basically everyone is responsible only for the space directly in front of them and you are responsible for honking perpetually in order to let every other driver know that you will be occupying that space.  Honking="passing you on the right/left," "merging into/out of the bike lane/sidewalk" "I'm blowing off this stop light" "I'm driving down the road the wrong way" etc.  This makes sense because the roads are so bad that you have to be perpetually scanning the road in front of you for potholes, construction pits, sparks and debris from overhead construction and open manholes.  So if you imagine that you were in a perpetually merging construction zone where no one was beholden to any kind of rules, then throw in a few of these:

And these:

A whole lot of these:

(and yes, maybe a few ladies hacking off fish heads on the train tracks, just for good measure)

 

In an effort to make things more civilized, they've put up signs prohibiting everything from spitting,

to setting off fireworks out of your car. 

They've also hired people to wander around and sweep the dust from all the construction into neat little piles and to sweep puddles into....other puddles? 

I'm not really sure how it works.  They also have people directing traffic, which means they stand around whistling and waving their hands arbitrarily while everyone carries on doing exactly what they were doing. 

As for my actual job....it's difficult and somewhat disheartening but it has its bright spots as well.  Teaching is difficult because I'm supposed to be teaching standard American High School content to students who have little to none of the standard skills of standard American High School students (critical thinking ability, the ability to infer anything, the ability to do anything that a teacher hasn't recited to them and made them regurgitate for a test, the ability to compose a coherent sentence in English, etc.)  They compensate for their lacking abilities through some very creative cheating methods and a lot of Google Translate.  The result is at least amusing for me, whether they use Google Translate and come up with sentences like "I am very enthusiastic and virile about math" or if they try to do the work on their own and write a question, answer and summary of Cinderella as follows me "Q:why does Cinderella loves with the Prince? A:six.  Summary: Hippy"   
   
The really disheartening, but far more meaningful work is the student counseling I get to do.  An 11 year old boy I was counseling summed up the plight of most Chinese children pretty well when he was trying to explain his relationship with his dad.  He told me an old Chinese story about a man who planted a rosebush and, very eager for it to grow, watered it, pruned it and watched it intently.  Finally impatient with its slow progress, he started to tug at it, and as it lifted slightly out of the ground and appeared to grow larger, he began to tug harder and harder.  Of course, the boy was the rosebush and, of course, the story ends with the rosebush getting yanked out of the ground and dying.  This is essentially the story I hear from most of my students, though some parents are far less involved, since they figure they are wealthy enough to hire a gardener to tend their roses.  Within the framework where children are essentially an investment in the parent's retirement fund, this approach makes sense.  The more money they spend on their children, the higher the return.  Their actual presence is not really necessary.  Some of my 15-17 year old students have flunked out of the school in their hometown, so their parents rent them an apartment in Kunming and ship them off to go to our school.  Of course the students fail to eat or sleep since they have never shopped, cooked or had to be responsible for their own well being and behavior in any way and spend their days and nights playing computer games.  When our school contacted a student's parents to say their kid was starving and sleep deprived and incapable of living on his own, his parents responded that it was really not "convenient" for one of them to be required to live with the student.  When informed that the student failed and would be unable to graduate, they just asked "how much will it cost?"  Ummm... he FAILED.  He did not complete his work.  He cannot continue to the next grade.  "Yes, so how much will we have to pay?"  The good news is, some of them can turn things around.  My little rosebush boy now asks his parents for what he needs, so his father has become less critical and gives him more affirmation and independence.  He doesn't fight with his classmates as much and he tells me he no longer cries himself to sleep at night because he's starting to believe his parents love him. 

When we're home, which is most of the time, since I only work 16 hours a week (yes, this is why the resentment of the hardworking Chinese garage guy is justified) the kids have gotten to be very creative artists and builders (since their only toys are blocks, legos, crayons and markers) and have also gotten very spoiled about having both parents home nearly all the time.  Cohen asked me why I didn't work as an inventor, and then create a food machine, so then I wouldn't have to go to work to pay for our groceries.  Then he would work as a builder and build us a house and we would never have to work again.  I felt guilty for a second until I realized that they actually have 1 1/2 stay at home parents so they really don't have much to complain about.  

China isn't a particularly kid friendly place-no neighborhood parks or forest preserves or places to go apple-picking, but we still get to take them out to the park,

Take them to see their friends...

or take them out on dates on the scooter, which they love.

  In some ways they are more adjusted to China than they realize.  The other day I said something cost 20 bucks and Cohen asked what "bucks" meant.  I told him "dollars" and was still met with a blank stare.  Cohen will also ask if we can watch movies "because the internet is working," since he might not get another chance for a while.  When the kids play, instead of playing house with their baby dolls, they pack up suitcases and go to Kunming and Africa and Hong Kong.  

The other night I was laying down with Cohen while he planned his building endeavors for the next day.  He asked where we could buy pipes and stone to build a fountain like he had seen earlier and I told him there was a store in America where they sold it.  His eyes got really wide.  "Really? A store that sells building stuff?"  "Yeah, they have everything you need.  Pipes, wood, tools, stone.  Even stuff you need for your house, like sinks and counters and cabinets."  I don't think Cohen understood why I was saying this so lightly because, to him, I had just dropped a bombshell.  "You mean they have EVERYTHING!?!?!  Like wires for electricity? And tiles and paint and glue? And pipes for the sinks?  And do they give you constructions (instructions) for building it? What is the store called?!?!"  

"Menards."  

He spent the rest of the night rolling over every 2 minutes to make sure he could remember the name right so he could ask John about it in the morning.  "Mards?"  "Menards."  (2 minutes of silence) "Bards?" "Menards." (2 minutes of silence) "What was it called again?" "Menards."  Now he draws pictures every day of what he will build when he can go to this magical place called "Menards" and has one more reason he can't wait to go back to America.  The other day he told me he was "tired of China."  Not in a whiny "why can't I watch TV all day like that kid" way, but he just seemed weary of it, which I am too some days.   If there was a way to take a quarter life retirement in the US and just enjoy our little kids while they're young, rather than remembering it as a stressful and sleep-deprived haze, I would do it.      

Friends who have been here for a while say you get used to it, but I can't help noticing they all seem a little sad and isolated and overwhelmed.  I'm not saying a lot of people in the US aren't like that, but there's just a level of stress and stimulation that comes of a bunch of people living on top of each others heads in a crazy, crowded and competitive environment that people's brains and souls just shouldn't be able to tolerate, no matter what they're used to.  I know I didn't live in the city before, but just in my commute to work I've seen more physical fights than I've ever seen in my life and I've witnessed several of what looked like total nervous breakdowns.  Not someone strung out on drugs out on the street acting crazy but what looks like professional men or women completely losing their heads, screaming, writhing, hitting at anyone who was trying to contain them.  The other day while I was biking home I saw what looked like a mid-thirties woman in a power suit and heels with her hands wrapped around a light post shrieking and violently banging her forehead against it while her husband/brother/boyfriend tried to hold her back.  Like I said, I didn't live in the city before where I saw all kinds of people everywhere, everyday, but there's something here that puts people on or over the brink of totally losing it.  This is why we stay home with our kids all day:)  

I suppose instead of one tangent, that turned into a whole slew of tangents.  I'll do my best to be more concise next time:)