The Lama Temple

It is a very rainy spring day and I am stuck here at home -- reluctant to make the 5 minute walk/2 minute tuk-tuk ride to the clubhouse gym just to get there drenched. And I REFUSE to ask my driver who is just waiting at the complex office (probably engrossed in a game of ping-pong with a fellow driver) for my call to take me there. Lately I have been spending my limited free time on the treadmill trying to work off the leftover-from-four-babies weight and the newly acquired Beijing pounds. Whoever said I would lose 10 pounds in 10 days just from being here was sooo wrong. No one factored in the amount of comfort food consumed in the adjustment period and the sheer delight one gets at just seeing anything HOMEmade American. The first time I was offered cinnamon rolls I ate three thinking I would never get the chance to eat them again. And I think I have even surprised myself on just how many OREOS I can eat in one sitting. (Chinese Oreos are widely available, affordable, and taste slightly different than the original -- oh know! I have become an expert!) I had to put myself on a no dessert diet for the whole month of March so I could reduce my dependency on anything overloaded with fattening, carb-filled sweetness. It was somewhat successful but now I'm addicted to dried fruit, which I didn't count as dessert, and I have discovered something that they call "coffee nuts" which is a very bad translation for the homemade slightly sweet and salty version of corn nuts. Delicious! So hence my new dedication to the gym. I haven't seen much of a change in my physique but it is very nice to weigh yourself in kilograms -- I haven't been just 2 digits since elementary school!

So here I am with some free time and thought this blog needed some updating. I haven't even finished our Spring Break trip account and April is almost over!! Okay here we go:

MONDAY:

In an effort to really feel like we were in China we decided to visit one of the many temples around. We went to the LAMA TEMPLE. (My kids were disappointed that there were no llamas thanks to their frequent watching of Go, Diego, Go!) Since it was during the Tomb Sweeping Holiday we had the added treat of seeing this still practicing temple all abuzz with the worship of the locals. Incense was being burned along with fake money and food was being offered up to the big golden statues of Buddha and other idols. Cory, who is a rule follower, obeyed the signs which warned against "filming" inside the temples even though I pointed out the many Westerners who gave no heed, so there are no pictures of the golden statues, the monks that guarded them, or the 26 meter high Buddha carved from one single sandalwood tree. Boooooo!

At the Lama Temple with lions and turtles

Kind of like at a carnival but without the prize, you throw coins and try to get them to land on the roof and you get your wish.  Ever an example of what not to do in a foreign country, Claire threw one rather ambitiously, missing the entire structure and hitting an innocent bystander in the face.

Can't you just smell that incense burning?

You could pay money to go inside the fence and strike the bell with a mallet 3 times for good luck.  We opted to stand really close and hopefully the luck would just hit us in the face!

Cory posing with 3 out of 4 kids on the OUTSIDE of one of the many temples.

The highlight of this trip came as rather an unfortunate accident.  I was standing nonchalantly watching the bell being rung and Alex came over to give me a hug.  He caught me off-guard and off- balance and down I went over a low fence that guarded a very old tree and landed flat on my back at the base of it still clutching Alex. The back of my leg is bruised from the impact of the fence 3 weeks later.  We don't have any documentation of that event but many a Chinese camera was pointed and flashing in my direction and I have a sneaking suspicion that it is a big hit on youku (the Chinese equivalent of youtube). Who wouldn't want to see a foreigner humiliate themselves in public?  I laughed and cried at the same time out of embarrassment and the pure humor of the situation.  At least that trip won't be forgotten.

Fortune Cookie Say:

Humor usually works at the moment of awkwardness

Spring has Sprung!!

Finally the days of bundling up in my down coat and winding my 45 foot wool scarf around my face are over!! Last weekend I went with some friends to an out of the way furniture market and got pelted with dust and fumes and all things that can be thrown around by a mighty wind that sounded like a train and one of the women looked at me and said "Welcome to Spring!" But as I look out my window this morning I see clear blue skies (thanks to the wind, the pollution has retreated for a while) and from my 3rd floor window I can see the magnolias and the cherry blossoms lightly swaying on some nearby trees. Quite fittingly in our backyard we only have dead trees growing along with the dead bushes with the perpetually dusty stone patio and fence that has a mangy, feral, born-white-but-is-now-environmentally-reduced-to-a-pale-gray cat slinking around our property. But at least I can enjoy the spring blossoms from afar. And as I've been told spring doesn't last long around here -- approximately 2 weeks of fair weather and then it turns unbearably, humidly hot. But all the stars have aligned and we are enjoying this weather as the kids are off for Spring Break, Cory has work off due to the Chinese National Tomb Sweeping Holiday, and it just happens to be my birthday week. So we have been using this time to get a little bit more acquainted with our new country.

SATURDAY:

The official Tomb Sweeping Day is Wednesday -- the day that all people should tend to the graves of their dearly departed ancestors -- but the holiday is observed Monday through Wednesday. But the government would never grant a superfluous 3 days off without requiring something in return. So people may have work off for 3 days but they are required to work the Saturday and Sunday prior to the holiday. Yes, ridiculous. So Cory had to work all of Saturday. I thought he was kidding about this until he woke up early on Saturday morning and headed off to work (in our basement, but with a huge, although invisible DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door.) Now what in the heck was I going to do with my 4 kids on a Saturday at the beginning of their Spring Break? My original idea of heading out to the city to enjoy some in-your-face culture was dashed. So what do you do with 4 kids that need to get out of the house? You go to the PARK! And what do you do when the wind is blowing so hard that you think it might lift your 7 month old baby away if you stay outside for too long? You go to the play area at the mall! (I know this from many a hot summer afternoon spent play-area hopping in Arizona.) And what do you do when the Chinese equivalent is an eclectic assortment of rundown toys that would never pass an American safety test? Well, you go of course! Too bad I found out they charged a whopping 60 RMB (the equivalent of about $10) per child after I had raised the hopes of my too-bored-for-home kids. In they went and we had a surprising good time.

Fortune Cookie say:

Spring is sprung. Life is blooming!

My New Wheels

So, as you know, I have a driver. And for those of you who imagine a man in uniform with a driving cap who clicks his heels when at your beck and call (which I admit I envisioned when I found out we had to have a driver while living in China) let me set the record straight -- it's nothing like that. It is a nuisance.

It is so inconvenient just like everything else is in China. It is inconvenient to share a driver with your husband who works 30 minutes away from your home. It is inconvenient to be stuck without a car when you realize you forgot to buy eggs. It is inconvenient when your kid's dance class begins at 4:30 but you haven't used the driver the whole day so you make him come in from his home an hour away just to take her on a 5 minute drive. It is inconvenient that there is one "NON-DRIVE DAY" per week (thanks to the Chinese government's efforts to reduce traffic) so you have to reschedule your son's doctor appointment and find another day to go search for the alarm clock and the vacuum (the two last items on my original "Need Now" list.) And not only is it inconvenient -- it's annoying. It makes you dependent on one more person which means one more person to schedule around, to coordinate with, to endure. There are 2 things that I am finding hard to get accustomed to here in China -- #1 the driver and #2 the money. (Don't worry, I will dedicate 2 more blog posts on those separate subjects later.) But this is not about the inconvenient, annoying, make-you-feel-like-a-15 yr old girl-being-driven-to-the-mall driver-situation, this is about the way I snubbed my nose at the shackles of dependency. I bought me my own set of wheels. Introducing the TUK-TUK:

Here it is in all it's glory. Since I bought it without the aid of my Chinese interpreting husband (another step toward independence) I have just a vague idea of its capabilities or how it works. I just know that it's electric, I can cram all my kids onto it, and it goes faster than the plethora of bikes and scooters I encounter on the road. I love it! Despite my efforts to call it "The Silver Bullet" by one and all, it is simply referred to as the TUK-TUK which isn't a Chinese phrase at all. It's mainly used for picking up the kids from school and it's funny to line up with the Mercedes and BMWs and the hundreds of Buick Minivans that dominate the private school parking lot. We get a lot of stares (which is typical anyway) but there is something about seeing a mom with her kids racing through a neighborhood on a souped-up electric wagon that puts a smile on one's face. And it's even better when Baby Cal joins us while strapped to me in the Baby Bjorn and the other 3 kids whooping out loud whenever we go over a speed bump. I was very ambitious the other day when the kids had a holiday from school and I thought it would be a fun treat to drive them to the local McDonald's. Well, I underestimated the distance and the windchill factor so by the time we got there we were windblown, chapped, human popsicles that not even a Happy Meal could cheer up. Thankfully I was wise enough to leave the baby at home. But I have a feeling that if I love it now in the spring-but-feels-like-winter weather I am going to adore it when it gets a tad bit warmer.

Fortune Cookie say: May life throw you a pleasant curve!

TIME MAY FLY BY, BUT MEMORIES DON'T

Okay, okay.... There is so much to say and tell and explain but so little time. I feel like I need to post something like one big run-on sentence of my life here but the practical me is still trying to organize it in my head so I can get it all down in one cohesive blog. But, this crazy, sporadic brain of mine is still trying to grasp the concept that I am actually living here in China so it's not going to be very cohesive. And heck, people just want pictures, right? Pictures of what my new normal is, pictures of my everyday life, information of what I actually do everyday, right? So, here we go -- my life in pictures. (A cohesive and toned-down rant of all things Beijingy will follow, I promise.) I think the easiest way to do this is to describe a typical day here in the outskirts of Beijing.

6:30 am -- I wake up to the sounds of church bells emanating from my brand new iPhone because I have yet to find a store that sells alarm clocks and my iPhone does not get phone reception inside our home and it doesn't get data outside of my home so this fabulous, must-have, 4S, Siri-talking iPhone is only reliable as an alarm clock, oh yeah, and as a camera.

7:00 am -- wake the kids up and dress them in THESE -- I LOVE SCHOOL UNIFORMS!! Makes for an easy morning. (This is Claire's P.E. uniform but on regular days she wears an adorable plaid pinafore dress.)

8:15 am -- head off for school dressed like THIS:

because the high, the HIGH is 35 degrees! And it sounds even worse in Celsius which is just 1 degree!

Leave the kitchen looking like THIS

Because I have someone doing THIS

And THIS
I thought I was going to have a hard time adjusting to a full time maid/cook/nanny but I love our AYI (which means Auntie in Chinese and it's a term of endearment and, boy, am I endeared!)
Load up our Buick minivan driven by THIS guy (sometimes) but sometimes I walk the kids myself but I have to brave a 4 lane highway that looks like THIS


and the picture does not do justice to the danger and pure terror of the Chinese driver loose on the streets with no lights and no kind crossing guard -- I miss you, Aunt Deni!

8:30 am -- Alex and Claire go to school HERE where Claire is not in kindergarten -- she's in Year 1. And Alex is not in 2nd grade -- he's in Year 3. (Those Brits are funny, but the kids were excited to think they were jumping ahead a grade.)

8:40 am -- make it back to our home through THESE gates which are heavily guarded from what, I don't know, but it makes it just a little inconvenient to have visitors.
I walk though THIS
weather-worn gate (which the landlord says he will repair when the weather turns warmer -- but he also said that about the garbage disposal, so I'm a little leery.) And you need a special swipe key to enter these gates which once I forgot and a security guard jumped the wall for me to let me in -- I guess those security guards are good for something besides trying to look intimidating in their Mexican Mafia uniforms. The gate leads to our little sad excuse for a yard which of course will be repaired in the spring and then I enter THIS
Which leads me to THIS

To say good morning to THIS
and THIS.

The morning consists of either hunting for some very useful item such as bandaids or a plunger and visiting one market to get the cheap Chinese food and another one to get American products that I deem necessary or I just WANT, but you pay the price for. (A box of generic cereal like "Fruit Rings" I can get for the equivalent of 5 or 6 US dollars and I haven't deemed the real Fruit Loops to be worth their $12 price tag.) And then I go to another market the size of a small bedroom to get the BEST FRUIT IN THE WORLD! Seriously, the fruit here is awesome. And then there is another stop to get great tasting bread at a bakery aptly named "Tasty's." (The weird tasting Bimbo bread just wasn't cutting it.) And that's just food. We came to China with nothing but our suitcases so it has been a challenge hunting down needed items for the home. One day I will dedicate a whole blog post to the IKEA shopping experience here in Beijing but I don't have the energy to tackle such a task at the moment. And honestly I don't have a sense of humor about it yet.

Or I might visit some new found friends like THIS
Or hang out at the freezing cold park like THIS
(I guess I'm the only one in the whole complex that needs to get a rambunctious two year old some fresh, crisp air.)
Or stop my 2 yr old from literally walking on thin ice like THIS.
My afternoon consists of tracking down beautiful, original, antique, or made just-for-you furniture in rickety buildings that are not heated and are really colder than it is outside. This is usually done without the kids but I just happened to have them all with me when they found this old, antique bed that they thought was a train so they climbed right up in it to the chagrin of the store owner. (But they really love kids here so while this is probably a very expensive piece, she laughed along with me and let me take a picture. THAT wouldn't happen in the states.)

Sometimes if I'm lucky I get a nap (or I pretend to be sleeping while my ayi is hanging up freshly laundered and ironed clothes in my closet -- love her!)

Or if I'm really lucky like today I get my first spa treatment the Chinese way which consisted of an hour long foot and leg massage (with complimentary rubbing out of all tension knots in shoulders and neck -- Awesome!) and lunch out with more new friends at a great Indian restaurant HERE

3:15 pm -- Then I come home right in time to pick up my older kids from school and brave the traffic on foot all the way home.

3:45 pm -- eat the fruit that I bought at the market but my ayi cuts up and has waiting for the kids when they get home. I think she can cut up mangoes and pumelos with her eyes closed.

We work on homework (where the kindergartners are writing in cursive and the second graders are learning fractions), let the kids run around crazy inside, break up fights that occur every nanosecond, let the kids play trains from a borrowed train set, or play hide and seek in the ghost-filled basement until Cory gets home from work and we sit down to a fabulous meal that was not cooked by me which makes it even more delicious. HERE

8:00 pm -- kids are in bed and I am usually soon to follow. Sometimes we flip channels on the TV and get surprised when we find "real" shows like The Voice and American Idol which probably are on a set schedule but one that we can't figure out.

Life is definitely really KOOKY around here but I think I love it. I am constantly saying THINGS SHOULD NOT BE THIS DIFFICULT!! But I read a fortune cookie once that said:

Difficulty at the beginning usually means ease at the end

We are definitely putting in our time. But every night I go to bed, look up at my high-beamed ceiling and feel really blessed and extremely lucky to be on such an adventure.

"Someday everything will all make perfect sense"

~ fortune cookie

We are moving to China! 11 days from today we are moving to China!! We are leaving our newly-built-just-lived-in-for four-months house with beautiful dark hardwood floors and antique white cabinets and moving to China! We are loading up our FOUR children and all our absolute essentials and getting on a 12-hour long plane ride and MOVING TO CHINA!!!! (Please insert a faint trace of hysteria while reading this.)

This whole process stared about 7 months ago. Scratch that. This whole process started when Cory and I were dating and he mentioned that he would love to live and work in China someday. And I married him anyway. He has since mentioned it a little more, dropping hints, and planting subliminal messages in my mind for the past 11 1/2 years. But 7 months ago the idea was reintroduced with a bit more gusto by my very adventurous husband and was quickly dismissed by his equally dull and unadventurous wife. Wasn't our stint in Berkeley enough culture shock to last a lifetime? And bear in mind that 7 months ago I was approximately 8 months pregnant and the idea was scoffed at almost as equally as was the likelihood of having another child. So in the past 7 months that followed I have entered and recycled myself through the 5 stages of grief:

1. 
   
   DENIAL: I refused to believe Cory was serious. He had threatened so many times in the past and nothing had come of it yet. And this was just like the time he had the notion of quitting college to become a professional golfer. (Oh, wouldn't that have been lovely -- he's no Tiger Woods -- thank goodness.) So I went to the seemingly legitimate lunch meetings with his boss and read a few online articles about living abroad with young kids but dismissed the idea as a fleeting fancy.


2. 
   
   ANGER: As time marched on and he had more frequent serious meetings with bosses and mentors at work and he brushed up on his Chinese to interview with someone in Beijing (while I was in the hospital recovering from my 4th c-section) the denial moved on to panic and the panic gave way to anger. How could he do this to us?!? How did he not know that "If you think this is the best thing for our family" really meant "Move us and die!"? How did he not know that "I love your ambition and drive" really meant "Slow down! My apathy and lack of motivation cannot possibly keep up with your ambition and drive!"? I thrive in comfort zones, I long for comfort zones, I HATE, HATE, HATE leaving my comfort zone! And CHINA, really?!? Why not Europe or South America or anywhere where I've dreamed of going?!? China has never been on my Bucket List!


3. 
   
   BARGAINING: This stage came in many forms. I first had the awesome idea that Cory could commute. He had been commuting the first part of the year to California each week, coming home on the weekends, how much different could commuting to China be? I even started thinking of it this way: If I do this for you, what will you give me? (I did, in fact, get my Mercedes after enduring grad school with 3 children in a car equivalent to the ones at Autopia at Disneyland) so moving to China should earn me diamonds, right? But I have moved on from this. This isn't an I versus you scenario, we are a team and there are things that Cory is giving up as well. And the fact that the relocation package will include a driver, a maid and a nanny with the added incentive that, and I quote, "spa treatments are a way of live here in China" I think that a good bargain has been made.


4. 
   
   DEPRESSION: Let's be honest, I keep bouncing back to this one time and again. I have this uncanny ability to put unpleasant ideas and tasks out of my mind when they are too stressful (case in point: we leave in 11 days and I have not packed up one thing in my house) so whenever this sneaky sad feeling comes over me I just push it aside. But every now and then when I think of the friends I'm leaving behind, not to mention the family that I have come to depend on and the everyday things that I take for granted, it could pull me down to the depths of despair.


5. 
   
   ACCEPTANCE: This was a long time in coming, almost as long as it took to get the final approval from Cory's company to go. And I knew I had made it that day when there was a hiccup at work and there was a possibility that all our plans would fall through and instead of being relieved I was disappointed. Crazy!! I am now excited for the adventures that await us and the experiences that will be gained. I am eager to begin this new chapter in our lives and already feel that 2 1/2 years won't be long enough for us. (Although I reserve the right to retract that statement at any time.)

So let the adventures begin! We welcome you to enjoy it with us (both vicariously and in person -- visitors will always be welcome.) But be prepared -- it might get a little KOOKY!!