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Life in Harbin as an American English Teacher
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Little Guy's 1st Birthday with US
Harbin
,
China
Birthday Boy
Wooohooo! More cake.
The cake
Actually we didn't pick his cake out the ayi did. We have been sick and were at the hospital yesterday and the day before. I went thru with monks and my bill was quite low. Chris was charged 4 times as much as me. Usually our prior experience with illness in China is that the foreign affairs dept. comes holds our hand and escorts us through the maze of medical stuff. This time we used the cell phone.
I coughed in class and my supervisor translated thru my students that I should go home and make my husband come here, now. Your students translating for your boss is always a delicate balance. As a wife, ordering my husband to take over my classes is equally delicate. I refuse to be put in that spot. I just always say, "No, he can't"
So the foreign affairs office called him and told him to go to the hospital immediately after reviewing his symptoms. Now my supervisor told me to go home and wait for foreign affairs to call me (via my students translation). After Chris finished at the hospital it was too late for me to go, so I went the next morning.
Cake with new chopsticks
None of this would have happened had the hospital chosen to treat our kids last week. We took the ayi because foreign affairs said the previous time that she was fine to go with the kids. She speaks little English but knows in Chinese the situation with the kids. For some reason, it was Friday, the hospital refused to look at the kids. We had been 2 weeks ago so we were a little confused. The ayi got in a heated debate with the doctor. Apparently they would look at Princess but refused to look at Little Guy. The word deaf and no and he doesn't belong here were thrown around. After discussion, they let the ayi take the temps. The ayi read the thermo and it showed fever. I looked at it too. The thermometer were handed to the doctor who looked ayi and said a number a good 2 degrees different and said there was no problem here, good bye. So we left. The ayi went off on her bike and procured some chinese medicine that worked wonders for Little Guy. Everyone else continued on the downward spiral of sickness made a little worse by whatever germs we picked up in our attempt to treat the kids.
We faithfully filled out our temp forms and placed them in the box each day. 3 days went by, no one called.
But one coughing spell in class and there was immediate concern for our well being. Anyway, we are sick. No one translated a diagnosis other than the dates we can go to back to work. It is not the pig flu. And Chris is not as serious as me, so he can return to work on Friday. He said he wanted to go back today, but they said "No, you need to take care of her and your family" Awe, how sweet is that. No boss in America has ever said that to us before---your wife had her baby (on Sat), great see you Monday-- is what you get in America. I have really found that the Chinese guys are unfairly stereotyped as not being compassionate. They really seem to bend over backwards to care for their wives and kids.
It turns out the foreign affairs office is down to 2 healthy people and so they really couldn't afford to get sick walking us thru the hospital. The remembered that I was allergic to everything and took great measures to translate all the medications to us and to make sure there were no reactions. For months, we had been terrified of getting the pig flu and villianized for being evil Americans trying to sicken everyone. But we really found that getting sick of course sucks, but that our bosses were much kinder and understanding than we imagined. Course we don't have the pig flu, so that may be why.
So anyway, back to the big day. We used our way cool software and were able to view You Tube for the first time in a year or 2. We had heard that there were alot of sign language songs on there, so we looked up Happy Birthday and learned it. It was very sweet.
How you get the kid and cake to school at the same time
We started his celebration by biking the cake and kids to kindergarten. But the kids were going on a field trip and loading the bus "right now" and the not so good English teacher told us to take the cake home and bring it back tomorrow. Little Guy was not to happy about the parting of his cake. We were a little baffled about the field trip. Yesterday we had discussed bringing the cake and there was no mention of a trip. We still don't know where they went, something about a performance. It is almost better to be blindsided this way because there is no pre-field trip anxiety for the kids.
So after school we picked him up and had cake and song at home. He was happy. We thought the cake was quite pretty, we had hoped for dragons or tigers, but flowers are at least peaceful.
They have the best candles over here, light the bulb
Then fireworks
And it opens to a flower of many candles
For dinner we served his favorite food so far, pork roast and boiled potatoes.
He got a remote control car and it has provided hours of entertainment until the wheel was stuck in Princess's hair and Little Guy wouldn't give up the remote or stop pushing the go button.
When we are well again we will take him out for a birthday celebration at KFC or McD's.
Opening the car the tie was a gift too
written by
carseat tourist
on October 29
from
Harbin
,
China
from the travel blog:
Life in Harbin as an American English Teacher
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Fall inHarbin
Harbin
,
China
Pig
This fall has been the nicest and longest we have had in China.
Fall
We have taken some nice walks around campus.
the Goat
The new library at our school- in top 5 largest in China
We enjoy the
Chicken
s.
Free Range Chickens
Chicken
Walking is like playing chicken with the motorcycles
But don't like playing
Chicken
!
Ducks don't swim in the toxic stuff, the floating balloons are nice.
We like people watching.
Padded clothes with split pants. Why must the baby freeze it's buttt off?
They seem to watch us too.
modern china
Woman knitted with kids climbing all over her
Warming up with some hot tea
The good thing about China is that is never the same place twice.
Princess got some
Even Wallyworld will throw in a few astonauts.
Blast off
Teenager
Sax
written by
carseat tourist
on October 25
from
Harbin
,
China
from the travel blog:
Life in Harbin as an American English Teacher
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The water cycle
Harbin
,
China
fall leaves
A few days ago they turned on the heat full time.
Yeah, we like to be warm. In Shenyang, they waited until 3 snows before the cranked the furnace and then it was never very warm even. One of the reasons we moved to
Harbin
was that even though it is super cold, they believe in cranking the heat so you are really warm inside. When we were at the consulate in Shenyang, we talked to one of the workers (they do outreach stuff to Americans living in
Harbin
) and she said that in Shenyang it might be like-16C and
Harbin
it might be -19C, but really when its that cold does 3 degrees matter because you don't want to go outside anyway. Good point, so we chose to be in
Harbin
where at least we are warm inside. My experience last winter was -16C your camera works, -18C it doesn't. Anyway...
Sprayers
Just before they cranked the furnace, (right outside my apartment window
) they sprayed something on the coal. I didn't remember this last year, but maybe I wasn't paying attention. I said to my husband, ew, what ever they are spraying we are going to be breathing it out the chimney. Sure enough when they cranked the furnace, our blue sky went smog orange.
So finally it has rained, knocking that stuff out of the sky.
Puddle downtown Harbin, far from our apartment
Lets just say things are bubbly.
Whatever fell from the sky, landed on those veggies. Can you wash dried veggies?
Everywhere!!!
bubble puddle
Teenager by courtyard
The leaves have turned and the campus is
Campus path
pretty.
written by
carseat tourist
on October 20
from
Harbin
,
China
from the travel blog:
Life in Harbin as an American English Teacher
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Ethnic Museum
Harbin
,
China
The restoration complete
Sunday we decided to visit the Temple/Museum on our campus. It has recently been restored and is free. I'm not sure if it is a Province or City Museum. The restoration was really grand.
Restored Scholars
I had been to the non-restored part over a year ago.
Headless roof accent piece-display of restoration process
They didn't let you take pictures inside the buildings before. Now there were no signs saying not to take pictures and the building ayi didn't stop us.
baby carrier
They have some cool stuff, it's just not displayed the same as at the Smithsonian, plus there are no English signs.
Ethnic cap
So it is kind of like being the archeologist yourself and figuring out what the item is and what purpose it had. I really like the fish skin clothes.
The fish coat
This province used to have "fish people" and they lived in tree Houses and fished and ate fish and even made their clothes from fish skin. One student once drew me a picture of his dream House and I was really impressed when he told me the Story of the fish people. I said that I wanted to see the tree Houses, but he sadly wrote the government tore them down on the picture. Anyway, last year my boss gave me a gorgeous fish people art piece. It is so cool it made of fish skin and shows a woman with a baby. The museum has quite of collection of fish skin clothes. They also had some baby carriers and silk shoes that I thought were cool. Little Guy liked the bow display and the canoes. The museum is inside a temple that is "not Buddhist" according to our students. The students say they go there to pray before a test.
Praying for good grades...Pre-K is tough these days!
It was Sunday so there were no students, but there were some Japanese folks
Re-actment or photoshoot??
dressed up in old costumes. Princess was really taken with them.
So overwhemled with the Blue princess
Not into girls yet
Bashful Wisteria & the Japanese Princess
She said "Why didn't I wear my Princess dress today?" when she saw them. We usually refer to her Princess attire as The Uniform because she wears the dress 5 days out of the week. The kids thought the highlight was the fish pond and bridge. They played on the bridge until closing time and the guard started chasing people out.
Fish God??
The fish
Looking at the fish
written by
carseat tourist
on October 11
from
Harbin
,
China
from the travel blog:
Life in Harbin as an American English Teacher
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Onions, the smell of fall
Harbin
,
China
The sign of fall in the treeless urban jungle is the appearance of vegetables everywhere out to dry.
First fall in China
My 3rd year in China and I do still find this as fascinating as the leaf changes in the South. My awe is the amazing places they will put the veggies.
bike parking
And how they are so symmetrical and orderly with the arrangement.
hanging cucumbers
The fall butterflies just love the onions. In Shenyang we had a first floor apartment and people would ask us to dry their veggies between the bars of our windows. Nothing like opening your window in the morning to a stack of onions.
Butterfly
What I am really waiting for is seeing the herd of chihuahuas (that yips and wakes me up everyday) pee all over them. I am quite interested in the double standard that the chinese think everything that is on the ground is dirty-yet they leave their entire winter supply of veggies out on the ground to the mercy of the dogs and spitters.
Roll out the green onions...fall is here!
I have been told that they dry the veggies because in winter prices go up and it is too cold to go out anyway.
park bench last fall
Happy face red peppers
The funniest thing happened at the store yesterday. Actually yesterday was a really bad day for little guy but I don't want to talk about it. So I went to Carrefour by myself last night to buy groceries. The check out line at Carrefour is the slowest on earth. The lines are long and people finally get their two seconds with the cashier and want to pester the poor girl about the price of an egg. Like she can bargain with them or something. Anyway they will argue and hold up the line and about half the time after waiting in line 15minutes they will walk of in a huff with nothing when the cashier won't change the price. So I'm in line about 7minutes into my wait. Always people come along with just a few items and try to cut in front. So this guy has about 10 bottles of beer without a basket or cart and wants to cut. He is whining about how heavy the bottles were. I'm thinking- you picked them up, if you want them, deal with it. So the lady behind me lets him in between us. He continues his whining. I refuse to budge so he starts to rant about how I'm a foriegner and can't understand anything. I think he really worked up and was going on about how selfish I was to not let him infront to set down his beer. He stands there a few minutes and his cousin shows up (this always happens if you let them cut). The cousin has more beer and a bunch of tea with instant coupons on them. Instant coupons always result in a big argument with the cashier, so I was really glad I didn't let him in front of me. So I wait out the line, probably 10 minutes. The guy and his cousin continue to have there foreigners are stupid conversation and the woman behind them is contributing to the conversation. Nothing like enduring racial prejudice just to get your groceries. They did analyze my purchases too. Little Guy cooperates for marshmallows so I had about 5 bags of them, so they had lots of fuel for their foreigners are fat and unhealthy rant. Finally it's my turn and the cashier pokes a hole in my dried red beans and they spill all over. The guy then starts telling the cashier how I don't understand anything and I'm stupid. So I'm packing the groceries in my bags (brought from home-Mr. Beer was so smart that he hadn't remembered his). The cashier tells me the total in Chinese and I handed her what I thought was the right amount. I had miscounted and was off by 5RMB, so they guy is still going on about how I don't understand anything. I pulled out another 5 and handed it to the cashier and said "Ming bai" ("I understand" in chinese) in perfect tone and looked at the guy right in the eye and smiled. He was so embarrassed!!! He just covered his face and started laughing and all the other people behind him started laughing too. He said (in chinese) "OMG, she understood everything I just said." I felt so vindicated. I didn't say anything else and just left.
written by
carseat tourist
on October 10
from
Harbin
,
China
from the travel blog:
Life in Harbin as an American English Teacher
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Spiritual
Harbin
,
China
The many faces of Little Guy
Little Guy is so spiritual. I think it is really fascinating since he is deaf. When he first came to us, we took him to a temple and he was so serious in praying to all the Buddas. Since then, we have seen him pray to almost any statue. Our least fav is when he insists to bow down at all the Mao's all over our campus.
Anyway at dinner we always hold hands and say the simple Madeline grace-We love our bread, we love our butter, but most of all we love each other. We have learned it in sign as well. Little Guy loves this part of the meal. He actually hates mealtime, so this usually is the only part of the meal that he is happy. I still don't know how someone can be so picky, but anyway...
photobooth girls
So, last night he was looking at his little car book. I saw him touch one of the cars and sign the Madeline prayer.
I was really amazed that he had made the connection to the fact that we are praying at meal time. We have never attempted to explain it to him, it's just something we do. And I was in total shock that he had the insight to pray for a car.
he loves cars
written by
carseat tourist
on October 6
from
Harbin
,
China
from the travel blog:
Life in Harbin as an American English Teacher
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National Day
Harbin
,
China
Yeah, I'm almost an American
Due to the fear of pig flu, the cut our National Day Holiday to 1 day. We celebrated by picking up Little Guy's custom made clothes. Since the addition of him to the family, shopping has become quite a chore. He came with the clothes on his back, so he has needed a complete wardrobe. We have been able to pick up somethings at Wallyworld and
Carrefour
, but he seems to have a shortage of pants. Rather than spend a half a day traveling by bus looking for the specialty area of boy's clothing in
Harbin
we decided to just have them made at the closest seamstress'. It actually is about the same cost as retail, if not a little cheaper. I sew back in the States, but have no machine here. Little Guy had 3 pairs of pants and some overalls made. Princess is so lucky to get hand-me downs that she hardly ever needs clothes, but she likes to match her brother. So she had a skirt made from the pant leg of Teenager's cut-off jeans with a matching patch to Little Guy's Obama'lls.
Checking each other out-vest is handme down handmade for Teenager
We watched the parade and gala on tv and were amazed at the ability for an open air limo for a world leader.
Back at class, the next day the students gave lots of feedback of their feeling of the celebration. They thought that the parade was very "serious" and the gala was "easygoing". They really like to share their feelings about the Western reporting of the events.
The parade didn't have clowns, but our house does!
Getting into the full handstand-don't drop him!
The best news is that last night was the first night we heard Little Guy laugh in his sleep. Quite often he wakes us up crying in his sleep. It is so sad because he won't open eyes for us to sign comforting things to him and since he can't hear, there is not much we can do. So we were really happy that he woke us up laughing in his sleep.
National Day Wear
written by
carseat tourist
on October 5
from
Harbin
,
China
from the travel blog:
Life in Harbin as an American English Teacher
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Mooncakes Baby
Harbin
,
China
Mooncake baby
It's that time of year again. We have received our first gift of mooncakes.
Our favorite foreign affairs guy has retired and the first evidence of change has been the quality and quantity of mooncakes has decreased. Last year we got a beautiful elaborate box with about a dozen mooncake surprises. I like the box best, I'm not a big fan of mystery food, so the reduction was not heartbreaking, I'm just worried about where else this guy is going to try to cut corners. This year we got 6 mooncakes in a so-so box. Actually we get 2 boxes each year from foriegn affairs since we are two teachers. Sometimes students give us mooncakes too. They usually give one little mooncake and it comes in the cutest box.
Mid-Autumn Festival is falling on the same day as National Day so we only get one day off. The first year in Shenyang we were required to give a performance for the school's celebration. They wanted us to sing or dance and I'm not a sing and dance kind of gal. We gave a little speach with our fellow foreign teacher that included some very simple jokes. The brave Chris tried to sing with Princess the "milk song". It is a girl scout camp favorite and very cute. Princess was 3. Before going on stage the host took Princess (who was quite bored and being silly after being in the audience for 2 hours) aside and told her that if she sang onstage that afterwords she would get mooncakes. That triggered a nightmare, the night before Teenager came back from school and had told Princess that someone had bet her and her English teacher 100RMB to eat a mooncake. Apparently it was so distasteful that money loving teenager couldn't complete the task. She went on to tell gullible Princess just how horrible she thought mooncakes were. So Princess hearing that she will get mooncakes for going onstage begins to go into super naughty mode the second they hand her the microphone. She doesn't sing but loudly talks jibber-jabber and starts spinning and doing whatever else she felt like. Poor Chris tried to sing but it was a horribly embarrassing scene witnessed by 4000 of our students.
But since we have adopted Little Guy we don't want to diminish his culture. So we graciously accepted the mooncakes and with full fanfare opened up the boxes. Little Guy was pretty excited. He is the worlds pickiest eater and if he liked mooncakes I was going to rush out to the market and by a years supply.
Not loving the mooncake
Well, lets just say he is one of the family and there was no need to go shopping.
written by
carseat tourist
on September 29
from
Harbin
,
China
from the travel blog:
Life in Harbin as an American English Teacher
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Easter Eggs Take 3
Harbin
,
China
Jello, Grape Juice, and tea
Third times the charm...
1st try
Before actual Easter we died eggs the "natural way" following all the tips online for people not wanting to use commercially available egg kits. I think those people are personally not looking at the globalization of holidays. Egg kits create jobs in China! They aren't sold in China, but I'm sure that somebody is feeding their family cause they make or package egg dyeing kits. Anyway, those haters of the commercial product say that you can color eggs with grape juice or tea or some other ways. Well, those folks didn't use brown eggs I guess. Why would you use white eggs if you were against commercial stuff, again I don't see their logic. We tried their tips and failed horribly. So we thought what stains clothes that we have on hand in China. Hmmm, jello. Some people had left China for life back in the states and had given us a 2 year supply of cherry jello. They tastes like cough syrup so I think previous repatriates had passed them when they left and that no doubt we will be doing the same. So we tried dying the eggs in cherry jello... well it did create a slightly pink egg.
The day after Easter, my brother's Easter package arrived containing the real kit! Redo, success, happiness!
So many colors
Take 2
My brother was so kind and generous that he sent a couple of kits that we saved one. We were thinking about when we adopted Little Guy that we'd take the kit and dye eggs and take them to the orphanage. Our experience in Shenyang SWI volunteering was that the kids got 1 hard boiled egg a day and that egg was like gold to them. We thought how wonderful it would be to show up with a whole bunch of colored eggs for the kids instead of candy. Well, we ended up in a hotel room in Hefei and were shocked when we found out we were going to be allowed in the SWI much less trying to figure out how to boil eggs, dye them and then transport them. In retrospect it could have been done- all the room come with the electric teapot so you could boil eggs in that, then dye them in the water cups, but anyway, we didn't do that.
Little Guy is the pickiest eater in the world. The foster mom said she kept him alive by force feeding him a hard boiled egg everyday for breakfast. Personally, I think maybe it would have been nice if she would have worked on getting some solid food in him. But the egg was what she could do and she did have 6 other hungry kids to feed so no doubt Mr. Picky Eater was lucky that she cared enough to force that down his throat. Our situation is that we want him to like food so we thought maybe dyeing eggs would make him like eggs.
Take 3... he was not at all sure about turning his egg blue! He may not like eggs but he was in the orphanage long enough to value that you do not play with that egg. Princess was a pro by this time and was having a blast playing with her eggs. Little Guy finally decided that it was cool. If fact he even got his hands dirty! Progress.
Getting his hands dirty
Take 3
Both were equally happy to peel and eat the eggs. We are not sure who ate their eggs because under one of the chairs was a big blob of spit out egg. Oh well...
On a separate front all our light colored clothes have been died yellow. We bought Little Guy a yellow shirt and threw it in the machine with the lights. We don't have a drier. So now our apartment has these clothes hanging to dry everywhere and it looks like a dog came in here and peed all over everything. Lovely...my favorite is the now yellow "I heart China" Sometimes that's how I feel about this place. Before we came and lived here we had all these dreams and ideas and now I sort of feel that they have been trampled on, spit on, and then had some chihuahua pee all over them.
written by
carseat tourist
on September 27
from
Harbin
,
China
from the travel blog:
Life in Harbin as an American English Teacher
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comment on this...
Who's Your Daddy
Harbin
,
China
Well, we thought we were making progress with sign language. We thought Little Guy had mastered the sign for Mom and Pop at least. Maybe not! Today I was doing a image search online and this guys picture is one of my choices. Little Guy was sitting on my lap and immediately pointed to the picture and signed Dad.
Littles Guy's thinks this is his Daddy
Hmm...maybe he thinks that sign is for any white guy with red facial hair.
On Skype, he makes the grandpa sign when he see's his grandpa. It was very interesting that on the last video call he touched Chris's nose and Princess's nose and pointed to his grandpa's nose and indicated that they all matched. He kind of curled up in after that. He doesn't seem to be interested in Chinese folk's faces. I think he would freak out if I showed him that his nose was the same as some of my students. I'm quite sure my students would freak if I tried this anyway.
Princess is on the other end of the spectrum with her identity.
All the boys in the class
All the girls in the class
She is blond in a sea of dark haired people. If she sees anyone remotely like our features she just is so fascinated. "Look, they have honey colored hair". She just looks at them with such awe.
Little Guy has been learning the sign alphabet with some luck. He can sign his name now. He wants us to sign any words he sees on tv (like the movie credits), so he does get that the letters correspond to the signs for letters. We have an old fashion label maker and he really likes feeling the letters and then signing them.
written by
carseat tourist
on September 24
from
Harbin
,
China
from the travel blog:
Life in Harbin as an American English Teacher
Send a Compliment
comment on this...
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