Summer Days

It’s been so long since I’ve written, guess that happens with three kids! We stay quite busy these days. My neck is still a pain, they took Xray’s on Monday to see if it’s bone instead of muscle that causing the pain and I’ll find out today when I go back to the doctor. She’s been doing lots of muscle therapy and has found a big lump that won’t go away with the muscle therapy, so she’s thinking it’s a vertebra that’s twisted. Fun, fun, fun. The pain has gotten better, but I’m still not able to turn my head fully to the right, so I look kinda funny when I’m wandering around looking at things.

I’ve been getting out quite a bit in the mornings, while Ashley and Liz are at summer camp and school. Ryken stays home with Xiaoshu and her daughter, Yao Lan, who is now working for us also. I’ve been checking out different markets here and there – basically any place to shop here is called a market, unless it’s a HIGHEND place, with actual air conditioned stores, then it’s a mall. I’ve been to some pretty cool places and have enjoyed seeing a lot of the local culture. I really enjoy the fruit, veggie and meat markets. You gotta have a strong stomach for the meat market, considering they sell the whole PIG – only cut up – ears, tails and head. It’s quite interesting. Anthony and I went to the computer market last weekend. I really don’t know how they make their money – there seemed to be a zillion of the same shops over and over again, all selling the same things.

We also went to Summer Palace last weekend with the kids. As much as I like for the kids to experience some of the touristy stuff here, it was hard to handle with them. The place is not made for strollers or the handicap – although there are a few ramps here and there. And the Chinese just love to take pictures of our kids – not just from afar, but actually putting their kids next to our kids, having them pose and taking pics. I finally got to the point where I just walked around saying NO, NO, NO (in Chinese of course) to anyone and everyone who was taking pics. It just gets to be too much. Liz is very protective of Ryken and would actually pull the stroller canopy over him when people would get too close. Pretty cute. One lady actually came up behind Liz and scooped her up and held her. That was too much, Liz was scared and freaked out. I don’t really understand what makes someone think they can just pick up a child they don’t know (from behind even) and that it is ok. Just strange. Summer palace was BEAUTIFUL and hopefully we’ll go back someday without the kids and stroller and enjoy the place.

The weather has been off and on – lots of rain lately and even cool temps – record breaking cool temps from what I’ve heard. One day last week, it was absolutely gorgeous and I spent most of the day at the pool with the kids. It was just perfect and only the 2nd blue sky day I’ve seen since we got here (how sad is that?!). But this week,s it’s just been rain, rain and more rain. We no longer have grass in about ½ the yard, from all the rain. It’s just one big mud pit.

18 months ago

I meant to post this awhile ago - just a little insight into what a major traumatic event can seem like to a 5 year old. She talked about this before the most recent tsunami in Java. Sometimes, Anthony and I forget that she was witness to the tsunami, until she says little things like this. It breaks my heart but gives me hope that she doesn't seem afraid or fearful when she talks about it quite matter of factly.

June 29, 2006

Out of the blue – in the car today – Ashley asks “what is an earthquake mommy?” I explain it as best I can and then she asks “but what about the water, remember, the dirty water that was everywhere with the earthquake?”….wow, we hadn’t talked about the tsunami in a long, long time. So, I explained to her best I could what had happened. Then she says “maybe we can take a rocketship to the moon and there won’t be any earthquakes or water”.

Birth Days!

I just wanted to post quick and say a BIG huge THANK YOU to everyone who sent me birthday wishes!!! I loved each and every one. It really does make my day to hear from friends and family back home. Since I know I won't be able to respond to everyone individually, I wanted to say thanks on here. I will try to respond to most, but I can't guarentee it! I haven't been on the computer much lately as I've been experiencing some rather painful neck problems and sitting here doesn't help. I'll be starting some sort of alternative medicine therapy tomorrow - don't really know yet what that will involve, but if it offers me some sort of relief, I will be ESTATIC. Another year older and what happens, I just start to fall apart - seriously - it's so sad.

Everyone is doing great. Liz's birthday is tomorrow - I can not believe she will be 3. She is doing well on her potty training and enjoying school. Ashley is in summer camp this week and LOVES it. They've both been to the pool quite a bit this summer and Liz can now dunk her head underwater, no problem. Ashley can swim across the pool as long as she has lots of flotation devices to keep her head above water. Ryken is doing great - still growing. He's not rolled over yet (just once from his stomach to back) but he's able to sit up for a few seconds on his own. He's wobbly, but it counts. My doctor told me he's all muscle - no fat on him. Although I disagree with her, it sounds good. Her response when she saw him to my neck problems - Well, no wonder!

I'll try to post more often and keep this more up to date, I just get so caught up in things going on around here...I know excuses, excuses!

Movie Night

Husband post:

Movie night! First movie, too!

OK, so it was more than movie night, since girls were both out of school/camp this week, I took a day off to go with everyone to the zoo. I'm sure Kimberly will post on the zoo, but basically it was huge, mediocre (but fun), and quite a few of the animals and/or exhibits deserved much pity. However, our Ayi, Xiaoshu, came along, and that part was wonderful!

You will need to check pictures when kimberly posts them, there's some great bare-assed pics of Liz walking around making a mess of her face with chocolate ice cream.

Any who, afterwards, dropped girls off, and Kimberly and I went to go see Superman Returns. Was showing at a nice movie theatre that also had Imax. Didn't see Imax one, since I don't really like seeing non-Imax movies on Imax theatre. Saw Batman Begins like that and just was kind of annoying.

So we went the opposite route, and got VIP tickets. Oooooooooo. Yes, we are special, thank you for noticing. : )

So what are VIP tickets, you may say. They're tickets for the VIP theatre, any more questions?

We weren't entirely sure, either, but they cost more, and that showing wasn't sold out. You may not think costing more makes it sound good, but when you're in China and haven't seen a movie in a theatre in 5 months, you would...

First went to find a place to eat, was going to go to Pizza Hut, but went outside to scout and make sure that was a good decision. Did I mention, this was opening day for Superman Returns in China? Because, as we were walking outside, not 50 ft from entrance to movie theatre, we got option to buy a DVD of it. HAHAHAHAHA

If you're doing the math, we could've bought DVD for $0.75 (I know this from, uh, friends. Yeah, friends). VIP tickets were $15/each. So could've gone to see one movie, or bought 40 DVDs. We chose the one movie. This time...

So went back to eat dinner at Pizza Hut, being the fancy avant-guard Americans that we are. Kimberly had a drink that tasted bad (I confirmed, being all thorough and stuff) - so we returned it for different one. Meal was OK. At end, got bill, I complained since they still charged us for the original drink! Eventually they brought over an asst. mgr. I explained I didn't want to pay for it, and that if they wanted me to return, they would deduct it off the bill (or similar words, with pointing and grunting). She explained that she had to charge us since we tasted the drink. What the hell!!?? I guess it's our fault, for not realizing the drink was going to taste bad before we irrevocably tasted it. I mean, then they couldn't serve it to someone else, right? What were we thinking, how gauche! She said she couldn't do otherwise because of her manager. I told her (very nicely I might add) that her manager was stupid.

Yep, China may have cheap labor, but they have cheap management, also. Don't panic too much about us falling behind... We've got many years left before they can turn the culture around.

Suffice to say, we are not going back there. If we're going to get bad service, might as well pay cheap prices. I thinking I'm turning Chinese, I think I'm turning Chinese, I really think so...

Anyways, then we went to see our movie. On 5th floor, next to coffee shop and tiny toy store/closet. Went in to the movie lounge.

Our little movie theatre had it's own lounge. Go in, and they have waitress/usher, who will pour you a glass of whatever soda or water you want (coke being ours of choice) and pick from bunch of snack on table while you hang out before your movie. Way cool. Couldn't find any chocolate though, and didn't have popcorn :(. Then it was time, taken in to our seat by usher, who took us to our very large black leather recliner with drink holder. Kick ass. Electric recliner too, very comfy.

I then went looking for chocolate - down to the concession stand on 2nd floor. Very small, not a log of people there, but lots of choices of all kinds of weird ass things to eat and buy, except chocolate. They had ice cream, but didn't want any then (knew Kimberly would hit DQ - yes, Dairy Queen - or Haagen Daaz after movie - which she did, went to Haagen Daaz after DQ service sucked too hard). Went up disappointed, and on whim asked waitress/usher if they had chocolate. didn't understand me, but I repeated myself. Was about to give up and tried one more time when she understood, and took me back to the table with stuff, and discovered one fo the containers did not have some seaweed crackers or similar screwed up attempt at food, instead it had individually wrapped Cadburry or similar milk chocolates. Awesome.

Anyways, we sat down for the movie, and notices the very loud air conditioning. How annoying, we were hopeful it wouldn't be too noticable during the movie itself. The theatre was small - probably only 20 or so people could fit in it, but screen was definitely large enough, and once the movie started, the quality of the film print was excellent. No scratches at all, nice fidelity. Movie was plenty loud enough, and seats were great for watching a movie.

Only negative was sound, there were a couple of times when audio would sound very echoey, like in a tin can or similar. Didn't happy a lot. Also, we didn't notice sound of the air conditioner! About an hour and a half into the movie, we understood why. They had just turned it off. It was getting uncomfortably warm by the end of the movie. That and the small glasses for the cokes were the only complaints I had about the theatre (Kimberly suggested next time we just take the two liter Coke bottle with us - hahaha - and she's serious, I love that woman). Overall, it was quite awesome.

The 3 phone calls I got during the movie weren't awesome, but hopefully that will not be a typical occurence.

That's my movie experience, I got to see Superman Returns in a theatre during opening run! Yay!!! and it was great!

In case you're curious, it was in English with Chinese subtitles. They also show dubbed versions at the theatre, depending on showtime. But we've gotten used to this, since all the movies we saw in Taiwan were done this way. Only difference is China dubs movies more often, but now we know you can find English versions.