Random

I've delayed posting because there's a great video I wanted to share, but uploading it has been pretty slow going, so it'll have to wait until another day.

By way of update, I was able to communicate to my seamstress lady that I would like to change the color of the curtains. I'm finding that having a husband is a great tool in awkward bargaining/shopping situations (as in "I told my husband about the curtains. He doesn't like red.") I really hate bargaining (especially when I have no idea what something should cost and I'm desperately trying to calculate exchange rates in my head at the same time as I'm trying to figure out how to respond in a language I don't really speak). When I'm not sure what to do and I just want to walk away without losing face, I just say, "Hm, I need to talk to my husband about this. Maybe tomorrow I will come back." Great trick, huh? And honest because I usually do need Adam's help to figure out whether I'm being ripped off or not!

Another cultural discovery that Adam made today as he was riding the subway (having splattered oil on his brand new khakis when reheating dumplings for lunch today): "As I looked at the pants of literally a hundred different men today, I noticed that every single one of them was wearing dark pants. Only 2 or 3 was wearing light or khaki colored ones." Astute observation, don't you think? We hypothesize it's because pants can get pretty dirty when walking everywhere in a city with such bad pollution and (right now) snow sludge. So I guess Adam's going to be buying some darker pants....

Last but not least, we've had some really great Katie comments lately.  We went to IKEA this afternoon and dropped Katie off at the kid play area while we shopped.  I was pretty nervous about how this might go as it would be Katie's first full immersion experience.  I did my best not to show my anxiety and just said, "Wow, this looks like fun!"  Thankfully, there was one helper there who spoke some English so I was able to tell Katie to talk to her if she needed help.  About an hour later, we got a call from the kid area.  Uh oh.  All the lady said was, "Your daughter is crying."  Rats.  All I could picture was my more exhausted-because-she-wakes-up-at-4am Katie totally overwhelmed and losing it.  The next few minutes could've been straight out of a nightmare....you know the one where you desperately need to to get somewhere fast and you're surrounded by a slow-moving crowd and can't get anywhere?  Plus they all speak a different language?  Yup, that was me.  I got down there and was slightly relieved to find that Katie was crying because she had fallen down and cut her lip pretty badly. (is it bad that I was relieved?)  The good news is that prior to the fall, she had been having a pretty good time!  Through her tears she told me, "Mommy, I even made two little friends."  So proud of my brave girl.  Now, onto the classic part.  Later on, she was telling us about how things went with the first little girl.  Katie said, "Well, she said 'Ni hao' (which means hello) and I said 'Ni hao' and then she said lots of stuff in Chinese that I didn't understand, so I said 'Wo ting bu dong' (which means 'I don't understand') and then after that we had a really great conversation!"  Crack. Me. Up.  I love that kid.  And the Lord is being so unbelievably faithful to her, it's blowing my socks off.  Pray we'll figure out her preK situation by the end of this week.