Being a tourist, Part 2

Here are some more photos from our recent hometown tourist excursions:

The two people we see most often (and thus are certain to be the most patient and kind people we know to deal with us on a daily basis)...our tutor Terry (who moonlights as a tour guide) and our house helper Wang Jie (who had never been to the Great Wall before!) 

Can it be? A family picture where everyone is looking in the direction of the camera? 

Caroline was absolutely amazing on this trip.  This child climbed up the ENTIRE WALL....WITHOUT STOPPING. We would try to stop along the way and take a break and drink some water...Care would start crying because she didn't want to stop!  What a warrior!

More jumping pictures, of course.

After watching Katie get her picture taken jumping, litle sis has to try, of course. 

Attempt #1:

"Hmm, not much air on that one.  Maybe I need to focus on the build-up...."

"Or maybe I'll just squat down and think about it for awhile."

"Hey, I think I got some lift this time!"

Hey, Mommy wants to try too!

 Um, that was kind of scary.  Funny, but scary.  Notice the scared people running past us in the background.  They were saying in Chinese, "We've got to get out of here quick before that foreign lady tries that again."

We've come a long way...can you believe Caroline climbed all that? 

We made it to the top!

So proud of my girl!

Had to at least attempt a family photo.  At this point, Caroline is close to melt down because it's 1:30pm and she usually goes down at 1, plus we had just been accosted by a bunch of girls wanting to take their picture, plus she had just climbed the Great Wall of China at age 2!  Unfortunately, the girls wanting to take their picture taught Katie to make a peace sign in the photo...ugh, and so begins the ubiquitous two fingers that are in most of my photos from my previous time in China.  Why, oh, why?

And this was Caroline on the return trip down the mountain.  Out. Cold.

Flat Stanley

We recently received a wonderful package in the mail from our dear friends, the Welches.  Their oldest son was doing a Flat Stanley project at school, and they invited us to participate!  Boy, did we have fun hosting Flat Zachary for a week!  It gave us a great excuse to hit up some tourist sites we hadn't visited yet.

First, Flat Zachary got to ride on the subway.  Believe it or not, this car wasn't as crowded as cars normally are here!

Next he got to check out the Forbidden City...

Then turning around and looking right across the street, he got to see Tian'anmen Square!

Later in the week, Flat Zachary went with us to visit the Great Wall of China!

His friend Flat Katie even came along for the trip.

Flat Zachary had so much fun on his trip, that Flat Katie is thinking of making a trip back to the States to visit grandparents and friends in Louisville!  I wish I could go with her!  More pics of our family fun to come.

Being a tourist

A few weeks ago we decided to be the tourists that everyone assumes we are.  It was kind of nice to walk around, without being expected to speak Chinese.  I was more than happy to pretend to not understand... until we got bombarded by the paprazzi.  Most people native to this city are used to seeing foreigners so they don't usually gawk too much. That's not the case when you visit tourist sites where most of the people are out-of-towners and are not used to seeing ridiculously cute foreign kids.  Add to that the fact that at tourist sites everyone has a camera, so we literally got asked about 20 times if they could take our kids' picture.  (I'm thankful for the people that at least ask and don't just take our picture like we're animals at the zoo or something.)  I picked up a trick from another foreign friend and started telling people to ask Katie if she wanted her picture taken (the answer, of course, being a resounding NO!)  I also explained to people that it was because too many people want to take her picture, in hopes of educating at least some folks that we are not a freak show!   I try to be kind to people (even though it does get annoying) and have tried to encourage Katie that we are like ambassadors, maybe the only representatives of our home country that they will ever meet!  I did lose my cool though when a guy came up and grabbed Katie to dance with her.  He was a young college-aged kid and was just playing around, but I let him know in no uncertain, mama-bear terms that it was NOT okay for him to do that.  What do people not understand about screaming children?  If they start crying, that means they do not like you and want you to stop!  It doesn't usually mean that they are having a good time.  Tears seem to me to be a pretty universal sign of distress....

That was just 5 seconds of our whole morning, and we had a fun time together as a fam, enjoying the warm weather and seeing in person the amazing job China did in hosting the '08 Olympics.

Why are photos cooler when the person is jumping?

The best cab ride ever

I just had to write to you about our taxi ride tonight.  First off, the driver was unusually friendly and happy to see our children and talk to us.  (Some drivers hate having small children in their cars and will sometimes even refuse to pick you up because of them!  They're afraid they'll make their cars dirty....)  This guy though was really sweet, kept going on and on about how pretty they were and how round their eyes were, but not in an annoying "you're a foreigner!" kind of way.  At one point, Caroline was kind of starting to lose it, so Katie and I started singing "Little Bunny Foo Foo" to help keep her happy.  The driver thought it was great that we liked to sing and (I think) said that he likes to sing too.  Whatever he said, he busted out singing (get this) "Do Re Mi" from the Sound of Music!  In Chinese, of course.  Well, little did he know that Katie is obsessed with the Sound of Music, so the two of them did a duet of the song in two different languages!  It was a riot and is definitely going on my list of favorite China moments.  I'll ride in his taxi anytime.

Thoughts on language learning, part 2

Since a large portion of my life right now is spent trying to communicate in a foreign language, it's not surprising that I often find my empty moments drifting towards thinking about language learning in general and Mandarin specifically.  (In other words, this post might be extremely boring to most of you, but it does give you a peek into my brain these days.)

In some ways, I like Chinese because it's very orderly.  Many of the words make so much sense.  Take the months of the year, for example. January is literally translated "1 month."  February is "2 month," March is "3 month."  Can you guess what December is?  "12 month"!  Moreover, there are a limited amount of initial and final sound combinations, so while the sounds are difficult for most American mouths to make, at least there's a finite number of them!  (413, to be exact.)

The picture gets a little more complicated when you factor in that each syllable can be intonated in 4 different ways.  So that gets you to about 1,600 distinct syllables.  Tone is mucho importante because the rise and fall of your voice when you uttering a syllable determines its meaning.  Click here if you're interested in understanding this more.  Basically, it means that the word ma can actually be 4 different words, depending on the rise or fall of your voice!  (Actually ma can be around 10 different words but that's getting ahead of myself...see the next paragraph!)

Things get even more murky when you realize that a word can be pronounced exactly the same as another but have a different character and so a different meaning.  (Think 'two' and 'too' and 'to').  Then I come to learn that it can go the other way too, and one character can have more than one pronunication and meaning (like desert as in abandon and desert as in Sahara)!

My weekend in the countryside was a little encouraging though...at one point my friend told me that she couldn't understand her husband's family's speech either and they couldn't understand her because of differences in dialect! It made me feel a little bit better that it wasn't just me, but then also a little disheartened...if a native speaker can't even communicate with people in her own country, what hope do I have! Ha!
I've also come to an odd point in my study of Chinese characters.  I'm finding that I'll often be able to read a sign (as in, pronounce all the words and know what each one means) and yet still have no idea what the sign means!  This is because a character might mean one thing by itself, but when combined with another character the meaning changes completely!  So I can read but not understand.  That would be like being about to pronounce a word in English but not know it's meaning....not very helpful! 

I did hit a milestone this week that I'd like to share with you.  I took a picture to commemorate it:


That, my friends, is a grocery list.  That I wrote.  And gave to our helper and she actually understood it! 
It wasn't perfect, by any stretch, but it got the job done.  Woot!



Derby Day!

A word to any Louisvilleans out there--be aware that while the city of Louisville and the Kentucky Derby Festival might lead you to believe that the entire world waits in baited breath for months on end for "the fastest two minutes in sports," it's not true.  Can you believe it?

Maybe because everyone around else was completely oblivious to the Event, we I felt the need to celebrate, probably even more than I ever did when we lived in Louisville.  When we lived there, I felt like the rest of the city celebrated it enough for me!  (Although I would make these bad boys.)  Regardless of where we live, our daughters are both Louisvilleans, and just because they're growing up overseas doesn't mean they have to forget their heritage, right? 

I wish I could say I put together some kind of amazing unit study on the Derby or Louisville or horses.  But since we did not have the two-month build-up that is the Kentucky Derby Festival, Derby Day kind of snuck up on me.  For starters, our Saturday May 7th was still Friday May 6th in Louisville, so we couldn't exactly celebrate in "real time."   Maybe the Lord knew we were feeling a little bit sad about that, so he brought a little taste of Derby to us.....there was a horse-drawn fruit cart outside our complex that morning!  Why do I never have my camera?  Only in Asia can you have massive traffic congestion made up by taxis, BMWs, bicycles, scooters, and horses.  Love it.

So Sunday morning came to our side of the world, and for some reason we were all up pretty early.  I decided to check online to find out the results of the race and see if we could watch a video of the Derby while we ate our breakfast.  I always think the race starts at 4pm, so I was uber-surprised when, instead of finding videos of the race, I saw live-blogs that said things like, "6:23pm, Now singing My Old Kentucky Home."  What???!!!  We could watch it live?  I herded the girls onto the couch, and we got to watch the Derby happen in real-time (and were probably the only people in our city of millions doing so).

Pleae note Caro's horsey pajamas!

I was kind of bummed we missed the singing of "My Old Kentucky Home." Adam and I both really dislike that song, but it was always hilarious to watch all the drunken out-of-towners attempt to sing it.  (I say that as if Louisvilleans actually know the words/tune!)

Last but not least (and most importantly in my book!), I made a Derby Pie, I mean, Kentucky Chocolate Walnut "Run for the Roses" Pie.  Since none of our friends here had ever tasted a real one (and I might mention had to be informed that the Kentucky Derby had happened!), I opted to make an actual pie, instead of my usual cheat version.  The pies turned out amazingly (if I'm allowed to say so...and I feel like I am, since I always bought Pillsbury pie crusts in the States due to the fact I'd never been able to pull off a pie crust that was actually rollable.)  I'm pretty sure it was just the recipe that was awesome and had nothing to do with me.  And I could not have done it without the incredible generosity of some mothers and mothers-in-law who gifted us with packages filled with shortening and chocolate chips.  Click here for the recipe.

And such was our family's celebration of the Kentucky Derby. Maybe next year I'll do the unit study?  :)

A trip to the country

This past weekend Katie and I went with some friends of ours to visit their family in the countryside.  It was an adventure in every way.  8 people (4 of whom were children including a two year old, thankfully not mine), 1 4-door sedan, warmer weather, a culture that doesn't believe in air conditioning or in asking for directions, the Yellow River, fried flowers and silk worms and cow's stomach to eat, squatty potties (lots and lots of them), plenty of photo ops with gawking interested strangers (I know how Brangelina feels now), and a 5-hour train ride on the topmost bunk of a hard sleeper for Katie and me back to the city (without our friends to translate).  (I couldn't help but sing this in my head.)

We really did have an excellent time.  Our friends were so kind to invite us, and it was awesome to see a different side of this country up close.  I had travelled in more rural parts in the past but had never been in people's homes or conversed with them or eaten their food.  It was truly an honor to meet our friends' family...all of them!  Our friend is the youngest of 8 siblings (the oldest one being in his 70s) and the whole family still lives in small towns or villages in a province south of us.  I think we managed to visit all of them in our two-day trip! 

One of the families we met

Beautiful girl and beautiful flowers

Checking out the Yellow River

Lost.

Katie lost her first tooth the day before Easter, which added a little more excitement to our Easter morning. 
There's something about losing that tooth that makes her seem so much older to me...
wasn't it just yesterday that she was getting that tooth in?