My new study space

As a mom of two young kids who love me, I can often find it hard to accomplish anything at home.  Even when Adam watches the kids so I can work on homework or do admin stuff, it's nearly impossible to actually do these things if I'm at home.  Leaving the house to do such work requires not only commuting time (which decreases the actual amount of time I have to work) but also a purchase of some kind (because the only places available to "camp out" here are restaurants/coffeeshops). 

Imagine my joy, then, when I discovered this space on the first floor of our apartment building:

It's actually the smallest and most tucked-away of three rooms in a kind of "lounge" area near the elevators.  I occasionally would see different groups using this space (old men playing cards in the afternoon, a kindergarten in our building used it as their rec space in winter), but I had always thought that this section was locked up and so could only be used for "authorized" people.  The other week, however, I discovered another door into this area...a door that was wide open!  I creeped in and spent a delightful hour in this sunny spot working on Chinese and replying to emails.  No one bothered me a bit or questioned why I was there, so voila! my new study space!

I was down there this morning working on some stuff (I'm really trying to use my two non-class mornings to doing a better job of keeping up with "can only do by myself" kind of work, like studying, correspondence, blogging, etc).  I was a little nervous at one point because a group of older ladies came down into one of the rooms and saw me.  They didn't kick me out though, they just proceeded to have some kind of vocal practice.  What better accompaniment to writing Chinese characters than this!  I have no idea what they're singing (I should've asked them), but they were able to tell me what a couple characters in my homework were that I couldn't read!

What we eat, Part 3

When it comes to fixing dinner for my family, I must confess I have always struggled to meal plan. I firmly believe in the benefits of meal planning, but for some reason often lack the ability to make it happen.  This was true when we lived in the States, but it became even more of a struggle once we got over here, after living out of our car for 4 months before we arrived and then having to figure out where to even buy food after we got here! After several crying sessions this summer that mostly centered on the question, "What is for dinner?", it became very apparent to me that meal planning was a discipline I simply had to develop for the sake of my own sanity. One of the graces I've experienced in getting back into a routine this fall has been success in this area...totally a mercy from God.

That said, here are some of the main dishes that regularly make their way onto our dinner table.  And once again, I must give credit where credit is due and say that I would be absolutely lost if it were not for this awesome blog. 

• Quiche:  eggs and spinach are readily available in the market and I make pie crust from Crisco that wonderful people have sent us from the States...although I just learned that I can buy Crisco from a website over here and also at a new grocery store I discovered that is close to my Chinese class.  Still more expensive than it would be in the States, but at least it's here if I need it!)
• Chicken fingers: back in the 'Ville we discovered an amazing recipe for fried chicken that we have successfully been able to recreate here.  The recipe had nothing to do with the fact that we were living in the Land of the Colonel but came mostly from the recipe in this cookbook which I got as a wedding gift.
• Chicken pot pie: a perennial favorite of Katie's, and again, except for the Crisco I use for the crust, I can find all the ingredients at our little market (except for butter too, which I buy at the restaurant wholesale market and freeze until I need it).
• Spaghetti: thankfully Italian pastas are available for a reasonable price at the Wal-mart and spaghetti sauce can be as complex or as simple as you want it to be.  We are so thankful for the parmesan cheese that was recently sent our way (although it is available at import stores here...at a price.)
• Pizza: just as in the States, pizza (in some form) makes its way onto our table about once a week.  I am regularly thankful for the restaurant wholesale market near our house that seels 5kg blocks of mozzarella that we shred and freeze in 2 cup portions. Pepperoni (everyone's favorite topping, right?) us virtually impossible to find here, but we have had some very faithful friends send us some from the States!

Some other recent big hits (at least for Adam and me) have been this Asian Lettuce Wrap (the peanut dressing is amazing), Chicken Flautas (using restaurant wholesale market cream cheese and homemade salsa), and salads in tortilla bowls (which make you feel like you are eating out at one of your favorite Tex-Mex chains).  As the weather has recently started to turn cooler, I've tried my hand at a soup or two every week, made all the more exciting by homemade bread bowls! 

That gives you a general idea of what we eat. About once every 1-2 weeks, cooking feels a little overwhelming and so we just order Chinese and occasionally McDonald's (by the way, they deliver McD's here!  Is that awesome or what?)

Sister Fun

These girls have so much fun together (most of the time). Here's a little song/activity Katie made up for them to play together.

"You have more, I have more,

I love you, Caroline. 

Doo doo doo doo doo, that's right."

Chalk

It's amazing how a little bit of colored chalk can make playing outside so much more fun.



Katie's cave drawings of nomads (she's been listening to MP3s of Susan Wise Bauer's Story of the World during my afternoon tutoring sessions)




Caroline's version of the Statue of Liberty, frequently on her mind thanks to a great Magic School Bus book Adam's mom sent over.

Doesn't she look so old in this picture?  Her legs look so long to me.

English Corner

Because we are native English speakers, we are regularly approached by people interested in practicing English with us.  We obviously cannot meet up with everyone, but we do believe that offering ourselves as language partners is a great way for us to contribute to our community and build friendships.  So in the final weeks before our fall semester of Chinese class kicked off, we decided to host an English Corner in our home as a way to meet some of our neighbors and offer an opportunity for people to practice their English.  It was so much fun! 

It ended up being three men (a neighbor, a guy we met outside one evening, and our landlady's friend) who became the regular attenders...along with their kids!  We had planned for the English Corner to last from 8pm-9:30pm, after our girls go to bed, so we could have actual conversation.  Once the Chinese kids arrived though, we realized pretty quickly that our girls were simply going to have a late night on Wednesdays!  So while Adam spoke Chinglish with the men (their English was not that great and it ended up being a great opportunity for Adam to practice Chinese), I played with the kiddos, which was a great chance for me and the girls to practice Chinese.  All in all, it was a very encouraging time...we feel more connected to people in our community and learned alot about Chinese culture too.

Enjoying the 'Hood

The evenings here recently have gotten delightfully cool, and we've spent a lot of them outside playing and getting to know our neighbors.  It's been encouraging, language-wise, because we've been able to carry on 30 minute-long conversations, all in Chinese! 

One night we invented a game in which each member of our family had to pretend to be another member of the family.  This is a picture of Katie being "Adam" and Adam being "Caroline," hence why Katie is giving Adam a piggyback ride.  It was a stitch.

Here's the Bean just being her usual cute self.  She is a riot.

Some of the kids who played with us that night.  They wanted to practice their English, we wanted to practice our Chinese, and we taught them how to throw an American football.  A win for all.



The long version

Most of you will probably be bored by the nitty gritty details of the lost passport saga I mentioned a few days ago, but I've decided (for those few who are interested in the whole story as well as for the sake of catharsis) to post it.

Last Friday I was getting ready to attend a women's retreat with some other expat women here in Beijing. In order to stay overnight in hotels here, you have to have provide your passport/visa information.  So (20 minutes before I was supposed to leave, of course) I remembered that I needed to bring my passport and went to the drawer where all those types of documents live.  Much to my surprise, when I opened the drawer, I found only Adam's passport; mine and the girls' were all absent.  It was then that I remembered packing the passports for our beach trip but never unpacking them.  Gulp.  Wave of panic, settling into a heavy rock of foreboding in the pit of my stomach.  In the next 20 minutes we tore our house apart looking for it....it's always fun to go on a retreat with your last minutes at a home spent in total panic, right?  No luck.
I took a copy of my passport and residence card and left for the retreat, hoping that it would suffice.  Meanwhile, Adam had our tutor (what would we do without Terry?) call the hotel where we stayed as well as the rental car company to see if they had found our passports.  Nothing.  By God's grace the hotel let me stay, and I was able to forget about the passports long enough to enjoy the retreat. 

Monday morning we resigned ourselves to the fact that we would have to get new passports and visas for the three of us.  Our tutor graciously agreed to accompany me to our district's Public Security Bureau (PSB, basically the police headquarters) to accomplish the first step and file a missing passport report there.  It was a little intimidating going there...this huge, landscape-dominating building and the knowledge that this is a place you want to stay out of at all costs.  I was so thankful for our tutor's servant-heartedness--not only was his translation help essential but he provided great moral support too.  The people there were actually very friendly and helpful, and we were able to file the report with very little stress (except for the motherly "Are you sure you've looked everywhere?" and good-spirited rebuke by the head police lady.)  Step one, done.

Tuesday morning the whole family headed over to the American Embassy to submit our application for replacement passports.  Can I just say, I love being an American!  Everyone at the Embassy was so friendly to us, and it was awesome gettting to deal with this situation in English and with a familiar protocol.  I think I'd forgotten how less stressful life is when you can communicate!  So, Step Two went off without a hitch.  Or so I thought, until I got a phone call that afternoon from the Embassy telling us that my and Katie's photos were out-of-date since they were the same as the lost passports and thus over 6 months old.  (I forgot to mention that on Monday I couldn't find any extra passport photos for Caroline and so had to take her to get new ones made.)  So, Tuesday afternoon Katie and I went to get new passport photos taken, and I planned to return to the Embassy on Wednesday morning to drop them off.  Step Two, almost completed.

Wednesday morning comes.  I'm rushing around getting ready to head to the Embassy and am trying to figure out how I can incorporate other items on my to-do list in the this trip back to the Embassy.  (Did I mention that the Embassy is on the opposite side of town from us?)  Since the subway station is right next to our Wal-mart, I decided to try to return a mattress pad I had bought last week on my way.  Ah, but where was the receipt?  Missing, of course!  (Are you detecting a theme here?)  So, before I could leave to go to the Embassy, I was determined to find that receipt.  Looked everywhere, of course, to no avail and decided to check my purse one more time.  As I was digging around in it, I noticed a "secret pocket" that I never use.  Might as well check that, I thought to myself.  Unzipped it and did not find my receipt, but I did find our passports!  AGH!  I couldn't decide whether I should be happy or hoppin' mad.  I didn't waste much time then trying to figure out my emotions, but immediately called the Embassy to see what we should do.  The lady checked to see if our passport applications had been processed yet.  Now, remember the new photos that I was supposed to submit that morning?  As it turned out, because our photos were wrong, my passport and Katie's had not yet been cancelled, but Caroline's (because her photos were up-to-date) had been.  Good news that we wouldn't have to get new ones for Katie and me, bad news that now I had to go back to the PSB to cancel the missing passport report that I had filed on Monday. 

I got our tutor to call the PSB to find out what we needed to do in order to cancel the report.  They said they would need an official document from the Embassy stating that my passport and Katie's were still valid.  So, that meant another trip to the Embassy.  I called the Embassy to see what I would have to do to get said report.  They made it pretty easy and told me that I could just come over any time and they'd put something together for me.  So, Embassy trip on Wednesday (because it took awhile to figure all that out).  And I never did find that Wal-mart receipt, but I decided to risk it and try to return it anyway without the receipt (Wal-mart takes anything back, right?)  I was once again loving America and its way of doing business...they gave me store credit without the receipt (which would never happen in a Chinese-owned store.  Wait, I take that back...the shoe lady did. God bless her.)  And can I just say that it feels like a huge accomplishment to be able to do a seemingly simple task like that in Chinese?  I'm not sure if I can really explain to you how stressful/intimidating it can be some days to accomplish simple tasks like...but I digress.

Okay, so Thursday.  I left early to get to the Embassy in order to pick up the document stating that Katie's and my passports were still valid.  I had high hopes of being able to go from there back to the PSB to submit the document, and so close that aspect of the passport fiasco.  I probably would've been able to do that if I had not gotten off the wrong exit of the subway and walked around for AN HOUR before I found the embassy.  (Those of you who live in this city can testify what a nightmare it can be if you get off on the wrong exit at a subway stop.)  I'll be honest...I was frustrated and feeling pretty much like a loser for the comedy of errors that was my life that week, since I seemed to be at the root of all the disasters.  I was really trying hard to follow the way of eucharisteo.  Some of the things on my list during my hour long "tour" of the embassy district: 
-that of all days to be lost in this city it was one of the 4 "blue" days we've had all summer and the weather was gorgeous
-that I had legs that worked
-that I had enough Chinese to be able to ask where the Embassy is and to understand the answer
-that God sent two English speaking foreigners along the way who had iPhones to help me figure out where I was
-that I had my iPod with Truth-filled music on it
-that I am an American citizen and didn't have to wait in line like all the Chinese people waiting to be interviewed for visas (oh, how my heart went out to them as I thought about so many precious friends who have stood in line at that very same place!) 
-that even though the Embassy couldn't reimburse the fees we had already paid for my and Katie's lost passports, they at least didn't charge me for the affidavit to take to the PSB

I finally made it home around lunchtime, not feeling very inspired to go to the PSB.  I had previously promised myself that I wouldn't trouble our tutor again and that I could go by myself to do it (so long as he told me all the vocab I would need before hand!).  But when he and I began practicing the dialogues I would likely have at the PSB, the stress of the week and the fear of looking foolish at the PSB spilled over, and I completely fell apart in a crying mess.  Poor guy, he didn't know what to do!  After a few minutes, I composed myself, and then sent off with his and Adam's prayers and our tutor's confidence that I could do it, I got in the taxi and headed back to the PSB to (hopefully) get our missing passport reports cancelled.  Thankfully, my taxi driver was super-friendly and kept complimenting my Chinese....just the encouragement I needed! More grace ensued.  When I walked up to the gate of the PSB, the guard actually smiled at me, and even though I totally butchered the pronunciation of the office I needed to go to, he figured out what I wanted (mostly because that's the only office there that deals with foreigners!).  After a few minutes, a lady from the office came out to me, and I was able to explain to her the whole complicated story.  (Just imaging trying to say everything you've just read on this blog post in Chinese! Much less detail and pathos of course, but still!)  Then, (I think because the document from the Embassy was all in English), she escorted me back to the office I had visited on Monday.  Thankfully, it was a different but still friendly policewoman working (I think I had mostly been dreading having to face that police woman who had asked me if I was sure I had looked everywhere!)  This policewoman had great English and said she would take care of it.  Problem solved!  (At least I hope...I asked her if she could give me any kind of report from their office as confirmation that the "lost passport reports" had been cancelled.  She politely declined my request, so I had to leave with nothing to "prove" that our passports are still valid in the Chinese system.  Plus, foolish me neglected to make a copy of the Embassy paper before leaving it at the PSB....more opportunity for trust!)

And so, that's the long version of this week's passport debacle.  Hopefully in the next week or two we'll get an email from the embassy telling us we can come pick up Caro's new passport.  Then we'll have to start the process for getting her replacement visa. We're hoping that at that time we'll also be able to check to make sure that Katie's and my passports are still valid in their system.  Pray for grace! 

All in all, it was a very humbling week for me. Fighting for joy and contentment was hard, and on most days and in the face of most of the setbacks my first response was not one of trust and gratitude.  I'm thankful for such a patient Father who "remains faithful even when we are faithless."

And to reward you for reading the whole thing--two of the cutest passport photos you'll ever see!