Holiday thoughts

After a few people expressed curiosity in our living situation here in Beijing, I thought I would post a little bit about where we live. 

Location, location, location!! Our apartment is not that fabulous (the school pays our rent though, so I'm not complaining!) but the location is really convenient. We are a thirty second walk from a subway station and right next to a bus stop, which I didn't fully appreciate until the weather got cold. Once we come out of the warm subway tunnels, it doesn't take very long to get home and we are right on a main road which makes catching taxi's pretty easy. Shopping is also pretty convenient, there is a huge mall across the street and I live right next door to a grocery store and if I need imported stuff, it's only a 15 minute walk to get to the import store. 

As far as our actual apartment goes, it could be much, much worse. We have a real western toilet, not a squatter (thank heavens!! That might have been a deal breaker for me. I might have turned around and just headed home if we had a squatter. So far, we've avoided using them in public restrooms and hopefully it stays that way. Using those takes some practice!) and a we have a real bathtub instead of just a drain on the bathroom floor. 

Our kitchen sometimes feels like it belongs in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs because the counters are so low and the fridge is teeny but you get used to it.

We have three bedrooms, which is plenty of space for our little family. 

Our "balcony"

This is W's little play area, I put down some foam puzzle pieces to make a softer place for him to sit and play with his toys. We have only wood or tile on every floor which is not the most baby friendly stuff!

W was following me everywhere in his walker while I was taking pictures, it was so cute! He always gets stuck in this doorway because the walker won't fit.

Some Christmas thoughts:

I never really thought I would miss the "commercialism" of Christmastime, but I actually do. Since Christmas isn't a holiday here, there really are no indicators of the season. No music, no Christmas sales or commercials, no decorations, no lights, and no snow. So I've been playing my Christmas playlist constantly to remind myself that even though it doesn't feel like it, it's still the holiday season. So next time you're tempted to groan when you hear "Jingle Bells" on the radio for the hundredth time, just embrace it. It could be worse! 

We did find one stall at a market that was selling Christmas decor, but it was all very cheapy and corny. And it had Easter, Halloween and Valentine's stuff all mixed in because they can't really tell our holidays apart very well. Makes sense since they don't celebrate any of them. It probably all looks the same to them. I got a good giggle out of seeing gory Halloween masks next to the snow flakes and mini Christmas trees!

Since Christmas isn't a holiday here, Joel only gets one day off from work. But for Chinese New Year, he'll have a four week break. I think we're going to wait to give each other our Christmas gifts until then so we aren't planning on giving each other anything on Christmas day. I think this will be a unique chance to really only focus on the meaning of the holiday since we won't have any of the usual Christmas chaos to navigate or gifts to buy and give. I'm actually really excited to have a quiet Christmas with just the three of us. It will be hard to not be with our families though. We definitely miss them and we're sad that we aren't home for W's first Christmas. 

It's also been freezing here. It doesn't seem fair to have all the coldness of winter without the pretty snow. (Snow is pretty infrequent here because of the elevation but we did get a little bit earlier in the season and it was chaos because no one knew how to drive in it.) This week it's barely gotten above 15 degrees in the day time and it's a damp, wet cold and the wind blows like crazy. Our radiators have had a hard time keeping up, we've had to wear a few extra layers around the house this week.

We both have callings in our branch now, too. Joel is in the Elder's Quorum presidency and I get to be in the nursery with six little cuties. There are a couple kids that speak Chinese and English and sometimes they will ask for something in Chinese and I'll have no idea what they're saying! So I have to tell them to ask me in English. Most of those toddlers know way more Chinese than I do. They're super cute. 

Also, our neighbor just unexpectedly moved out so we inherited a BUNCH of stuff. Bedding, dishes, and silverware. We were sad to see her move but happy to give her stuff a home. We now have more than 4 forks which is fabulous. Now I just need more bowls. We only have two. I just hate to spend money on things that we will only use for the next year and a half! But, bowls are pretty important when you have a husband that loves cereal as much as mine does so I should probably just bite the bullet and buy a few more.

That's pretty much it for now. I hope you have a Merry Christmas!!

Happy 7 months my little Will

This is going to be a mushy mommy post, just so you know. If you decide to keep reading, don't say I didn't warn you!

Tomorrow Willie-boy turns 7 months. He has been our greatest joy and our funnest adventure. I know everyone always says that kids grow up so fast but you don't really believe it until you watch it happen every day. Watching our helpless little baby start to develop into an increasingly independent human with feelings and emotions has kept us captivated. I can't help but smile when he pushes my hands away because he wants to do something himself. If I give him a bottle, he only wants it if he can hold it. He stops drinking if I hold it for him. And there are times when he just does not want to be held, he would rather sit on the floor by himself and play with his toys.

It's so fun to see him try to communicate with us in ways other than crying. He reaches for things that he wants and he reaches for us when he wants to be picked up or held. I love it when his chubby little arms stick out and he sits there with an expectant look on his face. I think my favorite time is right after he wakes up from a nap. He gets so excited when he sees me walk in the door, like a puppy when someone comes home from work. When I scoop him out of his crib, his hands immediately get buried in my hair and his face goes straight into my neck for a few minutes before he's ready to play.

Before I was a mom, I always thought it was a little silly to teach babies sign language. But I have learned the error of my ways!! I think it's a great idea to try and give a baby who can't talk a way to express themselves. (Thanks mom for the encouragement!) I have started trying to teach Will a few signs and I love it. So far, we have only successfully learned "milk." I made the sign for milk before I nursed him or gave him a bottle and now I'm pretty sure he knows what it means. When I make the sign before a feeding, he gets really excited and opens his mouth and waves his hands all over. Today I'm pretty sure he was signing back to me. It was almost dinner time and Will was laying on the floor and he whimpered and made the sign for milk. Twice. Joel and I both looked at each other and laughed. Success!

I love all of the sounds and faces he can make now. I love to watch his face when he gets his hands on something new, babies faces are so expressive. I can see excitement, curiosity, confusion and boredom in the same five minutes. And I forget how little things that I do and see everyday are new and exciting for him. Yesterday, I set Will on the counter and turned on the kitchen faucet and just let him play in the stream of water with his little baby fingers. He tried to grab the water and was confused when there was nothing to grab. So he just kept opening and closing his fingers, enjoying the feel of the cool water on his soft skin.

Will absolutely hates laying on his tummy. Hates it. He almost immediately rolls over if he's on his stomach. He hates mashed potatoes and he really hates the sound of my blow dyer. Whenever I have to use it, I set Will on the floor outside the bathroom door so I can see him and try to reassure him during the least favorite part of his day. As soon as the noise starts, this look of utter terror crosses his face. He starts to get teary eyed, but he also gets a look of determination, like he's trying so hard to be brave and not cry. It's so cute! As long as we keep eye contact, he never cries.

Being a parent has made me have so many "ah-hah" moments where I realize "my mom did all of these things for me 25 years ago." She was my first playmate and best friend, just like I am Will's. She changed all of my nasty diapers, cleaned up all of my messes, and laughed & smiled at my discoveries. Thanks for all of your hard work Mom and Dad.

Living here stresses me out, mostly because I'm worried about baby boy. Air quality, immunizations, safe food and the chaos of the big city are just a few of the things that keep me up at night. Sometimes when I'm out walking with Will strapped to my chest in his baby carrier, his little hands find my fingers and he just holds on tight. I feel a profound sense of responsibility because this little person is depending on me to protect him, care for him and keep him safe in this crazy place.

I hope you know that I'm doing my best little one.

I love you Will-a-bee, happy seven months.

Embassies, Immunizations and a double Thanksgiving

I have a lot of ideas that have been brewing in my brain for this blog post, so bear with me. This may turn out to be a long one. But they're all good ideas I promise!

First, and most importantly, we have HEAT!!! It's been heavenly. I can actually focus on doing something other than staying warm. Everyone who lives in Beijing now has heat and I think we are all a little happier than we were two weeks ago. The radiators actually work pretty well, our apartment stays very warm and they are so nice to sit next to. The only downside is that we have zero control over the temperature. They're just on all the time. But I'm not complaining! I will take it over the alternative any day. 

Our main project this past week has been trying to figure out the best way to get our money out of our Chinese accounts and deposited in USD in our American accounts. It's actually a lengthy process! We get paid in Chinese RMB which we have set up through direct deposit into our Chinese account. (Which, is hard to deal with sometimes. Chinese banking laws are funny, you can't have a joint account and you only get one bank card per account. So Joel is the account holder and we have one card for that account. It gets a little inconvenient at times. So we have ourselves set up on a cash budget. We withdraw the cash that we will need to take care of our everyday purchases for a month and we distribute that money into labeled envelopes so we always know how much we have left to spend in each category. It took a while to set up, but we are pretty pleased with the results!) Anyway, once the RMB is in our account, we have to withdraw what we want to send overseas and then we have to exchange that money into US dollars. China heavily regulates their currency which means that there are tight restrictions on exchanging money. Joel and I can only buy $500 each every day and you have take your passport with you and do a bunch of paperwork just to exchange the money. (Right after Hurricane Sandy, the price of dollars went down. So we were able to buy $500 USD for less RMB than usual. If China didn't have their regulations, we would have bought more dollars because they were cheaper that day. But that's one reason why China has those regulations, so people don't make money off exchanges.) We were hoping Will would be able to buy $500 USD, he has a passport, but you have to be 18 years old. Oh well. It was worth a try. So, our Chinese account has both RMB and USD in it and we just need to wire it to America. That will be our project this week, getting our money where it needs to go. Things that were so easy back home take so much more time here!!
On Saturday, we went on a really nice walk through the embassy district. It was a funny contrast to see the beautiful lawns and trees of the embassies that were surrounded by tall, thick fences that were topped with gnarled barbed wire. It almost reminded me of a nicely manicured POW camp because of the wire and the Chinese guards everywhere. The US embassy is not in the cluster though. I have been meaning to go check it out, that's an important place to know how to get to in case of an emergency. I also feel a need to go see the tiny spot of US soil in the middle of Beijing. Even if I just look at it through the barbed wire. 

And speaking of the US embassy, I have been asking other moms in China what to do about vaccinations. Apparently, the German and French embassies import vaccines for their citizens because the Chinese vaccines are not trustworthy and cause high rates of fevers and rashes. But the US embassy does not! A few western style hospitals here used to import vaccines through Hong Kong but they don't anymore. No one is sure if that's because the government put a stop to it or because it was too expensive and time consuming for the hospitals to do that. At any rate, there are no more imported vaccines that are readily available. I am so upset about this! Will was only 4 months when we came here and although he was caught up on his shots, he couldn't be immunized for everything since he was so little. He couldn't get the Tuberculosis vaccine or the rest of the Hepatitis series or the influenza vaccine. In the US, I wouldn't be as worried if he was behind. But TB is a real concern here, people still get it. And I don't even want to think about Hepatitis or Japanese Encephalitis. Most people just wait until they go home to visit and just get their kids caught up in the US. But our health insurance here is through a Chinese company so I'm pretty sure we won't have coverage in the US when we go home so we'll probably just have to pay out of pocket. It stinks but I would rather pay for the vaccines in America and not have to worry about Will catching some strange Asian disease or having a reaction to the Chinese shots.

There are two fences behind my head, the metal one with the strands of  barbed wire and then the cement wall with  coils of wire on top. Pretty heavy duty! 

People ask me what I do here while Joel is working. It's true, I do have some down time. But raising a baby while living in China is a full time job! Parenting in general is a full time job. But everything seems to take so much more time here. Trying to do laundry in our doll sized washing machine is a joke. I can do a handful of clothes in a load and I have to start the wash cycle first and when that's done, I start the rinse cycle. And I would give anything to have a dryer! All of our clothes are crunchy from drying them on a hockey lace strung between two kitchen chairs. I've already posted about how grocery shopping  is a difficulty all it's own and cooking in our munchkin-land kitchen with our toaster oven is another adventure. Cleaning (my nemesis) is never done here. I can sweep and mop one day and three days later, there are already dust bunnies accumulating in the corners and near the baseboards. The air here is just so dirty that nothing stays clean for very long. All of these problems are compounded by the language barrier that we deal with daily. Not to mention that if I want to go anywhere, my options are the subway (which is always crowded), buses (which there is no English on so I just have to hope I'm riding the right one), taxi's (no drivers speak English so I have to make sure I can somehow communicate where I want to go) or walking (which I love to do but it's getting colder now so that makes traveling with a baby difficult sometimes). I am not complaining, living here has been an unforgettable adventure and I learn so much every day. I just stay pretty busy figuring out how to live our day to day lives!

Do you see Joel climbing on the rock? He blends in with his greenish coat. We went on a walk to the park after the embassies. It's so nice to just be able to stroll and not have to worry about getting hit by a car!!

I am also very grateful that Will is just a baby and we don't have to worry about school here. For expat families, there aren't a lot of choices for schools for their kids here. No one wants to put their kid in local Chinese schools because for one, they have to be fluent in Chinese. So unless they were born and raised here, that counts most international kids out. Another mom was telling me that she knew a child who was born in Beijing and his mother was Chinese but his dad was American. They put him into Chinese schools and he was teased, bullied and an outcast. He was half Chinese and a native, fluent Chinese speaker but he was still ostracized. I've heard of students who live abroad for a while and are not treated the same when they come back, even if they were born and raised in China. Kids here are not kind to other kids who are different. So, due to these schooling difficulties, a number of international schools have popped up around Beijing. They are geared towards expatriate families and everything is in English. But, they charge an exorbitant amount of money!! You won't even believe how much preschool tuition is. Are you ready for this number? Remember, this is for PRESCHOOL, the number goes up from here depending on the grade. It's $25,000 for one year of preschool. Ridiculous, right? But these schools can charge this because when families get sent here for work, they are often offered a nice expat package which includes school for their children. So, these big companies pay the tuition fees. But there are a lot of families who don't work for any of the big companies and who aren't on a nice package that have to somehow figure out how to send their kids to school here. There is one mom who went and got a job at one of these schools so she could get discounted tuition. If I had the time and resources, I would start my own little preschool for kids whose families can't afford college tuition prices for their three year old. I have the qualifications, I am a licensed elementary teacher. If Will was preschool age, I would probably do it. I'm sure I could easily find enough students to make it worth my while. 


We are excited for Thanksgiving this week. Both of our parents have sent us wonderful packages with goodies like gravy mix, hot chocolate, cookie mix, microwave brownie mix and toys and clothes for Will. So we have lots of yummy things to add to our Thanksgiving feast! We will end up doing two Thanksgiving dinners, one with our church Branch on Saturday and one with Joel's coworkers on Thursday night. Since no one has an oven, we have to order catered turkeys. Hopefully they taste good! I am going to attempt yams in my toaster oven. We'll see how that goes. 

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Underground malls, art exhibits and chocolate mousse

This week has been an interesting one here in Beijing. It's been really cold and apparently, most people's heat does not come on until November 15th. I have no idea why it's not until mid November before anyone's apartment feels warm. And the heat that comes on is not central heating but radiator heating. We have a radiator underneath each window and it's encased in a wooden box with a vent on the front so the warm air can escape. I hope they work well! I guess I'll find out in two weeks if they do or not. Until then, we have been bundling in blankets and keeping the bathroom and kitchen doors shut because for some reason, those are the two most freezing rooms. (We do have a unit in the ceiling that is both a heater and an air conditioner. We just barely figured out how to switch the function from AC to heat, it's all in Chinese so it was a lot of trial and error with pushing all of the buttons. When we were running the AC in August, our utility bill was really expensive and we don't want that to happen again. So we have been rationing our heater use, mostly in the morning and when Will is awake and playing by himself. But, it only heats the living and dining area so it's really not that effective. So we are not completely without heat, just almost.)

We also celebrated my 25th birthday on Wednesday. We debated about what to do and our options were slightly limited by the fact that we had to bring Will with us wherever we decided to go and by the fact that it was cold outside. We ended up going to the China World Trade Center tower, it's one of  the tallest skyscrapers in Beijing with 81 floors. The Church Office Building in SLC is 28 stories so this building is almost three times taller! They have a restaurant on the top floor and we ate chocolate mousse while we watched the sunset and observed the enormous city from this new perspective. All the waitresses were completely mesmerized by Will and we found them frequently staring at us or just coming over to our table and standing there watching him. 

The China WTC tower sits on top of a huge underground mall, it was so cool. We rode the subway to get there and the station connects directly to the mall which connects directly to the WTC. So we didn't even have to go outside to get from the subway to the restaurant. It was so nice! On our way back through the mall, this girl just started talking to us to practice her English. She told us she was a senior art student and some of her work was on display at a student exhibit in the next tower over. We decided to go with her to look at the exhibit and ended up buying two of her pictures. This winter one is my favorite. They are mounted on silk that you can roll them up scroll-style so hopefully we can pack them home safely when the time comes.

After we made it home, we put Will to bed and ordered some Italian food from Annie's and just had it delivered to our apartment. That's one thing about city living I could definitely get used to: free delivery! So nice. Even McDonald's delivers here. They put your food in a heat box that's mounted onto an electric bike and they bike it over to you. The bikes are nice because they can deliver fast regardless of what traffic looks like. Anyway, the fettuccine alfredo was HEAVENLY!! The creamy parmesany goodness was something I had really been craving. Happy birthday to me!

This week is also midterms for Joel's students. They do it college finals week style here - no classes, just tests. So Joel has all week to grade and get ready for the last stretch until the Chinese New Year break. 

We've almost been here for three months now and I can't believe how the time has flown by. And we've made so much progress since we moved here and learned so much. I was thinking yesterday about how I'm really grateful we had the chance to move here. Joel and I have a lot more time to just focus on our little family and our lives (in some ways) are much more simple. We sold our cars, got rid of our smartphones and couldn't bring many belongings with us. I hardly miss most of our stuff. (I do really miss my skis, it will be two more seasons before I can go. I was pregnant last ski season so that will be three years total!) 

Catch up

Our computer has been having virus-like issues so I have been a delinquent blogger. Sorry! 

October is gorgeous in Beijing! The weather has been and clear. We had a rainstorm the other day that got rid of the pollution in the air so right now I can actually see for a good distance out of our windows. Apparently, October is the best time to be in China because the weather is cool and pleasant and the pollution is minimal. 

Will has started to eat real baby food, it has been so fun for us to feed him. We can buy Gerber rice cereal at the imported food store near our apartment but it's definitely more expensive here than at home! They also carry imported Gerber baby food but it's more than $3 a jar so I have started making my own. I bought a food processor and have been going to town! I go to the open air produce market near our building and buy my produce and then use our rice cooker to steam it. So far so good, it's definitely not as convenient as buying the pre-made stuff in jars but it's a lot more affordable.

Since my last post, we've had our formula problem solved for the time being. I found a Yahoo group for foreign moms in Beijing and there was one mom who had brought too much formula back with her from the US and didn't need it anymore. She offered to sell it to me and I bought everything she had. It should last me for a while. It's such a relief to not have to worry about that anymore! My sweet sister also sent me some and the wife of one of Joel's coworkers just arrived from LA and she brought 3 containers of formula with her for us. 

I think we are finally comfortably adjusted to living here. We definitely still have a TON to learn, but we have at least accumulated enough kitchen things to cook a decent meal. When we came here, we had a completely empty kitchen and I didn't want to buy all new sets of things since we will only be here for two years. But, people are coming and going from here all the time and we have already inherited quite a bit. Yesterday, I was craving Chick Fil A hardcore so I found a copycat recipe and made some chicken fingers and a honey mustard sauce and it was SO good! It probably wasn't that close to the real thing but it tasted so yummy to us. I think that may become a regular dinner that I fix.

We finally made it to Tiananmen Square yesterday. Joel had the day off because it was Field Day for the students and the weather was gorgeous so we decided to do some sight seeing. I imagined the square to be much more open but right in the middle is Chairman Mao's mausoleum. His body is preserved and in a glass case on display for all to see and it's inside a large building surrounded by a garden. I think my favorite part was the gate to the city. Back in the day, the city was surrounded by a large wall and anyone who wanted to enter or leave had to do it through designated gates. This gate was so huge and had massive wooden doors that could be closed to seal it off. It was so impressive.

Chairman Mao!

Waiting for our subway train

My favorite thing about this picture is the guy on the scooter staring at Joel. This happens all the time, people driving stare at us and get distracted and almost hit us!

My beautiful boy!

At the park by our building, they have these toys on the lake for kids. You pay for 10 minutes and they put your kid in there and they can push the bubble around the lake. When you're time is up, they pull on a rope attached to it and bring you back to shore. It's like a hamster wheel on water. So cute!

We borrowed this toy from a lady that works at Joel's school. She obviously has a little girl but he loves it! He can stand up like a big boy.

Will and I came to visit Joel for lunch

Beijing has all of these beautiful flower displays throughout the city. So pretty!

We also finally bought Will a crib...I know, I'm such a bad mom! We've been here two months and we just barely got one. He's been sleeping on top of  a twin bed but we put stuff around him so he couldn't roll off. Luckily for us, he is still not interested in rolling from his back to his tummy so it was never a problem. Anyway, we braved IKEA in China and it was busy as Black Friday but weirder. People here really take the "try it before you buy it" slogan seriously. There were grown men taking naps in almost every bed and people were occupying every couch and sofa. And they weren't just sitting for a second, they had camped out there and had their stuff spread everywhere. The cribs that we went to look at all had sleeping babies in them! And when I walked up to look at the crib closely, the moms would all glare at me as if to say "how dare you come into my child's room!" I'm sorry, but if you put your kid down for a nap in IKEA, you're taking the chance that someone will want to come and look at the furniture that your child is sleeping on. There are a thousand people in this store, surely someone wants to look at this crib! So we picked out the cheapie crib (again, not wanting to spend money on something we will just have to leave behind when we move back to the US) and a nice mattress. The tricky part was getting them back to our apartment. We just took a taxi there and IKEA will deliver for you, but it's hard to order the delivery service when you don't speak the language. So, we finally managed to convince a taxi driver (using mostly gestures, harder than it sounds) to take us and our new merchandise home. The boxes didn't fit in the trunk so he didn't want us to block his vision through the rear window but we paid him a little extra and he took us home. So our baby finally has a real bed. Two months later. Better late than never! 

I also saw my first child pooping on the sidewalk today. So gross. Kids here wear split bottom pants and when they have to go, they just squat where they're standing and do their thing. I have seen a few kids pee on the sidewalk but today there was a mom who was helping her kid squat on the sidewalk and he just pooped there and the mom closed his pants and off they went! I told that story to someone in our building and she said she's seen kids do their business on the floor in supermarkets. Not even outside! Oh the joys of living in China. 

This little piggy went to market

Today I made my first totally successful grocery shopping trip. I never thought grocery shopping would be so difficult, or so gross.

I usually can't make it to the market early enough, usually by the time I get there, the meat and produce is mostly gone and all that's left is what no one else wanted. But today, Joel didn't have to be to work until 9, so he stayed with Will. Grocery shopping with a baby is extra difficult. They don't have carts, they only have baskets so I have to carry the baby and everything I want to buy. You also have to bag your own groceries which is hard enough without holding an infant. And, I have to walk there so I have to cart the baby and everything I bought, home in one trip. I can't bring my stroller because the store has three floors and you have to get on an escalator. I tried shopping with a stroller once, it was pretty laughable. In fact, a lot of people did laugh at me. I was trying to hold my basket full of stuff while manage to get the stroller and myself on the escalator. I barely made it and I vowed not to try that again!

 You also have to bring your own grocery bags, if you want plastic ones, they cost extra. It's actually a smart idea. I never forget to bring my reusable fabric bags for that reason.

So, my trip this morning. I managed to find everything I was looking for! This was a first. It's all written in Chinese with no English and the layout of the store is crazy, there are escalators that go everywhere and I've just barely figured out the different departments. Once I found all of my dry goods, I ventured into the meat department. I usually can't bring myself to go that far into the store. It smells bad. Once I got past all of the fish, crab, eels and turtles in tanks (which you catch yourself and take to the butcher counter where they kill it for you right there. At first, I thought it was also a pet store...but no. Those are main courses....) I made it to the chicken display. All the various chicken parts are just laid out on a counter and you take what you want and put it in a bag. There aren't even tongs! You just grab what you want and go. So everyone is touching this raw meat and then they go and touch other things, including my baby! Nobody has personal space here and handwashing is almost non-existent. So there is probably Salmonella and E-Coli all over everything in the store. That's why I hate taking Will with me to the market.


So, I plan on actually cooking my first real Western dinner tonight. We've had spaghetti and PB & J's but nothing that I've really spent any time on. I'm going to use my cute little Chinese crock pot (I feel better about eating meat here if it's been cooked for a long time) and make a Pinterest recipe. We'll see how it goes.

Our Chinese crock pot has 3 settings: warm, fast and automatic... not sure which one to use....

I really thought it would be easier to buy imported things. We didn't bring enough formula with us and I'm starting to freak out a little bit. I breastfeed as much as I can, but it's not enough. Since I was working and pumping this summer, my milk supply is not fabulous to begin with and then making the trip around the world and switching our nights and days really affected it. I hadn't been feeding Will at night for the last two months and suddenly, what was night time was now day time and I had a very hungry baby to feed. I used a lot of formula while my body caught up and now my milk supply is even less than it was before the move.  So, I searched the import stores for American formula because the Chinese kind is not generally considered safe; they don't have the same regulations as the US does. The stores have Australian imported formula so I need to do some research about it because that's my only option. And it's very pricy. I did find American Similac on the Chinese E-Bay equivalent, but Joel's teaching assistant said she would be wary of anything bought on that site. I think we might buy some just to check it out. We're running out of options. 

This next part may be boring, feel free to skip ahead. It's meant more for journaling than blogging. I mostly just want to write down a few thoughts so I will remember specific things about China when I go back and read this.

China has it's own unique smell, I wish I could describe it. It really bothered me when we first moved here, it was so pervasive. I couldn't get away from it. We joked the first couple of days that we would need a scented candle to keep China out of our apartment. Sometimes the air here is so thick that it feels like you can take a bite out of it.

Today when I was walking to meet Joel at the school, I took a closer look at all of the different houses on the hutong (narrow street). Some of the doors were open, which is unusual. Typically, when I walk this way, they are closed. The alley is lined with a brick wall on either side and there are doors in the wall that lead to individual houses. Some of the homes have a courtyard between the wall and the house and some houses open right out into the street. Looking through some of these doorways was like looking back 200 years. Joel was telling me that these homes are so old that they don't even have indoor plumbing, there is a public toilet halfway down the street that everyone has to share.

It's interesting to me that the government here in China has complete control and they spend so much time policing the internet and blocking sites like Facebook and YouTube and yet food safety here is a huge concern. They can heavily regulate internet and television and yet the food industry here has very few regulations. Joel and I read an article recently that talked about how someone had investigated a processing plant for dried fruit and found rotting peaches that they just added a bunch of chemicals to before drying and packaging. No one here will buy Chinese baby formula because it was found to be contaminated with Melamine, an industrial chemical that caused kidney failure in babies who drank it. And, once the scandal was made public, the formula was removed from the shelves and then repackaged and resold. 

Chinese Oreo's are amazing. They have all kinds of flavors like orange, mango, vanilla milkshake, grape and a few more I can't remember. But my favorites are the Oreo milk straws. They're like pirouette cookies that are hollow in the middle but the outsides are made out of Oreo cookie with a cream coating on the inside.

I miss having an oven! Ovens don't really exist here, which makes cooking even harder.

I think the McDonald's Big Mac sauce has a little more kick here, I've always been a closet Mickey D's fan but I think it tastes even better in China.

I wonder if China has a welfare system. I see lots of people on the streets begging for money. Most of them are handicapped or disabled. There is one man that's always in the same place. He's been badly burned and he doesn't have arms. He paints calligraphy with his toes and sells it on the road near our building. I think I want to buy one. There was another lady when we went to the zoo, I can still see her face, we were in line buying our tickets and she came and was asking us for money in Chinese. She had also been badly, badly burned all over her body. I'm ashamed to say that I didn't give her any. I didn't know how to react. No one has ever begged me for money before. I wish I would have given her some.

Teacher, Teacher!

So far, we really like the school that Joel is teaching at. The school has two different sections, the regular Chinese high school and the international division where Joel works. The international division is designed for Chinese students who want to go to the US and be successful at an American university. They bring American teachers to teach all of the subjects in English to help students prepare for studying in America. 

The school was founded in 1724 and is one of the best schools in Beijing. It is a public school but students have to have good grades and test scores to get in. The campus almost looks more a university than a high school; there is a Koi pond (where we saw a ferret yesterday!), fountain, and nicely maintained landscaping.

They have been really good to us so far. There is a dining hall just for the teachers and they serve a complimentary breakfast for all of the staff. Their lunches are very cheap, usually about 50 cents per person and the food is really good. I have gone to meet Joel for lunch a few times and I have always liked what they serve. We can also eat a very affordable dinner there if we want to. The only downside to eating there is using chopsticks! It takes me forever to eat my meal. Especially noodles, those are really tricky. I usually end up getting my face as close to the plate as I can politely manage and just using the chopsticks to shovel in what I can!

The school even provides Joel with a bilingual teaching assistant to help with all of his classes. She is very nice and speaks very good English, which is helpful when we need to pick her brain on how to say basic phrases in Chinese. Most of the teaching assistants teach one day a week for the teacher so that the teacher has more time to prepare and grade, which is so nice.

This is the courtyard at the school. It's really pretty, it has a lot of bright colors and intricate designs.

Another shot of the courtyard.

It's hard to tell in the picture, but this day was one of the clearest we have had since we've been here. Usually, it's so hazy from the pollution that we can't see very far. But there are mountains in the distance that we had no idea were there!

Tropical vacation anyone? We found this lovely little backdrop at our local mall and couldn't resist the photo opportunity!

On another note, we found a great imported goods grocery store. I bought cream cheese!! I never thought I would be so excited about such a simple food item. I haven't really had much dairy since we moved here. Cheese doesn't really exist in the Chinese diet and their milk is not refrigerated (gross, I know). Luckily I don't really like milk.