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.
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| 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!
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| 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!!
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