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.

Beijing Aquarium = Awesome!

Today we were looking at a website that had the top 20 things to do in Beijing. One of them was the Beijing Aquarium and, since we've figured out the subway, we could actually get there on our own. So we packed up our baby and away we went down into network of tunnels underneath the city.

They had all kinds of cool stuff. I think my favorite were the Beluga Whales! There were two of them and they were so loud, you could hear them through the entire building. There was a diver cleaning the tank and the whales wanted to play but he wasn't having it. He was in the zone.

I was hoping for a shark but no such luck. They did have dolphins and sting rays and huge Sea Turtles though. It was a fun little excursion, too bad Will won't remember any of it!

Huge Sturgeon!

Church in China

 So, Will and I had our first day of church in Beijing today. (Joel had to give a presentation at school, so he couldn't come.) After our 25 minute subway ride it was so comforting to walk into our "chapel" and hear other saints singing Redeemer of Israel. I almost cried because it was so comforting to be there!

Our branch had a big group of kids from BYU Idaho who came here to teach English. They were leaving from Beijing to go to more remote villages throughout China. They wanted everyone from that group to meet in a separate room (which I didn't know because we were a little late!) and I just followed a big crowd of people to what I thought was Sunday school. So I sat down with Will and all of our stuff and slowly started to realize everyone else in the room was under 21 and single. I had ended up in the YSA class.... oops. I was too embarrassed to haul all of my stuff out of there so I just tried to get Will to lay quietly on my  lap and hoped no one would notice! Will, of course, hated that and so my plan completely failed and my face was bright red through the entire class. I did learn some cool stuff though. They have a virtual branch of the church for those members who are too far to attend one of the international branches. You call a toll free number and enter a pass code and, voila! You can listen to church on the phone. So cool!

I am continually amazed at the people here in China. Overall, we have found the Chinese to be very helpful and nice. And very understanding of us when we are completely unable to communicate with them! It's a common sight here to see teenagers walking arm in arm with their parents and grandparents, I love that. And I still cannot get over everyone's fascination with Will. Today on the subway, a nice lady gave me her seat since I had a baby. Will was totally conked out in his baby carrier that straps to my chest and his face was partially hidden behind the strap. This lady stood next to me and wanted to see his face so badly that she unhooked the carrier so she could see him! There really isn't a personal space boundary here.

On another note, this city is really amazing. There is ancient architecture right next to modern skyscrapers. And this city becomes even more lively at night. Street vendors come out of nowhere and occupy every inch of free space on the sidewalk selling anything you could imagine. The other night when we went outside, there was a group of people flying kites that had lights in them. China's version of fireflies, I guess.

The tall building in this picture is our apartment building. So far, we really like living here.

I saw these strange things at the supermarket the other day and couldn't resist putting up a picture. Weird cucumber maybe?

Seeing the sights

Oh wow, did we have quite the day today! The school booked a tour for us and we went all over Beijing seeing the sights.

First on the itinerary was the Forbidden City where the Imperial Families lived. The architecture was so impressive and the entire city is surrounded by a wall and a moat. What surprised me most was how many people wanted to take pictures of little Will! We were in the middle of this gorgeous city and people wanted pictures of our baby. I even had a few kids want to have their pictures taken with me, like I was a character in Disneyland or something.  

Next, our tour took us to the Temple of Heaven. This was especially impressive because the entire thing is put together without a single nail or fastener. It's made out of lego-like blocks that just interlock.

Our last stop was the Summer Palace where the Imperial family would go on Holiday. The palace is near a lake which is entirely man made. The Empress wanted her palace to resemble southern China so she had the lake made. Oh to be royal!

Will just took the whole day in stride. SO many people came up to us and took pictures of him, we were joking that we should charge per picture and get rich! He didn't seem to mind, he just smiled and charmed them all. We learned to keep moving though, the longer we stayed in one place, the bigger the crowd around his stroller would get!