The week in review!

Well, it has been about 10 days since I last posted and we have had all kinds of things go on. It's funny...when things happen I think, "oh, I need to blog about this" and inevitably I don't get around to it so I'm left 10 days later wondering what we have been up to. But here are some of the highlights.

We are getting closer to moving into our new house. A lot of the furniture that we ordered was delivered today, including a dining table, our bed, couch and chairs so staying here now will be much easier! It is a possible that our US goods might be delivered on Saturday but as John and I have learned to say, "this is China" so you just never know until the truck pulls up in front of the house on Saturday. I do mean that "this is China" comment in a good-hearted kind of way. They do things so differently here and we are trying our best to role with the punches. We have learned a new Chinese word though - ma fan - which means SO complicated. It seems much of what we are needing/wanting to do is ma fan! Our driver, Leo, says everything in China is ma fan. We are starting to believe him!

Here are some of the recap moments of the week that were memorable to us:

1) We went out to dinner last night. John ordered a bunch of yummy stuff and the food arrived. We served up everybody - mostly noodles and beef for the girls. Lauren is sitting at the table and all the sudden bursts into tears. I look at her and say, "oh honey, what is wrong?" She mutters out, "everyone is eating and I can't pick up these noodles with the rice spoon or my chopsticks!" So poor kid, there were no forks in this restaurant and after serving everyone, I was busy feeding Kate with my chopsticks and eating, Leah & John were eating with their chopsticks but poor Mei Mei (Lauren's nickname) was starving and unable to eat. I fed her for a bit until John got her noodles chopped up so she could eat them with her spoon - then she was fine! The whole thing really made John and I kind of laugh because Lauren is our most flexible, role with the punches kind of kid but she finally had had enough! By golly, she wanted to eat! I told Leo, our driver, the story and he said, "oh, I will teach Mei Mei to eat!" So here is a picture of him teaching Lauren to eat with chopsticks. Have I mentioned how completely fabulous Leo is and such a huge help for our family! Here is a picture of him teaching Lauren!
2) We went to the Shanghai Aquarium and had a great time. They claim to have the world's longest tunnel where the fish are all around you. I have no idea if it really is the longest but it was very cool! The girls said they felt like mermaids. The funniest time came though when we "entered" the Shark tank and all 3 girls squealed as if they were going to be eaten soon! I do have to give it to them though - some of the sharks were definitely scary looking!

(us going through the tunnel)

3) At a shopping plaza not far from our house (about 20 minute walk) there is, of all things, a Cafe DuMonde restaurant (of New Orleans fame) and they serve the best western breakfast! So our new tradition is to get up on Sunday mornings (church is in the afternoons here - weird schedule but again - we're rolling with the punches!) and walk to Cafe DuMonde for a wonderful breakfast! We did it last week and it was great fun and delicious!

4) And last but not least, I have been struck many times in the past couple of weeks how difficult some aspects of this move are...everything is SO different here that everything seems hard sometimes. Simple chores like going to the grocery store end up being tricky and things that admittedly are more challenging to do in the US are so hard to do here that it makes my head spin! So as I was thinking on how difficult things were on a given day, God gently reminded me that what I am going through now may seem hard but in light of so much else it really isn't. I know people who have buried their children, who are fighting a losing battle with cancer, who have lost their jobs and the list goes on and on - those are difficult things! What we are experiencing now may be a challenge but really it is such a blessing that God has given our family! I was so glad to be given that new perspective and it truly has helped make the "ma fan" moments in China so much easier to go through.

So there you have a recap of our last few days. These posts always get so long so thanks for hanging in there with me...those of you that are still reading! :)

OK - I forgot I had these pictures so I just had to add them in:
This is the grocery store on a Saturday morning. I'm sure it doesn't look that bad but trust me it is like going to Walmart on Christmas Eve.

Is this the pet store? Oh, that's right - this is the grocery store and it's whats for dinner!
Mmm, good eats!

John & Kate surveying the fish heads! No - we did not buy any! But if you look closely in the basket there is a $6 bag of Tostitos because we have some people here that are craving nachos!

The Olympics...

I just had to post a little blip because I have gotten so many emails asking how it has been getting to watch the Olympics in China! The funniest thing is - we are having a hard time finding what channel coverage is going to be on. We did get to see Michael Phelps and the 3 other guys beat the French in whatever race that was which was very exciting. It was on at about 9:00pm and because our girls are night owls they were still awake. It was really cute because all 5 of us were in the living room standing up and yelling and screaming for the USA to win. I'm sure all of our neighbors in this apartment building heard us and thought "those crazy Americans." But it was very exciting to see and even more fun to see all three of our girls jumping up and down saying, "go, go, go" at the TV.

But the reality of watching the Olympics in China is actually not great. For one, the best coverage we get of the Olympics is on a Korean channel - go figure. And even when we do watch coverage on CCTV we obviously can't understand any of the interviews. Well, that's not true - I now know all my numbers in Chinese so when they say someone's age or uniform number I can understand that! :) I'm not complaining, really, because it is fun to watch what we watch knowing that it is live...but then again I don't know - maybe y'all are seeing it live in the US too? We get a lot of the badminton, ping pong, archery and swimming. We've yet to see any gymnastics which is a disappointment because I know the girls would love to see it. There is no schedule that we can read that tells us when events are happening. Maybe I should Google it!

Speaking of reality - life is getting into a normal swing now. John had his first trip to the joint venture company this week. He left on Tuesday and is on his way home now. He took the train as the company is in a small (by Chinese standards) city about 4 hours (by train) from Shanghai. He said it is going to be very cool to be involved with this project. It did feel a little weird at first when John left since all the other times I've been in China we've always been together. We have survived without any problems though.

We celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary on Wed. with him in Xuzhou and me in Shanghai but that's OK. He bought me a really great gift that I had seen in a market not too far from our house. Here's a picture so you can see them. Well, the quality of the picture is not very good because I took it with my phone but you can get the idea of what they look like.I just love them! They are very quirky looking but for some reason I just like them. In the background you can see my great purchase - a beautiful black and white painting of Old Shanghai. It is huge and will look great above our mantel in the living room.
And one of cute Kate on her new mattress in her new room. (Again - phone camera quality) Next week we should have more furniture delivered and are definitely looking forward to that!
Happy Olympics watching to all of you...who knew, I would ever miss NBC sports commentary so much! :)

We are getting settled!

Well, we have been in Shanghai for almost two weeks and things are beginning to settle down a little. The first week was a buzz of activity. We arrived on Tuesday night and then on Wednesday had to go to our new house for the "orientation" and to receive the keys and such. The villa that we will be living in is brand new and has never been lived in so it needed curtains. The landlord sent a woman over with books of fabric and in the midst of all the mayhem, I had to choose curtains for all the rooms of the house. I'm grateful I got to pick the curtains but it was quite a task since I had no idea what the furniture would look like, etc. As part of living in a new house, the landlord gave us a furniture allowance to choose furniture for the house because they like to rent them furnished. Since it was only our first day in Shanghai, I obviously had no idea what the furniture was going to look like so I did the best I could with the curtains.

The next few days were filled with various house appointments and trying to find furniture at furniture stores. It was great because we found a nice big furniture "store" with five floors of different shops but no one spoke English. Amazingly enough, we were able to get most of what we need ordered and it will be delivered in a couple of weeks. In the mean time we are staying across the street from our housing complex in a temporary apartment. This apartment is in a complex that has almost all expats so it has been good to be able to meet some people. Our complex is mostly Chinese with a few expats thrown in.

We are currently staying on the 7th floor and the view is absolutely beautiful out our balcony. It is such a surreal feeling looking out and realizing that this is our new home - our new city. It is so massive but already we are starting to feel a little sense of normalcy and familiarity. Here's a picture from tonight so you can see what I mean about the massiveness of it all. You can see all the buildings of downtown Shanghai (Pudong side) in the background. In the foreground are villas similar to what we will live in.
I don't know if you can see it in this picture very well but way out in the distance is the Shanghai World Financial Center. It is the tallest building in Asia (right now - a taller one is being built somewhere but I can never remember where). It is so tall - unbelievable really. The funny thing is the top of it looks like a bottle opener so that is what we call it now. You can see it if you look close just to the left of the sun.

In the midst of all the appointments, we have also gotten to have some fun. We went down to the promenade on the river and saw the Bund. Shanghai is divided by a river and there is the Pudong side (where we live) and the Puxi side which is the "old" Shanghai. Pudong is the newer side as it has just been developed in the last 15 years. Yes, all those buildings you see in the picture above have been built in the last 10-15 years - it's amazing really!
I don't know if you can tell from the picture but Kate looks like she has been in quite a fight with her eye almost swollen completly shut. She got a mosquito bite right under her eye and it made her eye huge! Poor thing - she looked terrible but thankfully after 2 days it finally got back to normal. Anyway, it was a fun night walking along the promenade looking at all the bright lights of the city.

The girls have started their language school. The big girls go everyday from 10-12 to Chinese lessons and seem to be enjoying it. Our driver has been teaching me lots of useful phrases but I'm hopeful to start some formal lessons soon. For those that might not know, we are not allowed to drive here in China so we have a driver to take us wherever we need to go. The driving is SO different in China that I'm sure I would not want to drive. Our driver is a 27 year old single guy that speaks really good English and has been so helpful for us this past week! He has helped us navigate so much and it's great because he knows where most everything is. I'm so thankful to have him but there is definitely a sense of some lost freedom when you are not able to just hop in the car and go somewhere, especially in the evenings when we Leo has gone home. I will be glad to get my bicycle once our goods arrive and at least have that as an option.

One other thing and then I'll go. We had a great time watching the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics. We had been at the grocery store right before it started and on our way home we saw fireworks going off in several places around Shanghai. Once we got home, we turned on the tv and watched it on CCTV - in Chinese of course. We couldn't understand any of it but at least we could see it! Leah and Lauren really loved watching it and loved that we had just seen the Bird's Nest a couple of weeks before. Here they are watching...
Well, I have gone on for way too long but this is the first chance I have had to really update the blog. Our goods are supposed to arrive in Shanghai's port on Monday so you can all pray for us that it gets through customs quickly and is able to be delivered to our house! It will be nice to be able to begin that process of getting settled.

I'll post more soon!

We are in Shanghai...

We arrived safely in Shanghai on Tuesday.  The last few days have been filled with lots of appointments to get things going on our house, getting the temporary apartment set up, finding furniture for the new house, opening a bank account, getting me a cell phone, getting the girls signed up for a language camp and managing three young children through it all! J  We have been able to go swimming once and the girls loved the big outdoor pool here at the housing complex.  We still don’t have internet set-up at our apartment (supposed to be next week some time) so I can’t really post on blogger yet.  I’m sending this one through e-mail and not sure how it works.

 

As soon as we get our internet set up I will post more and some pictures as we have had some interesting stories already.  It is so funny and tiring to try to figure out how to communicate to people who speak no English when we speak very little Chinese.  I think the thing that cracks me up the most is that they just keep talking to us in Chinese as if some how we are going to magically understand.  But I guess to their credit we usually do eventually figure out what they are saying.

 

OK, I’ll post more soon!