Thanksgiving with the Fulbrights

So we were invited to go to a Thanksgiving dinner at an American style restaurant with all of the Fulbright grantees this past Tuesday. We hoped it would be a nice, almost intimate, buffet style dinner. We started out for the restaurant maybe 8 miles away with 50 minutes lead time at rush hour. We somehow managed not to bring our ever-present backpacks with extra water and snacks in them. This was a big mistake! About 1 hour into our 95 minute ride, Anna started crying from hunger. Rosa joined in after awhile. She helped the whole mood by telling Anna we were going to die from lack of food. Needless to say, we were a bit frazzled when we arrived at the dinner and found that it was in a restaurant's main room and that there were no chairs for us. We quickly bought the kids some cookies to get their blood sugar up and then spoke with our hosts who helped find us a table at the end of a long row of young grantees. We were the only ones there with little kids so we had to keep them entertained.
When the meal did arrive, there was some good pumpkin soup, turkey with gravy, some fair stuffing and cranberry sauce, but, alas, no mashed potatos. The pumpkin pie for dessert was fair as was the apple pie. All in all, it was an okay meal, but not worth the time and effort to get there through rush hour. As far as meeting the other Fulbright participants, the physical space didn't really allow for much interaction.
One thing we did find at the restaurant, was a hallway with very strange doors in it. At least five doors in a row, all with this same message. One wonders if they ran out of drywall and just made up the difference with doors!

Homework

The major change in my role in China vs. the last time we were here in 1995 is what I do with my free time. Last time, it was just Char and I, and I did a lot of teaching of English to monks. I also cooked and cleaned and shopped and circumabulated the monastery. This time, I am the homework king. (Or perhaps tyrant if you are a kid of mine.) Before we left, I was able to copy the homework sheets that the girls are missing in Portland. So each day around 8:30 or 9 a.m., I grab the next homework sheets, look up the Chinese characters and get the girls started. I then get Noah to look up characters in a Chinese book he is reading or ask him to do some of his math homework (also copied from his teacher.)


Four days a week, we go to a local Chinese/English library where the girls get a one-on-one storytime in Chinese with a bi-lingual staff member. We both encourage them to ask questions and speak in Chinese. They are coming along well.




I am also studying Chinese and the characters along with the girls. Besides their words, I also study words that an adult might need to know (not just "play ball" and "public park".)



There are still dishes to wash and shopping to be done (three different small stores in our complex make this very easy.) And the clothes washing is accomplished much easier this time by our small little clothes washer[In the picture, the keys are for scale.] In the picture on top, you can see the clothes hanging to dry in our enclosed porch/balcony. Last time, all the clothes were washed by hand and hung out on an open air balcony.


That's all for this post, I guess. We will be leaving for Qinghai on Friday as Char finally has all of her paperwork in order. We will miss this apartment and it's amenities. Other than the next post, I may not be able to get online for a while as we get resettled in Rebgong.
Love to all and Happy Thanksgiving!
Cain and family

A nice Fall in Beijing

Beijing is a more comfortable city this time around. It's still not America, but it feels like a second tier European city. Our apartment is small but mostly clean. We have a western style toilet and hot running water (in the bathroom but not the kitchen.) There is a small clothes washer in its own little windowed closet off of the kitchen nook and a system for hanging clothes in the sealed-off sun-room. The windows and doors actually seal out the cold weather and most of the dust.

[Here is a picture looking west on a minimally smoggy day. You can actually see the mountains.]

They did finally turn on our high-rise apartment's heat on Sunday. The whole complex gets it at once. In the meantime, we bought an electric heater to keep us from freezing (mostly) at night. So of course we used up our electricity allotment and everything went out the other morning. By mid-day we had figured out that in China, one must prepay for electricity and the building manager went out and bought an electricity card for us. Hopefully we won't run short again before we leave.

The weather has actually been nice for November. Mostly in the 50's during the day. This past weekend we went to the Great Wall at Mutianyu. I brought extra gloves, scarves and hats to deal with the possibility of wind and cold on the mountain ridges. Instead, it felt like 60 degrees and calm. We had a beautiful outing and the kids had fun running up and down the wall. The children have chosen pictures from that day for their blogs. Here are some others they didn't use:

Back in China

Well after a long day and a half in airplanes and airports, we arrived in Beijing tired but relatively sane. The airport is now indistinguishable from any other major city's airport. Char had arranged for a driver to meet us to get us to our hotel. This was nice as it was about 10 p.m. local time and we could fit us and our luggage all in one vehicle.

The first thing I noticed, upon exiting the airport, was the smell of China. Not necessarily bad or good, just potent. I think it's a mix of coal smoke, auto pollution, cooking smells, garbage/waste, desert sand--I can't truly describe it but it was very nostalgic for me. The air was thick as pea soup.

The next morning arrived clear and sunny. A strong breeze had come up overnight and blown the pollution out of the bowl in the mountains in which Beijing sits. We had two days of cool Fall winds while we explored around our hotel and arranged to see the apartment which Char had reserved while in the U.S. Living in Beijing is not so different from living in a European city--not quite as many amenities as in the U.S., but not so different as to be unfathomable.

As I write this, today is the third day with no wind. On day three, from our tenth floor apartment windows, we could see the mountains a few miles off. Each day thereafter, the vista has closed in on us. Today, I could barely make out the high-rises just 1/3 mile away. I know it is supposed to be sunny up there, because, if you look hard, you can locate the very red sun throughout the day.

In 1995, Beijing's highways were nearly empty while its smaller roads and thoroughfares were packed with buses and bicycles. Today, there are very few bikes and pedal carts and gazillions of taxis and private cars. We can walk the 3/4 mile or so from the Friendship hotel to our apartment in the same time it takes a taxi to negotiate the roadways. And the way they merge! They just drift into your lane, or around pedestrians or bicycles. Chicago, New York, or even Boston's traffic stress has got nothing on these folks. When you are in a little Nissan taxi and a big city bus is literally inches from your door and moving in...now that's high entertainment!

On the plus side, the ride only costs $1.85.

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My Chinese skills are returning. I am still understanding very little, but I can make myself understood when it counts. I am fine with shopping and taking taxis and getting around with the kids on my own while Char is at the University. I am studying the girls' homework with them and have pulled out my word lists from 1995 to refresh my skills. Noah is copying characters from my adult learner's Chinese book for his homework. I am proud of all of my kids for how hard they are working at adjusting to life here and trying to use and increase their language skills.

That's it for now. There is, of course, a lot more to say. But I have to go and get the girls started on their next homework assignment.

Love to all,
Cain