Wheels up

Its been an incredible adventure here in Beijing. We have made amazing friends and done lots of exploring.

Now we are off on the next adventure. Hard to believe this is our last post (at least for now) from China.

There will likely be some down time as we move but we hope to be back to blogging soon.

Not going to miss

Things I won't miss

Haggling
The air - though we have had some GLORIOUS days recently
Living in an apartment building and parking across the street adding an extra 10 minutes to any outing requiring driving
Appliances within our apartment running on different volts and amps and using different sockets (our apartment came with 2 different types of wall socket types and neither of them is North American)
The lack of stroller friendly walking places
Haggling
The inability to find certain foods and then having them disappear once they are discovered
My inability to have silly little conversations with passing strangers
Blocked websites (though the only thing that has been made truly inaccessible to me in the last few months was the video I took of people goofing around at the Olympics that was then blocked by NBC even though when I looked up what it takes to infringe on video copyrights I seem to be within fair use.)
Haggling
Unsafe tap water

Going to miss (updated)

Yesterday one of our local friends asked us what we are going to miss most about Beijing.
And we weren't allowed to pick our friends - which was going to be numbers 1-4 on the list.
Here are some of my items.

Interesting and tasty foods!
Bicyclists having as much (or as little) right of way as the cars
Cheap groceries
Tight knit communities with lots of people willing to lend a helping hand
An entire society who loves babies
Almost an absence of road rage (though it does seem to be growing)
Our Ayi!!!
People exercising, dancing, working out in local parks

I'm sure there is more, but that is what I've got for the moment

and here is more
Massages!!! (how on earth could I forget this)
Having everyone smile at you encouragingly when your daughter makes laps around the restaurant, tries to go through stranger's bags, and then offers her half-eaten dumpling to them.
Having the wait staff take our daughter during the meal to go play

Tovina cheering for the home team

After watching men's qualifying gymnastics last Saturday, some of the Chinese people at the event gave Tovina a Chinese flag and showed her how to cheer the home team. Here you can watch her getting the hang of it.

More pictures from Dalian

Tovina protected from the sun at the beach.

The rest of the clan not protected from the sun

Xinghai Square Area - New Spirit of Dalian
In the western part of the city is the largest square in Asia, Xinhai Square. It has a sculpture of 1000 footprints developing from childhood to adulthood. It represents a long journey requiring patience and composure, which Dalian has gone through.

Tovina and some new friends taking pictures of all the kids

Moving to the States

It looks like we will be leaving Beijing and moving to Ohio the beginning of September. Its still not finalized but, much like our move out here, we plan to get a definite answer from Uncle Sam at least 2 days before we need to fly.

Reading blogs in China

You have heard me complain before about how our blog is often blocked from China. Well I now have a work around!
Google Reader

(For those of you who know about Google reader and other RSS type things- a warning: this post is about to get very boring)

While I can't go to blogspot and see my blog, I can enter my blog address into Google Reader and see a copy of my blog there.
Very convenient.
In addition, I can enter the names of all the of my friend's blogs and picture websites whether on blogger, LiveJournal, Fliker, or whatever and Google Reader tells me when they have been updated and then lets me see the updates! I can hardly tell you how exciting this is what with the randomness of the Great Firewall of China where webpages mysteriously disappear from day to day, servers may be "temporarily unavailable", and generally keeping up with friends is painful.

Just wanted to share this awesome free program. And if you like following our blog and our friends listed at the side of our page, let me know and I would be happy to send you the Google Reader file that will add all of those names to your very own special version.

Noises

I'm told we need to publish some video, so here is Tovina making the noise that means "I want you to look this way." Why does it mean that? Because when Chinese people want to get her attention, this is the noise they make. It also means that when Tovina wants your attention, she might also make this noise.

Diapers?

The other day, while waiting in line at the grocery store, a crowd of Chinese women gathered around the small center of attention perched on my hip. There was a discussion among the ladies in Chinese and then one of them asked me, "Why do you put her in pants?" With a little more pantomiming I eventually realized the question was - why do you use diapers?

At first I tried to explain that it was so Tovina does not make a mess in the store. But Chinese babies are brought into the store with split pants all the time and I have only heard 1 story of an emergency. So my response just seemed ridiculous to them. What they were asking was more ,why bother with diapers at all? There is all that cleaning up of things stuck to the skin and the cost of buying them and the irritation to the child's skin. Why, they wanted to know, would anyone choose that way?

In my time here I have learned a bit more about the whole split pants thing for children. Most parents seem to learn to read their infants signals very young so that by the age of 6 months or so they know when their children need to use the bathroom and can react appropriately. This also means that the children learn that certain signals will get them assistance for going to the bathroom. Given that a 10 month old's ability to wait is pretty limited, this does mean that small children end up using the ground around the tree in the middle of the sidewalk occasionally. But it also means that their parents carry them around with no diapers and pretty much no worries from a very young age. To have an almost 11 month old child with a diaper.. well, it led to the question above.

Then the line started moving and I was saved from further attempts to justify my approach.

Getting on with it all

I'm sorry that the updates have once again gotten a little sparse. There are a few things going on.
1) Tovina is becoming more mobile and slightly more demanding
2) I just finished my last MBA paper and have apparently graduated
3) I am now looking for a job (this has become perhaps my biggest blogging excuse)
4) We are trying to determine our move date for coming back to the States
5) I temporarily broke another camera (Its fixed now)

There will be more on all of these topics, but I wanted to get our excuses out there as soon as possible.

Donating blood in China

On Wednesday last week there was a blood drive at the embassy. It was very similar to a drive in the States other than a few items:
First off, you get this cool book which you can see here.
Also

They type your blood in front of you
You have the choice of how much blood to donate (200 or 400ml rather than the straight 1 pint = 473 ml)
There are all sorts of restrictions that the US doesn't impose (No donation if over 55 or nursing a baby. Can only donate every 6 months rather than 8 weeks)
There are all sorts of acceptable conditions that the US doesn't recognize (No questions regarding prison time or sex with people who had served prison time, no question regarding traveling countries that have mad cow)

Lastly they gave all these cool gifts. I don't know if this is normal but it was very fun. I got a leather cased manicure kit with clippers, scissors, a file, etc. And even better there was a metal travel kit that contained a fork, spoon, and 2-part chopsticks that disassemble and screw together.

Baby's mother

Today I was recognized by an apartment staff member as Tovina's mother, again. Both times I have been in the elevator and had someone else come in, surreptitiously look at me a little bit, and then ask, 'where is your daughter?'

The first time the question was in Chinese but it was still pretty darn clear what the maintenance man was asking.

I knew she was popular but I had no idea that it could spill over to encompass other members of the family. I had thought that I could anonymously hide behind her smile but apparently the bearer of the empress is also noteworthy, if only as the harbinger of good news.

Didn't feel a thing

Just to answer the questions that have started coming our way - the only quake we felt was Tovina rocking her stroller as she tried to make it go faster.

Paparazzi at the Great Wall

I know we shared some still shots of this recently, but here is a more comprehensive idea of what happens when Tovina pauses for a photo op.



The noise she makes at the end of the video is when someone new tries to take her for the next round of photos. I should also explain that this had already been going on for about 10 minutes when I took the video.

Passover

One of the members of our community wrote this article about Passover in Beijing for her paper back in the States. Given the questions we often receive regarding our Jewish community, I thought I'd share it.

This year we did not attend the community sedar and instead spent both nights the homes of our friends.

Food, glorious food!

We are making some serious progress on Tovina's eating habits. Today she had 1/4 of a mango, half a banana, and a whole egg yolk. It is so wild to just watch her eat it all up. Very fun and impressive.

The down side is that she also seems to be making some serious progress on getting that food to go all the way through her system. Also very impressive. We decided it would be best to not share pictures of this event.

I would not have thought to give her eggs yet but 2 of my Chinese classmates told me that they started their children on egg yolks at 4 months.

Weekend retreat

The retreat was at Mutianyu, a nearby section of the great wall. We had outdoor services Friday night and Saturday morning and night as well as an outdoor Torah trup (singing) lesson. We didn't actually have services on the wall itself, but many people hiked over and then back at some point during the day.

One of the fun things about this weekend is how many children attended. Here are some of the girls sitting around after dinner Friday night.
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And here is Tovina coveting Sophia's hair. There was a hair pulling incident at one point and we tried to explain that Tovina was 1) unaware that she was pulling because babies don't always know what they are doing and 2) just jealous.

Gabrielle and Tovina are involved in some serious Torah study.

Judy and Tovina ignoring some serious Torah study.

Expat Show

There was a vendor fair at the convention center across from our apartments today.
We stopped by and Tovina came home with this cool balloon.

The fair had also set up these 4 HUGE stuffed mascots for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. (There are actually 5 mascots for the games, but only 4 made it into the picture.) What was extra fun was that after I sat Tovina down for this picture, a rather large crowd formed from passersby who all took her picture with the mascots. I am just waiting for her to appear on the front of some local Olympic magazine.

Tomb Sweeping Day

Today is tomb sweeping day. a federal holiday. We are about to leave on a weekend retreat so I just copied the following from the embassy newsletter to give you something to read while we are gone.

On each Qing Ming Festival, all cemeteries are crowded with people who came to sweep tombs and offer sacrifices. Traffic on the way to the cemeteries becomes extremely jammed. The customs have been greatly simplified today. After slightly sweeping the tombs, people offer food, flowers and favorites of the dead, then burn incense and paper money and bow before
the memorial tablet.

In contrast to the sadness of the tomb sweepers, people also enjoy hope of Spring on this day. The Qing Ming Festival is a time when the sun shines brightly, the trees and grass become green and nature is again lively. Since ancient times, people have followed the custom of Spring outings. At this time tourists are everywhere.

People love to fly kites during the Qing Ming Festival. Kite flying is actually not limited to the Qing Ming Festival. Its uniqueness lies in that people fly kites not during the day, but also at night. A string of little lanterns tied onto the kite or the thread look like shining stars, and therefore, are called "god's lanterns."

The Qing Ming Festival is also a time to plant trees, for the survival rate of saplings is high and trees grow fast later. In the past, the Qing Ming Festival was called "Arbor Day". But since 1979, "Arbor Day" was settled as March 12 according to the Gregorian calendar.

No fluoride, Only heavy metals allowed

We don't drink the tap water here because there are some cleanliness issues (gotta love the bacteria) and there are some heavy metals which don't have much of an effect for a short visit but over 3 years could build up in a body. Instead we drink (the probably better) bottled water. One consequence is that Tovina doesn't get fluoride which is added to the tap water in the States. To make up for this, we get to feed her half a dropper of fluoride each day.

She has been taking the drops for about a month now and while they are sweet and supposedly tasty, it was only this week that she started to decide she likes them. She still purses her lips and turns her head away when I take the dropper and bottle out. But after I smear a drop on her lips (while restraining her head with the other hand of course) she now remembers that this stuff is good and actually opens her little mouth up and then sucks on the dropper.

This is a huge improvement over:
1) Tovina spitting the stuff back at me - which was when I learned that if I only gave her 1/4 of a dropper at a time there was not enough volume in her mouth to spit
2) Having to sneak the dropper into her mouth while she was breast feeding. Not only was this really awkward, it was also sort of pitiful when Tovina realized something tasted funny and would give my breast a very confused and hurt look.