Happy V Day .. I mean - er - Leap Year Day!

It appears that even though I am 16 hours ahead of most of you, mail service is still 13 days behind. Two days ago I received a few Valentine's Day cards in the mail :) Made my day! It feels like Dia de Amistad all over again! I like to tease to make sure that you add the "chocolate tax" if you want your mail delivered in a timely manner. This is in honor of the first package that I received from my grandparents and I had found the Dove chocolates opened.

Sick again :(
I've been a little bit under the weather lately. I could feel it all weekend. My energy just wasn't quite there I was just waiting to get sick. Well on Monday Wendi came to talk to me and said, "Are you feeling okay? Your eye looks swollen and infected!" I was having a difficulty keeping my eyes more than half open ... but swollen and infected? From that point on during our discussion, all I could think of was the movie Hitch and my eye swelling shut and puffing up like Will Smith's. I could feel it happening. But when I went to check the mirror .. nothing. When I was leaving school, I spotted a very trusted mother, and asked her just how she thought I looked. Her diagnosis is a mild sinus infection with some swelling under my eyes ... a far cry from swollen shut and infected! Either way, I've been unusually cold, so when I went to Mandarin last night, I wore my snuggie across the lobby complete with Dana's fantastic warm scarf and bundled in a hood, with knitting in hand and a steaming cup of coffee. Now typically, whenever in the company of Chinese, maybe I'm paranoid, but I just FEEL like they're talking about me. That night in the elevator, yes I looked ridiculous, but I caught them! Ha! I heard the words "drinking coffee" with a little giggle.

Mandarin Class:
- You may remember the FU from the New Year, typically wishing good fortune and prosperity, but to all of us, it's a big "eff you". We've been learning Chinese characters lately and fu came up. Shelley explained to us that people usually hang the character upside down on the door. Now how did I go through the whole New Year season without noticing the character was upside down?
- "A" fourth tone means "scream". So we were asking does this mean the verb to scream? Or is it an onomonopia? Does this mean that whenver I scream I have to make sure that I pronounce my scream in the fourth tone?
- Dana caught me jotting a mental note for later on my hand and gave me a look. I think she thought I was writing the characters on my hand for studying. Which got me thinking ... that's why people should get tattoos of Chinese characters. We can just tattoo all the characters that we're studying on our arms :) Great idea, right?

Teacher Fail:
- We were looking at the calendar today, and predicting the name of the following month when Alice quickly whispered in my ear. It's a leap year! Whoops. Sorry kids, actually we have two more days in February!
- The PTA got us outdoor play baskets. Among many popular items are these light weight soccer balls. We got them last Friday, and Wendi has been waiting for one of the kids to kick it over the fence into the river. Let me just say that it wasn't a kid who kicked it over the fence :( At first the kids were in shock. But I admitted fault and promised the 3 boys I was playing flyers up with that I would get the classroom a new ball. The ball I lost was pink, so they were excitedly telling me about all the super hero designs I could get, the most popular being Ultraman. 

Other at School-ness:
- Wendi's class had a sub today, our PTA president actually. At lunch she was practicing some basic phrases that she has been learning in her Mandarin class, when my little only native Mandarin speaking elf turned to her and said sweetly, "Speak English please." I almost toppled off my chair in shock. Maybe it was just this kiddo's personality.
- Ever watched a kid walk with a full bowl of soup in his hands? Imagine how carefully that kid would walk if he had a bowl of soup in his hands at all times. I want to instate a rule in the class. Anytime you want to walk anywhere, make sure you have your bowl of soup! No more accidentally skipping into door handles or bouncing into desk corners or bumping into Alice while she's holding a cup of hot water (very popular thing to do in China to warm the hands).
- One of my elves had a REALLY rough day. He collided with another elf at recess, bit his lip. And he was just uber sensitive. I finally took him to the nap room about 2 hours early to calm down. Once the hiccuping sobs were about 20 seconds apart, he was able to talk to me. He felt the other elf had hurt him on purpose and so we talked about what an accident is. After several more hiccuping sobs, he seemed to accept this explanation and started to smile. The first thing he said to me was, "Then, the sun come out." What a perceptive little 3 year old! Talking about new beginnings and things getting better, and they always associate the sun with happy.... But then he started to continue and I realized that he had gotten totally distracted and started singing a song about planting seeds.

- I have one elf who started out life in an orphanage, so she has a tendency to horde food. This makes the other elves upset, since the food she is generally hording is everyone else's snack. So we've been really working on that.

Elf 1: "[Elf 2], where is your snack?"

Elf 2: *picks up her own snack container* "Here."

Elf 1: *gives Elf 2 the thumbs up* "Good!"

TIC - "This is China"

So outside the street, across from Cup of Joe, there's a steam vent, kind of. That's the best way to describe it. It very consistently makes a rattling noise. And as Line and I were walking by ... she said something like, "That smoke is making noise!"  But I was totally unpreturbed. TIC, "This is China". I just started giggling. Things like that happen all the time. It wasn't until later when I was mentioning it to Erich that I was VERY preturbed, because he said, "Oh yeah, that's where the water lady gets her water."
 ................................... Say what? The lady I buy my supposed clean drinking water gets it from the rattling smoke vent?!?!?! But what he meant to say, is that is where she gets her own personal drinking water, not the stuff she sells. I don't think that makes me feel any better.

Reading "Living Happily in China"
- It reminds me that I need to live in a culture and I need to respect that at times.
- First, in Mandarin there is a very common way of asking questions, I've been learning about it in my grammar book. For example,
"Shi, bu shi" means "Is it, is it not?" and if it is, "Is", the reponse is actually:
"Bu, shi." meaning, "No, it is." Confused yet?
This is important when I'm checking for understanding. I ask if it's okay to scribble, and my little Tawiwanese kiddo says, "Yes, it is not okay." .... I start to understand why he says that.
- The other thing I forgot about is eye contact, and luckily I just read that chapter. I have always expected the elves to look at the speaker, especially when we're working on solving a problem in class. I have one who loses focus very easily. (The one who can lose focus at the urinal and hit his own pants instead, or he walks to the clean up station at lunch and realizes when he gets there that he actually left his tray back on the table.) So now I'm trying to figure out if it's a It-is-impolite-to-look-a-respected-adult-in-the-eye culture thing, or if it is a I-lost-my-focus thing.
- In China, there is no hand shaking, hugging, or a kiss on the cheek when you meet someone new. Instead they exchange "name cards", or what you would likely call business cards. Name cards are exchanged by giving one with both your hands, and receiving one with both your hands. They're considered very precious, and should be kept somewhere safe to avoid disrespecting someone by accidentally leaving their name card on the table. I very fortunately read this chapter not one day before exchanging my first name cards with a local.. A dropped name card would signal dishonoring, and the fact that you don't care for the person. The two handed grab signals great care and indicates that you are important to them.

School:
-  The number of words this kiddo says in his native language his mother tells me is zero. The words he says in English are: please, thank you, my turn, excuse me, race car, angry, and snack time. Until today ... when I saw him this morning, and he pointed to the cup in my hand and brightly said, "Coffee!"
- There are a lot of quick fixes in China. Sometimes it is difficult to see the logic in the Chinese way of thinking, and it's easy to become quite frustrated. There has been an ongoing battle this week between the heat in our rooms, broken doors, termites in the nap room, and it appears that our illegal satellite TV company was discovered by the government and shut down (I'm told this happens about every 6 months) so we naturally just switched providers. They came Friday, and we were supposed to give the keys to our apartments to TJ. I guess one teacher forgot to turn over a key, because as a post note on one of the emails sent to all staff it said, "[teacher] you can give you key to TJ and you could find him in #46 somewhere around." I couldn't help but laugh. Our building is 26 floors ... and has two separate halves with their own elevators. That could take hours to find him.
- We've had so much indoor recess that even though the ground was still a little soggy, the moment the slides and swings were dry I took the kids outside. It turns out, these elves that are typically dressed in knee high rain boots, ponchos AND umbrellas do not like to be dirty or wet. One of my elves started to cry when he got mud on his hand. I had to teach him how to wipe it off on his pants. This is why I shouldn't have to wear my nice clothes to work. But a little while later when the soccer ball got dirt on it, he insisted on going inside and washing the ball off in the sink. Sheesh. You're not a kid unless you've gotten a little dirty. That's what washing machines are for!

Soccer:
- After a big play, I heard, "Next time, just take her out!" ... There's only one person he could've been referring to. And I heard that!
- Matt was in goal and there was a guy attacking, so I stepped in front of the shot. Matt said, "Nice block!" But after the guy left, I said, "I didn't block anything, he never hit the ball, he kicked my ankle!" Matt was a little surprised and asked, "Oh, then what happened." ..... Well, it hurt!!! Playing soccer again, I'm beginning to find all those new bruises .. the ones I remember getting .. and the ones I don't.

Some of you are aware that I had a slightly emotional day, and I'm very lucky to still have a complete support system here, no matter the problem.
- Ariana from Whitworth, for whenever I miss Whitworthy things.
- Julie and Matt from Bellingham, for whenever I miss Bellinghamster things.
- Dana and Line are my snuggle/hug/nuzzle team, for whenever I miss anything else.
Today, (I'm sure she's said it multiple times), but today was the first time I heard Bree say my name. Kyla pointed the video at Bree, and she looked at me and said, "Hi Kari!" She also blew kisses, something she has mastered for about a year now, and she attempted to hug the screen.

One of these is not like the others ...

Open Doors

First of all, my ayi is my second love. I love love love my ayi!
- So nice to come home after a long day at work, do some homework (I'm taking a class) and have my socks folded. Really, who wouldn't want that? If I could go back and do college over again, I would hire an ayi. Such a blissful feeling to have a clean apartment! That means no procrastinating on the homework too!
- It's a game of hide and seek. She's still rearranging my things a bit. So I have to use my Chinese logic and think, now where would I put that in China? There is a drawer of wooden dowels I explained last time, I had no clue what to do with it. Thank you ayi, this is genius!
- Plus, doesn't it just make you so happy to walk into your room and see Brown Sugar just WAITING for you! I cannot explain the weird simple happiness that fills my soul when I come home.

Doors in China are a fickle thing. The Chinese rarely heat or air condition any space, so there is really no reason to shut the door, because there is no "bought air" to keep in. This has created a mass culture clash and that battles have been raging all week. Not sure yet who will win the war ...

- At Cup of Joe, there's a nice little fire place and a sofa where I like to read in the mornings. I miss my coffee shop culture of the Northwest. I've perfected my evil eye look each time a local comes into Cup of Joe and leaves the door open. I'm thinking of asking Julie (HS Science teacher) to conduct an experiment on exactly how long it takes the shop to go from 70 degrees to 40 degrees, because I'm pretty sure it's about 20.4 seconds. Grrrrrr. Heating back up from 40 to 70 takes more like 20.4 minutes. Erich (owner of Cup of Joe) always smirks at my evil eye, but he usually closes the door for me.
- At school, the teachers have been trying to convince our handy man Jackie that the rooms are too cold. He always walks into the classroom and says, "It's fine". And I say, "Jackie, you're wearing your coat. We shouldn't have to wear coats in the classroom, or the nap room!" Jackie's solution was to tape my back door shut (there's about an inch of space between the door frame and the door, allowing a healthy winter breeze throughout the day). I've now hit the door once, and one of my elves has walked into it twice.
- Yesterday, it seems the heaters have finally been fixed, and with a taped door, at least some of it stays inside the classroom. I walked in and immediately felt a heat wave. WOOT! I walked back out to turn the thermostat down, but then I thought, silly me! That means I can take my down jacket off instead! :)
- I've also noticed, the Chinese are a lot more prepared for the cold than the whiny Westerners (myself included). Their clothing is thicker, and they all wear full body under armor. The cold doesn't seem to phase them. I'm thinking I should invest in some local attire. If only, I could find something without fur, leopard print, rhinestones, or animal ears.
- And finally ... I'm guilty of being a hypocrite. Last Saturday on the bike ride we found an orchid farm inside greenhouses. The workers offered to let us go inside to have a look. I don't think I've ever been in a greenhouse before, but I was shocked when I walked in from the 32 degrees to find 80 degrees. Unfortunately, I was the last one to enter, and when I noticed Erich smirking at me, I realized that I had forgotten to shut the door behind me. Guilty. One of the workers shut it. I almost killed a bunch of orchids! I'm a little more forgiving now at Cup of Joe.
- I know I know, the worst thing in my life right now is a culture fight over doors. Woe is me!

At School:
- The elves know they're supposed to be relatively quiet in the hall, and sometimes they take this too seriously. The even shush me when I make a noise but it was too funny when one of them got the hiccups shortly before going to nap time.
Elf 1: *hiccup*
Elf 2: "SHHHHH!
Elf 1: *hiccup*
Elf 2: "SHHHHHHHHHH!"
Elf 1: *hiccup*
Elf 2: "SSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
How to explain that hiccups are completely involuntary?

- Monkey See, Monkey Do! Still a very common theme this week, this time in the form of copy catting phrases. As they're building in the block center ... here are some examples:
- Elf 1: "My house!"
- Elf 2: "My house!"
- Elf 3: "My house!"

Elf 2: "My race car!"
Elf 3: "My race car!"
Elf 1: "My race car!"

Elf 3: "My coche!" ("car" in Spanish)
Elf 1: " ..... ???"
Elf 2: "No."

Knitting Club:
This is Jeff, from the UK. He was a regular on Sunday evenings before we even schedule our knitting club for that time. And luckily he's a fisherman. So this is the common occurrence on Sunday evenings:
Me messing up, me unravelling my work, me knotting the yarn, and Jeff fixing it.

Mountain Bike Ride

We went up into the mountains again. Erich, Matty, Dana, and I. We were looking for a specific path up the reservoir, but it took us awhile to find it. We got side tracked in some villages. Here are a couple of highlights.

Finally found the reservoir

Village on the way to the reservoir

- The kids in the village saw us coming through, they ran off the streets, back to the safety of their porches and jumped up and down excitedly shouting, "Lao wai! Lao wai!" (meaning: Foreigner!) I don't think they get out of the village much. But they were really cute.
- Most of the people hung their clothes out on hangers in the trees, right next to their meat, also hanging on hangers in the trees ... ??? I'm still confused by this.
- One of the guys walked a couple of feet into the very thin bamboo "forest" and just dropped his pants. I think this is very common, and at least now I know how my 3 year olds learned to confuse a bush with a urinal.

View of Beilun coming back from the mountains. My apartment building is almost hidden by the little hill on the left.

Chickens crossing the road :)

The creeks that leave the reservoir are built with little pools every 20 yards or so for cooking and washing.

Bamboo forest!

Magazine

I'm going to start treating this like my own personal magazine, so there are some reoccurring articles that you can look forward to. Obviously school stories is a big one. I'm instating a column based on my elf with the weird taste buds. He mixes the weirdest things! Other columns include my screwed up homophones when I type, language barrier experiences. Possibly my ayi might gain a permanent column, or just weird things that I learn about China.

Ayi:
- Love love love love love!
- The organization of my apartment is becoming a little more intuitive now that my ayi is arranging things. It's probably a good thing that she does the laundry now, since I just push random buttons until I get the washer to fill up with water, who knows what settings it's on!
- She kinda takes her own initiative. She's rearranged all my cupboards, the dishes and the food. Today I found my socks all neatly matched and folded in what I had already designated as my sock drawer, so that was a lucky guess, but for the life of me, I couldn't figure out where she put my clean underwear. I went over to shower at Ariana's tonight (actually, the issues I have with hot water could have it's own blog post) and she showed me the hidden drawer where I did find the missing articles of clothing :)
- Underneath said hidden drawer, there is also another "drawer" that is just wooden dowels, so it's a little hole-y. I couldn't figure out what to do with it, but then I saw Ariana's dress pants all hanging from the dowels. Genius!

School:
- Looking at me through a prism, a certain elf typically says, "Look, I see so many Ms. L!" But today was especially humid, and my hair I think had a little extra volume. So when I asked, "What do you see?" he responded, "You look like lion!"
- Monkey See, Monkey Do! We were really into copy catting today. One elf ran up and hugged a second grader today at recess. One of my other elves tried to copy, but the second grader was slightly mortified at the strange boy coming after her for a hug and so she ran away. Later at the same recess, one of my elves decided that the bush resembled a urinal and dropped his pants. Of course one of my other elves saw this and promptly ran up beside him and copied the action. So when Alice tapped me on the shoulder and pointed, all I saw were little moon cheeks just hanging out. They were so proud, and super confused when I asked them to go inside and wash their hands.
- Our PTA had a back sale for Valentine's Day, and one of my elves bought a box of candy hearts (talented bakers!). The other elves on the playground were asking him to share, but he said no. One of my elves was quite indignant. "But today is holiday!" He held his finger in the air as if to announce a scientific fact and continued pompously, "Today is day of sharing!"
- I got to play pictionary today. One of my elves still doesn't speak English. He can understand our daily routine English, but anything beyond that is guess work. He's also very OCD organized, and freaks out if something is not in order. He can't function until he has put things back in order. The first time he left his lunch box in the cafeteria was a huge episode. But he's gotten used to just pointing to the empty space in his cubby and I know he wants to go back to the cafeteria. Today, however his mom took his lunch box after the bake sale. I tried to tell him this, but he didn't understand and started to panic attack. I ran to get the piece of paper and pen. At first he told me "No no no." But then I drew his lunch box. I had his attention. He was watching me. I drew his mom, and his little brother with the soccer ball. I started to repeat that his mom took his lunch with her. That seemed to satisfy him. I have mad drawing skillz!!!

Language:
- I guess this is in reverse. It wasn't me speaking English, it was my elf speaking English. Normally there are two packages of tissue out on the lunch table for messy hands, but today there was only one. My elf said, "Look, no more this one tissue!" Just very interesting sentence structure.
- A lot of English language learners have difficulty with words that start with /s/, or the /th/ sound, or ending a word with a consonant (they always add /a/ at the end of the word). Because of this, the Chinese say "mouth" as "mouse", as in, "I want to put the candy in my mouse." and they call Erich, Ericka.

The Taste Bud Elf:
- Today he was eating french fries. He had a giant bowl of catch up, but to my surprise, he dipped the french fries in his soup instead. By the end of lunch, he had dumped all his french fries in his soup and just ate it.

Homophones:
- This should definitely be a reoccurring article I think. I love catching what my brain does with homophones. Maybe this should be a game. I've already caught one mistake :) Can you find it?

Water

Back at Whitworth, we used to have a dorm chant. It went like this:
Leader: "Here at Whitworth, what do we do with our sidewalks?"
Group: "Water, water, water, water!"
Joke being that the sprinklers were always misaimed at the sidewalks instead of the lawn. This joke came to mind today since I've been really struggling with the water system here. In my mind, it plays like this:
Powers that be: "Here in China, what do we do with hot water?"
Me: "Well, we certainly make sure it doesn't make it through the pipes to Kari's shower!"

It was a cold shower this morning, and since soccer I showered at Line's. I did have a fantastic/successful exchange in Mandarin, my first successful conversation with a stranger who wasn't a taxi driver.
The ladies at the water place speak enough English to ask if I want to put hot or cold water on my card, but it appeared there was an error when I went to buy water today. They tried to tell me to come back in the morning, when I asked what time, they continued to tell me in the morning. So finally I switched to Mandarin, and this was our exchange. *note: chitter chatter is unrecognizable Mandarin.
Me: Ji dian? ("What time?")
Lady: *chitter chatter* ba dian *chitter chatter* ("8 hour")
Me: "Shang ban" ("Start work")
Lady: Ohhhhhhhh... *calls her supervisor* *chitter chatter* .... ren hou ... ("then") ... *chitter chatter* mei you shui ("not have water") ... *chitter chatter* ... *hangs up* is okay!
Yeah .... except that it's not okay. Because when I swiped my card, I didn't get any water. I guess there have been leaking problems ... among other things. So hopefully I don't have to move like one of the other families in our building.

This next part, I don't know if it's China, or if it's just human nature, but I guess Line and I made a mistake when we decided to share an ayi. Line decided that if her socks are being folded, that her ayi is probably coming for too many hours. Line really didn't want to cut her hours, because obviously her ayi depends and expects that income. Since I was talking about it for song long, I'm borrowing the hours from Line, and actually she gets a few more hours, and she doesn't mind. What we didn't know: there is an ayi hierarchy, and the "head" ayi is throwing a fit, and calling Line, and calling our translator. Apparently she feels that my apartment is her job, because she has the right to first pick of jobs... or something like that. I feel bad, because my ayi really did a fantastic job, and I would like to keep her. Not really caring for the territorial, underground catty remarks and stuff. I'm going to consult with some of my local friends though, to make sure this is a personality thing and not an offensive cultural thing before I make a decision. More on this next time!
I had a little bit of gender-role whip lash today. Some of you may have seen this facebook post:
"Oh men. There are some things that transcend all cultures and nationalities. As I left soccer early to head to the knitting club, I hear back on the pitch, "Yay, the girl is gone. Now we can play naked!"
We had a lot of Europeans and Chinese playing that day, and a couple Latinos... and me. The only representative of both the female gender and the U.S.
So I go from this .... to the knitting club. I brought my knitting book today that Connie had given me for Xmas, called "Knit knacks". The girls at the club were overcome with cuteness by the front cover which pictured a cozy for a french press. There was more "ooooo"ing and "ahhhhh"ing and deep sighing when Line and Dana presented their matching socks mother/baby socks that they're knitting for one of our pregnant coworkers. And to make matters worse ....

Line taught us how to make caramel truffles today in anticipation of our ladies Valentine's night. I think we were high on thought of having such delicious-ness. It was absolutely contagious. I don't know about the last time you had the giggles, but if it's been too long, I highly recommend making caramel truffles with your coworkers. Seems to do the trick!

Last, I'm creating a list of mistakes that I catch when I re-read my blog post, in honor of my serious issues with "righting" homophones. Here's the one I caught this time:
- Instead of "throwing a fit", I wrote, "throughing a fit".

Ayi Ayi Ayi!!!!!!

I finally gave in and hired an a yi. The word literally means aunt (specifically on your mother's side) but has been adapted to mean any woman of your mother's age plus nannies and house keepers, in my case, house keeper :) It is so clean clean clean! I was giddy as a school girl when I got home. It smells so nice, and she rearranged the furniture! That cracked me up! I felt so bad and guilty for how messy I had let my apartment get, that I actually spent all last night and this morning cleaning for her. I guess I'm not the only one. When I mentioned this to Ariana, she said every Monday/Wednesday/Friday is a mad dash to put away all her clothes. Any clothes left out will be washed, whether or not they are dirty.

Best observation made by an international teacher: "You folks from Western Washington never use umbrellas." That's right. We're proud to represent! All 4 of us :)

This picture showed up on our school webpage. We had a Chinese New Year presentation celebrating different dances from the different provinces in China. (Also some of our teachers learned the dragon dance like the video from the Lantern Festival). This is supposed to be a dance that the high schoolers performed, and then they asked some teachers to come try. Bid and I were the first to be asked. There are students controlling the sticks and they move to a certain rhythm, so if you're successful you can step through the sticks on the beat.

At school:
One of my Nursery kids is getting promoted to Pre K next week, rightfully so, since he's 2 months from turning 5 years old. This week he's spent the mornings with me, and the afternoons in Wendi's class. I realized today that maybe I pampered him a little too much when he came back from P.E. and tried to take off his jacket without my help.
The scene: I'm sitting at my computer and I hear the kinders walking through the hall. I have two doors to my classroom that have two tall windows so I can watch the kids go by.
The story: As my elf comes in, I watch as he unzips his jacket, and then tries to take it off. He can't get the sleeves to come off though. It was like a cartoon. I see him hopping one way and then out of sight. Then he comes wiggling back the other way, shaking his arms like a frantic bird. And then again he's out of sight. I felt bad, I was giggling so much. Before I could get up, he managed to jump enough to shake off his coat.
The lesson: I think maybe it's time I teach him strategies for taking off his jacket by himself, that don't include hopping like a bunny.

A new favorite word!
Don't get too excited, "angry" is still definitely the most popular word in our classroom (sung and chanted very happily of course). But when we discussed the letter and sound for "F", for February and Friday, one of the pictures was a flamingo. I told them flamingos are always pink. Now one of my elves unzips his jacket and uses it for wings and says, "I'm flamingo!" ... EVERY DAY! Then one day, another elf came dressed in a pink sweater. The other elf said, "Look, he's flamingo!" So excited about the word flamingo. 
I guess it's not that unusual to have favorite words in a new language. We always had our own favorite words when learning Spanish, and we'd try to creatively work them into any sentence. Thus my favorite words in new languages have been:
Spanish: trabajabamos = "we worked"
Chinese: ping guo = "apple" and niu nai = "milk". (I like these ones I think mainly because of the tones, they're fun to say.)

Today at indoor recess, one of Wendi's elves confided in me his very complicated predicament. It's a loud room, so I didn't catch the whole story, but somehow lasers are involved, and there were certain students who were already his friend, and 2 students who were not his friend yet. So he pondered with me, how to get these 2 students to be his friend. He leaned up against my chair, propping his elbow on it, and set his chin on his hand, crossing his leg and assumed a thinking stance. Shaking his head he told me, "It's a tricky way." Five minutes later he came running up to me to say, "I think I know how to solve my problem!" Then he brushed my hair away from my ear and whispered very slowly and clearly, "I will just play with them!" He gave me one affirmative nod, and then happily ran off. Oh the wonderful problem solvers we are raising :)

Mountain Bamboo Fruit

On Tuesday, we celebrated Dana's birthday with a surprise vegetarian potluck. I, of course, brought brownies :). One of our Chinese families brought "mountain bamboo" fruit, or "shan zhu" (and be proud, I know how to write both of those Chinese characters!) So my friend Chen handed me one, then started at me expectantly, waiting for me to eat it. Shoot ... This thing is funny looking. And I know many of you have seen my famous face when I try something new. But it seemed rude not to eat it, since Chen was very anxiously waiting for my opinion of the fruit. And ... I was successful! It was very sweet, and it had the look and consistency of a very white grapefruit. But here is proof, I ate the darn thing!

The Knitting Club



Line and I at the knitting club. Sundays at 4 pm at Cup of Joe! ... you know, in case you wanted to drop by :) Dana is taking the picture, and she actually just finished the scarf that I am wearing. I love it! Julie would be there too, but she didn't have any projects to work on.

For Chinese New Year EVERYTHING shuts down for at least a week, including Taobao (basically ebay), which is the site where we order our yarn and needles. So Julie was still waiting for taobao to open up to order new yarn. Also, Metro closed, which is like our Costco. So the cafe had to buy an extra freezer to prestock everything they would need over the week long Chinese New Year. Seriously, how does this country even function for a whole week without any stores? We can just see every stock plummeting during that time.

"Oh no, oh no, oh no! Yes yes yes!"

At Home:
I'm titling this story Alarma! in honor of Lara's multiple post (as well as a recent one) about the fire alarm at Whitworth South.

Today, not wanting to make dinner, or actually I was technically unable to, I'm missing one ingrediant for every "meal" I know how to make, anyways, I ordered delivery. When the delivery came, I actually had to use my intercom to buzz the guy in downstairs. This is a first, normally the door is propped open. I figured out how to answer the call, but as for unlocking the door downstairs, I had no idea. What to do, what to do? Well naturally, start pressing buttons! Unfortunately, one button that I hit lit up, and made the intercom talk in Chinese. LOUDLY. ON REPEAT. She wouldn't shut up. XIN KAUI DAO LA. XIN KAUI DAO LA. (I actually don't remember what she was saying, but it was something like that.) Over and over and over. I opened my apartment door to make sure my food was on it's way, and sure enough, I saw the elevator moving. The guy kinda laughed at my intercom problem, gave me my food, and left. So .... what to do what to do? She still wouldn't shut up. Well naturally, press more buttons!! Two minutes later, with no luck, I get a knock on the door. It's a security guard. He gives me the *What's wrong with you?* look. And I give him the *I don't know what's going on FIX IT!* look. He shook his head at me, disapprovingly, but didn't roll his eyes, so that was nice. And then he patiently taught me how to turn the alarm off. He made sure I could do it by myself twice before he left. I'm not really sure what I set off, but it's good to know that if I press every button on my intercom, within about 3 mintues I'll have a security guard at my door.


The other teachers think I'm a little punk. They tease me for "sleeping in" till 6 am on school days now. I'm so proud! I guess it's annoying when they come running into Cup of Joe at 7:30 am since they don't have time to make breakfast, and I'm snuggled up in a lounge chair, breakfast clearly eaten, half finished coffee, and reading my book.
This morning however I mangaged to sleep in till 8 am. WOWOW. I think it's the lack of fireworks. Today is the 10th day after the New Year. The number 10 must no sound like anything special in Mandarin (i.e. good fortune, luck, money) because there was not a war of fireworks at sunrise like there was on the 8th day after the New Year.

Homophones. I think I've been over this before. I've had issues with these ever since coming to China. I go back and re-read my emails and this is what I find that I right. These are just 3 that I found in my emails only yesterday!
- It's just plane silly!
- I don't know wear I left them.
- Twoday I went down to the cafe.
It's like a first grade grammar test. I don't know how my mind switches these words in my head!

At School:
Today after waking up from nap time, one of my elves discovered my cheap Chinese cell phone on the floor. It's my watch to make sure they wake up on time. She asked my TA who it belonged to, and she brought it over to me. Then she asked if she could play with it. Bree LOVES playing with my cell phone, and it was locked, so I didn't mind if she pressed the buttons to watch it light up. Later when everyone was awake, I watched her slip my phone into her pocket as we left the nap room, so I stopped and had conversation, just to make it clear that it was okay for her to keep my cell phone safe for now, but by the time she went on the bus, I would need it back. It was the end of the day, they were to have snack, and they actually woke up early (a first time occurance) so I had decided to take them outside for 5 minutes. She really liked just holding the phone, and I had to advise her to put it back into her pocket while she was on the swings, or else she'd probably fall off, thinking the cell phone was more important to hold on to. When the parents started arriving, the kiddos got excited and ran for their backpacks. Halfway to the bus, my elf starting freaking out.
Elf: "Oh no! Oh no!" and holding her head was all she could do.
Me: "What's wrong? Are your ears cold?"
Elf: "No no no." *Points to her hands*
Me: *Check to make sure her gloves are on snuggly*
Elf: "No no no."
Me: "What's wrong? You need to talk to me so I know how to help you."
Elf: *Points to her hands, points to the playground.*
Me: "Did you forget something on the playground?"
Elf: "Yes yes yes."
Me: "Okay, show me where to go"
Elf: *Leads me onto the playground equipment, insistently waving me to follow.*
At the top of the play gym, on the slide is my phone. Somehow she remembered when I had forgotten that I was supposed to get my phone back before she got on the bus. Incredible.

Things to look forward to:
- The zumba like dancing has started up again on the basketball courts. The group whose music is so loud I hear every word from my 12th floor apartment. Next time I hear it, I'm going down and joining them. I mustering up the courage! It MUST happen!
- I'm hiring an ayi. A cleaning lady to come in and make sure I'm no living in squalor.

The Lantern Festival

Our wonderful neighbor community, Yulan, put on a Lantern Festival for all the locals and foreigners.

- The actual Lantern Festival is supposed to be held on the first full moon after the New Year (I think that's how it goes anyway, don't quote me on that!), which is this Monday night.

- Typcially you light the lanterns and let them fly, sort of like in the movie Tangled. Before you let them lose, you're supposed to write riddles on them, so whoever catches the lantern when it falls has to solve the riddle.

- There is also a dragon dance and a lion dance. Plus we got to be in a parade :) I have some ify looking pictures, and some video. I'm hoping to get pics from someone who had a better night time camera, so I may change these. But here are a few:

We felt bad but I guess not that bad. Our little parade stopped in the middle of intersections to perform. The drummers kept the beat, while the dragon danced, and the cars honked their way through :)

Blurry I know. These are the 2 lion dancers. And the dude on the left leads them and calls them to dance. I guess they are meant to be loud in order to scare away the evil spirits from last year.

For Bellingham people, our parade was the equivalent of crossing the Guide around 6:30 pm. For Seattle people, I'm not sure the equivalent, maybe Aurora? Either way, at least we have the green light!

¿We're assuming this is the Happy New Year shrine that indicates what year it is. This year is of course, the dragon! Don't you love how we're just walking through traffic? Nothing as organized as Ski to Sea or anything.

Proudly holding our lanterns. Dana *Me* Julie, Pat and Line. We have our rabbit lantenrs. We assume they're supposed to be burned, as last year was the year of the rabbit. Julie is wearing what we ssume are dragon horns. They were very popular among the youngsters.

The lion dancers. So cute! .... And, you know, a couple of cars. This is very typical China I'm thinking.











A look at the dragon dancers. Some of our teachers and PTA members actually did this for our New Year's celebration at school. I'm thinking that's a lot of arm strength to keep this going!

Nursery Teacher ... More than a full time job.

Once they wake up at nap time, my elves know they can choose a book to look at quietly while they wait for the others to wake up. Elf 1, on the far left, was the first to wake. Then 5 minutes later, Elf 2 came and quitely sat next to him. Elf 1 offered him a book. Elves 3 and 4 followed quitely. I watched the whole thing happen. It was so cute!


I know I've had a lot of vacation recently, with Christmas, and Chinese New Year, and I'm not complaining or anything, but this week has been SOOOO busy!!!
- Report cards were due to go home on Tuesday. Oy! My first set. And conferences are next week. We stay at school till 7 pm on Monday and Wednesday. Now that is a long day at school!
- Our school is also trying to be WASC accredited so we have a lot of different committees for how to improve our school so we can submit a final report for WASC in March. I've been bounced around a lot since I got here, but they finally landed me on the Curriculum Mapping committee. Here's the story:
My first meeting was CHAOS. By asking all my questions and figuring out the purpose/goals of the committee, I kinda forced them to get their act together and organize things. I guess the chair of the committee had left several weeks before my arrival. By the end of my second meeting, somehow I was the one delegating tasks and guiding the minutes of our meetings. By the end of our third meeting, I was nominated the chair of our committee, and asked to present our findings to the rest of the faculty. That happened yesterday. I think tomorrow they will make me their queen! Okay, just kidding. I have to admit, at first I thought maybe no one else wanted to do the work. But outside meetings I've received so many thanks, and a bunch of HUGS (????) for bringing organization and leadership to our meetings. And my Head of School stopped me today to say the saame thing. During meetings, often times I have to tactfully head off accusations and frustrated remarks and turn them into something productive. It cracks me up. I feel like the babysitter of 15 year veteran teachers. I know I was hired to be the nursery teacher, but really? I didn't realize how much of a full time job it is!


Okay, so this is an old story, and I can't remember if I've already written it down, but something similar happened yesterday, so I'm resharing.
To get to the playground, we exit my classroom out the front door, we walk around to the side, walk around the back, and there it is! One day late after school, 2 of Wendi's elves came racing down the hallway, obviously returning back to the playground.
Elf 1: sprints out the door as fast as he can, and starts to run around the outside of my classroom.
Elf 2: comes to a screeching halt at the door, looks at my classroom door, back at the outside door, I actually see him make the decision in his mind, and then he's barreling through my classroom heading for my back door. Clearly, cutting through my classroom was thought to be much faster than running around.
One of the 4th grade math standards is being able to look at a map and draw the shortest distance between point A and point B. I'm thinking that general concept was mastered in that one moment. I was proud of him, and I told him that I thought the idea was brilliant, but right after that, I strictly told him that my classroom was not to be used as a shortcut, and had him walk around the outside anyway. Mean teacher! :)

I have one elf that has the attention span of a bat. It's AWFUL. It's frustrating because sometimes I have to ask him very calmly 7 times over to complete a task since our curriculum says that you ask as many times as it takes (There is no, "If I have to tell you one more time ... !") But it's also hilarious at the same time.
- At lunch, he'll clean up his tray and walk it over to the garbage, toss any extra food, and walk back to the table, still holding the tray. Wait for it. Give him about 20 seconds and suddenly he's surprised that he's still holding his tray, and he rushes back to the garbage to put his tray on the rack.
- When he runs, if he gets distracted, he'll watch something else, sometimes running forward and looking the complete opposite direction at the same time, and not realizing that he still has forward motion. He ran square into me at recess doing this. I'm so glad I'm not a metal pole. But I can totally see that happening.
- Yesterday at snack time, I caught him absent mindedly licking a banana like a lollipop. I asked him, "Do you need to peel that?" And when he looked at it, I swear it was the first time he noticed the fact that he was holding a banana.

Sometimes I put on kids music during work time, just because the elves like to sway and hum while they play, and as I listened I found a random song called, "Build it up and tear it down, build it up again." Perfect!!!!! This is the perfect motto for our block area. We started learning the song yesterday, and here's what happened today:
One elf built a fortress, gave me a race car, and asked me to try and break through the walls, taunting the whole time *You can't get me!* He ended up knocking over all the walls himself as his racecar attacked mine. We paused to put our race cars back together, and I started building the walls up again, humming the tune of "Build it up and tear it down, build it up again". My elf started copying me, humming sweetly as he built. Sharp contrast to one minute later when he's yelling "BAM BAM!!!! I got you!!! Let's make again!" And then sweetly humming. I have the best job in the world! You know, except for the snot, tears, and germs and other body liquids that I choose not to name.

So, I drew a picture of all the different weather. Rain, snow, clouds, sun, rainbow, yada yada. And here is my snowman. I drew in red. After I was finshed, one of my elves took the blue pen and scribbled on the face. Then he turned to me and said happily, "Angry!" Oh yes, angry is still their favorite word/emotion. I'm not sure it will ever get old to them.