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".