Christmas is upon us!

I cannot believe how quickly Christmas is coming. I guess technically it isn't any faster or slower than any other year, but it feels like it has snuck up on me and left me unprepared. On one hand, we are planning and doing some wonderful things with local friends and students this year. Dinners and parties, cookies and apple cider, gift games and shrinky dinks, fun and laughter galore. On the other hand, I feel a little nervous about gift buying and birthday planning for my own family. I didn't mean for this to happen, but somehow Christmas caught me by surprise even with me watching for it.

Today, I asked Olivia what she wants for Christmas. Her response was, "shopping book." Who knows what that meant. It got us talking about Jesus' birthday and why we give gifts and whatnot. Her response to all that was to give "all the presents to Jesus." I loved it. Upon further reflection, she seemed to have a slight change of heart and decided Jesus didn't need the gifts and that she should get three gifts and Joel get one. (Since she is 3 and he will be 1 I am sure.) At least she started off generous. :) Pretty good for a 3-year old.

Really, I love this season. Since I have been in China, it has not been the same any two years. Different teammates and the meshing of traditions and expectations make each year unique. Last year especially made a lasting impression with Joel being born early and in Harbin. It is just so hard to believe that a year has passed already.

Please join me on this last leg of 2011 as we approach and enjoy Christmas and then move on into New Year.
What do you want for Christmas, by the way? Me? A whole night of sleep without waking up even one time. Aaah.

See ya' tomorrow! 明天见！

Whew! Just a dream.

Have you ever had a dream that seemed so terrible and so real that when you woke up all you could feel was utter relief that it had not really happened? I had one of those this morning. I know it was morning because I had already been up with Joel around 3 something and it was after that.

I don't really want to go into the details of the dream, but in a nutshell, Steve had been killed and I someone had taken my children. I didn't see any of this happen, but I knew it had and I was dealing with the emotional side of the situation. I felt the deepest pain and despair. I cried hysterically most of the dream.

When I woke up, to Joel's crying, I looked over and was immensely thankful to see Steve laying there beside me. I had to touch him to make sure he was real.

I hate those kind of dreams. They seem to effect my mood the whole day. I am thankful beyond words that my husband and children are safe and sound, but for some reason I have a hard time shaking some of the emotional stress that came with the dream.

I'm sure there is some psychological answer for all that even though I cannot make much sense out of it.

I wish I had done the spiritual thing and prayed when I woke up, but I let the necessities and demands of the morning set the pulse of my day. Not so pleasant. We are to cast all our cares on Jesus because He really does care about us. I don't wish for another dream like last night, but my hope is that the next time this happens that I will follow my sigh of relief with a prayer of thanksgiving and allow the Maker of dreams control my day.

I know that had nothing to do with my family, China or the price of rice, but it is what is on my mind today.

See ya' tomorrow! 明天见!

Watching my kids a bit.

I love my children. I think they are cute from head to toe. I don't think they are prefect by any means, but I think they are pretty special indeed! One of my joys as a mom is watching other people enjoy my children. There is a swelling of my heart when people take time to actually talk to Olivia and listen to her go on about whatever she finds fascinating at the moment. There is something quite thrilling about watching someone goo and gaa over Joel as he holds a plastic bowl and squeals with delight.

Sometimes I get stuck in my routine and I don't stop and take time to just watch my children. We are rushing around or I'm trying to get the house clean or dinner made or whatever, and I miss something that I can't have back again. I don't mean to get all mushy and sentimental, but I realize that my children are really growing up fast.

I was looking at Olivia's feet the other day. Now, I know that is a crazy judge of things, but I remember when she was learning to walk and thought she had the cutest little "baby" feet. They were petite and sweet. The other day I looked at her feet and thought, "Wow. They are long and skinny and so... big girl looking."

Joel is about to be one year old on Christmas day! What happened to the past 12 months!? He wants to try and stand up, eat like a big boy, play with big kid toys that are still too big for him.

Growing up is a hard thing. I was talking to a friend today about the three difficult ages in life. 3 years old, 12-13 years old and 18-21 years old. This is my theory at least:

3 is hard because you aren't a baby anymore but you aren't really a big big kid yet either. You kinda want Mama to baby you some, but you also want your freedom. The problem is that your Mama wants you to be a big kid where you want to be little and vice-versa.

12-13 is hard because you aren't a little kid and you aren't a full-blown teenager yet either. Awkward on so many levels!

18-21 is hard because you begin to feel the weight of your age and maturity. You know there is this level of responsibility that you are expected to begin taking on, but you feel torn. Part of you wants to be at home a little longer and part of you is ready for the full-load - or at least you think you are.

Once you get through all that, there are still hard times and adjustment periods, but they don't seem to be as hard - or at least aren't hard in the same ways.

My little girl is in the first one, and I feel like it is imperative that I handle it carefully. I don't know what that means exactly, but I'm praying through it and asking that I have wisdom as I tread.

Even still, I am enjoying the days I have with them and I'm trying not to wish them away. For when they are gone, they are gone for good, and while they are here they are precious.

Thanks for listening.

See ya' tomorrow! 明天见！

Cell Phone (Service) Search

Steve here.

So I took a friend to help me get 3G for my phone, expecting the help to be invaluable. It was.

In China, there are few cell phone plans that are yearly, and you can get numbers without even telling them your name. Then you just pay for what you use. It's much cheaper than the USA.

I pay about 5 dollars a month.

But getting some things are more difficult. For example, I want unlimited data for my smartphone. I don't want to pay for a certain amount and then be cut off, nor do I want to pay exorbitant amounts for using more than I'm allotted. Unlimited is not available for me.

Why? First of all, I have to use China Unicom. We first went to China Mobile, where I hoped to use my same number as always. Unfortunately, my phone does not work with their system, and they said China Unicom uses what my phone has.

Bummer. I have to get a new number after 2 1/2 years.

But my friend doesn't mind and even spares a moment to look at the nearby shops so I can find the "Android Tablet for $100" that I've heard about from my dad and various websites. Sure enough, the Novo 7 Advanced can be bought for 720 RMB, and surely the basic would have cost less than 630 (which is about 100 USD). (Note to those salivating: unfortunately it doesn't have 'Ice Cream Sandwich.') My friend wants one too.

Next, at China Unicom I hear the bad news that there is no 'unlimited service' and getting 2-3Gb per month comes with an expensive package that also allows me to call people all over China for hours on end. But that's both expensive and unneeded.

After figuring and confusion over the cost of each Mb more than a reasonable 300Mb plan (which comes with typical phone service I would normally use), I finally realize that each Gb of usage over my 300Mb will cost almost 50USD. That means I'll have to be careful, but at least I don't have to pay that every month.

So, for now I am paying less than $10 per month for both 3G data service on my smart phone plus an hour of free calls (my normal amount anyway) and 240 text messages.

It's twice as much as I used to pay, but I also have a budget for 10 times what I now have (for work). I'll monitor how I use the service; tell us in a comment below if you want to know how it goes!

Smart-phoning in 3G,
Steve

再见 zaijian！

Do's and Don'ts.

Recently after getting unreasonably upset about a sippy cup, I realized that I have a terrible tendency to make a federal case out of every little thing that my children may do. For some reason, my daughter has this fascination with pushing the top of Joel's sippy cup into the cup. After proudly announcing that she had accomplished this feat, I jumped on her and told her to never touch the cup again. I don't think I was yelling, but my face showed that I meant business. The result as you might imagine was tears at the time and a repeat of the offense a few days later.

After thinking about how ridiculous that was to get so up in arms about such a little thing, I decided to make a list of do's and don'ts for myself. The top of the list, "Don't make a federal case out of everything." "Do make a big deal about the things that matter." "Don't get into a power struggle." "Do find the buttons that defuse the preschool attitude" and so on it went.

Since then, I have found that I have tended to lean a bit too far the other direction, and want to lighten everything, but as I adjust and find the balance of what to deal with and what to overlook, I am finding that my relationship with Olivia is doing so much better. In fact, the second time the sippy cup was being accosted, I simply said, "Now Olivia, you know you aren't supposed to play with that. Please put it down." The result? She put it down and started playing with something else.

Tonight was a time I got to hone my defusing skills. She was moody after having no nap and it was getting late. She didn't want to take a bath the way I wanted her to and we had to get to a meeting. We made it through the bath okay, but when it came time to get out and dry off, she had reached the end of her patience. She was crying about nothing and whining about everything. Inside I was feeling that old pull to force the issue and move on with her kicking and screaming, but something in me said to wait and try something new.

I said, "Olivia. Do you want to wear your snowman pajamas?" She looked at me a second and said she did. I said that I thought they were dry and she could wear them. She almost started blubbering again when I continued talking about the pajamas and even wrapped her up funny in the towel and whisked her out of the bathroom in my arms. Something I said made her laugh and she giggled all the way to the bedroom. She waited on the table patiently, went through the whole deal of getting dressed without a fuss and we went to the meeting happy. Amazing.

I wish it always happened so nicely. Sadly there are usually more tears than I wish on both sides and a constant pull to be right (also on both sides) and get our way and not give in and.... I think you get the idea. I have given birth to a stubborn little girl who takes after her mother way too much in that area. Thankfully I married a man who is very patient and has taught me a lot about the art of timing.

I have even had more of a voice in her life and she has responded better to me in general. When she doesn't obey as she should or shows an unacceptable attitude, we work through it and she seems to do better afterwards. She is really growing up fast.

See ya' next time! 下次见！ xia ci jian!

她喝多了。

Steve and I went on a date today. I think this was the first date we have had since our anniversary. I think. We ended up going to... wait for it... Starbucks. I know, I know, I said I wasn't going to get all worked up about it, but it is a big deal for Harbin and all, so we took the bait and went.

That isn't actually what I want to talk about today though. What I want to share is about our ride TO the coffee joint. We took a taxi, and as is the custom of many taxi drivers in the city, they pick up more than one passenger. After we got in and went a little way, he picked up a woman with very red hair. Now, by red, I mean it was red velvet cake red. She told the driver where she was going and he needed her to repeat herself a few times. Her speech was a little difficult to understand. I thought either she was a foreigner or I was having a bad Chinese day. The driver had already established before picking her up that we were from America (most people assume we are Russian) and when she got in that was her first question to him about us. The conversation proceeded with them talking about us and us talking about them talking about us. Quite normal so far.

She was talking to us and repeating herself and kept talking about "You French and the Russians and the English all are so...." fill in the blank with whatever she thought based on some show she watched. She shared she was afraid of Russians, but her reasoning wasn't so clear. The driver pointed out again to her that we are American. So, "American" replaced "English" and then she continued with "You French, the Americans and the Russians are so  blah blah blah."

She wanted to light up a cigarette which we pounced on pretty swiftly (including the driver). Somehow in conveying that we didn't want her to smoke, Steve indirectly and unknowingly made them think I was pregnant. I am not by the way.  I knew what he had done, but he had no idea. They then looked at me with that, "aww!" expression you give women who are expecting. ugh. We didn't correct their thinking out of fear that she would again try to light up! That was probably bad.

Steve said, "I cannot quite place her personality." My swift response was, "the drunk kind" but then thought maybe I was being presumptuous. The driver seemed bothered by her, but at that point I thought it was just HIS personality at work. Some drivers are less friendly and talkative than others.

So the ride continues and she gets dropped off before we do. Immediately upon her exit the driver says, "她喝多了." /ta he duo le/ "She's had too much to drink." He then went on to list all the reasons he believed it to be so. He had told her we were American. "What's with this going on about 'you French'!? Talking about being afraid of Russians. She smelled like alcohol.... She was indeed drunk." He then went off on her wanting to smoke and how it is illegal to do so in a taxi. If she lit up he could make her get out and find another taxi. If a driver smokes and you ask him not to, you don't have to pay him! Good info!

The driver became so much more friendly after she got out of the car. He began asking us more questions about us and seemed more comfortable with us than he did with the woman who had just been in his taxi. That is rare for us to have a bigger in than a Chinese person; we were thrilled to chat with him the rest of our way to Center Street where we did indeed find Starbucks.

He dropped us off right by a big pile of huge ice blocks that will become some amazing sculptures in the next week or so and cautioned me to be careful. ;) I'm sure he was thinking of my delicate condition. Haha.

See ya' tomorrow! 明天见！

Back in the classroom again...

Though I am not teaching, I absolutely love being in the classroom. It is so fun to see how the teacher and the students can interact. It thrills me to see the character of a class (meaning the class personality as a whole) come out. I remember teaching three different groups of students. One was the "laughing" class that laughed all the time. The second was the "sweet and quiet group".  The third group was the "intellectual group" that I often called the Mary Popins  group because they were "practically perfect in every way." You interact differently with each just as a parent might three different children.

Today, I was in an English class with a Chinese teacher. I have observed a number of foreign teachers, but it is a rare and beautiful treat to watch a Chinese teacher work with her students. She brought her personality to the room and the students seems to feed off of her every word. She wasn't the traditional "read from the text and recite the answers" kind of teacher.  She wasn't perfect either. She was real.

I appreciated her insights about different students and how she knew who she could call on and was careful about those who didn't know the answer. She didn't shy away from error correction or grammar. She approached the lesson with confidence even though English isn't her first language and she hasn't been teaching many years. I am supposed to be the teacher mentor in this relationship, but I am amazed by how much I have learned even in this first observation. She is also quite open to ideas and suggestions.

I will be observing her two more times, and I am truly looking forward to those visits. It took quite a bit to get to the school however, and Joel had to come along too. One of the foreign teachers at the school was able to watch him. Olivia and Joel both might have to tag along next week as well. It is good for them to get out.

明天见！See ya' tomorrow!