Family Trip #2

We enjoyed out time away as a family for a couple of days. To our surprise this little town about 3 hours away had lots of our target people (which we knew) but what we didn't realize was that there is this little hole in the wall restaurant that had some pretty good Western food. In fact, I think we ate so much Western food that it make my stomach upset the first night. I blame the fantastic thick

fries that I had twice that day.

Todd got to practice his language and the kids got to ride in another rental car and we got out of the big city. Even though traveling here can be pretty stressful our short trip seemed to provide us all with much needed rest. When the kids went down for naps we did too. It was wonderful getting a 3 hour nap each day! Maybe we should do family nap time more than just on Sundays.

We took the kids out to the grassland so they could see yak, cows and sheep up close. It is fun that they are so entertained by animals.

We are home for the next two days until we take off again, this time on an airplane, to go see Aunt Kara and the pandas. That is what Ev's been saying for a week now. :)

I posted a lot of my pictures of the harvest fields. I think I am going to print a few of them and hang them up in our home as visual reminders that the harvest is plentiful...

Summer Is Almost Gone

I know many people have started school back in America. We will start sometime around the second week of September because we didn't get out until mid July. Tomorrow we head out for a 2 day family trip again to our people's area. We are squeezing this trip in because at the end of the week we will get on a airplane and travel to see Todd's sister. We'll be in that city for a week. Once we come back from that we will start the renewing of our visas process and get enrolled for school. Please be thinking of us for this. It is getting harder and harder to get visas. We don't foresee any problems but a lot of people have had not easy processes.

On another note, we are enjoying our new home. We managed to not leave our complex for several days. We enjoyed taking the kids to the play grounds and get around the complex. I rest was just what we needed. We have also been pretty surprised by the amount of people that we target living in our complex. We see so many of these families everywhere we go. We have a family living in the building across from ours and then a family in the 3rd entrance of our building (we live in the 2nd entrance), and many more all over. I have been asking that Ev would make some local friends her age. Tonight we went over to the family that live beside us. The great grandma and grandpa and the 4yr old grand daughter will live there and all of the family members will go home. We are excited for Ev to make friends with this little girl. We invited her over to play when we get back from our trip. Maybe by the Spring when we will send Ev to the local preschool she will be comfortable with this little friend and they can go together.

Will It Ever End?

So after my last post I had planned on a post of things I like about our new place. Unfortunately the ongoing stressful things has continued and have clouded my vision. I thought I would be able to do a post today but we had a few more things happen. So bear with me as I get these out and I really do promise to post about the things I enjoy about our new home. Hopefully, it may take a while.

Ev finally started calling our new place home. During the high stress days as I put her to bed she would calmly say, "mama, I want to go home." That made me cry almost every time. In fact when we would get into a taxi to go home after Todd would tell the driver where to go she would say no and then say in the language our old home's name.

We found out that we don't have floor heating that we control. I don't know if we would have moved here if we would have known that before. We have the lovely ghetto style where we have radiators (most radiators are not hidden like ours are) that are turned on mid October and turned off mid April. Most of this country has this system. Nice control over their people. It can get really cold here so as we are already cold because the past weekend we had lows of 40s and highs in the 50s if we did have our old way of heating the floors with our control we would have used it already. It looks like we are going to have to shell out more money to buy heaters for several rooms. Here in April it can still snow, actually it can snow in May too and not having heat then is not going to be enjoyable either. So I am really frustrated.

Meanwhile the toilet needs fixing still, the sink in the bathroom needs fixing, Ev's window needs replacing... Our landlords are too busy right now to help us out. Oh the joys of a country where people don't take others into consideration.

We got the Internet hooked up on Friday afternoon and then by Saturday morning we didn't have it. We had to call several times and finally today (Monday) we have it again. Why can't people do their jobs correctly the first time?

To top it all off we went to dinner tonight at our friend's house. They have been great sounding boards for us to get off all the junk that we have been dealing with. We stayed over at their house a little later than usual and came home to the front doors of our apartment being locked. Our wonderful (can you hear my sarcastic voice?) landlords haven't given us the key to the front door yet. So far since other apartments are being fixed up so the front door has been open. But not tonight. So we stood outside in the cold and had to call our landlord 2 times for him to get someone from the complex to come and open our door How long have we been living here so far and we still don't have all the keys?!

Today Todd and I went to buy new curtains for our bedroom. Getting curtains made is probably one of my most stressful things to do. If I could get good material that is large enough I would make them myself. But the house we live in has 4 windows that are 2. 5 meters in length and 2.5 meters in height. When you go and tell them the size of your window they double the fabric because they love huge flowing curtains. I'm not a fan of them. So I tell them what I want and they argue with me about how ugly that is and that it will look flat Why should they care? But they do and will calculate the measurements based on their ideas over yours. Meaning if you had a 2 meter length window they will make the curtain 5 meters and it will cost way too much. I am just tired of arguing and defending myself. Plus since I am a foreigner they will charge me more than locals. So I have to go round and round with them to lower their price. It is exhausting.

Today when I was buying something else I was measuring it against something I had just bought. The lady wouldn't sell it to me because she said it wouldn't work. Doesn't that sound ridiculous? I was giving her business but it wasn't to her liking so she would rather not have business.

I would really like to just stay inside my house and not talk to anyone. That really defeats the purpose of why we are here. But I am just undone with this culture that I think I will snap at anyone and at anything.

Oh and Todd and I were trying to research ways of getting to this other city to see Todd's sister. We don't want to do this but other than taking an airplane you can take a train. The train is cheaper than paying for 3 airline tickets but the train is over 24 hours. Meaning we would have to get a soft sleeper bed and buy 4 of them to ensure we would have a space just for our family and not any random person. You can't just buy these tickets. You have to buy them 10 days in advanced and you have to go through a travel agent. Or you could stand in line at the train station before 6am and you are not guaranteed to get the soft sleeper bed. So we went to a hotel that has a travel agent but after waiting for the guy to show up he tells us he can't issue tickets and told us another place to go.

In addition to this we are trying to weigh the factors of taking the 24 hour train. Do we really want to be surrounded by the people for 24 hours? They will stare at us, grab our kids and be up in our personal space. Do we want our 1 yr old to scream the entire time? The only reason why we would even entertain this option is because we have spent so much money so far getting the house fixed up and buying 3 plane tickets to this city are incredibly expensive. It is ridiculous how expensive the tickets are to fly to a city that is 2 hours or less away.

I think I am done now. Don't you wish you lived where we do?

We are Alive... and finally MOVED!

Just a few mintues ago they guy came to hook up our Internet. We are so worn out, tired beyond words, and done with dealing with workers and the culture here.

It has been a incredibly long week. As I was paying our house helper yesterday we realized that she worked double the hours she usually does. The day we moved she worked 11 hours. She has been a great advocate for us. You wouldn't think you would need an advocate but when it came to dealing with the curtain rod guy, our landlords, the water heater guy etc. we were so done with the junk you have to put up with here and just needed her to help communicate what we want.

It took them from 9am to 7pm to move. We used a moving company where 2 guys did the job. They strap furniture on there back and carry it by themselves. This one guy carried our largest couch. How he did it I don't know. It was amazing. The same guy carried 10 very full and heavy boxes straped to his back up 2 flights of stairs into our home. We were amazed. A little scared but amazed. What a long hard day of work for them.

After moving in on Wednesday by Thursday we already had our handy fix it man come and do some repairs. The toliet is leaking, the washing machine hook up needed something, he had to change all of the outlets in the kitchen because I couldn't use any of my appliances, oven, microwave. I found out today (Saturday) after taking my first shower since we moved Wednesday that I need our fix it man to replace the outlet in the bathroom too. I can't blow dry my hair in the bathroom right now. We just got hot water so that is why we couldn't take showers. Oh and let me remind you that we are living in a brand new apartment and the apartment complex is probably the best in they whole provience.

When our curtain guy came almost a day and a half after we moved 3 of the curtain rods were the wrong size even though someone came on Monday to measure. It took him from 4pm to 7pm to install our curtain rods after someone brought him the right sized ones. And he still had to go and buy a saw to cut off the blinds for our kitchen because they were too big.

Yesterday after someone came to turn on our water they told us that we would not be able to use our washing machine anywhere in the apartment. We quickly had this guy call our landlord to talk to him and he asked us why can't we just go somewhere else to do laundry. Seriously, they actually asked us that question. After several hours of dealing with lots of people we finally got it worked out.

Before we moved in our helper, Todd and I cleaned the apartment until 5pm on Tuesday. Every worker who comes to do a job leaves everything and just walks out. That means, the tile guy, the plaster people, the painter, the floor guy, the door guy leave a HUGE mess to clean up. Our painter used an airspray to do the job. He did the whole house in a day but he left paint everywhere. Our entire kitchen floor was painted, along with most of our countertops, our phone, a random piece of furniture, all of the light fixtures and so on were covered. Meaning we cleaned it up.

But now I almost have everything unpacked so we are almost done with moving. We are ready for a vacation. Wish we could leave the country but instead we are going to a city to see Todd's sister and enjoy a lot of Western food in a couple of weeks. Until then we are going to try to stay around home and not deal with the people here. Todd and I have both had our days where we were just undone by everything. If we don't let ourselves rest and give ourselves some time then we could really grow to hate the culture around us. Don't know if you understand that but it is a real thing.

I hopefully will post pictures soon. We need to charge up the camera but I haven't found the charger yet. Whenever I do I will take pictures and post them.

We're Ready to MOVE!

We are more than ready to move. As with life here we have been just waiting for our landlords to tell us we can move into our new home. It has been over a month now and the deadline we were given has gone and past. That is just life here. We just have to wait and deal with it all as it comes. We have packed up almost everything. I left out a few clothing articles for all of us and it seems like we have gone through them all. We left out a few dishes and cups for the kids so we've been eating out a lot lately. Our house is a mess with boxes everywhere and we are waiting on cleaning until everything is out so the house is DIRTY! I am so ready to move it all and to finally be settled in our new home. In the mean time Todd and I have spent several days going to different places trying to find furniture and things we need. If only we could just go to a Home Depot, Bed Bath Beyond or a Target. It would be so much easier.

Since everything is packed I've been spending a lot of time on the computer trying to figure out how I am going to decorate our new place. I can't wait to do that. The kids are off their normal routine too. They can sense something is up and the fact that all our belongings are stacking in boxes all over the house. While Todd and I are gone Elijah has taught himself out to start his own bath and I realized that he and Ev have spent a few days this week in their pjs.

I guess it is time to move because it seems like this week several things are starting to break. You have to love the quality of merchandise here. Our shower started not working. I think there is a leak somewhere and we have little to no pressure. The curtain rod in Ev's room broke, ours broke a couple of weeks ago. We haven't had consistent hot water in the kitchen for the past month. I am sure I am forgetting something. We are crossing our fingers to hope to move by at least Wednesday.

My Finds

Back in May we had a "clothing swap" among the expats that live here. It is a wonderful time to take clothing the kids have outgrown that I haven't made things out of, and to take other items we don't use and so on. The first day you take your items then the next day you get to pick up others. It is similar to a large garage sale but you don't have to pay. I found a few great finds for the kids. I have been reading Clifford books with Ev and I found a small Clifford stuffed animal. I also found a large set of doll house furniture. Then a week or so ago one of Ev's friends came over to play. Her mom brought us some dress up clothes and a small Fisher Price doll house from a sale here in town. Ev had some little dolls that we have bought here (4 dolls for 15 kuai - a little over 2 dollars!) that she loves and uses with the furniture and house. These items have afforded us much time as Ev quietly plays for hours!