Month: November 2017

One of the biggest changes for our family here in China has been meals. Mark and I have cooked most meals at home most of Alex’s life. We go out every so often, but we usually have dinner together at home talking about our day, what happened in our book the night before. Here, we eat in the cafeteria most meals. And that’s not bad, no dishes to wash or messes to clean up. But it’s not the same either, it’s loud, there are always lots of students around, sometimes we’re not crazy about our dinner options, and often we have friends join us for dinner (which is lovely, please don’t stop doing that).  It has changed the dynamic a bit though.

So Mark and I decided that as soon as we got into our permanent apartment (which should just be apartment now) we would cook a meal at home, something we all enjoyed. And slowly we (mostly me) decided that we should invite all our western friends over to enjoy it too.  I began planning and shopping, sourcing out western foods from the available options, and buying way too much cheese because I didn’t convert KGS to LBS correctly.

The second half of the Taco Night plan came together when Mark was talking to a friend about movies to show Alex.  The thing they both landed on was Fifth Element.  And it was decided that a movie night needed to happen, complete with popcorn and beer.

And so it become Taco, Movie, Popcorn night at Casa De Butala. 

Mark made homemade chips from the massive quantity of tortillas I overbought, and amazing guacamole. He made taco meat and all the fixings.  I made lemonade and iced tea and there were tons of beer options.

After dinner, it was movie time.  And after the movie, Alex went to bed and the grownups stayed up and drank and talked. Richard, Mark and James were all brave (stupid?) enough to drink baijiu, a type of Chinese liqour that is 52% proof.

All in all, I think Taco Night was a success, and will be repeated in the future, although the next Taco Night might really be a pizza night, or pasta night or who knows what.

I keep meaning to, and promise I will soon, take and post pictures of the apartment. You can see part of our dining room above. Maybe when I finish decorating for Christmas I’ll post the pictures.

In mid October, as I was sitting in the cafeteria with Mark, I noticed some new Western faces. And I watched them for a little while (like a creeper) to see if they were just visiting or if they’d be staying around longer.  I thought to myself- this lady doesn’t know it yet, but she’s going to be my friend. But I figured I should give them time to get at least a little settled before I forced friendship on them.

As I was picking up packages a few days later, they stopped me!  We struck up a conversation about getting packages weird life in china stuff and thus a friendship was born. Coral and James have joined the growing Western presence here on Campus.  They are a lovely couple from Scotland and have been brainwashed into thinking we’re not that bad to hang out with.

So we thought we’d start them off right and we took them to Hotpot! So we took the bus so they could get used to that. And of course, Alex made friends with everyone.

And, like he always does when given a camera, Alex took dozens of pictures of random things along the way.

 

When we got to the mall, we walk around for a bit, showed them the important things, made them play some arcade games with Alex. And then it was time for Hotpot! This time Mark had figured some things out from our last adventures and ordering what we wanted went much smoother.

We got the usuals, beef, tofu, potatoes, lotus, noodles, corn and mushrooms. And we had such a good time introducing Coral and James to hotpot and getting to know them more in the process. It was nice to be the person with the experience for a change, instead of always feeling  two steps behind.

Alex was done earlier than the rest of us (as usual) and got very bored waiting for us to finish, so he started taking pictures.  Someday I will look back on this and say that this was the beginning of his amazing career as a photographer… or not.

Before dinner, or maybe after (I really can’t remember) we took them to a toy store to show them what I consider to be my greatest find in China yet.  There is a Lego factory here in Haining and as a result there are lots of off brand legos. There are some (Enlightenment is one of them) that are absolutely legos;  same bags, instructions, pieces, quality, everything is spot on.  That being said, some of the sets of enlightenment legos are different than any we’ve seen in the States. You can get Space Wars (Star Wars), and Future Knights (Nexo Knights) and Super Ninja (Ninjago) but you can get completely different sets that as far as I know are only available here in China.

One of these sets is the one that Alex has started collecting. He has a newfound fascination with WWII and the Chinese legos have a WWII collection. He picked a tank and a plane (shown in a previous post) and an anti-aircraft gun thing that I had to learn the name of.  I tried to convince him to get the lego set below… but he wasn’t having it.

I have since tried to buy only lego Hitler, but he’s only available in this set.  I don’t know why exactly I think this is so funny, but I really do.

 

After that we took them down to the supermarket in the basement of the mall. It is a little overwhelming at the best of times, but it was particularly busy that Saturday night.  They were good sports though, even though they had to watch me pick out kitchen ware for our next big adventure… TACO NIGHT!

We’ve moved into our permanent apartment on campus.  Moving was an adventure, since apparently we have brought more stuff than anyone else.  Most of the faculty came with one or two suitcases. not us, I packed 6 footlockers and 4 suitcases and still felt like I left half of my life behind.  So, needless to say, we had some help moving things in.  Actually, we had two very helpful security guards help drag all our stuff up to the apartment.

After worrying and writing here about being sad about Halloween- I found some vinyl stickers online and decided to decorate the best I could. One of my amazing friends (Sheri!) sent me a care package full of Halloween goodies. There were candy corn, fall m&ms, reeses peanut butter bats, kitchen towels and amazing smelling candles.  It was like a little slice of Americana here in China. I didn’t take any pictures of any of these, but I should have- I need to start thinking like a blogger!

Our lovely apartment manager Tiffany, who we’ve become friends with,  also orchestrated trick or treating for her daughter Elsa, Alex and the little boy who lives upstairs.  She decorated the courtyard and even put up a tent for the kids to play in.

He had a great time teaching the little kids about trick or treating. And we did trick or treating UK style where the kids actually had to do a tick (sing a song, do something cool, etc.) to get a treat. Alex figured out he could impress people by counting to 10 in Chinese.  It was a really fun night and it made me really happy to see new people enjoying my favorite holiday!

We’ve made quite a few friends since we got here and several of them just because we have Alex.  Summer is a lady who also works at the university, and she has a little girl who is 6, Kitty.  So we decided to get them together.

The first time we hung out with them,we went to the local mall and the kids got ice cream and played at the arcade and had a pretty good time.

The next time we hung out with them, they took us to Bigfoot Park. It is a local kids amusement park here in Haining.

We also met one of Kitty’s other friends Ethan. Even though the kids didn’t have much overlapping language, they were all having a good time running from ride to ride together and deciding what to go on next.

 

After the kids were done going on the rides, we all walked over to Summer’s house to let the kids play on the playground over there.

There was a big grassy area where Kitty, Alex and Ethan all kicked the soccer ball around with Mark, and then some more local kids joined in.

The best part was when someone brought their dog out to play

 

There will be more adventures of Kitty and Alex to come.

So I’ve already covered Hotpot, but food in general here has been pretty good and I wanted to share some of our favorite things with you.

 Every morning I get these noodles for breakfast, and it’s gotten to the point that if I can’t get them… my day is a little ruined.  They are onion oil noodles and they have soy sauce, msg, green onions, and hot onion oil on them. I then add a healthy dose of hot pepper oil to it as well.  This is the breakfast of champions. To top it off, this day I got a pork bao. It is a pork sausage with some sauce stuffed inside a bun and then steamed.  It’s a little fluffy meat cloud of happiness.  Some days instead, there’s fried rice- but I didn’t get any pictures of that.

On really special days, when the stars and moon align, or for some other reason I can’t figure out,  they have dumplings for breakfast. Never for lunch, never for dinner, only very rarely for breakfast.  And if you come early- no dumplings, and if you come late- no dumplings. It’s small window-but when you get lucky,  heaven!

And the really cool part is- both of the meals pictured- cost me $1 USD. That’s it- $1.

This ^ is one of our favorite dinners. So on campus there is the regular dining hall, and then there is a Halal dining hall. This soup is from the Halal.  It’s a beef broth, with pieces of lamb, tons of noodles, and green onions and cilantro. All the red stuff you see is hot pepper oil I like to add to almost everything.  The guy who runs Halal has 3 little girls who run around campus- one is 9, one is 6 and one is 5, but in Chinese years. Here in China, you add the 9 months you were utero to your age. So Alex is 7 in the US but he’s 8 here in China.  Alex has made friends with them and they all four run amok and teach each other English and Chinese.

 Mark is such a good sport letting me use pictures of him for the blog- I really wanted to get a scale of how big the bowl of noodle soup was and how big the bread was, and this is what he gave me.

So with the bread and the noodles, this meal was a whopping $3USD.  And like the dumplings, some days when everything aligns and appeases the food gods, halal does kebabs, and they are good! They also take the lamb from kebabs and use it as a dumpling filling- so many good food choices at our dining halls.

 

 

I have been very bad about writing recently. I started working, we moved into the permanent apartment, and then we’ve been running from activity to activity.  So there will be a rush of posts soon as I finish writing and catching up on all the things we’ve been up to.

I started my job after the Golden week holiday. Since then my job has changed a few times, but I think I’m finally settling into a groove. I proofread the website for the university, and I’m currently working on a faculty handbook full of all the information we had to learn the hard way.  I’m thinking about asking for a position as an international recruiter, as we don’t have one of those at the moment and we really need one.

Alex has been practicing a lot of sports with the help of some of our new friends here in Haining.  Lynken and Richard, both teachers here at the university, have been playing soccer(football), american football, baseball and Frisbee with us.  Soccer is still his favorite, but I don’t know for how much longer. Alex is loving Frisbee and Lynken even got Alex his own Frisbee and smaller sized football. Richard gave us a great volleyball to use as a soccer ball.  It’s lighter weight so you don’t tire out as easily and it rolls a little better and Alex has to use better footwork to control it. 

 

Alex also met a local boy named Miles, and he came to visit and played basketball with Alex.  Miles’ dad, Mao plays sports with the university sports club.

We learned that day that the local chinese kids Alex’s age have to pass a jumping roping test at the end of the year. They have to complete 100 jumps in 1 minute.  It made me very glad Alex’s school doesn’t do that test!

Miles and Alex turned basketball into a full contact sport, but they were both having fun.

The weather has started to turn colder here, so I don’t know how many more good sports days we’ve got left- but I hope he gets a few more practices in.