Traveling Expat Family

Getting to the plane was an adventure, the flight was largely uneventful except that while everyone was wearing masks (and they really were) some people were wearing disposable hazmat suits. Like the kind CSI people wear at a crime scene. A lady sitting in front of us was wearing one, with the cutest cat ear headband to complete the look.

I’m an anxious flyer on a good day and this was not a good day. I had one full blown panic attack in the back of the plane, complete with Mark having to come check on me and a flight attendent asking what they can do to help. It was just so overwhelming to think that we were finally on our way back to China – and I was so afraid of our stop in South Korea that the flight would be turned back around and we still wouldn’t be able to go home.

The stop in Korea is necessary because some people got off there as their final destination, and also so they can do some more checks or disinfection of goods or honestly who knows what. When the flight took off from there heading to Shanghai, Mark and I both cried because that was the final step, they wouldn’t send us back from there. Meanwhile Alex played video games and watched movies and generally ignored that we existed.

We landed in Shanghai at roughly 12:30 am, and before we could deplane we had to show that code that we got when we boarded the flight in Dallas. It is important to note at this point that my Chinese phone number had been turned off, and Mark’s phone was mostly dead (as usual). After debarking the plane, you follow the crowd to a line, where you fill out some paperwork and answer some questions and they give you another paper to carry to the next line. There is another QR code with questions in Chinese that need to be answered, and we felt lucky to have Alex to help us, although there were translations of the questions on a form at the desk. Then we got our papers sorted and got test tube vials to take with our names on them into the next line where we would get our nasal swabs.

My anxiety was pretty high since I didn’t like the very minimal swab I got in Miami, but Mark and Alex kept saying it would be no big deal. The line moved so slowly, and part of the line was outside in the cold- we had come from Miami and Houston and hadn’t thought to bring something warm. As the line snaked around you could get a peak at the people in front of you being tested, they were swabbing kids as young as 2, imagine trying to hold a toddler still while jamming something up their nose. About 5 people in front of us was an older man, maybe 65-70 years old, in a really over the top hat. I noticed him because of the hat, which is known around here (at least with my family ) as the Boonie Brothers guy’s hat. Boonie Bears is a cartoon here where there are two bear brothers constantly fighting with a logger guy- the logger guy, when he’s not wearing a hard hat, is shown wearing a big fur hat.

So, older guy,in this ^^ fur hat, and as I round the corner to wait my turn he starts yelling and crying and making a scene. It scared the crap out of me and when he turned around he was holding a bloody tissue. He had jerked his head while the nurse was administering the test and basically shoved the swab too far up- it was his own fault though for not sitting still.

Mark and Alex volunteered to go first, and Alex got to be at the same window as me since he is still a kid. I’m not trying to be dramatic… ok, maybe a little, but that nasal swab was one of the most awful experiences I’ve ever had. 30 seconds each nostril, while the nurse holds the back of your head so you can’t escape. Not just in the tip of your nose, but like I-think-you’re-touching-my-brain deep. Alex handled it better than I did, but I still handled it better than the old Boonie Bears guy. With the swab done, we moved to the next stage of reentry, which was going through immigration and getting our luggage.

We had been in the very last or second to last row of the plane, so we were the end of the line for testing and immigration and everything else. The airport was the least busy I’ve ever seen it, it was really bizarre to see it so empty. At immigration, Alex has always been allowed to go right before me or with me up to the counter, this time they made him go at the same time as me, but to another agent. While my immigration officer is grilling me about being a student and where I’m going (this time the agent was pretty aggressive with me, I’ve never been asked 1/2 these questions before) they are asking Alex all kinds of questions he doesn’t know the answer to at the counter next to me. Everytime I would try to help him with the answer, I would get shushed and told not to help. At roughly 2 in the morning after countless hours on planes and airports I was not in the mood to be shushed.

Mark had had to buy some new equipment for teaching while we were in the US and was told not to leave the airport without the duties tax form or he wouldn’t be able to be reimbursed. Once we had our luggage we headed to the duty officer– who knew nothing. There was no one to call for help, and we waited behind another couple from our flight also trying to get forms. They eventually helped us talk to the duty guy to find out that he couldn’t help us and there was nothing that could be done. After an hour we gave up and decided to make our way to the next step.

The next step was to find our province on the signs and follow them to where the busses would pick people up and take them to the quarantine hotel. Another QR code and forms to fill out. By this time, Mark’s phone is dead and mine can’t recieve text messages because I have no cell service, we were swapping sim cards, and the guards at this checkpoint are using their phones to help us and it couldn’t be more frustrating if it tried. I was ready to lay down on the floor and sleep until tomorrow.

We made our way, with the help from our new guard friends, to thee last step of the airport, getting on the hotel bus. We had to turn in our passports and I had taken them out of the lovely passport wallet I have, and placed the wallet back on the top of our cart of luggage on top of a duffel bag. We load our stuff onto the bus to find out that everyone has been waiting for us- while we went through immigration, the tax wait, the qr snafu, all of it, they waited at least an hour and a half. I sat down on the bus and reached for my passport wallet to put our paperwork away… and it was gone. I told Mark, I think it’s missing, it’s got my phone, all my credit/debit cards, my student id – and I started to stand up on the bus so I could go abck and check where we just were. A lady, no not just a lady, the lady from our flight with the hazmat suit and cat ears, comes back to help because she speaks English. Not only that, but she knows us- she’s also from Haining and I met her at a Christmas party the last Christmas in China.

She explains to the other people on the bus, and instead of getting angry that they have to wait even longer for the dumb foreigners, everyone says they understand and hope I find it. She helps explain to the workers at the airport, and they send people all the way back upstairs to the QR code guards in case it fell along the way and Mark and I walk back to the last place I know I had it… no luck. Just as we’re about to give up, someone (I can’t remember if it was Vivian- our local friend- or Mark) suggests maybe it fell under the bus, and Mark starts looking under and we pull our luggage back off the bus, and there it is, tossed in the luggage hold of the bus with the duffel bag it was on. Mark hadn’t seen it on the duffel bag and in the hurry to keep us from holding up the show any longer, had thrown all the stuff under the bus. In Mark’s defense, the passport wallet and the duffel bag are the exact same pattern, from a set. So it blended in so well that Mark couldn’t see it on top of the bag. Crisis averted, all the other passengers were happy it was found and that we could be on our way… to the hotel, at probably 3am or 3:30 at this point, it’s a little fuzzy.

We get to the hotel and Vivian stays back with us to make sure we get checked in ok- we’re the last ones off the bus and the last ones to check in. I had a school deadline in a few days so Mark offered to take Alex so I could have the three days in quarantine in Shanghai to work and then we’d all be together in the second hotel closer to home. We had to sign more papers, get our temperatures checked again, pay for the hotel rooms, pick up our bag of quarantine goodies (note- these included chlorine tablets to put in the toilet after pooping, alcohol wipes, chopsticks and something else I’m forgetting), walk up five flights of stairs to our rooms, but at least our rooms were next to each other.

The rooms weren’t fancy, Mark’s and Alex’s room was clearner than mine, but totally doable for 3 days. If we had had to do the whole quarantine there I don’t know how happy I would be about it. The food was….dismal. I knew that I would eventually be writing these posts, so I took pictures of most of the food everyday to give you an idea.

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I was able to finish my work and read an entire book that my friend had given me that was supposed to last all the way through quarantine.

We stayed in Shanghai for three days and then we were moved to our second long term hotel in Tongxiang. They told us to have our bags out in the hallway and then they would come get us in a bit.

45 minutes go by, and Vivian calls me, “where are you guys? We’re all on the bus” we tell her they told us to wait and never came back…. They had forgotten to come back and get us! So again we were holding up the show in getting to the next hotel. We got downstairs got on the bus, and even though it only been 3 days, it was really good to see my boys again. We talked about what we were going to do together over the next 11 days at the next hotel, what movies we were going to watch, how we would handle Mark’s teaching with me and Alex in the room.

After Alex’s illness, I know it sounds so cliche, but we were so happy to have him home with us and healthy(ish) that you couldn’t help but look around and be grateful for the weird set of circumstances that had affected us during the last 10 months.

I’ve said it before and it’s as true today as ever, I can go anywhere and do anything so long as I have my family. Mark gives me strength and believes in me when I don’t believe in myself, he is the anchor on my wildest stormy days and so long as we’re together, I can get on board for any adventure (which is how we ended up in China). Alex is my wild, my try something new, my be-better-than- I-thought-I- could- be. He inspires me to be a better version of me as an example for him, and he is the most compassionate kid, with the weirdest sense of humor, and I find myself looking forward to see what kind of man he becomes.

All this to say, I can make anywhere home so long as we’re together. Right after Alex got home, we got the news that my visa had been approved and if we could find a flight (that didn’t cost 12,000$- no joke, that’s what some seats were going for, not even in business class) we could come back home to China. We checked with Alex’s doctors to make sure that he would be able to fly, and they gave us the all clear. So we booked tickets and started packing up our Houston lives to bring back to China.

It is amazing to me how much we managed to accumulate in just under a year, but there were new clothes, so many thoughtful gifts from friends and family, and suddenly the two suitcases we came with were overflowing. We bought and packed some new carry on luggage (no affliations, I get nothing from this recommendation, but I just really liked these bags, — and now it seems like they are even less expensive https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LX9BWDM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s02?ie=UTF8&psc=1 ) and thankfully my aunt and uncle were willing to store two boxes for us.

But for the stupid part, because we had flown from Hong Kong to Miami (via San Fran) American Airlines was making us leave from Miami, even though we had to fly from Miami to Dallas to South Korea to Shanghai. You know Dallas, as in the city a 3 hour drive north of where we were living? Yeah so we flew from Houston to Charlotte to Miami. And this is where the most stressful trip of my life started.

So, the rules to get back into China went , at the time, like this- Get visa, buy plane ticket, get a negative covid test (both PCR – up the nose- and IGG- the blood test) within 48 hours of flying. For those not familiar with the US during this time, no one was able to give us 48 hour results most couldn’t even give us 72 hour results- which was the previous rule. We found one place in Miami, I guess two really but the one basically costs your liver to get it done. I say we found, I called every testing site and number off a website from any where in Florida, I called multiple times asking for updates and finally we had to go with this last place, even though they cost a fortune. They had three appointments left but for a weird time that wouldn’t work for us with the flights we needed to take, so after calling and talking to the amazing lady who answers the phones, she told us to come by right when they open and they would make it happen for us.

After landing in Miami, we drove to the north side of the city, to this weird bank building park lot, and pulled in to the teller window lane. We weren’t the first car, but I think we were second or third. We had to have our passports out, and they checked our names to the forms and then they swabbed, Alex went first, then Mark and lastly me. I’m not going to lie, I’m a baby and anything up my nose makes me cry, I tear up getting my eyebrows done. Alex and Mark were teasing me because I had managed to avoid testing up until that point but they had both had it done already. We drove home and they said we’d have the results in an hour.

The second part of rules for flying back to China is that once you get the results back, you have to send them, along with pictures of your passport, visas, flight itinerary, and some other things to the Chinese Embassy. They then send you back a peice of paper with the stamp that you show to the airlines. It was so late when we got our results that we sent out our papers to the embassy with Urgent written all over it, and we went to the airport early in the morning without the stamps hoping that they would appear before we boarded. In addition to the need to fly to Miami to go to Dallas, we had to have the approval before we boarded the flight to Dallas so there were some really anxious moments waiting for it. But we managed to squeak by and get on the plane to head to Dallas, and we kept waiting for someone to tell us that the flight was cancelled or something else would prevent us from getting to that Dallas flight. We had so many tickets cancelled and rescheduled and we had thrown all our eggs into this basket.

Flight to Dallas, no big deal, we had a longish layover in Dallas so we sat down and had lunch- we were in the same terminal at almost the same gate we flew out of on our first visit to China. Mark will be the first to tell you, I like to be early…. not normal people early but like 15 minutes to everything, so waiting at the gate is the only way I feel calm, and I even get anxious that I’m somehow going to miss my flight while I’m sitting at the gate- and that’s on a normal flight, not a getting back to my life flight. As soon as we were done eating I dragged the boys over to the gate to wait, and it’s a good thing I did– our flight was already lining up early and there were extra steps to get on the flight.

We had to scan a QR code and enter information to get another code that they would scan before we got off the plane in China. Mark’s code worked, Alex’s code worked… mine- error messages- asked for help from the flight attendent, she was mobbed by everyone asking questions, so she asked a nice Chinese student to help me. He couldn’t make it work either, I was starting to panic and tell Mark that he and Alex should go anyway and I’d follow later.

I don’t know how it finally worked, like so many things in the last year, it seemed like everything fell together at the last minute. Meanwhile the airline has been asking for volunteers to fly on the next flight (I think 4 days later) because they weren’t allowed to fly at full capacity and had oversold assuming (probably rightly) that not everyone would get all their testing and paperwork in right. We were listening to the numbers creeping up, by the time we board the plan they were up to $3500 and a hotel room for the time between flights.

We were trying to come up with activities to do with Alex to get him out of the house(and away from video games) but still would be socially distancing and safer. I came across a trail ride and thought what better way to spend some time in Texas than riding horses. Alex has always expressed an interest in riding, and why not. The boys went on this adventure without me, it was a two hour ride, the only downside was that it was in August I think in Houston….. so it was melty hot.

Mark and Alex had a good time, Alex was a little less commanding than his horse needed- so sometimes he stopped to eat grass. Alex had such a good time though that we were discussing doing it again, or letting him take the horseback riding after school program.

It’s actually kind of amazing to me that this kid used to fit on the ponies back at the Montrose Farmer’s Market

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They had a great time and Alex is always asking when he can go ride horses again. They even bought a bag of carrots to feed to their rides after returning to home base.

In very traditional riding gear of track pants and sneakers– but it was Texas and he had already outgrown the jeans we had brought from China.

Playing Red light green Light with his cousin and Uncle Mark- Alex had never played that as it isn’t a game here in China, but he had a blast with it and talked of bringing it back to his friends at school. He got to spend a lot of time with his cousin (who was in our bubble), which is great because he hasn’t had a lot of extended family visits since our move abroad.

And now to the down part of the story…. most of you will have heard about this, or at least what I was able to tell at the time.

Alex woke up one morning not feeling well, after not eating much the night before at dinner and looking a little ragged. I didn’t think much of it and told him to take it easy and rest for the day, no going outside with his friends. Then he started limping around the house, he hadn’t fallen, or banged himself on anything- he just said his leg hurt.

Mark will be the first to make fun of me about my google Doctorate, which oftens leads me to conclude that I’ve got the worst diseases( admittedly, the phd work in diseases isn’t helping) but this time it really helped us. I googled 10yr old boy, fever and hip pain. The results were pretty conclusive that is would be Toxic synovitis, a not uncommon reaction to an illness- more common in boys than girls, and it’s a hip inflammation that makes it hard to walk. The list also included several much worse case scenarios so we thought it would be good to take him to Urgent Care since we had the fancy traveller’s insurance.

By the time we got to Urgent Care at Texas Children’s Hospital, the poor kid could hardly shuffle his feet along so we had to find him a wheelchair and his fever was so high he was shivering in the doctor’s office. We had a lovely young doctor who agreed with me that it was probably just synovitis, but they’d have to do an ultrasound to be sure and they couldn’t do that at the Urgent Care- so she sent us across the way to the Emergency Room.

Because of Covid, they would only let one parent back at a time- and since I had done more medical visits with Alex and know his history a bit better, I went back with him first while Mark had to wait in the waiting room. We got a terrific nurse named Brandon, who had the toughest time getting an iv in Alex because at this point he was super dehydrated. Alex got to watch them use a small ultrasound to help Brandon find the veins and thought that was kind of cool…. as much as he could at that point, he was pretty miserable.

He kept asking for a drink, but they wouldn’t let him because they wanted to rule out surgery first. So we wheeled down to the ultra sound, and a couple x-rays. All the people that we dealt with there were really nice, the nurses and techs, really everyone.

We got back to the room,and I went out to switch with Mark and update him on everything. He brought a game to play with Alex and I went to wait. Things get a little blurry here because I wasn’t in the room and I think I’ve blocked some things out. We got sent home after collecting some blood samples and told to have him rest and relax.

The idea was that it was toxis synovitis and it would go away on its own. We got him home, got him comfortable on the couch and kind of went about our day thinking we were so lucky. He didn’t eat much, and we were mostly just focused on keeping him hydrated.

The next day, I went off to Target for gatorades and a new switch controller for him because his was glitchy and we needed him to stay still and rest . I was on the phone with my mom, telling her about this horrible day, sitting in my car at target, before going in, and the hospital calls telling us to bring him back in, and to pack a bag because we would be staying.

My heart just dropped. The results of the blood culture they took the day before came back and that’s all the nurse would tell me. I asked, do I need to bring him right away? and she said they’d be waiting for us and to pack something for me too. I raced back home, told Mark and amidst complete panic and racing around to pack, trying to tell Alex everything would be ok.

When we got to the hospital, Alex was super brave, not worried, just irritated that he had to come back in, get another IV (with another ultrasound because the resident couldn’t find his veins) and he was so tired. Mark still had to wait outside until but now they had shut down the waiting room too so he had to wait outside the hospital. A nice lady ( I can’t remember her job title, kid specialist?) came by and tried to get Alex talking and interested in something, she asked what he liked to do and he said board games, she said she’d try to find something.

He was wearing a shirt from my mom, that has a metro line map over a dinosaur

And I don’t know if she couldn’t see it, trying to be funny or whatever, but she asked him if that was a map of somewhere he had travelled. My super sick kid rolled his eyes and said it’s a dinosaur, not a real metro.

At this point we’re still in the ER, and have been for about 4 or 5 hours, Alex needed a covid test before they would admit him and while they were waiting they took some blood and sent him off for an MRI on his hip. We weren’t getting a lot of information at this point, but we knew that the blood cultures had come back showing a big infection and they were worried about it being a bone infection in his hip causing the problem.

Around 11:30-midnight they finally admitted him and Mark could join us and go upstairs to Alex’s room. He was so miserable and tired, but he hurt too much to sleep- he just kept crying and those of you who know him, that’s just not like him. They gave him ibuprofen for the fever and told him to rest.

Mark and I slept on a fold out couch in the room, and kept track of when the nurses came in, what they gave him-how he reacted. He was doing this weird thing where they would give him ibprofen or tylenol for the fever and then the fever would spike higher than it was before they gave it do him. And no one seemed concerned about that but me and Mark– the doctor just said, hmm that’s weird.

The child specialist came back and asked if he’d like the video game guy to come visit with some games to play, or would he like a visit from the therapy dog. He said both, but he wasn’t really that invested. I think we had Teen Titans playing almost constantly in his room, and Mark and I were just trying to stay calm and keep Alex calm. It is a terrible feeling when your child is hurting and you can’t do anything to make it better.

Poor Mark still had to teach class during this week too, so he had to leave to go home and teach and then come back. And as the week went on and we weren’t seeing much improvement, Alex started realizing he wasn’t going to get to go trick or treating. Halloween is my favorite holiday, and Alex loves it too, and he was really looking forward to going trick or treating with his friends/cousin since we don’t really do that here in China. The second day, the doctors came to tell us that Alex had a blood infection and that they think the hip pain is a seperate issue or just the way that the infection was presenting itself.

They started him on a generic antibiotic and ran more cultures to see which antibiotic would be best for fighting the infection. They were very careful with us not to use certain words (like sepsis, or MRSA) but between my google doctorate and my real phd work, I knew what we were all talking about.

We started to have peaks and valleys, sometimes he would seem like he was getting better, and then he’d tank again, nights were hard, and I think he ate one meal the whole time we were there. He kept pulling the ivs when he slept, so the alarms on the machine would sound. By the end of day 2 I knew how to turn them off or pause them until the nurse came in.

This was the most up he was the whole day, when the therapy dog Pluto came to visit – in all honesty this was the most up Mark was too- Pluto worked wonders for him too. Day 3 was a turning point, and the good times were really good, he started building the legos my mom sent, even getting up a walking around a little bit. Day 3 they started him on targeted antibiotics and things started improving, except that now there was vomiting. It just felt like the poor kid couldn’t get a break.

Here he is, Day 3, building legos trying to smile for Grandma. I went home for the first time on day 3 to have a real shower and grab clothes and food for me and Mark before coming back. Mark sends me a message asking where I am as I had been gone for a bit, and I asked was everything ok, and his response was “you’ll see when you get back” I was sure that something was really wrong and he didn’t want to tell me over the phone, so I finished paying and raced back. When I got back, Alex was up walking around, no limping, they had toured the recreation area one floor up, he was doing so much better. He borrowed Mark’s jacket (because he didn’t want his butt hanging out) and walked over to the family dining area and ate a little bit of dinner with us.

We had so many gifts from friends and family, my mom sent him legos to build, one of my best friends sent him a new video game, another sent him mini cupcakes, we ad people offering to send us dinner from across the country, my cousin heard he wouldn’t be able to go out trick or treating so he came to the hospital with a big bag of candy so Alex wouldn’t miss out. The outpouring of love he got was so overwhelming, it was so touching at such a really low point.

The child specialist told him that he could dress in his costume the next day (Oct 31- Halloween) and there would be a little dog parade and reverse trick or treating. So we brought his Luke Skywalker era x-wing pilot costume – not to be confused with the new Poe Dameron era x-wing pilot costume, so that he could trick or treat at the hospital.

The therapy dogs, 4 of them all named after planets, so Pluto the planet not Pluto the dog, were dressed as hand sanitizers. And they rolled a little booth with non candy goodies for the kids to collect and “trick or treat” from.

Alex was excited, and his doctors were dressed up like the Space Jam Bugs Bunny characters and got into Halloween too.

The lady in the tutu is the child specialist. She even got Alex a board game he could keep (that also came back to China with us).

And then we got the best news, he could go home! So 4 days in the hospital, oral antibiotics for the next two weeks and a follow up, but he was allowed to go home and they even cleared him for real Trick or Treating. He got a stuffed dog wearing a Texas Children’s Hospital tshirt too when he got released.

My mom and stepdad got him this cool mustang planter with a cactus- it coud not come back to China with us, but it found a really good home before we left.

Alex got to go out with his friend Rylan, they knew the best area for trick or treating, and we told him as soon as he was tired, we would take him home. He made it about 3 times as far as I thought he would before he was too tired to keep going.

Rylan dressed up as a Plague Doctor, and Alex as Luke Skywalker

They had an impressive haul of candy, and you wouldn’t think to look at him here that he was so very sick the days before.

Maybe you can see a bit around his eyes how tired he was. All in all, we were lucky to be somewhere like Houston with such a good children’s hospital right there, and lucky that we had gotten the traveller’s insurance as our total bill for the 4 day stay, and two ER visits was just about $38,000. We paid a total of $300 and the insurance paid the rest.

And in the end, there’s no real reason why this happened to him, they don’t know how he got sick, we were lucky it wasn’t MRSA but that it was treatable with antibiotics.

Writing about this, even almost a whole year later is really hard– this kid and his dad are my everything and when I think about how sick he was and how lucky we went to the ER when we did… and also, to the love of my life, who was so busy being a rock for me and for Alex- you are irreplacable and I wouldn’t want to be doing this adventure with anyone but you.

Alex made some friends in the apartment complex, and there was a group of 3-5 boys from the ages of 4-13 who would come by to ask if he could come out and play. One boy was his age and would be “going” to the same school in the fall of 2020 together, although not in the same class. They hung out everyday and even now we’re working on getting them together on a zoom call.

As a mom, I always worry about Alex making friends and being welcomed into new groups of kids- realistically, it’s never a problem. He has a magnetic personality and the kind of empathy and compassion that is well beyond his age, and he befriends anyone in his vicinity. It was nice to see him creating the best of a bad situation and making new friends.

There are so many amazing things to do in Houston, however, during covid, everything was closed or we were not willing to risk going. We decided against the Johnson Space Center, but decided that a trip to the zoo would be better since mostly it’s outside where we could safely distance ourselves. It was also nice because we don’t really visit zoos in Asia and we hadn’t been to a zoo in a long time. The downside of the Houston zoo is that parking is an absolute nightmare, I ended up dropping the boys off and driving a bit further to find a spot. Unfortunately though, Mark had the tickets and wasn’t answering his phone(maybe it was dead?), so I thought I’d never find them. My great guys waited by the gate for me, even though it was hot and they were losing time at the zoo.

I felt like this gorilla knows how to live life, he was pressed up against the cool wall in the shade. The gorillas were a little hard to see as for the most part they were all hanging out in the shade or inside the building. It wasn’t particularly hot that day given Houston’s summers usually, but the sun was pretty intense that day.

The great ape habits at the zoo were really nice, very big and with lots of natural plants- and plenty of shade for them too! I don’t know why I didn’t take pictures of the lions, but their habitat was great too, you could actually walk underneath in a tunnel and look out observation windows to see them up close.

The giraffe section was also home to this one really pissed off looking ostritch. I don’t know what his deal was, but he had the grumpiest look all the time. The giraffes had a feeding time where you could buy some leaves and get right up close with them, I didn’t think we were going to be over there at the right time, but we caught it just at the end.

I love giraffes, and even after seeing them out in the wild in Uganda, I’m still happy to spend time seeing them at the zoo.

My grumpy ostritch friend, he looks a little better in the sunlight.

I did not take pictures of Alex feeding the giraffe this time, I wanted to feed it too! Sometimes it’s good to get to experience the moment without the camera.

This zebra was also in the giraffe section, I guess it makes sense since those animals are all from the same general areas. But only one zebra with no zebra friends.

There was also a wounded Bald Eagle, I can honestly say that I don’t think I’ve ever been as close to an eagle as we were able to get. It’s one of those… “I know it’s big, but I forgot how really big it is” kind of things.

All in all, the zoo was a hit- almost every one around us was wearing masks, and we just avoided the ones who weren’t. We got to see all our favorite animals, and get out of the house for a bit- I actually think this might have been the longest Mark was out of the house the whole time we were in Houston.

There was obviously a lot more to see at the zoo than is pictured here, and if you’re ever in Houston and looking for a good outdoor activity – this is a great place to start.

Due to the pandemic, we didn’t explore that much of Houston, but one thing we did do was order delivery from some of the truly amazing ethnic options around town. We had Ethiopian food(which admittedly loses something with delivery- it’s best enjoyed fresh at the restaurant), Indian food,Ramen, Soul Food, Thai food, Carribean food, and my most favorite of all…. Afghan food. Afghan cuisine has some overlap with Persian or Lebanese, in so much as there are kabobs and really tasty rice. Afghan Village in Houston (https://www.theafghanvillage.com/) had fantastic naan, and the best hummus…. and finally got me over my hatred for all things eggplant. There is a dish called Bouranee Baunjan- which is tomatoes and eggplants simmered for a long time and drizzled with yogurt, it’s a dip/side dish that is great with naan or put over the rice after your kabobs are all gone. This dish completely changed my perspective on eggplant, I’ve even tried to find recipes to make it myself at home.

There was also an Indo-Pak restaurant , Aga’s (https://www.agasrestaurant.com/ ) that was lovely. This was maybe the first place we ate in a restaurant in Houston, and as is often the case, Alex made a friend in the manager- he was very inviting and interested in what Alex was eating and if he enjoyed everything. Again, if you’re in Houston and you want some fantastic Indian food, Aga’s is the place to go!

We tried lots of food, and I’ll mention one or two more stand out places in the next post!

For the first time in a very long time, we were in the US for the 4th of July, and of course, because of the pandemic the local fireworks shows were cancelled. So my Uncle Mark, and my cousin Dan took Alex and went to buy some appropriate and totally legal fireworks to use in the backyard. Alex was pretty thrilled because he had never used a sparkler- they weren’t allowed in our area in California because of wildfire risks and we just never bought any in Illinois for some reason.

This kid was rocking the sparklers, he would have done it all night every night-

I apologize for all the blur, it’s hard to capture the wild nature of the Houston clan when they are holding firesticks! Above is Uncle Mark, gracefully parading around the yard, and below… waving for joy?

Uncle Mark hasn’t been mentioned on the blog yet, but is geniunely one of my favorite relatives. He is a pastor after 30 years of teaching 5th grade- which means he’s totally equipped for all of Alex’s shenanigans. I loved that Alex got to spend time with his cousin Logan and his aunts and uncles- and that they got to get to know him a bit better too!

So while we didn’t get to see a big fireworks display, we made our own. And a good time was had by all!

One other thing that we wanted to do in Houston, since we didn’t get a chance to go to the bigger version in Austin, was watching the bats fly out from the Waugh Bridge Bat Colony. Not too far actually from Voodoo Donuts, there is a nice park with walking/biking paths that lead to the bridge. We ordered take out from a highly regarded but slightly disappointing BBQ place, found a picnic table and ate out enjoying the sun and each other’s company… and honestly just being out of the condo for a while. Then we walked around trying to find where the bat area was, in the end we walked way farther and in a very winding way to the bats. It was a pretty walk though, and again, probably very needed after a couple months not leaving the apartment unless absolutely needed.

We knew we were in the right place when we found the crowd, the hill here is a little steep so we didn’t bother trying to sit over here– plus we were still trying to keep our distance. Unseen but directly to the left of this picture is the bridge that all the bats live under.

My patient kid waiting for the bats— who don’t arrive on a time schedule- so we had to wait for sunset.

The bats are all the blurry spots that look like dirt on the lens. There were thousands of bats flying out, sometimes they would be in big batches, and then a break, we would think they were all out and then boom, another flurry of bats.

In addition to all the bats flying around, there were some hawks who were also waiting for their nightly meal. While the bats were hunting mosquitoes and other bugs, they were also being hunted by hawks. The big blur in the picture below is a hawk.

Mark laughs about all this now because when we first started dating I was terrified of bats (and snakes, and spiders) and now I ask to go see bat colonies and snake farms… and if I’d realized it was also in Texas, I would have dragged the boys to one of the biggest bat colonies in the world, Bracken Cave in San Antontio, Texas. 20 million bats fly out of the cave every night at sunset. Next time we’re in Texas, it’s a must do.

Houston is great, I have visited the family here before but usually for weddings so we really hadn’t explored the city before. Now, of course, it’s the middle of covid- so we didn’t do a ton of exploring now either. As we were leaving Florida it was a hot spot for covid (and for a lot of the pandemic really ), and as we got to Houston it became a hot spot. I know I’m not the only one by far, but I felt like we couldn’t escape it no matter how hard we tried. But we took advantage of our time in Houston to do some (safe) exploring.

I’m a bit of a germ freak, which has been made worse by studying diseases and covid-19, so everywhere we went we wore masks, used hand sanitzer, kept our distance- got what we needed and got out!

One thing we missed in China is donuts. They have Dunkin Donuts here in some train stations in Shanghai, but they don’t taste quite the same and you can’t get most of the best flavors. So when we got to Houston, we were looking for something low risk to get us all out of the house and Mark found that there is a Voodoo Donuts branch in Houston. For those unfamilar, Voodoo donuts is a famous donut shop in Portland, Oregon and I’ve seen it on lots of food network shows and always wanted to try it. Their most famous donut is a voodoo doll, covered in chocolate, with raspberry filling and a pretzel “needle” sticking in the heart.

Mark likes Maple bars, just plain maple bars- nothing fancy, and voodoo donuts had him covered on that too.

We went a few times and Alex and I usually got different things, one for me was the Homer- pictured below. Raised donut with strawberry frosting and sprinkles. I usually don’t like strawberry frostings, but this one was very good- good enough that I got it multiple times, it was also bigger than your average donut.

Inside the store while you were waiting in a socially distanced line, there was merchandise lined up. It was a bit pricey so I didn’t get any (especially with the donuts costing a bit more, but still worth it).

I was actually surprised they weren’t more busy- there was never more than a group or two in front of us, although the drivethrough would get backed up. It is also in kind of an out of the way part of town so maybe the location (or you know, the raging pandemic) kept people from coming in.

We always sat in the car with our donuts to eat (or brought the extras home for later). It’s clear there were areas to sit inside and out during normal non-pandemic times.

One thing that we got to do was visit my Aunt Jeanne at her office at University of Texas Health Science Center. Since it was the summer, she wasn’t teaching, but still had to go in and get work done. She showed Alex the garden, she (and I believe her students) plant and maintain an outdoor garden with lots of cool and yummy vegetables and fruits that they then use to teach nutrition and how to cook with these vegetables to the students and the communties.

Alex here is looking at a baby watermelon that was just starting to grow. He got to pick and try a pepper, which we thought was a jalapeno… but it was not, it was something much spicier like a habanero that wasn’t ripe yet. After that, his desire to try things from the garden was a little tempered.

One other super cool thing we got to do with Aunt Jeanne was see her good friend, Mr. Sims. He is a state of the art simulator that helps students work on noticing symptoms and signs of dietary diseases in a hospital setting. He can be modified with wigs, skin patches, different teeth, programmed with different pulses and breathing patterns, overall just a really cool learning tool.

Here Aunt Jeanne is showing Alex where and how to find Mr. Sims pulse.

Maybe Alex will grow up to be a doctor, he certainly thought this was a great time listening for heartbeats and checking pulses.

I’d like to think Aunt Jeanne has as much fun as Alex did- his joy in these kinds of things is contagious and it’s hard not to get swept up with him. My favorite part with Mr. Sims was when Alex started trying on all his wigs.

Above is Alex’s impression of a 70 year old man

I think he looks good in grey!

In the blond wig, I think Alex looks a lot like me as a kid- he is considerably less thrilled about the blond wig than the grey one though.

Mullet wig for the win! It’s funny to see this picture a year after it was taken (because I am almost always about a year behind on the blog) because he has grown so much since then, these shorts and shirt barely fit him now, and I think he’s up two shoe sizes since then.

It was so wonderful getting to spend time with my aunt, (and uncle and cousins) because of moving around and just the general hustle and bustle of life- I don’t get to see them as often as I’d like. Shoutout to the newest cousin on that side, Teddy, who unfortunately I didn’t get to meet yet because he was born after we came back to China– but is the most adorable kid and I can’t wait to meet!

After 5 months of hospitality from one set of my parents, we felt like we had overstayed our welcome… especially since we realistically still didn’t have an exit strategy to get back to China. One idea had been to stay with my other set of parents, but my mom and stepdad were getting their house ready to sell (and despite their insisitence that it wouldn’t impact them, it would have) and Mark’s parents couldn’t accomodate us either and then my amazing Aunt came to the rescue. She had a condo in Houston, Texas that was unoccupied and we could use it until we could head home.

So we rented a van, packed up the surprising amount of stuff we managed to accumulate in 5 months (including a not horde-y amount of toilet paper, but not un horde-y either) and drove to Houston. For those of you not familar with the geography of the American Southeast…Florida goes on forever. We drove for 9 hours and we were still in Florida. My goal had been to make it through Florida and stop across the state lines the first day, unfortunately due to traffic and really terrible storms- we only made it to Pennsacola, Fl before having to call it for the night.

We stopped and had Texas Roadhouse for dinner and we were honestly disappointed, the Texas Roadhouse in Shanghai is much better than what we had in Florida. Alex made the comment that “you have to go all the way to Shanghai to get authentic Texas roadhouse!” They were out of baked potatoes, and something else that we wanted, the chili came out cold… and they were super swamped so the servers were running around with no time. After that it was over to the hotel and a rest before getting up and moving on through Mississippi and Louisiana. If we had more time, and the situation was different I would have liked to do more exploring in both of those- I’ve never been to either before.

Honestly, I love a roadtrip, it’s one of my favorite ways to travel and see the country while you go. Mark is less of a road warrior, and Alex is enjoying it less and less as he gets older, but it still makes me happy.

As much as I enjoy roadtrips, the anxiety about stopping in hotels, restaurants, and gas stations along the way was definitely a downer. I had hand sanitizer that we used constantly, plus wipes, and still washing our hands whenever available. It was geniunely such a bizarre experience that I didn’t even do our traditional things of taking pictures at welcome to the state signs- I thought the more we isolated in the car the less likely we were to be exposed to someone with covid.

Mark found podcasts to listen to the whole way, so we listened to a lot of Radio Lab, and another one called Lore. Those were my favorite of the ones he picked and the ones I don’t mind spending hours listening too, although I’m more of a blare music type of driver. We learned about tick bites and meat allergies, ranked voting in Ireland, and all kinds of mythology on monsters.

The storms followed us all the way to Houston, so we had bad weather and slow going the whole way. The rain was so intense that it took us an extra couple of hours to get out of Florida and a fairly terrifying drive on bridge overpass roads through Mississippi.

In addition, we had a scare or two about covid- namely that we had to drive through New Orleans on our way, and Texas annouced they were going to block anyone who had been in New Orleans from entering. So instead of stopping for dinner there, we ate fast food in the car, which no one enjoyed. All in all, while it wasn’t the family roadtrip from the movies, we made it in one peice and when we got there, my Aunts were there to meet us and help us move in the condo. It was so good to see them, my cousin’s wedding was the last thing we did right before moving to China, and I hadn’t been able to see them since then.

I know I’ve said this before and will again, but we are so lucky to have such wonderful family and friends who were willing to help us out in a very weird time in our lives.

Alex got to spend his 10th birthday in Miami with the grandparents– it had been a while since we had done an American birthday celebration for him. One of the downsides to the decision to put him in local schools while we were in the US is that there was no one for him to practice his Chinese with. He retained so much (the benefits of learning a second language at a young age) but he did regress a little.

Luckily we found a Dairy Queen near the house that was owned by a lovely Chinese couple, and the wife of the couple spoke Chinese with Alex so he could practice a little. So when he decided he wanted an ice cream cake for his birthday I know what we had to do.

Happy Birthday Alex written in Chinese. She thought it was very funny I was asking for that, I don’t think it is a request they get often in the Miami area.

Birthday Boy was thrilled with his cake, as you can see from his giant peice and the green frosting everywhere. That is a thing we very much missed in China, we are an ice cream cake kind of family, but it is not a thing I have learned to make (or really have any desire to learn).

One of the birthday presents that Alex got was the highlight of his time in Miami– I think a pretty good capstone to our time there in general. My dad and stepmom are both Dive Masters, and my dad works as a dive instructor for the last almost 7 years I think in Boyton Beach. My dad has been talking about teaching Alex to dive almost since he was born – and at 10, Alex was finally old enough for the Jr. Diver certifcation, which means when done with all the training and testing, Alex could dive with an instructor or me and Mark to a certain depth.

Alex was so pumped, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him throw himself in a class like this– and he is a good student who loves school, but this was special. He finished all the course work within a week and was ready to start in the pool with Grandpa. And Dad didn’t take it easy on him, Alex still had to preform all the skills and tasks like any other student.

Learning how to assembly gear, check your tanks for leaks

Making sure your regulator is working (important for the whole breathing underwater bit). As a mom, I was really proud of how seriously Alex took all this training, and as somone who has gone through dive certification I can say without hesitation that my son is a better diver than his mother.

Finally getting into the pool with a fully checked BC- I don’t know who was happier, Grandpa or Alex.

Goggles in the back of his head, why? because that’s how grandpa does it–

Just getting used to breathing underwater and all the gear. Alex has been out on a couple discovery dives, but this is the first real training.

Grandpa showing about the weight release system to come up if needed

This is one happy kid!! This was just the first day of in pool training, it lasted for several days (over the course of a week I think, maybe two?) And when pool training was done, then they could go for the open water portion of the certification.

My dad, looking a little quarantine scruffy, but that is a happy Grandpa, I think he was pretty proud of how well Alex did too.

Giving the official OK sign for divers, this was the end of the first day in the pool.

Day 2 (or 3? ) of pool training, tired diver towing-

While Alex and Grandpa Hof were diving, we found a blue crab stuck in the backyard. Harmless but slightly irritating to the dogs, we tried to catch him with the leaf skimmer from the pool so we could put him out over the fence. He was a fierce little guy who was not going to back down from a fight with Mark.

The amount of wildlife photo opportunities that Miami gave me was terrific, although I never managed to catch a photo of the albino peacock that roams around their neighborhood area.

I could have taken 100 pictures of this crab, I love the bright blue, and he was so accomdating to pose beautiful while attacking Mark’s shoe.

There are also an abundance of spiders around the area of the house (but not enough to take care of the ridiculous mosquito population, they need more bats too) and every once in a while I was able to get a good shot of one sitting still. Despite the upclose nature of the picture, this spider is actually fairly small, it was less than 1/2 my thumb long. I loved the coloring on this one though, and have been cultivating a new found appreciation for spiders (as long as they stay out of my house).

These pictures were taken on Father’s Day, right before we made our next move on the Butala Refugee Tour of the US. While I’m sure my parents were happy to get their house and their freedom back, I’d like to think they were a little sad to see Alex leave. Unfortunately, due to a problem with his ear, Alex wasn’t able to complete the open water sections of his dive certifications. But he hasn’t forgotten and has plans to try again at the earliest opportunity.

Just two dive dudes– in their matching fishing shirts.

My dad, being the goofy Grandpa he is. Alex loved his time spent with grandpa driving up to Boyton Beach to go diving just the two of them, and coming home with stories of what fish they were able to see. While moving home under the circumstances was not ideal, I’m grateful for the time that Alex got to spend with his grandparents- He made memories that will last him a lifetime!

Easter was right around the corner once we “locked down”. I put it in quotations because looking back, there wasn’t much staying put. Our family, including my Dad and stepmom, stayed home, only went out for essentials for two weeks. The rest of Miami…. not so much. Mark and I would always comment on how much traffic there was for a bunch of people staying home, but in all fairness, I did put Alex in the car and just drive around because I wanted him to get out of the house but not be near anyone.

Alex and I borrowed the car and grabbed sandwiches with the idea of heading down the Florida Keys and finding a good scenic spot to eat our lunch in the car. Right before the big no where to turn around stretch of road leading to the Keys, there was a road blockade and unless you had proof that you lived in the Keys- they turned you around. Instead we found a channel nearby to park at and eat our sandwiches.

I also found a craigslist ad for my vintage silverware that I collect across the state in Naples FL and thought, why not? So I drove two hours I think, just to pick up some forks and spoons, but since all the time was in the car with no contact, I didn’t think it was that dangerous.

One of the perks of not being able to return to China was getting to spend some holidays in the US, and not having to order special things that arrive melted or smashed about half of the time (chocolate eggs do not travel well). One thing I love to do is make sugar cookies, I do this in China too, but Easter lends itself well to sugar cookies. I will include a link to my favorite recipe at the bottom of the post.

I tried something new with the pink bunny and was really happy with how it turned out. My cookies aren’t always perfect, but they’re tasty and make me happy to make so they’re good enough.

Trying out a new pattern, my frosting was a little thick though, and my blue bunny is a little confused, either he has a tail on his stomach or his head is on backwards.

Alex’s Grandma Jane was really excited to get to do an easter egg hunt with him, and she made him a basket too. He loved spending the holidays with family, he got about twice the candy he normally would.

We decided to hide the eggs inside because we had been getting a lot of rain and it was still pretty muddy outside.

All of the action shots are blurred, Alex was running too fast to find eggs for me to get a good picture. The dogs were a little confused as to what we were all doing!

Showing off Sour Watermelon Peeps- which, as you might imagine, were really gross.

He’s sporting his lockdown haircut here (meaning I tried to cut it and we ended up buzzing it all off because I am the worst at haircuts). He couldn’t believe his Easter Basket haul and how much fun he had with the grandparents finding eggs.

One fun thing about the Florida house is most nights, but particularly after rainy nights, there are tons of frogs in the yard. Unfortunately there is a type of frog here that is posionous to dogs and we try to get rid of whenever we find them– but they are too fast. Most of the frog life in the yard is harmless though and after a while you get used to the screaming ribbits and croaks all night long. These two frogs below are just a few of the many that we had outside our door– It’s not the best picture, but they were hard to capture up there. They are sitting on a exterior light fixture by the door to the backyard.

This little guy was just happily climbing up the door, and was completely unbothered by us watching him and getting some up close and personal pictures.

Sugar Cookie recipe

I’ve been making this recipe, exactly as written (or halved because the full recipe makes an absolute ton of cookies) for about 12 years now. It’s taken from Cakecentral.com which is where I hung out when I first got into cake decorating. The link to the recipe is below, but in case you don’t want to head over there I will post it here too.

No Fail Sugar Cookie – NFSC

Ingredients

• 2 cups unsalted butter
• 2 cups sugar (white granulated)
• 2 eggs
• 1 Tbsp vanilla extract or desired flavoring
• 6 cups flour
• 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. salt

Instructions

1. Preheat Oven to 350 degrees F (176 C)
2. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
3. Add eggs and vanilla. Mix well.
4. Mix dry ingredients and add a little at a time to butter mixture. Mix at low speed until flour is completely incorporated and the dough comes together.
5. Chill for 1 to 2 hours (or see Hint below)
6. Roll to desired thickness and cut into desired shapes.
7. Bake on ungreased baking sheet at 350 degrees F (176 C) for 8 to 10 minutes or until just beginning to turn brown around the edges. 

HINT: Rolling Out Dough Without the Mess

• Rather than wait for your cookie dough to chill, take the freshly made dough and place a glob between two sheets of parchment paper.
• Roll it out to the desired thickness then place the dough and paper on a cookie sheet and pop it into the refrigerator.
• Continue rolling out your dough between sheets of paper until you have used it all. By the time you are finished, the first batch will be completely chilled and ready to cut.
• Reroll leftover dough and repeat the process! An added bonus is that you are not adding any additional flour to your cookies.

https://www.cakecentral.com/recipe/2055/no-fail-sugar-cookies

I’m still here, I’m still writing for the blog. I just needed a bit of a break. I will be back soon with some new posts about our refugee experience in the US, our trials on getting back to China and everything new here. Thanks for being patient and expect a new post soon.