Dali

We left Kunming early Sunday morning and took a 5 hour bus ride to Dali. Dali is famous for it's old town, as well as being close to many ethnic minority villages. We decided to only spend one night here and head on to Lijiang today (Monday). We really enjoy the hotel we're staying at. It's run by a Tibetan man and the whole thing has been decorated in Tibetan theme. All the rooms open up to a walled courtyard. The courtyard has grass, a pebbled walking path, and several picnic tables to sit at. Also, there is a sandbox, a swing set and a paved area with several children's toys (bikes, skateboards, etc.) The kids love it here and have played outside non-stop. It's refreshing change to be somewhere so kid friendly. Not that we've ever encountered any "kid hostility" here in China, but most places cater to the adult traveler.

We spent yesterday walking around the old town. So much to buy, so little time (and money). We could just spend and spend here. Every time I see something I think "OH! Chris' dad would love that" or "OH! I have to get that for my sister!" We restrain ourselves for the most part but we have bought a few interesting pieces. I am getting more confident in my bargaining tactics, which makes it easier for me to spend money with out Chris' help. Yesterday I bought two large medallions, one jade and one turquoise. They both have silver detailing on them and are meant to be worn as jewelry. I think they are much too big and too old to wear as jewelry, but I thought they'd look pretty framed together.

Dali is peaceful and beautiful, but it's time to move on to the next leg of our journey. I know the kids are already tired of traveling, but we still have two more cities to visit. We're trying to make this a painless as possible for them, but at their age they can only take so much. They really miss Josie :)

the first of the vacation updates

a long email I wrote to friends and family that I'll post here for posterities sake...

Right now we are still in Kunming. We flew here on Wednesday night. On Thursday, we went to a nearby mountain and road a cable car up to the top. That always scares me, because it seems so unsafe. All that's keeping us from falling out is our own common sense! It's like a ski lift, and I'm always nervous that the kids are going to jump out or lean over too far. Thankfully, they have more sense than that :) At the top of the mountain are several Taoist shrines that were carved into the face of the mountain by Taoist monks. It's simply amazing. The kids liked it ok, but it was a long day for them and they were full of complaints. We had dinner plans that night to meet up with Chris' study abroad advisors from when he was here in 2001. They took us to this really cool place called 1923 and it is decorated in an old, traditional style. We ate outside in a glass house and we had to walk across a small stream on stepping stones to get to it. Zack whined and whined and whined the whole dang time! Not just Zack, but mostly Zack. Meanwhile, Chris is talking shop with the husband. Chris is trying to get a lot of details worked out for his summer teen adventure trek that he's in charge of (with the broadreach program). Since he will be bringing the kids here to Kunming, and since his advisors have years of experience running study abroad in this area, they are a very valuable resource to him. I didn't begrudge him talking business, not at all. However, the wife and I were just sitting there sort of left out of the conversation. I was trying to appease my grouchy kids, trying not to offend them with my rude kids who refused to eat any of the food they ordered. I was feeding Josh his noodles because he can't feed himself these super long noodles without making a complete mess. Meanwhile Zack and Petey won't eat a think and just sit there saying "can we go now!?" Ack, it was horrible. To top it off, we were an hour late meeting them for dinner because traffic was so bad coming back from the mountain.

So, despite the fact that Chris and I were very upset at the boys, we resolved to have a better day the next day. We realize that vacations are hard for everyone involved, and especially for children. Eating dinner at a fancy restaurant with people they don't know isn't exactly the best time for a kids good manners to shine through. We had a good family prayer and we all determined to be more patient and loving with each other tomorrow (which, as I write this, was yesterday).

In the morning we got up early to get ready to go to the Stone Forest. When you have time, do a google search for photos of the stone forest in Yunnan province. It was so amazing. We had a wonderful time there and took lots of amazing pics of our own. We planned on having McDonalds for breakfast because the hotel here serves mainly a Chinese breakfast (noodles, veggies, basically same food as dinner). Unfortunately, McDonalds isn't open for breakfast and we ended up having dumplings and noodles for breakfast anyway. The drive to the stone forest was pretty long, almost two hours. Still, I loved it. I'm getting to see rural China, finally! The part we live in, Nanjing, has been very populated for thousands of years. There really isn't much "rural" left. But now I'm seeing it and it's beautiful, so rustic and amazing. As Chris says, just think these people have been living this way for hundreds of years. They are happy and content to live this way. You should see their beautiful smiles. Once we got to the stone forest we just went in and explored. We pretty much let the kids determine which paths we would take and ended up getting somewhat lost in the maze of stones. It's almost like a cave but outside. I've never seen anything like it in my life. However, we couldn't really get "lost" because the places was way crowded with tourists. Zack got quite upset at one point when he wandered away from us and a Chinese woman grabbed his arm and tried to pull him with her. He told me he had to push her away and run away really quickly. He was pretty upset by that, and who can blame him! We had several personal space invasions while we were there. However, we had some neat experiences too. For example, a man reached out his hand to Zack to shake hands. At first, Zack didn't want to and he walked away, but then he thought better of it and went back to shake the guys hand. I was proud of him for being so friendly.

When we finally found our way out of the stones, we went to the closest Chinese restaurant to eat and had noodles and duck. Noodles and duck are always a safe bet for the kids. They ate pretty well. While we were there, another man came up to shake Zack's hand. After Zack shook his hand, the man went back to his table and then came back with a bottle of beer. He wanted to give Zack some! We said nonononono! The guy just laughed, but he looked surprised at our objections.

On the way home, we went on back roads for half of the way. This was sort of an accident as our driver missed the turn off to the highway, but once again, I didn't mind at all. In several of the hillsides that we drove past, I saw tombs. At first we thought they were shrines to the land gods, but we soon saw they were tombs. They were all really well taken care of. I wonder how old they are? It's so neat how Chinese don't forget about taking care of their ancestors graves. It turned out to be a really good thing that we took the back road home. It ran parallel to the high way some of the time, so we could see the high way. Often the highway was above us. On the way to the stone forest, we had passed a horrible car accident. Multiple trucks, SUV's and cars were smashed together. We even saw a man (most likely dead) hanging out of his truck. People were just standing around. I'll never forget the sight of that man. Traffic was backed up for miles. As we were returning on the back road, we drove past the accident site and it was still there! This was 5-6 hours later and traffic was still jam-packed together. Thank goodness we took the back roads!

We had another business dinner that night, but we were determined to make it much more bearable. We fed the kids McDonalds before we went to the dinner. I think our hosts were a little surprised, and baffled, as to why we had fed the kids ahead of time, but that's ok. At least the kids were very well behaved. I also took crayons and lots of paper and worksheets for them to work on. That went really well, too. Also, one of our hosts had brought her 7 year old son, so they had lots of fun playing with him too. All in all, a much better day. Oh, btw, the business dinner that night ended up being at the same place we'd eaten the night before! We made the boys promise not to say anything about it, and they didn't. We ate inside this time, not in the glass house. The inside was a traditional style Chinese house, with the rooms all opening to a common courtyard. Very cool. Also, I ate pig feet. I didn't like it, and it was way too spicy for me. But I tried!

We were scheduled to leave Kunming today and take the bus to Dali. However, we've decided to stay another day. There's a museum in town with 5 dinosaur fossils that we want to take the boys to. I want to go to the Buddhist temple, as well. We're on vacation, right? There's no need to rush around from city to city. We're just going to take it easy and enjoy ourselves as much as possible.

Kunming is so much more "Chinese" than Nanjing. In Nanjing, it's entirely possible to never eat Chinese. There are so many western restaurants everywhere. Not here. It is actually quite hard to find western food and it's just going to get worse as the vacation goes on. The next two towns we travel to are much, much smaller. If we lived here our boys would be eating Chinese food like champs because they wouldn't have a choice.

Cotton candy at the Confucian Temple

We leave on our vacation this afternoon. I'm really looking forward to visiting new parts of China. We've hardly even left this province since we've moved here, except for our one trip to Beijing. It's time to see new things, go new places!

This morning I spoke with my parents. I don't speak to them nearly as often as I'd like to, thanks to the time difference between Nanjing and Alabama. Zack spoke with them to and they asked him if he was excited about taking this trip. He said "Not really, we go on trips all the time." I suppose traveling is traveling is traveling. And, for an 8 year old kid, it's hard to comprehend the difference between a 3 hour train ride to Shanghai and a 3 hour plane ride to the other side of the country. I hope the kids will have fun. I tried to pack light, but we are going to be gone for 10 days and it's hard to pack light for that amount of time.

We took Josie to the vet yesterday for more puppy shots. Afterwards we went to a Korean restaurant for lunch and they kindly let us bring Josie inside. We ended up taking her all around town and no one stopped us from bringing her inside anywhere we went. She was in a duffle bag with just her head peeking out. She was very well behaved but I think she was also quite overwhelmed by the hustle and bustle of the city. It's nice and quiet out here at our country home.

One more thing: my kitchen sink has been leaking ever since we moved in here. I've had the guys out many times to fix it, but they just keep doing quick fixes and not resolving the true problem at hand. The real problem is that the pipe under my sink is a cheap, flimsy, plastic pipe. It's bendable and the plastic is so thin that I can see the water flowing through it. A couple nights ago my sink wouldn't drain so I opened up the cabinet and took a look at the pipe. I could see that it was full of water, so I proceeded to bend up the pipe to help it empty. As soon as my fingers brushed the pipe, the whole thing fell apart, dumping gross water all over my kitchen floor.Chris called Li Weiping and asked him to get it fixed. The pipe fits back onto the sink, but it can fall off again with just a light tug. Li Wieping explained that this was simply and design flaw (his favorite excuse) and nothing to be done for it. Chris told him, yes, something can be done and please get it done.

Apparently the repair man came yesterday while I was in class. I noticed today that the flexible pipe has been tied to the sink pipe with yellow string. Ok, I guess that works too...

Mmm, yummy pigeon head

Ok, so I didn't really eat it, but it makes for a fun picture, right?

This was taken at the Red Star restuarant, the one with the Cultural Revolution theme. I just finished reading an amazing book entitled "The Good Women of China" by Xinran. It's about women living through the cultural revolution, mostly in Nanjing. It was so eye-opening and made me regret patronizing the restuarant. The Cultural Revolution is not something to celebrate, not in the least. Some people I spoke with about this issue told me the reason it's "ok" is because the CR is something the Chinese people did to themselves, verses (for example) the Nazi crimes that were commited by Germans against other nationalities. Still, it's disturbing to think that so many people are ignorant about the CR that this type of celebration is seemingly acceptable.

Bubble boy

Zack walking on water!
Zack in the bubble as they are filling it with air

Zack had a blast, although he said it was very, very cold. Petey was also going to do it, but once he got enclosed in the bubble he started to freak out. He was crying and so upset. Suddenly I remembered his tendency towards claustrophobia. The workers saw that he was upset and they started pushing him off the ramp and towards the water anyway! I stood in front of the bubble and blocked it with my body, yet still the guy tried to push it into the water. I'm yelling at the guy, "Let him out! He doesn't want to do it!" I suppose the worker thought Petey would be fine once he got into the water, but I was not going to let him "force" Petey into doing something he was so afraid to do. Finally, when the guy saw that I wasn't going to move, he opened the bubble and let Petey out. It took Petey several minutes to calm down. Poor guy. It's times like this when I'm proud of myself for standing up for my children.

Chris went in a bubble with Josh. Josh was scared too, but he was soon ok since Chris was with him. Chris later told me that the reason Josh got upset, and probably Petey as well, was because the pressure changes rapidly and causes your ears to pop. Chris had lots of fun, as did Josh, and of course they attracted a large crowd who gathered to watch the crazy foreigners :) There were plenty of Chinese playing in bubbles as well, but they were all children. Chris was the only person out there older than 12.

Plum Blossoms at Nanjing City gate

Josh's birthday was a success. He was so happy and proud to be turning three. He told me "I'm a big boy now, not a little boy anymore." Petey asked me in bewliderment why Josh hadn't grown bigger on his birthday. Turns out Petey remembers himself as much bigger at that age, lol. How Petey retains so many memories of being three is beyond me. We had birthday cake at lunch and invited a some friends over. All of them were adults, but that didn't seem to matter to Josh. Pangeline, Gao Lao Shi, Mariannette, Rene and Sailing all stopped by to wish Josh "Happy Birthday." In return, they all got a peice of cake mix cake and loved it. Chinese bakery birthday cakes are very different from American cakes. They have fruit layered inbetween the cakes and are much less sweet. I'd venture a guess and say that the frosting is made mostly of lard as well. I made a yellow cake with chocolate frosting, both bought in the import section. It cost about twice as much as back home, but it's worth it for a birthday as important as turning three.

We went to Papa John's for dinner. We never ate Papa John's back home and now it is pretty much our favorite place to go.

Today we are going to a rock climbing gym in Nanjing. We have no idea if the kids will be allowed to do it or not, but we're just taking them on the premise that usually nothing is off limits to kids here. When I took the kids to the water park last summer they let Petey go down even the steepest water slides. It scared me, but he loved it. I figure rock climbing will be fine, as long as they are strapped into the safety harnesses.

Our vacation starts in less than a week! I'm so excited to travel to new parts of China. Unfortunately we only have 10 days and we have 4 different cities to visit. I'm hoping this won't turn into a horrid vacation because we're running ourselves ragged. Hopefully we can take it easy and enjoy ourselves as much as possible. We're going to Kunming, Dali, Lijiang, and Chengdu. The last leg of the trip, Chengdu, is for the boys. We're going to the panda preserve.

Happy Birthday, Josh!

Today Josh is three years old. I can't believe how quickly he has grown up. And, I also can't believe I'm not yet pregnant! This is the first time I've had a three year old and no baby on the way or already in hand. When Josh was born, we finally had a boy with my brown eyes. Both Zack and Petey have blue eyes like Chris, Josh has the Ross-eyes :) He's such a sweet child and I've very thankful that he's a part of our family.


Josh caught one of these fish himself. For 10 rmb, he was given a tiny fishing pole, with a teeny-tiny hook on the end. He was given 10 minutes to fish in an inflatable pool full of gold fish. After he caught one, we were done. It had suddenly occured to me that I didn't want a bunch of gold fish to take home. Well, the generous proprioter of the establishment gave us two more fish as a freebie. Two of the fish have died so far, leaving us with only one. I'll admit a dirty secret, every time a fish dies I'm a bit relieved to be done with yet another mouth to feed.

Funny story: Yesterday, after my class, the boys and I were sitting around the table together eating lunch. Petey then proceeded to tell me how one of the goldfish had faked his own death in order to escape down the toilet drain. Hmmm, this sounds very familiar....could our fish (more likely our kids) have gotten this idea from "Finding Nemo"? So, after many questions this is what I've been able to discover: The fish was lying sideways in the bowl, so the kids scooped it out with the fish net. The fish laid still in the net until they dumped it into the toilet. At that point, it came alive and swam away down the drain. The kids are adamant that they did not flush it, and the fish swam away on it's own. Stranger things have happened, right? Now that fish has escaped into the wonderland of the Chinese sewage system.

I stayed up too late reading and as a result my whole day yesterday was out of whack. I did poorly in Chinese class. The truth is that I've gotten to the point where I don't know as many characters as I should to be able to read the dialoge practice we have in class. I keep going out of compassion for the other student. I wouldn't want her to be the only student in the class. Also, I do still learn bits and peices each time I go. It doesn't matter if I learn the characters or not since I'm only auditing the class. However, my teacher expects me to study and learn as if I were taking it for credit. Today is our midterm exam and both teacher and student want me to take it. Sure, whatever. I tried to study last night but I had no interest or energy. I was asleep before 9:30. This morning I plan to try and memorize my oral presentation before I go to class. After all, I'm only interested in learning how to speak, not so much how to read.

Yesterday afternoon Chris went to play basketball with some of the students. They go up to the courts here on campus and pick up games with some of the Chinese students. Basketball is very popular here and the courts are always crowded. On to the point of the story: Chris came home with a black, swollen-shut eye. He bashed heads with another guy and came out for the worst. This morning his eye is still swollen shut, puffy and purple. Looking at him, you think of "Rocky" and the "cut me, coach!" scene.

And of course, tonight we are having company for dinner. I met a neighbor who can speak really good english. It turns out that she is an ecology professor who works at Nanjing University. The wonderful part for us is that she is part of the history department. I told her about Chris working on his dissertation, etc, and she said she'd be happy to help him gain access to the history departments private library. This is a huge deal! I'm sorry Chris will be slightly disfigured for the meeting, but hopefully that won't matter in the long run:)

McDonalds was so decked out for New Years, I had to take a photo :) Chris wasn't expecting it.

A conversation I had with Connor as I was getting him ready for his nap:

Him: Bounty hunters have two guns, Mom.

Me: Yes, but bounty hunters have to put their guns away when they take naps.

Him: OK. (He proceeds to take his two "guns" out of his pockets and put them beside him on the bed. His "guns" are made of rolled up paper.)

Is it just me, or does it seem odd that a two year old not only knows the word "bounty hunter" but also pretends to be one? Of course, this isn't just any old bounty hunter. This is a Star Wars bounty hunter.

We're back from Shanghai. The trip home was relatively uneventful, excepting the fact that Petey had to pee twice in an empty bottle. Yet another reason to take the train and not the bus...bathrooms.

Nanny Zou came late today and is staying late so Chris and I can go on a date! We haven't had a date since we were home at Christmas time. I suppose this isn't officially a date, as we'll be going to a birthday dinner for boss #2, but still, it's time away from the kids so its a date!

I realize that I was too hasty in my frustration with Josie's nipping. It's just normal puppy behavior. I couldn't get rid of her. She's too much a part of our family now. Even if she does snag her sharp little teeth in my only pair of grey tights and rip a hole in them while I'm wearing them, I can't give up on her so easily. We going to have a "dog" unit in home school and learn all about how to train and care for dogs. We should have done this BEFORE we got her, but live and learn, right?

Nanjing, in all her smoggy glory.

I love Shanghai. We got off to a rocky start on our trip. I thought the bus left at 9:40, but it actually left at 8:20. How did I get that so wrong? Fortunately, we were traveling with some other church friends so they called to say "where are you?!" It's times like that when it's so painful not to be driving myself. I have to sit patiently and wait while Driver Fang (seemingly) takes her time to drive carefully through traffic. It's times like that when I need Mr. Du! He'd drive on the sidewalk to get me there on time :) However, we were able to catch up with the bus at it's second stop before it left town.

The ride to Shanghai was quite uneventful. Chris and I watched the most recent two episodes of LOST while the boys played on their Gameboys.

Once we arrived in Shanghai, we parted ways with the church friends. The hotel they're staying in doesn't have any rooms that will fit our family. We'd have to book two rooms, which we don't like doing. We want to be together :) We went back to a hotel we've used in the past. We can rent a two bedroom apartment, complete with kitchen, for about $70/night.

On to the reason why I love Shanghai: it's so foreigner-friendly. We ate lunch in a western cafe we came across at the mall. I had couscous with lentils and roasted eggplant. It was so very delicious. It also had sour cream on it. What a treat! Next we had "real" ice cream and went shopping at Toys R Us. We hit the English bookstore and then found a grocery store that sold Fruit Roll-ups. I've heard people say that it's possible to live in Shanghai and never really "live in China". I can see why.

Although I enjoy all these western treats, I wouldn't make a habit of it if we lived in Shanghai. It's a nice splurge, but an expensive one.

Livejournal has been blocked in China

I really miss livejournal. I know, when all is said and done, a blog is a blog. I'm still able to write and post my feelings, stories and pictures for my loved ones back home to read.

I miss all my livejournal friends.

Darn that evil Chinese censorship! What was being said on livejournal that was so bad, compared to blogger that isn't censored? All very baffling, and now I'm cut off from my friends! *sobs*

Yesterday was an "off" day for home school. Somedays, we just can't seem to get along no matter what. I tried to have a heart to heart talk with Zack about his bad attitude towards home school. He pretty much told me that he has difficulty taking instructions from me because I'm his mom and not a stranger (like a teacher at public school would be.) He said he feels like he has to obey teachers at school because they he doesn't know them like he knows me. Well, at least he's man enough to admit the truth, hmmmm?

Josie continues to give us problems. She nips all the time now. I'm not sure how to break her of this problem, and I'm not willing to have a dog who is going to bite my kids. I have no idea what to do. When we got her, I didn't consider the fact that she might not work out. Foolish of me, perhaps. I don't think there is such thing as a Humane society or even a pound here. I think we'll just have to find another home for her, if it turns out that we really are unable to get her to stop nipping. Yesterday she ran up to a stranger to try and play with him. He wanted nothing to do with her and kicked at her. She wasn't hurt, she just rolled over and then got up to try and play again. I'd been trying to catch her the whole time and was finally able to pick her up before she went back for more. As if I don't have enough to worry about with three kids intruding upon peoples lives, now I have a dog who does it too. I'm woman enough to admit when I make a mistake. I made a mistake getting this dog. We just aren't ready for a dog. But now my kids are in love with her and how can I get rid of her without breaking their hearts? This is a mess.

Lovers by the lake.

Chris made it safely home from Beijing. At the last moment, he decided that he wanted to fly home instead of taking the night train. Who can blame him? A two hour trip versus an ten hour trip? We were able to get a cheap ticket and he was home by Monday night. He brought lots of goodies for us. There is an awesome foriegn language bookstore in Beijing and he was able to get 4 more books by the boys' favorite author, Dav Pilkey. He also found several second-hand Star Wars characters. As for me, jewelry! Pearls, jade and tibetian earrings. I love it. For himself he bought several peices of artwork to hang in his office.

Nanny Zou has called in sick for the past two days. This is the first time since she's been working for us that she's taken off any personal time. She has the same stomach virus that we combated last month. I hope she feels better soon. It took us about two weeks to fully shake it off. Speaking of Zou, she and her husband are in the process of buying a new home. It's a bit odd to realize that the money we pay her is helping her buy a new home, but Chris and I have yet to buy a home. We've always rented. I should add that she and her hubby have been saving up for years. I can't say that about Chris and I :)

So, will we stay or will we go? It's getting very difficult not to know what our plans are for next August yet. Chris and I both feel the best thing to do is to stay. I know! That probably sounds like craziness considering all that we've gone through here. Let's face the facts, though. Our priority right now is to finish Chris' dissertation. His teaching load here is considerably lighter than it would be at virtually any other job. Also, he has access to countless resources that have helped a great deal with his research. It's clear that he's getting his dissertation done while we're here (he's already started writing it). Why mess with a good thing? If he can finish it up quicker living here, then shouldn't we stay so that in the long run we can get a tenure track job more easily? I've spoken with the boys about this and I think they're coming around. They're starting to understand why we might need to stay here for another year.

I had such great expectations for yesterday. According to the plans, it should have been a super fun day. Unfortunately, it turned into one of those days where everything that could go wrong, did. I think I’m going to record every painful detail, just to give you a true taste of how crazy it was.

It has lately become apparent that Josie has very high levels of energy. She almost always wants to play. Her version of playing is biting onto the pants leg or sock of whoever happens to be walking by her. She is constantly underfoot and getting stepped on. However, this stepping-on doesn’t seem to teach her anything and she’s back for more with in minutes.

So, this is how my day started. A hyper dog attacking the feet of my children and me. She has play toys, and we try to distract her with them by playing tug of war, etc, but she much prefers feet. After I had the kids fed and dressed we took Josie outside to try and run her wiggles out. We all went up to the grassy hill, both the boys and Josie’s favorite place to play. Their favorite game is to race up the hill and back down again. As Zack, Petey, and Josie were running down the hill, Josie got under foot and tripped Zack who in turned fell on top of Petey. They both ate it really hard and ended up sliding a few feet down the hill before they eventually came to a stop. After Zack spit out the mouthful of grass he had, he assured me that he was fine. Petey wasn’t crying, but he did have a large friction burn on his stomach from the grass. Their clothes were now filthy and the day had just began.

We headed home to get cleaned up and as soon as we started walking Josie attached herself to the cuff of my pants. Sigh Once we got home, I had about 20 minutes to get everyone cleaned up before Mr. Zhu (pronounced “jew”) would be there to pick us up and take us to the Paleontology museum. Mr. Zhu is one of the drivers employed by the program. He’s always on time, always polite, just a model employee. During the next 20 minutes I scrubbed dirt off Zack and Petey’s hands, scrapped mud off Petey’s shoes (how does he manage to do that every time we go outside?!) and packed a bag to take with us into town. Still, I wasn’t ready when he got there but came up and helped me get the kids’ coats and shoes on. He’s a genuinely nice guy.

Since I thought there was only my family riding into town in the Honda Accord, I buckled the boys in the backseat and took the front seat for myself. Let me stress what a luxury it is for me to be able to (a) sit in the front seat and (b) not have a kid on my lap. When Chris is along I always sit in the back with the kids and with Connor on my lap. Chris is just so much bigger than me, I almost always let him have the front. Yesterday I was quite happy at the prospect of riding all the way to town in my own seat with no kid wiggling all over me. However, we’d only driven about two blocks when we stopped to pick up Jesse and her mom. Of course. I moved to the backseat to hold Connor on my lap and gave the front seat to Jesse. Her mom squished in next to Petey, so there were 5 of us in the backseat. Fortunately this only lasted for about 10 minutes. They weren’t going all the way into Nanjing, just to Jiangpu (the city right outside the campus gate.) Unfortunately for Petey, Jesse’s mom kept trying to pet him the whole time. His new defense is to yell “Bu Yao!” pretty loudly to let people know he really seriously doesn’t want them to touch him. However, since this woman is someone we know and not really a stranger, I was trying to get him to be more polite about it. Her mom just got here and I think she must be from the countryside. I’ll explain more about that later.

Finally they got out and we were on our way. It was a long drive which resulted in complaining kids. I tried to distract them along the way and told them the story of King Midas and The Emperors New Clothes (both slightly depressing when you get down to it). When we arrived at the museum the boys and I got out and Mr. Zhu drove away. I had no idea if we were at the right place because I’ve never been there before. I just have to take it on faith that Mr. Zhu will take me to the right place because he always has in the past. Not today. There was some mix up in communication and after he drove away I realized he had taken me to the Nanjing Provincial Museum (Mariannette and I have that on the schedule to go to on Monday). I called her to ask if she could text me the name of the Paleontology Musuem or Buddhist temple right next to it so I could just take a taxi. She didn’t have it handy and suggested that I call Li Weiping.

Li Weiping is one of the administrative assistants for the program. However, I rarely call him for help because he –too be frank—doesn’t do his job. If you ask him to do something he just doesn’t do it, and he often has many excuses handy as to why it can’t be done. He is a lawyer and was initially hired by the program to help them circumvent and manuveur their way through the Chinese legal system. Now that there is no legal business for him to attend to, he is in charge of making sure the apartments and dorms stay up and running (clogged toilets are a constant problem) and he’s also in charge of transportation. It’s obvious that he feels this jobs are below him and who can blame him? He’s a lawyer for goodness sakes! So why not QUIT and find another job!?!

I called Li Weiping (who btw, doesn’t have the best English skillz). I could tell he was in a very loud place and I was having a hard time hearing what he was saying. Let me also interject here that with most of the other faculty and staff out of town on the Beijing trip, Li Weiping is the one we’re suppose to be able to ask for help, right? I try to explain to him my situation, that I’ve been dropped off at the wrong museum and I need the name of the correct museum so I can take a taxi to it. He replies “I gave the name of the museum to Mr. Zhu” I’m starting to feel frantic “Mr. Zhu dropped me off at the wrong place! I need to go to the Paleontology museum, you know, dinosaur bones? It’s next to the Buddhist temple.” Li Wieping “What?” “Buddhist temple!” “Yes, what is the name of the Buddhist temple?” “Uh, I don’t know what you’re talking about”.

Finally I yell into the phone (I am not a yeller and it really rattles me to loose my cool like this with someone) “I am stuck in the city with my children and I have no way to get to where I need to be! I really need you to help me!!” His reply “I can’t hear you, text me.” Oh, I was so dang mad. Shaking mad. As I’m trying to text him, Mariannette text’s me with the name of the Buddhist temple. She was able to find it for me. Yay Mariannette for saving me, once again!

We get into a taxi and our on our way to the Paleontology museum, finally. It was a little muddy outside from the rain we had off and on throughout the week. Of course, when the boys climbed into the taxi they put their shoes on the seat and Of Course the taxi driver started yelling about the black foot prints they were leaving all over the white seat cover. This is something that we’ve talked to the kids about many, many times. I had to hold Connor on my lap to prevent him from climbing all over the seats. I really miss his toddler carseat at times. We arrive at the Paleontology museum and the cab fare was 14 rmb. I only had 100 bills, or coins. I know most taxi drivers don’t like making change for a bill that large so I started trying to count out the coins. Will I was doing so, the driver made a big show of trying to brush the dirty footprints off the backseat. I ended up just having him break a 100 because I didn’t have 14 in change anyway.

We crossed the street and walked into the gate of the museum. The boys were so excited because they could see a couple huge dinosaurs through the large front windows. However, as we were walking up towards the building, a man stops us and is clearly trying to tell me we can’t go in. I get that we can’t go in, but I want to understand why. I called Andy (the political science professor, and boss #2). He speaks pretty good Chinese and he said he’d try to help. However, when I handed my cell phone to the man who stopped me, he looked confused and muttered something into the phone and handed it straight back. I thought he couldn’t understand Andy’s Chinese. Andy suggested I call Li Weiping and I said “NO!” So, then he suggested I call my teacher, Gao. I did call her (and I suspect I woke her up, whoops.) I told the man this was a Chinese person but he still refused to speak to her. It was at this point that I realized the man couldn’t hear well enough to use a cell phone.

Thankfully, he flagged down someone walking by who could speak English. This nice man told me that the museum was only open on Saturdays and Sundays. Ouch. After all that, now I had three highly disappointed boys on my hands. We wandered across the street to a park to contemplate what to do next. The plan was to meet up with Mariannette but that was at 2:00 and it was only 11:30. We decided to head over to our meeting place which was at a huge indoor playground. We stopped off for Pizza Hut first and that was about the high light of the day. They boys were really well behaved while we ate ☺

Next we went to the playground, where they always have a blast. This indoor playground is a big money making scheme in China. There are really no places equal to it in the States that I’m aware of. I suppose the closest equivalent would be Chuck E. Cheeses. However, in China there’s no food associated with the playground but there is an entrance fee for each child. The reason these retail playgrounds are such a big success is because there aren’t really very many public playgrounds. The ones I’ve seen are quite small, nothing in comparison with this 4 leveled monster of a playground we were at.

Imagine this: 2 trampolines, 3 ball pits, 4 racing slides, a twisty slide steeper and twirlier than anyone you’ve ever seen. Mix into that several levels of climbing and maze like structure, all clean. There’s nothing mysterious down in the bottom of these ball pits. The whole place is spotless. Of course, you can easily lose your kid in that place because it’s so huge, but there’s only one way out so I felt safe about that aspect.

We’d only been there for about 15 minutes when I heard Petey start to cry quite loudly. I called for him to come down (he was high up in the nether reaches of the maze) but he wouldn’t. I had no choice but to climb up and find him. When I did find him, he was laying face down crying his heart out because he’d twisted his knee. Poor guy. I helped him down and after a few minutes he was ready to play again. After another 15 minutes or so he started crying again because it hurt to badly to play. At this point, I knew it was time for us to go home. Unfortunately it wasn’t yet 2 and Mariannette hadn’t even arrived yet! I knew I wanted to go home as soon as Mr. Zhu got there. As much as I hated to do it, I called her and told her that we just had to go home. We’d had enough of that day and needed to get home. She was completely understanding and went home with us. She didn’t complain once about the fact that she’d just rode for an hour to get to town and was now turning straight around to go back home. She’s awesome that way.

We went to the Paleontology museum this morning instead. Turns out the place specializes in invertebrates. Those awesome dinosaurs we saw from the front window were the only ones in the whole museum, lol. Ah, the irony. The whole place was mostly small fossils of plants, crustaceans and insects. The boys still liked it anyway.

Thus ends the epic and tragic tale of my misadventure. I was so tired last night I fell asleep before 9:30. I’m glad today went so much better.