Turning rights

I had a brilliant idea today to go with a friend to Ikea for lunch. Yeah, us and 1.3 billion other people. It was fun, the food was good, and it was packed. On a Wednesday afternoon. Go figure.

Was it worth it? Yes.

On the way home I had a brief but interesting conversation with our cab driver.

Him: "So what country are you from?"

Me: "America."

Him: "Oh, America's a good country."
Me: (wanting to be polite and not feeling especially homesick at the moment) "China's good, too."

Him: (smirking into rear-view mirror) "Humph."

Me: "Well, I mean, it's getting better and better."

Him: "China has no human rights."

Me: "Oh, um," (awkward pause) "Mumble, mumble, mumble." Thankfully, I can always count on someone crying to excuse me from a conversation, awkward or not. Trying to redirect the conversation: "Shenyang doesn't have many parks or places for kids to play. People make money building apartments and high-rises, but there's not a lot of money in building parks."

Him: "See, even if the regular people on the streets want parks, they have no way of building them. No human rights!"

Hmmmmm... I'm not so good at redirecting a conversation.

It was interesting to see that this was so much on his mind. I think that most people go about their day-to-day lives without much complaint, but when it comes down to it, a lot of people feel like their hands are tied. If there's a problem, there's not much they can do about it because change has to come from the top down. A lot of change is happening, and there are improvements being made in many aspects of life. But it's true that the 老百姓 or regular people on the streets don't have much power or control-- or rights, once you come down to it.

We found China!

We've been here for over 3 months now, and I feel like I just found REAL China.

Somehow, living in a swanky apartment building on the main shopping street just doesn't cut it. I mean, it's cool to live upstairs from an H&M. If I want a McDonald's ice cream cone, I have a choice of 5 different locations within walking distance. When I want to feel underdressed, I can just go walking in the fancy mall, past Hugo Boss, Armani, Burberry, and a bunch of other stores I'd never shop at. But it doesn't feel particularly Chinese.

So one day we went walking the other way. And right around the corner, there it was: real China.

In these pictures you'll notice that many things are run down and old. That's not exactly what I mean by "real." Instead, it's the feeling of community, the fact that this is where real people live, work, eat, and sleep. These people are neighbors and friends, instead of customers and employees.

In the background is our high-rise apartment, right next-door to this one, which is probably somewhere in line for becoming another high-rise building in the future.

It's an alleyway and a slum, but it has so much more character than our place will ever have.

In front of our neighborhood Xinjiang restaurant, they have a sheep tied to a light pole. It was there for several days, but last time I passed, I didn't see it.

On a completely unrelated note, they serve excellent lamb kabobs!

Not sure how old this building is, but we love the vintage Lei Feng painting. And Kevin would make a good model for modern socialist propaganda, too.

A fruit-and-vegetable market spilling onto the front steps.

If there's one thing I miss about the last several places we've lived, it's the gardens. Our shopping street has literally not a single living plant on it, not even trees. The park is a 20-minute walk away, and it's a little sad to have so little green around.

But in an apartment courtyard, we found this little garden. They told us the retired people in the complex care for this garden. Penny liked the bugs.

This apartment building is directly across the street from a new high-rise, and the tenants have put signs up in their windows that say "I want sunlight," and "Return my sunlight." I can only imagine what the Shenyang winters are going to be like for them now that there's a building shading them.

Quite a talented girl

Penny's really good at noticing when I get out the camera and stopping whatever she's doing. But the first part of the video's pretty cute.

Swimming like a star

Penny can't swim. I just thought I'd make that clear from the beginning. ;)

But everywhere we go, Penny is the center of attention. People stop and take pictures of her. People walking 30 yards away will elbow their friend and point to her. When Penny's in her stroller, people come up and pinch her cheeks and arms. When she's walking, she has to stay right by me, or so many people will squat down to talk to her that she can't get back to me. It's really scary for her. It's like being a movie star, except without the big bucks.

Anyway.

Some afternoons a few of us in our apartment building get together and let the kids play in a paddling pool.

This time we went, and Penny was much more interested in her little friend's new bike.

And the apartment staff were more interested in Penny riding the bike.

Which was fine with Penny once they showed her their pictures on their phones.

And meanwhile, Naomi was just doing what Naomi does best.

How to speak Penelopese

Sarah-my-sister, this picture is for you!

Penny is now two. We celebrated with a small party. Most of her friends and ours were out of town, but she had fun, we had cupcakes, and that's really all you need for a successful two-years-old birthday party.

Penny's been saying words for about a year now, but now it's starting to form a language. I usually serve as translator, but I thought I'd start putting together a little dictionary.

Meimei? Sleeping? Eyes? Closed? This was Penny's first long sentence. She's very concerned with whether someone's eyes are open or closed. And almost every word she says is intuned like a question. That's part of speaking Pennese.

Goot oer- Scoot over

Kiwi- scary

Apple- apple, pear, pineapple, etc

Cow- zebra

Two, tree, two, tree- counting

Syar- star

Kicken- Chicken

Kicken- Kitchen

Pah-ee: Penny

Pah-ee: Potty. This is a problem.

Boppies- panties

Bopper- diaper

Cockit- Chocolate

Gock-giss- glasses

cocker- cracker

Icreen- Ice cream

Yap- lap

Yiyon- lion-- yes, Penny has inherited my Y/L speech impediment. I grew out of it eventually, but sometimes when I'm tired...

Gabidge- garbage

Sabidge- sandwich

Yu- 鱼 fish in Chinese. She's pretty consistent to say this one in Chinese

Xiexie- thank you in Chinese. She loves to say Thank you in English, too, but she'll happily say it in either language.

Hawer- water. Mixture of heshui (to drink water) and WATER. Now no one understands her-- in English OR Chinese!

Nooooooo! Nnnnnngggggg!- To many people, this seems to mean, "Look at me, I'm so cute. Come squeeze my chubby arms and cheeks," when it really means, "Get the heck away and stop looking at me. Don't you DARE try and touch me!" Unfortunately, it's hard to explain this to 1.3 billion people.

Kitchen

For this week's Foreign Service Blog Round-Up, the assignment is kitchens. And since I'm nosy and want to see everyone else's kitchens, I'm posting about mine too.
This is the cleanest kitchen I've ever had, thanks not to me but to our Ayi, or housekeeper. She keeps the place livable and sanitary. With two tiny kids, I'm not sure what I'd do without her. Well actually, I know what my house would look like without her, and I'm very grateful to have her help.

This is my grey kitchen. My favorite feature is the toddler-sized oven. It comes up to knee height, and the control knobs are placed just perfectly for small children to handle. Thankfully, Penny knows it's 'hot' and hasn't played with it... much... yet. It's tiny and only has room to hold a 9x13 pan. So instead of making cookies, I've made bar cookies. It's so much faster, I think I may do this in the future, even with a bigger oven.

You might notice that the stove has no control knobs. It took me two days to figure out how to use the darn thing ("Why didn't you just ask someone?" my Ayi suggested. I'm stubborn, that's why!) I've figured it out now, and it's quite nice.

We bought some little Ikea shelflets to help store some stuff that didn't fit into the cupboards. I would love to have a pantry, but we're making due with the shelving we do have.

And this is as clean as my kitchen gets. Our Ayi was here today, and I spent 10 minutes cleaning up before taking these pictures-- something I realize I should do more often but don't. And it's still not pristine.

We have a pitcher of water on the counter, which is from our distiller machine (in the laundry room). When I first moved in, the distiller was on full-blast boiling mode. I was horrified that I had a boiling water machine just the right height to boil my children when they played with it. But then once the jet-lag wore off, I realized that distilled water is cooled. And clean. Yay for distilled water!

Yes, I made that rug.

We have a dishwasher. We also have an Ayi. We store our Tupperware in the dishwasher.

This is Penny's table. I sit on the rocking chair usually, and Penny sits on one of the stools. I was going to buy a cute new table at Ikea, but when our stuff arrived, this table fit our needs just perfectly. Penny loves the handles on the little stools, and she goes through phases where she drags them around the apartment wherever she goes.

We live really near North Korea. When we went to see Kung Fu Panda II the other day (in 3D!), guess who was there watching with us:

Looking good, Mr. Kim Jung Il.

Your friendly neighborhood dictator

We live really near North Korea.

Looking good, Mr. Kim!

Being helpful

Today we went to visit Dad at work. We also needed to do some paperwork to get Naomi's citizenship. We figure she needs a country, and we sure like ours, so we'll go ahead and have her become American... not that we have many (any) other options.

Anyway, after lunch, I took the girls outside and got started hailing a cab. There are certain times of day when it's practically impossible to get a taxi, and this was one of them. I hailed and waved, but none of the taxis were available.

I didn't want to take the public bus. They're crowded, hot, and not terribly convenient with a stroller and two babies. However, I recently learned which number goes from our house to the Consulate, and I headed in that direction. Along my way, a lady told me how beautiful my daughters were. Thank you. How old is that one? She's almost two. How old is this one? She's a whole month. Aiya! And you're already taking her outside?! Yup.

This is my typical walking-down-the-street conversation. It was punctuated by my frequently stopping to wave at taxis. She commented how the street we were on wasn't so good for hailing cabs (che buhao da), but it might be easier at the intersection ahead. I agreed. She wondered where we were going, and after I told her, she pointed at which direction we should head. Thank you.

When we got to the intersection, we parted ways, and I stood on the corner waving down cabs. They were all full.

We waited and sweated in the sunshine for a few minutes before I realized what was going on. The lady I'd been talking to wasn't just going on her merry way; she had wandered into traffic and was talking to a cabbie, pointing at us occasionally.

When she motioned for us to come, I pushed Penny's stroller and trotted on out into (stopped) traffic. She had stopped a cab-- a cab that already had a passenger, mind you-- and talked the driver into taking us as well. He would take his first passenger to his destination and then take me to mine.

The lady reminded me to thank the driver-- and of course I thanked her as well.

Sometimes I feel kind of annoyed when everyone wants to have their say in how I hold, feed, dress, or shade my children. But then times like this remind me that many people just want to be helpful.

满月了

Naomi's now a whole month old! I guess this means I can stop lying about her age. For the last 3 weeks, I've been telling people she's a month old. I still get a surprised exclamation of, "哎呀！你已经给他包出来了！" But the exclamation is not a shriek of horror at my awful parenting, followed by a long explanation of how Chinese moms don't leave the house for a month, they don't take their babies out for 3 months, and they DEFINITELY don't hold them upright for those 3 months either. I've heard these explanations so many times I could recite them backwards and forwards.

So I found it easier to just say she's a month old. And now she is! Look, how cute:

满月了

Now that Naomi's a month old, I guess I can stop lying about her age.

See, whenever I go out with her in tow, I hear quite an earful about what I ought to be doing besides taking my daughter outside. The dialogue usually goes something like this:

"Woah, that baby is sooooo small! How old is she?" I'd answer, "One week" or "two weeks," whichever was true at the time.

"Aaaaah, Oh my gosh! She's only two weeks and you're already taking her out and about?!?! Don't you 做月子?"

Zuo yuezi . I heard a lot about it. Loosely translated, zuo yuezi means "to spend the month post-partum in confinement." After a lot of lectures and explanations, I learned that in Chinese tradition, a woman doesn't leave her house for a month, among other things. And China learned that Chelsea doesn't zuo yuezi.

Eventually, I got pretty tired of everyone

Du Li Ri

Happy Independence Day, everyone! This will be mainly a picture post to let everyone know what we've been up to-- and to show off my amazing photography skills. Be in awe.

From the news I'm hearing from home, it sounds like I'm not the only one who had a change in plans for their 4th of July celebrations. I'm very happy that the Los Alamos fire didn't make its way into town, but it did put a damper on celebrations. Meanwhile in China, we originally made plans to travel to Dalian (a city 4 hours away on the coast) to celebrate Independence Day with some Americans down there. But with a month-old baby and a toddler in tow, we decided to can it. We stayed home instead.

But here is a picture of Penny in her 4th of July, Yay-America ensemble:

Isn't that the cutest dress?! Yeah, I made it. Last year Penny had a 4th of July outfit, and she wore it all weekend. I decided she needed one for this year, so I made it for her, and it fit just right.
She wore it to a party on Friday night (for a German friend celebrating getting her visa.... we were the only Americans there). Then she wore it to church on Sunday. I forgot to have her wear it on the actual Fourth of July. Oops.

And this week we are lucky to have Kevin's mom come to visit us. She is having a great time visiting with Penny and Meimei..... oh, and Kevin and me too! Meimei loves being carried and held by her Ah-ma, and of course I love having another person around to play with the girls.

We joke that when we go out people probably think she's the nanny. But we know who is who, and that's what's important.

Just another picture of Meimei chilling in her swing.

The other night Penny started an evening ritual of going through her books one by one, reading each one page by page, and being enthralled by it for almost an hour-- until we need to throw her in bed. I love that she's enjoying reading her books!

And the other day I noticed Penny had gone into my room where Naomi was sleeping. It was really quiet for quite a while. I know Penny has the best intentions, but she's not always very careful with her little sister. When I went to check on here, this is what I found:

You know you've been in China too long when...

This morning Penny was digging through Kevin's desk and emptying the contents onto the floor. But she's a good little girl-- and probably a little OCD-- and put everything back in. The last item was a 2-inch-long white eraser, the kind you might find in a mechanical pencil. She squatted down on her heels and proceeded to smoke it like a cigarette.

Now erasers are on the "yucky" list.