Picnic Outing

The past week was a Chinese holiday and Jeremy had a whole week off from work. We went on a picnic one day with a couple co-worker friends to a small mountain west of the city. They brought a tent with them and set it up to keep out of the sun during the day and take naps in, however none of our kids took naps...They were too busy playing with the neighboring Chinese children and making friends with them! They have come a long way in two months. At first it was difficult getting them to just say "hello" to another kid at the playground. While picnicing Annalise spent hours just talking in English to this Chinese family next to us and sitting next to the water lilies with a girl her age. Hudson was playing with water toys and playing tag. He chased the other kids in a game, pretending he was a dinosaur, and learned how to say "konglong." It is so cute to hear their little voices learning and saying Chinese words. And Sayde, she just enjoyed running around all over the grass in her onesie and meeting all the other little Chinese babies her age. I mistakenly thought the sun would not be so bad, and everyone got sunburns by the end of the day.  Plenty of vitamin D for us city dwellers!

We have learned over the past two months that putting too much pressure on our kids isn't the best for them. We decided to let up and just let them figure out how to make friends, learn Chinese and adjust to the culture. We are thankful for the international friends we have met who encouraged us and told us we were doing just fine and don't worry too hard about how or when or how many friends our kids are making. Their biggest influence should be at home. Not long after that, sure enough they are playing with other kids every day we go to a park. All they have to do is bring a soccer ball with them and their is always someone else to play with. 

When we came home that evening of the picnic, we noticed Sayde had a fever. She came down with roseola the next three days, so for the rest of the holiday we just remained at home keeping her fever down. She is finally over that part and just has the rash. I am so thankful I know what it is and that it is not serious. She is teething at the same time, we are surprised at how well she has been acting in spite of all that.

Little bits at a time...

Our family has had a busy few weeks here in Shanghai...homeschool began officially for Annalise and she is doing so well with that. She is able to read some short story books that contain all the words she has learned thus far, and the math program we picked has been super easy for her. We're wondering if we picked the wrong one, but it's too late now...maybe next year. We also met and hired a Chinese nanny named aiyi Xiang. She is coming to our home two mornings a week and helping me with the kids so I'm able to work with Annalise more one on one, and she only speaks Chinese! She is exactly what we had hoped for and a huge answer :) I have learned so much from her. She brings a sense of peace to the loud chaos of our home, a very sweet and peaceful presence. We have also been able to go out and get the kids playing with other Chinese children. Yesterday they played ball with another little boy. All three of our kids enjoyed running on the big grassy field where people fly kites. Sayde ran in bare feet. We're still working on getting her to enjoy wearing shoes. She has been walking for over three months now and it's how she learned to walk so early. Everyone here is surprised about that...

A couple weekends ago our family joined a company tour around the city for the mid autumn festival. It is a Chinese holiday similar to thanksgiving. We went to a city planning museum, a garden, the bund and some restaurants. We were told our kids behaved well, in spite of the fact that they still eat food with their hands and dump noodles into their laps :) 

This week I braved taking all three kids with me on the subway alone to get to a mums tea. It was with ladies from our intl fellowship and only three stops east from our station. It was definitely worth it and the kids did well and played with others. 

So much more to write but this is all I have time for. Our children are still staying up until midnight no matter how much activity, exercise, running around they get and it's exhausting. I'm thankful to drink coffee!

Lisa

Photos

Sayde loves to eat now :)

Annalise made a skyscraper instead of a log cabin.

Sayde is ready to potty-train, and Annalise is there to help her.

This is how we get around with three kids!

Handsome buddy!

Making our home in China

My thoughtful, kind husband gave me a break last Sunday morning and let me meet a co-worker of his for the morning. On my way back to our apartment I walked through the adjoining lobby of our building to find a car show going on…the past two Sunday mornings they have models and sports cars as everyone takes pictures. This is how many Shanghainese may spend their Sunday mornings…Sometimes the materialism can really get to us, I am especially sensitive to it. Sometimes it is frustrating when we want to make more in-depth friendships or talk about more than shopping.

This weekend we will have been in Shanghai for one month. My husband is giving me yet another one-hour break to go to a nearby coffee shop called Pacific Coffee to write in our blog. Even back home this rarely happened. Me, hanging out in a coffee shop! We have at least 4 or 5 Starbucks on our block already, but Jeremy recommended this coffee shop.

I started homeschooling Annalise some more since we are getting settled into our apartment. She is going through hooked on phonics for reading, but it can be kind of boring when we get past the activities to reading materials. So, next week we will begin some readers with stories that are a little more interesting. She is also learning her numbers, colors, fruits and vegetables in Chinese. Hudson is slowly joining in too :)

We have a tutor who visits our home two evenings a week, and we are all learning a lot from her. She is very talented and very good with the kids and has experience teaching them. We have a different style and lesson book this time around. The kind of teaching we had in Beijing is just not practical for everyday language and conversations around here, she said. I noticed I am picking up a lot more on what people are saying. Still working on being understood when I speak to people in Chinese. The accents and words might be a little different in Shanghai.

Sayde had a doctor visit at the Children’s Hospital in Shanghai for the blocked tear duct in her eye she has had since birth. It is very minor and we are not comfortable getting a surgery done now since it has gotten much better. At home in the U.S. surgery is not recommended until after one years of age, so it was never an option before we came here. She has never had pink eye or infections in it so that is good. It was quite an experience going to the hospital and clinic though, everything was in Chinese so an employee from the company Jeremy works for came with me and Sayde on the subway. It took a little over 30 minutes to get there and was very fast. We were greeted at the service desk with people wearing face masks and talking into microphones even though they were right in front of us with no glass separations, just to be heard above the noisy din! People were just pushing everywhere to get their kids in to see a doctor. The lady who came with Sayde and I was really helpful and I enjoyed talking to her. Even Chinese people have people like her to come with them on doctor or hospital visits. This is one of the services the healthcare company does who Jeremy is working with. There are many people who need to see a doctor or hospital but are not getting in. There are also many people getting treatments or staying hospitals who do not need to be there. Our company is sorting out all of this for the Chinese people. In China, it is normal to call the company you work for “y’all’s company” or “our company” and it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are the owner of the company.

We live in the western part of Shanghai which is called Puxi, while the newer, eastern part is called Pudong. We love living on this older side. I think there might be more trees over here. The Pudong side is supposed to be even more expensive to live on, though we think this side is pretty expensive too. We have met a couple of our neighbors. We are happy that we do not live in a complex with all foreigners, and we are looking forward to being able to communicate with our Chinese neighbors more and more.

 Last weekend we all got onto the subway to go to Pudong. We got out at the historical Bund and then went under the river on another subway with fancy lighting and music. We had planned on going to an international fellowship service on that side of town, but missed it and couldn’t figure out the directions. We don’t really use taxis with our family size and lack of seatbelts, so we ended up eating out at a Korean BBQ restaurant and then coming back home on the subway. We are pretty happy with the international fellowship on our side of the river though and we’ll continue going to that one on Sunday evenings. Our Sunday mornings are then free for other places. 

We are noticing that we cannot plan too much in one day with our kiddos. They are happy just going to the park and going out to get dumplings or ice cream :)

Here are just a few things that I have been making at home and foods that the kids like to eat here, maybe some day I will have a recipe blog or food channel –

Wok-fried ginger chicken wings with carrots and rice (a one pot meal, very easy)

Fried potatoes and green beans, or sweet potato fries

Eggplant, ground beef and other veggies in the Wok with soy sauce, fish sauce, or a black bean sauce

Eggs and tomatoes

Sticky rice, avocado and cucumber “sushi” rolls – wrapped up in seaweed wrappers

Pork, Chicken pieces, or beef steak sliced thin with veggies, cabbage or Chinese broccoli in the Wok

Beef Stew

Lots of noodles, rice, and fruit…

We finally found out where the bags of rolled oats are at the grocery store so we have been having that for breakfast. We stay away from the tiny boxes of cereal, for many reasons.

We have one stove burner that works until we get a new stove, so everything we make has been fairly simple using a wok or frying pan. We just got a little rice cooker last week and that has helped a lot. We may be getting a blender and a toaster oven soon to make more things with. Next week we are planning on having at least one friend over for dinner, yay! This is one of the things that makes me so excited, having people over to our home.

Next post I will try to include more pictures...

- Lisa

Our first two weeks

I am taking a few minutes to write this while Sayde is having an afternoon nap and the older two are at the table making log cabins on paper out of popsicle sticks and painting them… I thought the best way to share what our life has been like is to describe one day…we woke up this morning for quiet time before the kids woke up. After breakfast, Jeremy went down to the eight floor to start his workday at the office. Hudson finally got dressed after keeping the bed dry for the first time all week (yay, no washing and hanging sheets to dry today, I’m thankful we have a nice little washing machine that works well :) He had taken some pink ribbons off of a lion gift bag someone had given the kids that had crafts in it. I was going to use the ribbons to fix Annalise’s hair and he stole them away and flushed them down the toilet. The toilet was fine but we had to have a talk about not flushing objects down it. Next, I had to find some cloth to cut up into new ribbons for Annalise. I saw my yellow t-shirt hanging out on the sun porch and decided to cut it up into ribbons since it had gotten stains on it already. Then I fixed Annalise’s hair. 

Jeremy came home for lunch today and that was nice. Yesterday, he was here for lunch also and I was able to go out with a female co-worker from his office. Her English name is Taylor and we went to a Korean food restaurant. It was so nice to have a break from talking to the kids all day long. One of the things we have in common is that we have no female friends during the day to talk to since their office has all males and I am with my kids all day. We also both like to run and stay healthy.  Sayde just woke up crying so I have to go for now...

Today, a friend we met from the international fellowship stopped by. She has a baby a few months younger than Sayde. We are still hoping for new friends for Annalise and Hudson. They are still shy about speaking to other chinese children and afraid they won’t know what to say when they speak chinese. I am hoping they don’t feel too pressured and can relax enough to start conversations if even just to say hello or ni hao. We did begin some family language tutoring in our home with a teacher and Jeremy and I are picking up a lot and remembering all the words we used to know.

Another typical day happened this way…we went to the large park across the street that is very pretty and busy. There are grandmas dancing and doing tai chi exercises in groups with boom box music, parents or grandparents strolling their babies, and little boys waving sticks under martial arts instructors. It was a very hot day and I was reprimanded many times by the Chinese ladies for bringing my baby out in the hot sun, too hot for her! The park has a little amusement park and a playground for kids. 

Another event that happened was Sayde’s actual birthdate on August 1st when she turned 1 year old. Jeremy’s work took our family out for pizza and spoiled the kids :) Chinese people love and appreciate children. Sayde has been eating and running around like crazy! She is climbing on top of the couch and on beds. Hudson is also acting up. A plumber has already been to our apartment to check the sink drain after he dropped his toothbrush down it.  Here is some pictures of where we live and the kids..

Almost one week

Well, it's been almost a week since we arrived! I don't have a lot of computer/screen time simply because the kids don't allow for that, but I do want to write about some of our first experiences here in Shanghai. This move has been quite an adjustment for the kids most of all. They still seem to be experiencing jet lag and are very quiet around new people. We are trying to help them get over this and reply to adults who ask them questions, but they still clam up when mommy or daddy are talking with another adult.

Here are just a small handful of things about life in Shanghai, China...the eggs we buy from the store are not refrigerated, our apartment on the seventeenth floor has two front doors with about four or five locks on it, and I've seen a whole family - baby, daddy, mommy in that order - ride by the city street on a motorbike without helmets on... It actually looked cute with that little Chinese baby just sitting in front!

Jeremy's office hours are from 9 to 6 pm. This is so nice, and he also works only a few floors below us so we see him at lunchtime often. I feel so blessed right now and hoping that our kids can feel better knowing that he is so close.

Flying to China

In only a couple more days our whole family, all five of us, will be flying on an airplane together to our new home in Shanghai, China. We have technically had about five to six years to prepare for this move, but had we believed this would truly come about at this time we would have spent more time preparing ourselves for this..studying language more often, teaching our kids more Chinese words, and even getting to know more Chinese people in our own hometown in Rochester. Though I am glad we had at least a year and a half of studies with a wonderful Chinese tutor in town and we are thankful for that.

What are some of the small bits of Chinese we can remember? We know how to greet people properly, how to order food or buy groceries, how to introduce our friends and family, and how to say the number of people who are in our family...which when translated to English is like saying how many mouths we have to feed. The classifier word Chinese uses for people in a family is the word "mouth," and it looks like a little box.

What are some of the things we will need to learn to do right away when we get there? One thing I can think of is to know how to order new water containers. Some of the things I can imagine we will be updating folks on is what we are feeding our kiddos. Or what our neighbors are like. We are hoping there are other families with kids for our kids to make friends with. What are some of the differences between Shanghai and Beijing, where Jeremy and I had lived before. We hope to encounter many good adventures and keep everyone updated. We will also try to remember to sign our posts since both Jeremy and I will be contributing to this blog.

~Lisa