California

When I first came to California with Kevin five years ago, I wasn't sure what the big deal was.  I was about as impressed as Kevin was by August in Georgia (he wondered why in the world people live there).  It's desert.  The "trees" Kevin pointed out are more like tall scruffy bushes.  I thought that a lake was supposed to be a body of water, not big expanses of sand like the "dry lakes" around. The rivers are dry most of the year too.  The yards were dirt or rocks (and everybody knows a yard is supposed to be grass).

While I still like trees (real ones), grass, and rivers with water, I have come to appreciate the desert.  For one thing, you can actually see the sky.  Not a tiny patch of sky in between the trees, but a full expanse of sky from east to west.  Kevin's parents' house is situated in the foothills, so it looks out over the whole valley.  They have a view of fabulous sunrises and sunsets and a whole sky full of stars.  We are surrounded by mountains, a couple of hours away from numerous beaches, and near major airports (important in our life), plus we get to have In-n-Out and a lot of good Mexican food.

In our post-marriage California year, I also had to adjust to a more relaxed west coast approach to life. I don't really know if it's California in general or just Kevin's group of friends, but it took me a while to realize the social protocol was a little different.  When I hung out with friends, I usually felt like there was a general time frame for our time together.  If we had lunch together I assumed we would part ways by mid-afternoon.  If we were going to hang out at night, we probably wouldn't get together until at least dinnertime.

So I was confused when we went over to Kevin's friends house at 11am and were still there at dinnertime.  By 9pm I started saying,"Don't you think we should go?  They probably want us to leave now.   They have kids and all."  Kevin didn't understand why I was so eager to leave.

Once I adapted my expectations, I found that I really liked this approach to friendship - casual involvement in each others lives with no set time frame.  I realized they really weren't looking at the clock, eager for us to leave.  I started to feel a little disappointed when my friends would leave after 2 hours.

Now when we hang out with Kevin's friends, who aren't really "Kevin's friends" anymore, I know we'll probably be there for eight hours or maybe twenty-four.  Since it's no longer practical to stay out until 1am, we just bring Juliana's bed and spend the night.  We never get much sleep but it's lots of fun.  Eventually I say, "We should probably go home..." and then we leave five hours later.

Maybe we couldn't do this all the time, but it works great for summer when we have more freedom of schedule and want to spend as much time with friends as we can.

Today is our last day in California this year.  I guess if we miss it too much we can head to the mountains outside of Yinchuan which looks almost exactly like Southern California.  The abundance of Mexican food and good friends, though - that's harder to come by.

Juliana's American Adventures

We're back in the States! Actually, we got back a week and a half ago, but my great blogging plans have fallen to nothing. The trip went smoothly. We thought we'd miss our flight to CA, but after running through the BJ airport, we arrived before the flight even boarded. Juliana slept about 7 hours of the 12 hour flight and spent the rest of the time watching Shawn the Sheep cartoons and saying, “Airplane? Airplane? Airplane!” at least 500 times.

Since arriving at Kevin's parents, we have been busy visiting friends, reading library books, preparing to talk about China, helping Juliana play with all her new toys, buying out the 99 Cent Store... Our time in California is flying by, and we are working hard to arrange all the activities we still want to do like camping, visiting a children's museum, seeing lots of relatives and friends.

With Kevin's Opa on 4th of July - I'm in my blue Thai shirt, Kevin's in his red Cambodia shirt, and Juliana's red, white, and blue outfit was a gift from our Chinese tutors!  Very patriotic.

It's interesting to see the US through Juliana's eyes. After we got to California we took a walk down the country dirt road outside of Kevin's parents' house. When Juliana started getting tired she said, “Taxi? Taxi!”

Juliana has been having a great time just walking around in a big house. Nana bought her a little dolly stroller, and she has spent hours just walking her dolly around and around the house. She also loves walking right the door to get outside – no bother with six flights of stairs. She is used walking outside and seeing tons of people, though. She finds the birdy and doggy sounds interesting, but I think she wonders where all the people are. She does not appreciate car-seats, however, since her only experiences with them have been a few months in the States. She keeps saying, “All done? Stuck! Stuck!” It's hard to explain that being “stuck” is the whole point.

Mid-splash

In general, Juliana is having lots of fun with her Gramps and Nana. She has lots of new toys to play with and a whole new house to explore. She also has new friends. When we spent a day with our friends who have three young daughters, I've never seen so little of Juliana! She was so busy playing and being entertained by the older girls she hardly had time to notice I was there.

She is not really enjoying her new sleep arrangements, though. She is still afraid of falling asleep in a strange place, so we're back to holding her until she falls asleep and the sneakily slipping her into the crib. Jetlag was not kind to her – the first few night she was up for 4 hours in the middle of the night. The past few nights she has slept through the night again (yay!), or woken up briefly, but she is still resisting falling asleep at night.

Juliana stares down a hippo

Our most exciting outing was to the San Diego Zoo. It was a long day – 9 hours walking around the zoo and 5 hours in the car, but the zoo was great. Juliana was excited to see all the animals she's seen in books, and she learned how to say “panda” and “polar bear.” She was mesmerized by the polar bear and hippos playing in the water just inches away.

I have plans to blog more as the summer progresses, but I guess we'll see what happens...

Water, Water Everywhere...Except in our Apartment

Just one more week until we are back in America! Never before have I been so excited about the luxury of having running water all day long. Of course, I haven't before been in a place where the water is off about 18 out of 24 hours. Imagine being able to flush the toilet and wash your hands any time! Juliana can paint and play in the dirt and do messy activities because we can actually clean her up afterward. Kevin can take a shower when he gets back from playing sports all hot and sweaty. We won't have to plan ahead to get the laundry and dishes done in the short “water windows.” If our child should throw up in the middle of the night, we can actually clean her up (unlike last week when we had no water).

Juliana's idea of a fun playtime

After a couple of months of this, we are getting better at filling up basins and jugs so we can wash hands and flush toilets during the day, but if we forget it's a real pain. Usually we have water from 7-8am, 12-1pm, 6-7pm, and about 9-11pm. We have finally been remembering to fill up Juliana's tub with water before dinnertime so we can give her a bath before bed. After playing outside every afternoon in the heat and dirt, she definitely needs it! Laundry is trickier. I have to remember to put it in as soon as the water comes on so it can finish before the water turns off again. Our washer may be small but it takes forever to fill up! Fortunately, it's so dry here that we could hang up laundry at 9pm and it would probably be dry by bedtime.

We live in on the edge of the desert, so if our lack of water was due to actual water shortage, I wouldn't mind it so much. Saving water is a good thing, and nothing helps water conservation like not having any water to waste! However, our water is not off because of water conservation. It is only consistently off during the springtime, and it's because they are busy flooding the grass. Not watering – flooding.

The typical “watering” method seems to be: Place an extra-large hose on one spot in the ground. Eight hours later, move hose to a new location. It makes no sense to me. And yes, sometimes when I see all that nice water making a mess out of the ground, puddling on the sidewalk, and forming lovely mud playgrounds for children, I'm a little bitter that we can't wash our hands.

Our friends in another neighborhood have had similar water issues, but some in a third neighborhood always have water, so it seems to depend on where you live. My tutor said the water is always off in their dormitory as well. “It seems strange,” she said. “The grass gets lots of water but the people don't have any!”

(I know you are on the edge of your seats for all of my stunning parenting wisdom in the posts I mentioned before, but those will have to wait until after finals, which I am obviously busy studying for...)

This is Christian Parenting?

As I mentioned in my last post, most parenting decisions are not worth the division they often cause, but I feel there are a few definite exceptions. I have recently been reading about some teachings of “Christian parenting experts” Michael and Debi Pearl that I find deeply disturbing. I have not read their book, To Train Up a Child; I had heard of it before but didn't know much about it. I usually don't like to make judgments about something I haven't read since I don't want to take things out of context. However, after having read a number of direct quotes from the book and website, and I cannot think of any context in which I could consider them acceptable.

For example, in their book the Pearls recommend spanking babies under one year old to train them, giving an example of switching their 4 month old daughter!

At four months she was too unknowing to be punished for disobedience. But for her own good, we attempted to train her not to climb the stairs by coordinating the voice command of “No” with little spats on the bare legs. The switch was a twelve-inch long, one-eighth-inch diameter sprig from a willow tree.

In another particularly disturbing quote related to the philosophy and goal of “training up” your child, the Pearls say:

“However, if you are just beginning to institute training on an already rebellious child, who runs from discipline and is too incoherent to listen, then use whatever force is necessary to bring him to bay. If you have to sit on him to spank him then do not hesitate. And hold him there until he is surrendered. Prove that you are bigger, tougher, more patiently enduring and are unmoved by his wailing. Defeat him totally. Accept no conditions for surrender. No compromise.” (Emphasis added)

You can read further examples here.

I find these teachings deeply troubling on many levels. In fact, I felt physically ill as I read. It would be bad enough if these were the teachings of a strange cult, but the Pearls' book has sold over 670,000 copies, and they have a website and magazine publication as well. In 2010 they said on their website that “one out of every 75 Americans have been introduced to our ministry.” Somehow these ideas have been accepted as good Christian parenting.

While I mentioned that we do not plan to spank, I do not think that all spanking is physically or psychologically harmful. I was spanked (though not much) as a child, and I don't think it caused me any  lasting harm. I am just not convinced it is a necessary part of discipline, the best method for our family, or “the Biblical method.” Maybe I will talk more about that later. Fortunately, most of the parents I know who spank (the majority of the parents I know) do not practice the extreme methods as outlined in the Pearls' teachings.

If you do follow their teachings, I'm sure you are offended by my attack. I generally don't like to offend, even through the internet, but in this instance I am very offended by your parenting. I don't believe this falls under the category of “personal differences in parenting;” I believe it is harmful and wrong.

I am ashamed that teachings such as this are equated with Christianity. Not only are they harmful to children, they seem to completely ignore the grace and mercy that God shows toward us in favor of continually reminding children of their sinfulness and their need to earn good standing with their parents and presumably also with God.

“The parent holds in his hand (in the form of a little switch) the power to absolve the child of guilt, cleanse his soul, instruct his spirit, strengthen his resolve, and give him a fresh start through a confidence that all indebtedness is paid.”

I have been thinking a lot lately about what Biblical parenting actually means. It is clear to me that these teachings are not truth, but what does it mean to parent Biblically?  I plan to write more of my thoughts on this, even though I know I am no expert!  

After reading some of the Pearls' disturbing teachings, I saw these verses in my daily devotional (Daily Light):

* He arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.

* The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in mercy. He will not always strive with us, nor will He keep His anger forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor punished us according to our iniquities. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward those who fear Him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him.

* You received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.

* You who were once far off have been made near by the blood of Christ. Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.

(Luke 15:20; Ps. 103:8-13; Rom. 8:15-16; Eph. 2:13, 19)

What wonderful reminder of the kind of God we serve and the grace that we can reflect in our parenting!

Getting Past the "One True Way" of Parenting

There are a lot of things that bothered me about the now infamous Time's breastfeeding cover. It wasn't the woman nursing her three year old. It was the sensationalism, the obvious attempt to get a good rise for the sake of money making. It was the stupid caption, “Are you mom enough?” - what does that even mean anyway? It was all the ensuing comments – a lot of judgment on every side, a lot of ignorance, and a general negativity toward mothers of all types. Somehow public controversy really brings out the stupid in people.

I didn't read the actual Times article (you have to pay for it), but there were about 5000 articles, blogs, and random, unrelated people talking about the article (for free), so I read some of those. Some I appreciated and some that made me angry, but today I read a related article that I really, really like.

“Parenting websites, Facebook pages and forums are consistently bogged down with people debating the right and wrong way to parent...sometimes there's even a bit of smugness or nastiness, as AP parents take the moral high ground over bottle feeding cot users, who in turn accuse the AP'ers of being enslaved to their kids.

If we try to cut through all this, what really matters? If we look at what we as parents are actually trying to achieve - healthy, happy adults...what is really absolutely crucial to healthy child development, is not 'Attachment Parenting', but 'Responsive Parenting.'” (click here to read the rest - it's good!)

I consider myself to practice “moderate attachment parenting.” This means that most hardcore Attachment Parenting people wouldn't consider me AP at all, while many people who make more conventional parenting choices think I'm a little “out there.” It's a wonderful place of being too weird and not weird enough.

To give you some examples, I had a natural birth with a midwife in a hospital. I am still nursing Juliana at 21 months, but only twice a day. Juliana slept in our bed part-time for most of the first year, but now we are all happy with her in her own room. We felt strongly about not leaving Juliana alone to “cry it out” even though she woke up 3-39843x a night the entire first year. When we were once again up with her for hours every night at 18 months though, we decided it was time to let her cry (which by that point she did surprisingly little of). We have four different types of slings and baby carriers but in recent months I almost always use a stroller. We didn't put Juliana on a schedule as a baby, but she gradually developed a pretty consistent routine, and we put her to bed whether she thinks it's time or not. We lean toward “gentle discipline” principles and don't plan to spank (which is not the same as no discipline).

While I have made each of those decisions because I think they are important and work best for our family, I don't think everyone should do things the same way as me. Okay, sometimes I do, but I really try not to! There are some parenting decisions that I honestly think are terrible and potentially harmful, but most don't fall into that category.

It's easy to obsess about the specifics and say, “you MUST do things THIS WAY to be a good parent.” Some AP people say you must sleep with your baby, only wear your baby in a sling, breastfeed for years, etc., etc. or you are neglecting your children. Some popular parenting philosophies say you must put your baby on a schedule from birth, they must learn to sleep on their own, they must be spanked, etc., etc., or you will ruin them for life.

These decisions are important, but when it comes down to it, the most important thing is loving responsiveness to your child. Knowing your child's personality and developmental level and individual challenges and abilities. Parenting should be thoughtful – and we should spend a lot more time examining our own parenting instead of others'. There are good parents and bad parents represented in every style of parenting, and most people I know really are good parents and really care about their children.

I want to be less judgmental. I want to remember that each person's situation and children are different, and I don't know the specifics of why they make the choices they do. I want to stick to my convictions about what is best for Juliana and our situation while also being flexible and knowing I might change my mind. I want to be tuned in to Juliana, not expecting her to be like other people's children or like a small adult. I want to be confident in my parenting, not trying to measure myself with others. I also want to be humble and learn from people who have a lot more experience than I do. And mostly, I want to be loving.

'While children need food, sanitation and access to health services to survive and develop optimally, a warm and affectionate relationship with an adult caregiver who is responsive to the child’s needs is equally important' and that responsiveness is 'parenting that is prompt, contingent on the child’s behaviour and appropriate to a child’s needs and developmental state.' - World Health Organization

My Alternate Hippie Self (plus a good bread recipe)

Sometimes I imagine what my life would be like in an alternate reality. I don't feel discontent with this life; I just wonder what life could be like in another place and another situation. I think I would be a hippie. Some sort of Laura Ingles Wilder meets Madeliene L'Engle's Austin family.

We live in a big, old farmhouse in not quite the middle of no-where Kentucky, but close enough that there are fields of cows (not ours) and crops (not tobacco) all around. The house is weathered and comfortable. All of the windows are open, since it's springtime, and there is a fabulous breeze. The house is surrounded by a big porch overlooking rustling trees and open pastures.

We have about five kids, all of whom were born at home. It doesn't seem like too many because they can roam around all over and we never have to travel by airplane. I do very wholesome things like baking bread, sewing clothes, and canning. We have a giant garden full of vegetables and flowers that are actually growing. Of course the super helpful children take part in gardening and cooking and all those other wholesome tasks. We have a big old tractor but no livestock. Maybe a few chickens. Far away from the house and not very smelly. A nice dog and a couple of cats that wander in and out but stay remarkably clean.

I get up at sunrise to enjoy coffee on the porch while it's still quiet, unaccountably a morning person. I cook all kinds of healthy, from-scratch meals, and we don't eat any processed food except boxed mac and cheese because it's irreplaceable. We all run around barefoot, and we are never fashionable. I probably home-school. We read books under big trees and catch fireflies after dark. We are so relaxed that we may not even have clocks in our home...we just go by the sun and the seasons. It's all very earthy.

In real life I live in a sixth floor apartment in a Chinese city. There are plenty of (live) chickens at the market waiting to be eaten, but that's about all in the way of livestock. I can't really imagine having five kids, and while I find home-birth intriguing, I was quite satisfied with my hospital/midwife birth. I don't really like to cook that much, Juliana has yet to turn me into a morning person, and I always like to know what time it is.

But have started making bread again, a remarkably simple recipe from my sister Becky that turns out well even in my small China oven. We have a pet cat, puppy, bunny, kiwi bird, and several giraffes – they just all happen to be stuffed. I will likely home-school, since we'll be living in China, and I'll probably mostly enjoy it. I have one house plant which I have kept alive for over a month. And the not-fashionable part seems to be working out quite well. So I'll just take what I've got and enjoy the rest in my imagination.

Ruth's Hippie Bread (aka Amish White Bread)

This recipe makes 2 loaves so you can eat one and freeze one, but it can easily be halved if desired.

Prep time: 20 minutes

Cook time: 40 minutes

Total time: 2 hours, 30 minutes

2 cups warm water (110˚F)

2/3 cup white sugar

1-½ tbsp active dry yeast (2 pkgs)

1-½ tsp salt

¼ cup vegetable oil

6 cups bread flour

In a large bowl, dissolve the sugar in warm water, and then stir in yeast. Allow to proof until yeast resembles a creamy foam. Mix salt and oil into the yeast mixture. Mix in flour one cup at a time. Knead dough on a lightly floured surface until smooth. Place in a well oiled bowl and turn dough to coat. Cover with a damp cloth. Allow to rise until doubled in bulk, about one hour.

Punch dough down. Knead for a few minutes and divide in half. Shape into loaves and place into two well oiled 9”x5” loaf pans. Allow to rise for 30 minutes, or until dough has risen 1” above pans.

Bake at 350˚F for 30 minutes.

Variations:

* Whole Wheat: Substitute up to 2 cups of whole wheat flour. Add 1 tbsp honey with salt and oil.

* Use half sugar and half honey (I substituted all honey once, but it turned out a little too mushy.  You can also add a tiny bit of baking soda if you use honey.)

* Substitute 1 cup of pureed squash for 1 cup of water.  (My pureed squash turns out pretty watery.  The bread is not quite as light as originally, but otherwise the squash is unnoticeable and a little healthy addition.)

*Add a bit of wheat germ (I never actually measure).

Don't Run In The Street (and other perplexing problems)

“Don't run into the street” seems to be one of those basic childhood rules. It's an unquestionably important issues to have squared away, but it is also one that I find rather perplexing. It seems very sensible to tell Juliana not to run into the street; I just have to figure out first what “street” means.

Obviously I don't let Juliana run around near the big road outside our campus that is filled with cars, buses, taxis, bicycles, and motorbikes. I usually let Juliana walk on the sidewalk, but there are probably more people walking on the road than on the sidewalk. The sidewalk, which is partly for walking but is also where you get your bike repaired; get your shoes repaired; hang out and drink yogurt; buy newspapers, snacks, milk, fruit, and honey. It is the parking lot for small shops and an alternate bicycle route.

What about the little roadway going through campus? At some parts of the day it is mainly a walkway for students going to and from their dorms, grandparents walking with their young children, plus a few bicycles and motorbikes. During these times I let Juliana walk on the road because pedestrians outnumber drivers and a lot of other toddlers on the road as well. In the evening, the road is busy with bicycles, motorbikes, and cars – as well as lots of pedestrians. Even though there are lots of children walking home from school and preschoolers skipping beside their parents, I don't let Juliana walk on the road at this time because it's so busy. What percentage of vehicle traffic vs. pedestrians turns a walkway into a road?

What about the area outside our apartment where little children often gather to play? Toddlers run about and ride around on their little toy cars. Babies hang out with their grandmas. School children kick around balls. It's also directly in front of the bike-shed, so bikes and motorbikes often come through. It is also a parking lot for the occasional delivery truck or car stopping by the small store next door.

Perhaps Juliana will be confused that sometimes she is allowed to walk on the road and other times not. The again, she's grown up in China, so she might already have a much better grasp on the flexibility of life here. The lines between street, sidewalk, parking lot, store, and play area all blend together, and I'm sure it doesn't bother her in the least.

Americans: Fixing Problems That Don't Exist

I was just reading a blog post from a woman who has lived in China for many, many years.  She has a lot of great culture insights, and I wanted to share part of her post here:

Sometimes Americans overseas are like 3 year olds who drive everyone in the room bonkers by asking a never-ending series of "why" questions.  In most cases, what we are really asking is "why is it like this?"  And what that really means is "It's not like this at home, so it shouldn't be like this here." I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't be asking 'why' questions; on the contrary, I’m a firm believer in them.  They demonstrate a desire and willingness to learn.  But I think it's important to make a distinction between two different motivations for incessantly asking “why”.

One motivation is the desire for understanding. Why is the traffic so chaotic (at least by my standards)?  Asking the “why is it like this question” may reveal the fact that until fifteen years ago, private cars were banned in China, and there were almost no taxis.  That means that many of the drivers of those ubiquitous taxis and Mercedes Benz’s are rookie drivers,  none of whom grew up riding in cars.  So the traffic patterns of cars are merely extensions of the traffic patterns of bicycling, which are much more fluid and situational.  I still may be terrified when careening through traffic on the third ring road, but it sort of makes sense.

The other motivation for asking the “why is it like this?” question is a desire to fix whatever it is that is being questioned.  The question gives definition to a problem.  And once a problem is defined, then it can be fixed.  This chaos is fixable, thinks the American. Put in one-way streets.  Put in left-turn lanes.  Institute strict fines for breaking the rules. Put up stop signs. The list goes on and on and on.

Check out her blog for the rest of this post (and to find out why this chaos isn't actually a problem).

A Trip to the Farm

A few days ago Kevin came home from class saying the school would be taking the foreign students on an all day trip. Our semester schedule listed a “Spring Semester Practicum,” but we didn't really know what that meant. The teacher wasn't able to provide many more details, except the general time frame (8:30-3pm) and that we were going to 农村-“the countryside.” We should bring lunch and dress Juliana for indoors and outdoors. We figured it could be interesting, and class was canceled, so we decided to go.

Yesterday morning we waited at the classroom building as the 150+ students slowly started to gather. Juliana was already in a strange tired/shy/clingy mood. After about 45 minutes, we finally got everyone loaded into the buses and drove about 45 minutes into the countryside, ending up at some kind of agricultural area associated with our university. 农村can mean countryside or farm, so perhaps that's what they were trying to tell us. We joked that maybe they would hand us all shovels and assign us some “education through labor.” That would have been kind of funny and only halfway surprising.

We were wondering why the girl in the middle was carrying around a large, packaged teddy-bear.  We discovered it was to present to the man giving the speech.  Seems like a strange gift for a middle-aged man...but it's China.

We all stood around and listened (or not listened) to some guy give a speech, and then we walked around some fields while a guide said things like, “These are beans.” He said other stuff too, but even if we could have heard him, our agriculture language is just not up to par. So we walked through some fields. Then we walked down a road to look at some other fields. I guess if you had never been to the countryside in China, or if you had never been to a farm in general, or if you were really fascinated with corn it might have been interesting. Maybe. We figure the only real reason for bringing us there were the pictures and video cameras trained on us – obviously they were using our foreign faces to make some school production look good.

Walking around the fields

The non-western foreign students are enthralled by Juliana

Workers stare at the foreigners traipsing past their fields.

A worker in the field, shielded from the sun.

Fortunately all Juliana really needs to play is some open space for running or some exercise equipment to climb on. Of course, we could have found that right outside our apartment.

Juliana off for a run

Trying out some exercise equipment.  You'll rarely see a playground in China, but this exercise equipment is everywhere - usually with kids playing around on it.

Juliana and her little friend Jo-Jo running around together

After lunch we piled back in the buses for another hour ride. Everyone was hoping they would just take us back, even though it was early, but no such luck. Instead we drove to some kind of newly opened/not quite finished horticulture expo. We went inside a giant greenhouse building where a fake river wound its way through gardens. We were herded into little round rafts and sent on our way. Unfortunately there were only enough paddles for one per raft. You can probably imagine about how effective one paddle is in steering a round raft (in a fake river with no current).

Rafting on the fake river

This part was pretty interesting since it wasn't too hot and we laughed with the other foreigners as we all tried various methods of coercing the rafts forward. It would have been more interesting if we weren't just ready to be home. Several rafts behind, the teachers got into a water fight. Not even the 13 year old graduate-student/teachers that teach our class but the real, middle-aged teachers. Get teachers out of the classroom and you just never know what they're going to do.

Water fight

After the rafting, we walked through another giant greenhouse building filled with salad. That's what it felt like anyway. They showed us different types of lettuce and tomatoes and gourds they were growing. Finally they let us pile back on the hot buses for the 40 minute ride back to campus. It was already almost 3pm, but let's be honest – who really expected us to get back on time?

Visiting lettuce

It was now a couple of hours past Juliana's naptime, and she was hot and tired and wound up. She and her little friend took turns crying and wailing until her friend finally succumbed to sleep. Juliana continued to alternate between crying and playing gymnastics on my lap, repeatedly pulling on and off her socks, and calling out, “Car! Car! Car! (x15). She finally slumped over about ten minutes before we got back but woke up as soon as we tried to get her out. Terribly tired and unable to figure out why she wasn't in her bed, she cried the whole walk back to our apartment and until I finally got her to calm down enough to finish her nap.

So, it could have been worse. Like last fall when they took the students to another town for an optional 3k which ended up being a mandatory 6k just to get back to the buses. Thank goodness we didn't go on that one. Apparently in the past the school has taken students on some good trips, but I think next time we'll be a little bit skeptical.

Juliana pokes a panda

Our China-fabulous Bathroom

I mentioned that last week our toilet stopped flushing, and when our landlord came by he said he would replace it right away. By “right away” he really meant 10 days later, but whatever – we were just surprised he was actually going to buy a new toilet! Last night a plumber showed up, extracted the old toilet in about 5 minutes, and hauled the new toilet upstairs. It was shiny-white and decorated with flower decals, including one inside the toilet bowl! Not only does it flush, it actually has water in it so the flush is effective! The seat isn't broken, there's no mold, and did I mention it is shiny-white?

Old, tired, worn out potty

New, flowery toilet. Doesn't it look so shiny?  Especially compared to all the other not-shiny around it...

In honor of our new toilet, I thought I would tell you a little about the rest of our China-fabulous bathroom. Actually, as China bathrooms go, it's really pretty good. Our friend once walked in and said, “Wow, this bathroom is so nice. It's so big!” I understood her admiration when I saw her bathroom - the size of your average toilet stall with barely enough room to stand behind the door to shower. The sink was around the corner next to the kitchen. Comparatively, our bathroom is definitely roomy. There is even space for the washing machine in the corner.

In springtime the workers are busy drowning the grass, so our water is often off for most of the day. We save dishwater and Juliana's bathwater for flushing. The washer comes in handy for storing these basins, because Juliana would love nothing more than to dump the water all over the floor. We also keep some clean water in a coke bottle under the sink for washing hands.

When I say drowning, I do mean drowning

Our bathroom also has character, compliments of the pipes running all around the walls. Another friend declared it the “pipe-iest bathroom” she'd seen in China. These pipes make very convenient towel racks and shelves for bath products, toilet paper, cleaning products, laundry supplies, toys, and anything else that winds up in the bathroom.

The washer and the storage pipe behind it.  Last fall I painted a sunset on the wall to cheer things up a bit.

There are no windows in the bathroom, which has its advantages. For example, my Yangzhou and Weinan apartments both had windows in the shower area. In Yangzhou, the window was so loose the shower curtain flapped in the cold breeze, even after I taped it and covered it with plastic wrap. I didn't shower much in the winter. In Weinan, our shower window looked directly into our neighbor's shower window about 10 feet away. Thank goodness for blinds (and people who actually use them).

The downside of no windows is that there is also no ventilation. Well, one pipe has some holes in it that are supposed to serve as ventilation. Unfortunately we had to cover it (with plastic wrap and a rubber band) because every day when our neighbor smoked in his bathroom, it smelled like he was smoking in ours. So no ventilation except the slats in the door where Juliana likes to kneel outside and peer in, visiting with whoever is in the bathroom, should they be so rude as to not let her in with them.

Like most Chinese bathrooms, we don't have an actual shower, just a hot water heater with a shower head in between the sink and the toilet. The floor is slightly tilted toward a drain in the middle, which also serves as a drain for the washer-hose. A shower and a self-cleaning bathroom all in one! The self-cleaning part is a little sketchy though, because the constant water on the floor plus no ventilation leads to mold and scummy-brown tiles.

Since our sink doesn't have hot water, Kevin used some random pieces of metal to contrapt a device to hook the shower head over the sink. He used other random pieces of metal and a coat hanger to hang Juliana's baby tub up on the wall and some other random pieces of metal to form another towel rack and formed some “real” shelves by balancing random pieces of wood on the pipes. Yep, if there's one word for our bathroom it's classy. That, or resourceful.

Towel racks and bathtub hanger

Our bathroom has some negative points, though. 1. Mold. 2. Roaches. I don't know which one I like less. Yes, I do – roaches. I don't care if they are “clean” bugs and the mold is more likely to kill us – they are gross. Apparently the roaches were busy multiplying during winter holiday because when we came back, they made their appearance in full force. Every time I went into the bathroom two or three roaches would run across the floor or the walls or the toothbrush. The toothbrush!! I never realized how many cracks there were in our bathroom walls until I saw the roaches running into and out of them. We stopped them up best we could with toilet paper. Kevin said the walls must be filled with roaches, a lovely image that has haunted me ever since. Fortunately, now that the weather is warmer, the roaches seem to be venturing back outside and leaving our bathroom more or less alone. Some days I don't even see any roaches!

Oh yes, and there is the horrible smell that comes up from all the drains. That's kind of unpleasant.

But now our bathroom has a shiny white toilet (with flower decals). Not only that, our kindly landlord gave us a new toilet brush – clear plastic filled with water and fake flowers. It really gives our bathroom just the finishing touch I was looking for.