You Might Have Been in America Too Long When...

We have now been back in the America for over 10 months. 10 months! That is by far the longest we have been here since we got married 11 years ago. When you spend that much time in your own country, you start adjusting your behaviors and expectations, until America starts to seem pretty normal.

You know you have been in America too long when…

1. You say, “I don’t really feel like Mexican food today.”
2. You find yourself drinking ice water – IN THE WINTER.
3. You start to take closets for granted.
4. Burger King is not the best burger you’ve had all year.
5. You send your child to school in one layer when there is frost on the ground, and nobody even scolds you.
6. You don’t even stop in the cereal aisle.
7. You complain that the door locks aren’t working...in your temperature controlled, shock-absorbing, faster than 30mph, fully enclosed and locking CAR.
8. You don’t go into fast food and gas station bathrooms thinking, “This is so much nicer than my bathroom.”
9. You think that drive thru and grocery pickup and prepaid mailing labels are quite normal.
10. You stop wondering what the neighbors will think, because you don’t have a couple hundred of them seeing and hearing all the screaming through windows, walls, and floors.
11. There is only one Chinese person at the park who is eyeing you...because there is only one Chinese person at the park.
12. Nobody comes up and awkwardly asks you in English, “Hello! Are you American?” but you go up to the Chinese person at the park and awkwardly ask in Chinese, “Hello! Are you Chinese?”
13. It seems normal to have so much stuff you need an attic, a basement, and/or a storage shed in the backyard.
14. You start to take for granted that you can send your kids off to school where someone keeps them all day and is responsible for making sure they learn everything – for FREE!
15. Your kids get super excited about rice and even more excited about jiaozi (potstickers).
16. You start thinking of all these ways you will HGTV and Container Store your apartment when you get back.
17. Your kids have twice as many toys and yet somehow still have less than most of their friends.
18. You feel annoyed when it takes a minute for the water to heat up in the sink, even though you have hot water in the sink.
19. You take for granted the DISHWASHER.
20. You stop noticing when other parents take their babies out shockingly under-dressed.
21. You start getting all paranoid about safety, even though your kids have probably never been safer in their lives (school shootings not-withstanding).
22. You don’t eat avocado every day.
23. Your family hasn’t flown, even domestically, in NINE months.
24. You think it’s a pain to drive 45 minutes to get immunizations, even though in the past you have taken 24-48 hour round-trips to get immunizations.
25. You start thinking that maybe it wouldn’t be too weird to live in America.

But then you go back to China and everything rights (or possibly wrongs) itself. It all depends on your perspective.

See also You Might Be a Chinese Foreigner If...

Do you miss China?

It is another one of those questions like “How are you adjusting to America?” and “Where are you from?” and “Do you love China?” that leaves me fumbling and confused.  In an eloquent attempt to convey the complexity of my feelings, I typically say something like, “Um, kind of…”

Besides, saying, "No, I don't miss China" is as awkward as saying, "No, I'm not excited about returning to America."  I don't know why - people should be impressed that I'm so content in (or at least unwilling to leave) my current location, wherever that may be.

I told my friend (who lives in China), “I don’t miss China, but I miss our lives in China, if that makes sense.”  She thought it made perfect sense.  

I don’t miss the stares and attention every time we go outside.  I don’t miss the lack of mental healthcare and the general questionable healthcare.  I don’t miss the pressure of knowing we are supposed to be Doing Something Significant and knowing everyone is watching us and thinking how weird we are.  I don’t miss the pollution or the ugly buildings.

But I do miss some things about China.

I miss the relative simplicity.  There is so much less to buy, because we don’t have space for it anyway, and we already have more things than most people around us.

I miss walking and biking and driving our san lun che.  Even though a van is so convenient and much more comfortable, I like being in contact with the world instead of being sealed away.

I miss the roadside peddlers, their big metal drums baking sweet potatoes or their giant walks frying up rice and noodles.  I miss our fruit seller, who was always so happy to see us and gave us bags of free damaged fruit.

I miss the hijabs and the Hui beards and the smiles I associate with them.  I miss the friendly Muslim guys selling flatbread.  I miss learning about the cultures within the culture - Hui, Uighur, Kazakh.  There is a camradere in being the odd ones out.

 I miss Adalyn’s smile she comes out of Chinese kindergarten, holding her teacher’s hand.  I miss how enchanted everyone is with Nadia. I miss seeing Juliana talk easily with her Chinese friends.  I miss her dance class and her international school and her Norwegian best friend.

I miss my own friends.  My city friends have know each other for 7 years, and some countrywide friends for 13 years.  We understand each other because we live the same kind of strange lives.

I miss the Chinese old women dancing every morning in the park, even when it is 15F outside.  I miss the parks and even the crowded buses, because I don’t ride them too often.  I miss Chinese food and all our favorite restaurants.

I miss the mountains and the sunsets on clear days.  I miss fall leaves and spring flowers and winter's frozen lakes.  I miss the familiarity of our two square miles of everyday life.

So yes, I guess I do miss China.  Missing a place is not all or nothing, not pure love or hate; life is never that simple.  I am not ready to return, but I think in another 6 months I will be.  After all, it has become our home.

An Unbalanced Force

Sure the trees are nice, but where are all the people??

We are on vacation in the mountains, staying in a beautiful guesthouse for overseas workers. Inside our cabin is comfortable and tasteful; outside the large windows and spacious porch overlook an unobstructed view of green, rolling mountains.

But Juliana was a bit skeptical. “I like our house in China better, don’t you? I like that the kitchen is small, and I like our bathroom because it is small. I like how the laundry porch smells. Don’t you like our China house better?”

I tried to give a diplomatic answer about liking that one because it was our home, but liking this one because it was really nice and pretty. She was not satisfied. In fact, she was offended that we did not come to the defense of our China home. She looked around outside the windows and gave her final complaint.

“There are too many trees. They block the view of all the other people!”

Ah, our social little city-dweller. While we are basking in the natural expanse, she misses knowing there are thousands of people all around. I guess it is all a matter of perspective.

In another week we will return to our China home. I return with mixed feelings. I will be happy to get back into our own space, and I look forward to a predictable rhythm of days. But I have recognized that part of my predictable life rhythm follows the law of inertia. “A [Ruth] at rest will remain at rest unless acted on by an unbalanced force.”  An unbalanced force...yes, there seem to be a lot of those in my life, propelling me out of rest and back into transition.

While Juliana is always ready for the next adventure, a part of me never wants to leave where I am. Even if I am looking forward to my destination, I inwardly cringe at the prospect of making another transition. It doesn’t help that there is often a long day+ of travel in the way. But I know this about myself: I do not like change and I do not appreciate the unfamiliar.

The first day in a new place is a shock to the system, as I scramble again to find my bearings. I suspect part of this is related to being highly sensitive. My senses are flooded with too much to take in; I cannot appreciate it until I have a chance to settle down and absorb the small things.

The first day back, I recoil from America. Even as I appreciate the aesthetic beauty, I am turned off by the unconscious affluence and the ridiculous choices. Why don’t people walk anywhere? Why do people have so much stuff? How can their possibly be 50 different types of canned tomatoes??

I wrinkle my nose at the California desert. Dry and lifeless. Who wants a dirt yard and scrub brush “trees”? Don’t they know rivers are supposed to have water in them? But I slowly adjust to the desert, to the different colors, to the beauty of these resilient plants. When we leave, I miss the open sky and the view of sunsets.

Those first days in Georgia, the trees seem to close us in. The sky is so small and the light is filtered through layers of humidity. Even at night the air is warm. I am shocked and a little frightened to see confederate flags on jacked up pickup trucks. What is this world we have stepped into?

But the trees win me over. They always do. Myriad shades of green flutter in the breeze. The whole world is effortlessly covered in life. Bright colored birds flit from branch to branch and deer graze peacefully right in my parents' backyard. The southern drawl soothes instead of irritates. Maybe this is my world after all.

I have returned to China often enough to know what it will be like. My heart will cringe as we land in the Beijing smog. The harshness of language will bruise my ears. The first time I step outside, I will be accosted by smells – pollution, stinky tofu – and noise – horns and loudspeakers and stores blasting competing music. I will dismally survey the gray and rust and faded yellow of ten year old buildings already falling apart. Why do we live here again?

But then I will return to those familiar spaces. The wind will blow the mountains clear, and their rugged peaks will orient me again. When we walk to our little vegetable shop, neighbors will beam and hurry to welcome us back (mainly interested in the girls). I will pile some eggs in a bag and choose from the giant, dirt covered carrots while Juliana runs on the playground, thrilled to be back in the land where there are always friends waiting outside. It will feel right.

If I am patient, I will push through the disorientation and rediscover the beauty in the familiar. Juliana will exalt in our stuffy little bathroom because there is her Strawberry Shortcake towel! And the tiny toilet is just the right height! And remember this little bowl for washing our feet?!

I will step out onto the laundry porch, looking beyond the endlessly drying laundry hung above me, and appreciate the warmth of the sun and the pattern of rainbows the prism scatters on the tile floor. I will settle in the chair next to the bank of windows, momentarily hidden from all the surrounding neighbors and students. I will hear the chatter of birds and the wind rushing through the trees. 

We may not have the variety of birds or trees of Georgia. Our mountain view may be obscured by apartment buildings - and often by smog. But I will remember that the sunset is still beautiful even when I can't see the whole sky. A solitary tree still ripples joyfully in the wind.

In the familiar, I will find balance again. In the balance, I will rediscover the beauty that is already all around.

Our unblocked view of all the people

On Minivans, 三轮车's, and Being Totally Normal

Back when we first got our 三轮车

This past week I have been playing at being an American mom. I do feel a bit like a kid playing house. “Hey everyone!  Look at me, driving along in my air conditioned minivan, sipping my coffee, rocking along to annoying kid songs and 80’s and 90’s music. Don’t I look normal? I’m so normal you’re not even looking.”

When I was first adjusting to China, I always felt most in tune with the culture when winding through chaotic traffic on a bicycle. This was back in the day when almost everyone was on bicycles and motorbikes and cars were the definite minority.  

This is what foreigner parking looks like in China!

Even now, bouncing along in our 三轮车 (three wheeled electric cart), driving down the road makes me feel connected.  Our city is full of these carts. Tiny, super slow ones that look like an oversized tricycle with an “old person” seat in the back, pick-up truck sized ones packed high with deliveries, and sometimes ones like ours filled with a family.  Whatever the size, they bounce and jolt and rattle and clank along, bridging the gap between bicycle and car.

Our 三轮车 has been a lifesaver with three kids.  I occasionally did two kids on a bike, but once they get big enough that isn’t too easy - or safe.  I think of our 三轮车 as the equivalent to a van.  We can pile all the kids in the back or fill it up with groceries on my bi-monthly supermarket trips.

But actually I realize, it’s not quite the same thing as a van.  For one thing, it is about half the size of a compact car.  If Kevin is driving, the girls and I can all squeeze onto the benches in the back with our knees touching. We always drive it at full speed, which varies from somewhat faster than a bike to somewhat faster than walking, depending on how many people it is carrying.  And it is bumpy, very bumpy.

While we have pretty successfully winterized our vehicle with a canvas cover for the back and a blanket type drape in the front, it is far from climate controlled.  Long about December, we pile on all our winter gear, reluctant to leave any skin exposed to the 13* wind.  

Winterized...

...but still pretty cold!

As summer heats up in Georgia, I am really appreciating the ability to hop in the car and turn up the A/C.  Driving around in my parent’s super cool minivan, I am not only protected from weather but also from noise and other people.  Granted, there probably wouldn’t be nearly as many people staring at me here (because I am doing such a good job at being normal), but even if they wanted to stare, they’d only get glimpses through the window as we sped past.  Did you know that you can’t even see inside tinted windows?  Crazy, right?  It’s like driving along in your own little private world all the time.

I can settle back in the cushioned seat, listening to music or to the quiet (or more likely to an endless stream of chatter), practically gliding over the road.  I can sip from my coffee conveniently placed in my cup holder right beside me.  This is a big disadvantage of a 三轮车 - not being able to drink coffee while driving.

As a person with a ravenous appetite for quiet, I really appreciate the relative isolation the car can provide.  You could pick up coffee, food, medicine, money, and groceries without even leaving the comfort of your isolation.  Some days I would love not having to interact with the world.

And yet, as we bounce slowly along in our 三轮车, we memorize the little details of our drives.  We wave at our fruit lady at her roadside stall. We pull off to grab a baked sweet potato from the cart.  We swerve in and out of traffic and around holes and sometimes down the wrong side of the road (if that’s a thing), because we aren’t yet confined to the more ordered rules of cars.  

We enter into the fullness of the seasons - like it or not - the bite of winter, the autum crispness.  We smell the air - coal in the winter, flowers in the spring.  Our transportation doesn’t isolate us from our world but connects us to it.  While every day, more and more cars enter the road, the road rhythm of China still follows the tradition of bicycles and motorbikes and 三轮车.

In the dead of winter, covered by hats and scarves and masks, with only a tiny bit of eye showing, we bounce down the road in our 三轮车.  And for a moment, we are almost normal.

Totally normal, right?

Home Sweet China Home

We have now lived in the same apartment for over three years – a record! It has also been 5.5 years since we moved to Yinchuan! In honor of this unprecedented stability, I want to share my favorite aspects of our current home.

I wrote a while ago about our past apartment. I liked that apartment – despite the roaches and mold – but it would be hard to go back because this one is so much better. It may not be quite up to American dream home standards (one bathroom, no hot water in the sinks, a few spots where the wall or ceiling is falling apart), but it is a great China apartment.

 My favorite place in our apartment is the laundry porch. It's not because I love hanging up laundry. The “porch” is actually an enclosed area just off our bedroom which has windows on every side. It is the place that gets the most direct sunlight, making it very warm in the winter. I moved our ikea chair out there so I can sit in the sun. It is the furthest I can get from the general noise in the house (except for maybe the kitchen pantry, which is much less comfortable), and it takes the girls longer to notice I am there, giving me an extra 3.5 seconds of quiet. Even though the windows look into our neighbors' laundry porches, several classroom buildings, and a relatively busy campus thoroughfare, when I sit in my chair I mostly just see sky. And wet clothes hanging above me.

The girl's bedroom is warm and colorful, and it also gets lots of sunlight.  Natural light has always been important to me. I dislike artificial lights, and we get enough sunshine here I rarely have to turn on the lights during the day.

I had just cleaned their room...it doesn't always look like this!

 A three-bedroom apartment leaves space to have an office/guest room/storage space/mud room. It is always a mess, therefore I try to avoid it. But Kevin is able to close the door and work on lessons with minimal disruption (he doesn't seem to mind mess). We have room for our big shoe rack (because of course we don't wear shoes indoors!), our big coat rack, and our bike helmet rack. Whenever we do actually have guests, we can clean up the bed/clutter gatherer.

Yeah, it usually looks like this.

The kitchen is another highlight, featuring a large window, bright blue cabinets, decent cabinet space, a two burner stove, and an actual pantry! It is a huge step up from our last kitchen. The attached eating area also houses the fridge, oven, and water machine. I like this area a little less because of the lack of noise absorption. Our mealtimes are very loud!

Some other nice features:

*Our recent paint job makes the walls look much cleaner and homier.

*The white tiles only look good when they are really clean, but they are nicer than gray tiles that never look clean.

*The large living room has enough room for running in circles, dance performances, slide tricks, and fort building. We also have a small home-school corner and enough seating for large groups.

*Our bedroom is small enough there really isn't room for it to get messy.

*The bathroom has space for a curtained off shower area. The whole floor still gets wet, but the rest of the room can stay dry. The bathroom also rarely smells like sewer gas.

Chinese bathrooms are never a thing of beauty, but I do appreciate having a shower area!

*Our laundry poles crank down to load and up to the ceiling so the clothes can be out of the way (thus allowing me to sit underneath them).

*We have no upstairs neighbors, so no sound coming through the ceiling. I cannot say the same for our poor downstairs neighbors...

*We have space to park our san lun che (3 wheeled vehicle) just below our apartment so we can run a super long extension cord from the 5^th floor to charge it!

*Almost all of our furniture is school provided, but it is mostly decent and includes several nice bookshelves.

*On clear days, we can see the mountains from the windows.

Still Pretty Foreign

I am sitting in a tiny chair, listening to Juliana's kindergarten teacher rattle off a bunch of instructions to parents, thinking, “I don't know Chinese. At all.” The other parents are looking glassy-eyed after two hours of sitting around, but at least they can understand what the teacher is saying. These are all the specific things your child should have in their backpack. Don't just pack all their favorite snacks (I'm looking at you grandparents). This is the new procedure for picking up your kids. And fifteen minutes of other stuff I have no clue about.

I have the idea that after this many years, living in a foreign country should be easy. It should, right? We have lived here for the most part of twelve years. I have spent nearly a third of my life – pretty much all of my adult life – in China. It feels like home. Sort of.

It also never ceases to feel like a foreign country. The habits and customs of our childhood culture run deep. I am fascinated by culture because it influences us so profoundly in ways we don't even realize. After all these years, a lot of the things that bother me are not necessarily bad, they are just still so different.

I grew up in the suburbs and then in the country, where my family were the only inhabitants of 6.5 acres of peaceful nature, 30 miles from the city. Now I live in a country with 1.3 billion people, in a city, on a small campus with 20,000 students packed 6 to a dorm room.

The walls of our fifth floor apartment seem thin. In reality, I hear little from our neighbors, but I am aware of their nearness. I am particularly aware of the ones below us, who undoubtedly hear plenty of jumping and stomping and screaming. They kind of scowl when they see us outside. We hear the laughter of students, the rattling of carts, and the roar of trucks bumping along the road just below us. Over a hundred windows look into our own.

Outside, we are watched. Not in a creepy way, but there are always people around, and they are always curious about the foreigners. Random strangers turn to watch us every day, every where we go. Students gasp as they catch sight of the girls, taking their pictures or summoning the courage to say hi. The girls are used to this attention but they do not always receive it benevolently.

Even Juliana, attention lover that she is, gets tired of people touching her. After stopping a random stranger on the street who is trying to pick up Adalyn, I explain to her, “You don't have to let people touch you and hold you. If you don't like that it's okay to say so. But you do need to be kind.” I watch Nadia closely to see how she responds – is she comfortable with the attention or do I need to intervene? Will this person be gentle or pushy? Why do people love playing the “I'm going to steal you away from your parents” game? What kid thinks that is funny?

Our own neighbors are familiar with us. They watch us kindly as if we are unusual but relatively normal people. At the park or the supermarket or on the street, however, we are more of a spectacle. In their excitement or curiosity, strangers sometimes forget we are real people, not just a fascinating display for their viewing, touching, picture taking pleasure.

Our weirdness comes out in the most normal of circumstances. I think about it whenever I drink cold water or eat bread instead of rice or put on a bike helmet or home-school my daughter or write with my left hand or step outside the door with my white face. I am foreign. I will always be foreign.

There are other stresses in China that I am realizing will never go away. Language has always been a stress. Even after all these years, it is still a big challenge. Chinese is no joke! Kevin teaching English and me spending so much time at home with kids does not place us in optimal language positions. We can do all the basics and carry on conversation, but there are always things I don't understand.

Almost every Chinese conversation involves stress. Even if I do understand everything, or enough to get the general idea, there is always the fear that I won't understand and will look like an idiot. Or I will understand but won't be able to think of all the right words to respond. When I interact with Juliana's teachers I want to say, “Really, I'm smart! I know I sound like your kindergarteners, but I actually have a masters degree!”

I feel stress whenever the children are sick – will they need to go to the hospital, where I don't fully understand the doctor and don't necessarily trust what he says anyway? Will people blame me for not putting enough clothes on them or feeding them the right food or letting them sit on the tile floor?

There is the stress of travel – the ridiculous 30+ hour trips to see our family and the jetlag and the suitcases and the children shuffled from one place to the next with too little routine and too little sleep.

I feel the stress of uncertainty – What if something happens and we have to leave China? What if the school decided they didn't want us to live here anymore? Will Juliana be able to go to primary school part time next year and how will we figure out the system? Will Adalyn's kindergarten teachers know what to do with a foreign kid, and how will she handle being the only foreign kid in an all-Chinese environment?

There is the stress of responsibility – Am I using my time well? Is it worth us being here? Are we spending enough time with students? Why don't we know our colleagues better? Are we friendly enough with our neighbors? At the end of the day how do you ever do enough?

Many things about life are easier than the used to be. We understand the culture much better, but with children we are constantly venturing into new aspects of life. Just like everyone, we worry about their schooling and their social life – and we also worry about how they are handling always being the weird ones.

So what do we do with these stresses? That is what we are trying to work out. I think the first step is recognizing these areas are still challenging so we can give ourselves grace.  Beyond that...well, I'll let you know when we figure it out.

Internet Shopping and The Trouble with Numbers

One delivery company has packages piled up on the ground just before classes let out.  A few minutes later the whole area was filled with lines of waiting students.

It was only several years ago when we asked students about online shopping and they said, “Oh no, we wouldn't do that. We couldn't trust it.” Judging by the many hundreds of packages delivered to our school, I guess most students have now decided differently.

It was only a few years ago when we ourselves had our eyes opened to the broad shopping horizon known as Taobao. Taobao is like a Chinese Amazon marketplace (there is also Chinese Amazon, but their things tend to be more expensive). You can find pretty much anything on Taobao. Clothes, toys, furniture, produce, live hedgehogs. The selection is wider and the prices often much lower than in stores. And you can avoid actually having to go shopping, which I think is a big plus. I buy most of the girls clothes on Taobao, some harder to find or bulk grocery items, and a lot of odds and ends I don't want to have to search for in real life.

The only tricky part can be figuring out the names of things in Chinese. “Girls winter boots” is pretty simple, but sometimes I have to do a lot of guessing and baidu translating to get what I'm actually looking for. A lot of import items are also available, but they are usually still expensive.

November 11^th is “Singles Day” in China (双11 or “double 11”). Thanks to the owners of Taobao, in recent years this holiday has been turned into a Chinese Black Friday. It is now the biggest shopping day in the world (because you know, China has an awful lot of people). We waited until the holiday to buy things for ourselves and our teammates, and the past week we have been getting multiple packages a day.

If you live in a regular neighborhood, delivery companies will deliver packages to your house. Since we live on the university campus, they deliver to several designated areas and we have to go pick them up. There are close to a dozen different small delivery companies with different locations near different school gates. The delivery company sends a text message letting you know you have a package to pick up, generally around lunchtime but recently as late as 8 or 9pm.

This past week the companies were seriously overloaded with Singles Day packages. Hundreds of packages delivered through each company, multiple shipments a day. When we went to pick up packages, there were often 30-40 people waiting in line at each location. Fortunately the delivery companies have improved their organization. Instead of searching through an incomprehensible organization of 100 packages, they now text you a package number.

Students lined up at another delivery location.

As I went to pick up several packages the other day, waiting in one of four lines while harried delivery workers called out, “What number? Next! What number??” I realized that I still have trouble with Chinese numbers. The numbers themselves are pretty elemental and one of the first things I learned in China. But I still find it hard to read off a series of numbers in Chinese, like a phone number or a 5 digit package number. “That's kind of ridiculous,” I thought.

But then I realized, I also have trouble reading numbers aloud in English. They make sense when I see them, but to say them out-loud I feel like I have to translate the numerals into words and my brain or my mouth gets easily confused. So naturally it is hard to read numbers in Chinese, when my brain has to first figure out what the numerals mean and then into Chinese words.

I also have a terrible time remembering numbers. I still don't have my phone number memorized, and I have had the same number for 5 years! I have tried memorizing it several times and it just hasn't stuck.

Well, I always knew my brain had a tenuous relationship with numbers, despite their color connections.  Isn't it reassuring that I am the one teaching Juliana math?

The Challenges of Raising Kids in China

A week ago I wrote about the benefits of parenting in China. I'll be honest – this list was easier to think of. I suppose that's the nature of things; somehow it is always easier to see the negatives. Or maybe that is just my pessimism coming through. There are great things about raising children in China. I've never really done it anywhere else. But it certainly does have its challenges as well.

Inconvenience factor: I already wrote about this, but let me just say again. I would love a dishwasher. I know it's better to make everything from scratch, but some days I'd really like the option of just opening a can. I don't actually want a car in China, though it would make some things easier. And taking the kids to school with a 10*F wind blowing in your face isn't our favorite. But we'd still have to cart everything up to the 5^th floor anyway.

Differences from my childhood: There are a lot of things I wouldn't miss at all if I grew up in China, but when I think about my childhood I wish my kids had some of the same opportunities. We went to the library every week. My mom sent us outside to play in the backyard everyday while she fixed dinner. I appreciate the great green spaces on our campus and other kids around to play with, but sometimes I would love a private area where the kids could run wild.

Cultural Differences: On the other side of this is the reality that people just do things differently and we are weird. We start getting the “why is your child still in diapers?” question before they turn one. A common way of showing concern is giving criticism. Thus the five hundred “Your child isn't wearing enough layers” comments. If your baby is sick, it is obviously because of something you did (give them cool water). A lot of things we do with our kids just seems plain wrong.

Attention: We get a lot of attention. People watch us absolutely everywhere we go, any time we step outside our door. We are used to it, but it's still draining sometimes. Some days the kids don't mind the stares and pictures and “come shake the foreign kid's hand,” but understandably some days they just want to be left alone. No matter how long we live here, we will never fit in. They will always be the weird foreigner.

Confusion: Figuring out how everything works can still be hard. We've figured out a lot in our 10 years, but we are still figuring out the realm of school. We have to learn how the school system works and struggle with understanding teachers and decoding numerous internet messages that may or may not be important.

Language: I know you've always heard that kids pick up languages so quickly. And that's true, sort of. But that doesn't mean it's easy, especially in a really difficult language like Chinese. Juliana has learned a lot of Chinese in the past couple of years, but it has meant sitting through a lot of lessons she doesn't understand and trying to play with friends she can't talk to. And she still struggles. If you think it's hard to send your child off to preschool or kindergarten for the first time, imagine if they couldn't communicate with their teachers or classmates AND were the one weird kid that is different from everyone else.

Travel: We get to go to really awesome places like Thailand, which makes up for a lot of other things we put up with in life. A lot. But people who travel around the world with their kids for fun are CRAZY. If you have never taken a 30+hr trip while 8 months pregnant or with a newborn and toddler and kindergartener – DON'T DO IT. Nobody does that for fun. Much as we love seeing our family and eating In N' Out, every time we go through jetlag I swear we will never travel again. You finally survived the loooong trip and now you get to say up with super hyper kids from 1-4am every night for a week. If you have ever complained about daylight savings time, trust me – this is a thousand times worse.

Medical care: Everyone feels worried when their child gets sick, especially when they are only a few months old. I am grateful that we have decent medical care here and lots of medicine available, but I having to take my kids to the doctor fills me with great anxiety. I never really trust what the doctor says, perhaps because I only payed 30 cents, or because the checkup was less than 30 seconds, or because sometimes the doctor looks 12, or because I know they will prescribe antibiotics whether it is necessary or not. Oh, and we have often gotten a wrong diagnosis or potentially harmful medicine, so there's that. I super miss our pediatrician. And of course there is the whole flying across the country to get necessary immunizations. Or traveling to another city or country for a few months to give birth.  That's kind of a pain.

Family: But one of the biggest things is, we really miss our families. I want my kids to make cookies with their grandmothers and build towers with their grandfathers. I want them to read stories with their aunts and play with their cousins. Instead we settle for a mostly-Skype relationship. We have the only grandkids and nieces on both sides of the family, so our families miss them extra much. The newborn they saw last time is now walking and talking; the toddler is now starting school. We miss them, and they miss us.

There are a lot of great things about raising kids in China. I've thought of even more since my last post. But to be honest, it's really hard as well. We are fortunate that our kids are doing well. This life is all they have known. But one day they will realize how different their life is from their friends and how much they have had to put up with.  We feel that this is where we are supposed to be and the challenges are worth it.  I hope when they grow up, they will be able to feel the same way.

The Benefits of Parenting in China

At a restaurant recently when the girls climbed into the neighboring booth to play games on this student's phone.

Last month we were at a restaurant celebrating Juliana's birthday with friends. The adults were sitting at one table while the kids (four 3-6 year olds) were sitting at another table. After a while their coloring and giggling and eating pizza turned to crawling under the table playing hide and seek. The few others in the restaurant looked on indulgently, smiling when the kids encroached on their personal space (which they probably don't realize is a thing).

We sat back watching and occasionally reigning in when it got a bit out of control, talking about how great it was to raise kids in China. “Can you imagine doing this in America or Norway? No way your kids could run around a restaurant. It's so much more stressful going out with kids!”

There are certainly hard parts about raising kids in China, which I'll probably touch on later, but there are some real advantages too. China is such a kid-friendly culture. For example...

• You don't have to keep an eye on your kids every minute when they are outside at the park or in the neighborhood. In fact, I've seen a number of unattended 5-6 year olds playing near our home. There is much more of a communal feel – there are always aunties and grandmas around to keep an eye on things, and everyone is more or less familiar with their (hundreds and hundreds of) neighbors.
• In general, I feel like my kids are honestly safer in China. There are no practice lock-downs at school. There also isn't such a culture of fear here - people just don't seem to worry about sunscreen or the wrong kind of bed killing their child.
• Restaurants are naturally noisy environments, so if your kids are making noise nobody cares. If they run off and play with the owners' kid or explore behind the counter, it's just to be expected. If they get overly friendly with the people at the next table, checking out their food, they will probably get a lot of smiles and possibly candy. If the restaurant is slow, the waitress might offer to hold your baby while you eat (so long as you don't mind her being shown off to everyone in the restaurant).
• If your child starts throwing the standard supermarket fit, instead of casting disapproving looks, strangers are more likely to do whatever they can to cheer up the poor child. (Any disapproving looks would be from your failure to give the darling whatever they want).

• Potty training is a lot easier when it's totally acceptable to squat your toddler by the nearest tree.
• When people realize we have three kids, they ALL say, “哦! 好辛苦!” (“Wow, so hard!”) They are shocked that you raise children without help from grandparents. People are very good about recognizing that kids are hard and you are pretty amazing to be doing this all on your own. :)
• There are a lot of fun things for kids to do. For $1.50 you can spend hours in a bounce castle at the nearby park. There are indoor and outdoor play areas (though very few free playgrounds). Our city has a free kid-friendly science museum, a kiddie beach, and a park with a carousel, train, and the standard tank ride.
• Your kids can almost always find playmates outside. It helps to have hundreds of neighbors in a few acre radius. Grandparents spend a lot of time outside with their little toddlers, and school children congregate outside at the end of the day.
• The in-home childcare rate is around $3-4/hour.
• I hardly ever take all the kids to the supermarket. In fact, I only go to the supermarket about once a month, since most essentials can be gotten from small shops nearby. We even have old-fashioned fresh milk delivery two days a week!
• Your kids have visited multiple countries, taken hundreds of flights, napped on the back of an elephant...all before starting school.
• Bouncing around in a little electric cart or sitting on the back of a bike is much more interesting than riding in a car. You can see the scenery much more clearly and really enjoy those fun speed bumps.
• One of the official duties of grandparents (students, friends, random strangers...) is to pass out candy to any child around.
• You often refer to the world map when talking about where various friends live.
• You realized that people around the world have very different perspectives on parenting.  Here, everyone sleeps with their babies/children and putting your baby in another room sounds horrifying.  They also rarely use diapers, would never give a baby cold (room temperature) water, and don't put kids to bed until late at night.  People do things differently, and shockingly, it all works out.  So perhaps there is more than one right way after all.

An Inconvenient Life

“Why is it so hard to accomplish ANYTHING?”

I ask myself this question nearly every day. Of course most of the difficulty results from three small, messy, needy people. I generally feel like I could spend absolutely all of my time just keeping us fed, clothed, and decently clean. And we have an ayi (house helper) who comes twice a week to wash dishes and clean the floor and water the plants, which otherwise would have all died long ago! So how is it possibly so hard to stay on top of things?

I read a post the other day in which a woman described why she had so much more difficulty accomplishing her chores in China than when she lived in the US. It was a good read for me. I have never lived in my own home in the US post children, so I don't have anything to compare it with.

I've spent 9.5 years in China, and most of life has become so normal that I forget there really are a lot of differences between what my daily life would be like here or in America. I'm honestly not trying to complain or say “Oh my life is so hard.” Some of the things I like about life here are the relative simplicity, the daily walking and biking and stair climbing, the necessity of buying from small shops and making things from scratch. And obviously my daily tasks are nothing compared to the majority world.

But I wanted to give an idea of why it can by challenging to do daily life in a foreign country, so here are some examples.

Shopping

• The supermarket is so loud, so crowded, and such stimulation overload that I avoid going whenever possible. People peering into your shopping cart, fawning over your children, shoving in front of you to weigh vegetables – just not my favorite.
• Buying food and daily necessities involves a lot of different stops. We go to one store to buy bread, another for paper, another for vegetables and eggs, another for light bulbs. A stop at the meat market, the honey seller, the fruit stand...you get the idea.
• Sometimes it's ridiculously hard to find what you want. A needed tool or office supply might be found only after searching dozens of small shops full of random things.
• You can buy almost anything online...if you can find it. But sometimes figuring out the Chinese name for an obscure item involves a great deal of guess work. We have to trek across campus to pick up any packages, mostly delivered to the gate farthest away from our home.

Cooking

• A small fridge and freezer means it's hard to stock up on anything or make food ahead of time. And a third of my freezer is filled with coffee because...priorities.
• Almost everything is made from scratch with very few “convenience” items. Anytime a recipe calls for a can of something or a type of seasoning, that means extra steps to make it. Even something simple like spaghetti involves chopping a bunch of vegetables to make the spaghetti sauce.
• Most western recipes involve ingredients I don't have and require a good deal of substitution and experimentation.

Cleaning

• We never wear shoes inside, but our floors (white tile!) get dirty within about an hour of being cleaned. They show every single spot. And it is just so much dirtier here. I can't even imagine what would happen if we wore shoes in the house!
• Since we live on the edge of the desert, we get a lot of dust. Dust storms in the spring leave the floor gritty even if the (not so sealed) windows are closed.
• No dishwasher and no hot water in the sinks
• China doesn't do closets, and obviously we have no basements or attics or storage sheds, so storage is often a problem. Out of season clothes are stored in suitcases piled on top of cupboards. We utilize the space under our beds, behind chairs, and in corners. I'm certain we have a lot less clothes, toys, and household items than most our home-owning US friends, but I am continually reorganizing and purging because we have so much stuff!

Laundry

• Our washer is much smaller than the standard US variety, so with three kids + cloth diapers, it's possible I could do laundry all day until I died and never be done.
• No dryer means an extra step of hanging clothes to dry and then taking them down to fold
• Fortunately clothes dry really quickly in our dry climate, but we still have to plan out when to wash clothes so they will all fit on the laundry porch.
• Kids' clothes get covered Chinese food grease stains and coal dust, and though I work real hard at it, I apparently do not have the gift of stain removal.

Other Household Considerations

• Old or not so high quality items constantly need fixing. Our toilet stops flushing, the cabinet doors fall off, the fridge stops cooling, pipes leak... We can either wait for days until a handyman can do a (usually very temporary) fix, or Kevin spends a lot of time fixing things himself.
• No AC means hot summers when it is hard to sleep or get anything done. And of course the windows are always open, bringing in more dust and allergens.
• We have no control over our heat, which runs at a set temperature November 1 to March 31 regardless of weather. (But unlike the southern China, we do HAVE heat, which is huge.)

Children

• A smallish apartment means we really need to get outside every day or people start going crazy.
• We live on the 5^th floor, so going anywhere involves a lot of stairs. Coaxing a tired two year old up five flights of stairs while carrying a heavy baby and a big bag of groceries is tiring.
• Making your own baby food is the only option (small amounts of canned baby food can be bought at very high prices)
• Our little three-wheeled electric cart makes life a lot more manageable with children, since they don't all fit on our bikes. But it barely goes faster than a bike, so it still doesn't make for speedy travel.
• Homeschooling is the only good, long-term option for our kids here, which means we'll be hauling over a lot of school books in coming years! It will be an ever larger time commitment on my part. It also requires creativity and resourcefulness (and a whole lot of YouTube) when you can't pop into the library, find some common supplies, or send your kids to extracurricular activities.
• Sometimes really simple things like getting necessary vaccinations involve an overnight trip to another city.
• This is the only life our kids have known, so they don't realize sometimes how hard it is on them. People watching them and touching them and wanting to take their picture every single time we go outside anyway ever. Ridiculous 30 hour trips and jet-lag and transitions. Trying to understand why you can ride without a car seat, slurp noodles from your bowl, and walk in the road in China but not America. They don't realize these things are weird, but they do feel the impact. And I realize and sometimes feel the weight of their childhood.

Like I said, one of the things I like about living in China is our lifestyle here. If I lived in America I would drive a car everywhere and use packaged foods and buy everything at the supermarket, and it would be very convenient but I wouldn't like it as well. I am grateful for some of the things that bring such inconvenience, but some days I admit – I wish it were all a little easier!

American in China

A serious patriotic post is beyond me. My thoughts about the United States are too complicated to even try to express. I imagine living in a foreign country for nearly a third of my life (woah!) has something to do with that. Even saying “United States” sounds foreign when we are so used to saying “America” for the benefit of our students. (Sorry Canada.) But if my sense of patriotism is confused, who knows what will become of my children, who have only spent various scraps of time in their passport country.

On Sunday we celebrated 4^th of July with a standard 4^th of July picnic. It was standard in that it was a picnic and a potluck, but otherwise it veered pretty quickly from tradition. The picnic was attended by other Americans friends...as well as Australians, South Africans, and Singaporeans. The annual Yinchuan 4^th of July picnic always has quite an international population, which is one of the things I find enjoyable and amusing: The Norwegians grilling their salmon, the Australian/Chinese baby wearing an Old Navy 4^th of July shirt, the Singaporeans bringing the only patriotic looking desert. For our part Nadia was appropriately decked out - even her diaper was blue and white stars! - and I made chocolate chip cookies...and the traditional 4^th of July tofu.

Thanks to Facebook's “memories,” I have been noticing a trend of some interesting reflections surrounding patriotism and life in a foreign country. For example, four years ago we celebrated 4^th of July in America: me in my blue Thai shirt, Kevin in his red Cambodia shirt, and Juliana in her red, white, and blue China outfit.

Two years ago when we also spent the 4^th in China, I showed Juliana some patriotic video renditions of America the Beautiful. She spent the rest of the day singing, “South AMERICA, South AMERICA” and could not be persuaded otherwise.

Last year Juliana tried to convince me that every day they raised the American flag at her Kindergarten (“Red! With little yellow stars!”).

A few weeks ago I decided perhaps I should teach the girls the pledge of allegiance, seeing as they weren't going to learn it anywhere else. We looked at the flag and talked about the meaning, then I had them repeat the pledge after me. Juliana repeated, “One nation, under guns...” She had no idea of the dreadful irony, just one day after the Orlando shooting.

So you might say we are a bit confused about our relationship with America. But never fear, I am keeping the love of chocolate chip cookies alive.

My China Dream Home

Our apartment building

Juliana goes through these spells of nostalgia. Thoughts of the carefree life of the long ago four year old can bring her to tears. She especially misses our old apartment, where we lived when she was 1-3 years old. One day after telling her once again that no, we couldn't go back to visit because someone we don't know lived there now, I decided to show her some pictures of the old apartment.

The first picture she saw was this one, and what do you think she said?

"Oh, I miss our old bathroom! It was such a pretty bathroom!"

I had to laugh, wondering what exactly she missed. Was it the mold? The broken tiles? The rusty water pipes lining all the walls? The leaky pipes and broken toilet? Or perhaps the perfume of sewer gasses that was particularly pungent in warm weather.

As teachers, the school provides furnished housing, but as language students we had to find our own. Pickings were rather slim, and all we had to go by were pictures from another city. We chose the smaller, older, cheaper apartment partly for the price ($120/month) and partly because it was furnished. The only furniture we owned was a crib, and the thought of furnishing a whole apartment sounded daunting and expensive.

Living/dining room.  Does this count as "open concept"?

You could say our apartment had some special features.  One of the windows broke and since the landlord didn't want to repair it, we fixed it ourselves - with thick plastic, tape, and chopsticks. [We realized in the US this would be considered super trashy, but in China our American friends congratulated us on our resourceful fix].  The laundry porch was filled halfway to the ceiling with random things the landlord left behind.  If you sat in one particular spot on the couch, you could smell cigarette smoke from an unknown source. The kitchen was so small that the fridge was in the living room, as was the folding table and chairs which served as the dining area. 

I bought some green fabric to cover up the big gas tank and rickety counter frame.

And the kitchen itself was the most special part of all. The "counter" was actually layers of boards propped up on a rickety frame/old broom handle. The one burner stove was in its own little metal alcove built onto the window. You had to bend out the window and down into the alcove to cook. In winter, the burner sat on a bed of moldy ice; in summer, rain dripped down through the crevices. Every winter, the kitchen windows froze over from the inside. 

When we arrived the stove alcove was covered in newspaper.  That seems like a good idea, right?

And then there was the roach infestation. I still shiver thinking about opening the cabinet to see dozens of roaches scurry away. And every spring we would lose water for a couple of months. The water would be on for an hour at meal times and sometimes for a couple of hours at night. We planned laundry, baths, and toilet flushing accordingly.

Juliana's room was definitely the prettiest.  Perhaps that's why she has such fond memories. :)

It would be hard to go back to that apartment, with its particle board furniture. And yet, I really liked that home. It was there that Juliana took her first steps and finally (finally) slept through the night. It was there our Chinese language abilities progressed from pathetic to passable. I spent many all too memorable hours throwing up and awaiting the arrival of Adalyn.

Ice patterns inside

It was in that apartment I learned that there is always beauty even in the ugliness. Admittedly, I never found a purpose for the roaches, nasty little abominable creatures. But the thin windows and inadequate heating allowed for intricate ice patterns on the windows and cozy evenings doing homework next to the radiator. The small space meant that Juliana could keep me in sight no matter where I was. The climb to the sixth floor meant light and breeze and unobstructed mountain views.

I once planned to be an architect, and then -when I learned how much math that would entail- an interior decorator. I still get hooked on HGTV in America. I particularly enjoy the shows like Fixer Upper or Property Brothers, where they take a really ugly old house and transform it into something new. I think there is something in us that craves beauty and restoration.

I always dreamed of having a house like that - beautiful, spacious, and mold free. A place where everything matched. Instead most of my homes have been more similar to the “before” version than the after. Even the apartment we have now, a very nice roach free three bedroom apartment - a huge step up from the last one - is hardly an American dream home.

Perhaps one day I will have a pretty home with more than one bathroom, hot water in the sinks, and no downstairs neighbors to worry about. Ooh, and a dishwasher.  I think a dishwasher would be veeery pretty. But until then, I will keep enjoying our home for what it is – home. Perhaps one day I will restore and redecorate and transform, but for today I will overlook the ugly and focus on the beautiful all around.