A Traveling we will GO!

People often ask us (both here and in the US), "How do you travel so many places with your kids? Don't they melt down? Is it stressful?" And in answer to these questions, I guess they travel well because we really don't give them a choice since we have traveled with them since they were born. Yep, we just drag them with us. Andy and I love to travel, so for us it became travel with kids or don't travel (since traveling without them just doesn't appeal to us). While there are special trips we have taken just the two of us, for the most we enjoy taking the kids with us. I think sometimes the thought of traveling with little people can be worse than the actual deal. And yes, our kids melt down just like yours do. And I have lost count the number of places where our kids have gotten sick. I am sure that you don't want those details! But over the course of our travels, we have learned a few hints that can turn a trip from stressful to enjoyable. I hope I don't come across that we have it all together and our kids are always well behaved on every trip. In fact, most of these we have learned through crashing and burning  - the hard way!

Hint #1: Begin traveling with your kids when they are young. Don't be afraid that you can't do it. Andy and I have a theory that ours have adjusted well to traveling here because we took MANY car trips with them in the States. And if they are used to waiting in a car/bus/train/plane then each time gets easier. Well, at least in theory. Surprising for many people that when I do the 24 hour+ trip from the US to China with the kids (by myself) that the hardest part is the not the 14-hour plane ride. Yes, it is long. But the hardest part is navigating the airports themselves. Even the standing in long immigration lines is not hard. Tiring, yes. But not hard. Because our troupers know what to expect. While it is not their favorite of things, they know that it has to be endured.

I think that since we traveled with her since she was born, she can fall asleep ANYWHERE! (on the train from Shanghai)

Yes, she is asleep! (on a boat on the Li River, South China)

Hint #2: Pack snacks. Or find them on the way. When we first would travel and our kids were little, I applied "home rules" to travel time. You know, things like, don't eat too many snacks, don't eat them too close to meals, yada, yada. . . But I have found, when our kids get grumpy we eat. Whether it is 10AM or 3:30PM, we just stop and find a snack. Or even a complete meal. Then often in these down times, we have a great time with our kids. We talk, laugh and have time to just enjoy them. We have found Starbucks in crazy locations and then enjoyed. . . (well, this leads me to our next one)  reading a book together.

Kids choosing a snack while I bargain for a good price (Xi'an, China)

Mmm, meat on a stick! My boy's idea of the perfect snack. (night market Hua Hin, Thailand)

Hint #3 Have a bag of tricks. It could be as simple as a few crayons and a notebook or a handful of small toys. One of our kids absolutely favorite things to do when we travel is to read a book as a family. We pack a longer book (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was our first and recently we read Redwall) and whenever we have to wait somewhere, we pull out the book and read a chapter. And suddenly our tired kids who have been waiting in line for over an hour perk up and are ready to go on. (and this is not an exaggeration, we have waited in lines for 3 hours or longer. After all, this is China with SO many people and sometimes you just have to wait) Find what works for your family.

my iPhone would be part of my bag of tricks (Starbucks in Chengdu, China)

Hint #4 Be flexible. While we generally have a plan of what we want to see and do, we have learned to allow some flexibility in the midst of that plan. If you have a particularly busy day, follow it up by a low key one. Often when I let go of my plan and am just enjoying is when we find those unexpected things: a lake where we can rent row boats, a man painting Chinese characters on the sidewalk. Another thing we have started experimenting with is letting our kids take turns to plan a day, excursion or even part of our time. They come up with things that we would never have thought of!

Skipping rocks on the bank of the Li River (Guilin, China)

Totally unexpected -- a puppet show that the kids got to participate in. (Xi'an, China)

One of those finds - a fountain that had a nightly light show (Chengdu, China)

Riding stone lambs (Hangzhou, China)

Our kids were getting tired of all the walking in the Yellow Mountains. Becca and Josh came up with the idea to count all the steps and see which was the longest. (Huangshan (Yellow Mountains), China)

Now we will need to apply these as we are scheming and dreaming about our fall trip. We are undecided about where to go, but on the list of possible places are: Tibet, Xinjiang (the northwest province of China, on the border with Kazakhstan), or Inner Mongolia. Oh, yes a traveling we will go!

Chinese lesson 1.2

A couple posts ago, I started with a fave word to teach you just a little Chinese. We will pick up with another favorite and very useful word. 麻烦 pinyin: máfan (this one is somewhat easy to pronounce: maa-fahn, not really fan. Think more nasal). The meaning:

1. Troublesome, inconvenient; To trouble, or bother somebody. e.g. "Because of all the construction, that road is really a bother to drive on." But this is one that even though I say that sentence, I am not sure that you get the full meaning of  麻烦 . For example, think of something that is such a pain to do that it is virtually impossible. And then you are getting close to the meaning. Because sometimes things in China are just difficult to get done (for various reasons), and nothing else describes it like this word. In fact, we don't even say this in English anymore. We will be talking along and drop this word in the midst of an English sentence. Chinese do this as well. One of the engineers at the company was talking to Andy about fixing a machine. He said that, "It would be broken for a couple more days and then they were going to have to build the part and it was going to . . . " (and here he paused, trying to think of a good way to describe it) . . . and finally he summed it up with: "it is going to be 麻烦 ."

2. Excuse me (with the intent of asking a question), . . . Because much like in English if we are going to ask a question of a stranger, we don't usually just walk up and jump in. Usually we say something like: "Excuse me, where is the  . . . ?" Similarly, in Chinese you would say: "麻烦 您, . . ." which literally means: "Can I bother you, . . . ?"

I think next lesson, we will tackle the tones. You know, those funny marks over the vowels. That adds a whole new level of hard.

Field trip?

Today Tori went with her kindergarten on her 春游 (Spring Field Trip). We got a notice last week informing us of the trip and all of the particulars. You know, the where, when, what they need to bring, how much. All that good info. But of course it was in Chinese. I wish I could just show you typical communications from the school. I read it (well, sort of) and figured out the day, the cost, and what she needed to bring. But I had no clue where she was going. When she was talking about how excited she was and how much she was looking forward to going on her trip, I asked her where she was going. Her response: "I don't know." Then today after school, I was trying to figure out exactly what they did. She told me that they went on a carousel, saw a seal show, saw sharks and jellyfish, rode on a shark scrambler, and saw a real mermaid swimming with really flat fish. I guessed the aquarium. When I asked her about it, she said, "No, not the aquarium." But after talking more, I just don't think she knew what an aquarium was. I think is one of those times I will just need to make an educated guess. Cause when your information is obtained in Chinese and then via a 5 year old, it is not that reliable. ;-)

But regardless of where they went, she had a FABULOUS time. In fact, she talked non-stop about the trip throughout dinner and the evening. My favorite part of her description was when she was describing the real mermaid that she saw. In her words: "She was really, real. She was swimming with the flat fish with wings (known to the rest of us as rays). But I think she was just an 呵姨 (ayi)* dressed up"

**呵姨 (pronounced: ayi) literally means aunt, but is the polite way to refer to women who are about your moms age. kind of like the equivalent of ma'am or miss in English.

Travel stress

Becca is our worrier. In fact, I often tell people that I don't need to worry about things because Becca will take care of that for me. This is particularly evident when we travel. If our plane is delayed, she worries that we will miss our connection. If we are running late, she worries that we will miss our plane/train/bus/boat (as the case may be). When we were in Vietnam for Chinese New Year, the kids and I were going to return to China by ourselves and Andy was going to immediately start traveling for business. We got to airport to check in and were told that they had overbooked the flight and we were going to have to take a flight back to China the next day. Andy and I proceeded to argue with the airline representative, to no avail. If we were in the US or even China, I don't think that I would have worried about flying the next day. And while I had enjoyed our time in Vietnam, I was ready to go back home to China. As we were discussing things with the check-in attendant, she was fairly insistent that the kids and I were going to have to fly the next day. Suddenly, it proved to be too much for our girlie who of course had been listening in to every word. She burst into tears. And within minutes, the kids and I went from not getting on flight to being upgraded to business class.

This week we had a holiday (Tomb Sweeping Day) and we took the opportunity to go to Shanghai for the day. We enjoyed a great day. Took the bullet train in -- only 25 minutes from Suzhou to Shanghai. We then met up with friends for lunch. After lunch we went to the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum. Finally, we finished our day up with dinner out. Truly a terrific day as a family. After dinner, we had a little bit of time. Andy wanted to walk down to the river, but B was worried about missing our train. Andy insisted that we had time, so we started walking. We got to the Huang Pu (the Pu River) and Becca was stressed out, feeling that we needed to go catch the subway to the train station. After less than 5 minutes, we left the river and started the journey to the station with Becca asking every couple of minutes what time it was. Our train was scheduled to leave at 9:04 PM. We arrived on the subway at the train station at 8:50 PM. We then sprinted through security, up the escalator, found our platform (keep in mind the Shanghai Train Station is HUGE), practically threw our tickets at the attendant. Just imagine our family running, and yes the kids were running as well. Tori was running and giggling the whole way. We boarded the train and it started moving. Seriously a close one. As Andy said later, "ok, going to the river might not have been the best idea. Not my finest moment."

Now most of travel experiences are not quite so extreme. Through all of our travel, Andy and I generally don't get too stressed about delays or other incidents. We keep waiting for Becca to get to that point. But for now, she just suffers from travel stress. Every time. But Andy and I think we are ready to audition for the Amazing Race. Cause at moments like those, it seems like we are in training for the Amazing Race - family version.

Which stop?

So another funny thing happened on the bus today. I was coming home from a friend's house and was trying to see if a direct bus went from there to our house. I read the sign and thought that it said that the 33 stopped at the stop by our neighborhood. When the bus pulled up, I asked the driver if he went to that stop. He said that he did, and I got on. But then as we are getting close, maybe 3 or 4 stops away, he hollers (of course in Chinese): "Foreigner, are you getting off?" He proceeded to do this at each stop, until I did get off. Funny stuff. I felt like he was worried about me. That I was lost or something. I wonder does this stuff happen to other foreigners?

Saying Goodbye Again. . . and Again

. . . and yet again. Friends of ours are leaving. They found out 4 weeks ago and are moving back to Germany. Yes, you read that right. In 4 weeks time, they found out, packed their entire house and will be getting on a plane Monday to move to another country. So no more complaining about your moves, people. Their son is one of Josh's buddies (in fact he is one of the boys that was in the pic in the last post). I found my boyo crying one morning this week. When I asked him why, he said he was really going to miss Marcus. Last year at the end of the school year, Becca said goodbye to 4 friends. Another of our friends might be moving this summer. They don't know yet. I know this is just the nature of living in the expat community. People are always coming and going. The great thing is that new families are also moving in, but part of me just gets grumpy. Do I have to say goodbye again? And then on the other side of that equation, do you have to get to know another group of people only to say goodbye yet again in a year or two?

Please, don't misunderstand me. We absolutely love living here and cannot imagine moving back right now. BUT. . . I just don't want all my friends to move away either. [sigh] We have friends who have lived here for 10+ years. When they meet new people, they ask them straight out how long that family plans to live in China. If you answer anything less than 3 years, they just might spend less time with you. While that seems extreme, I can see their point. But the optimist in me, she just can't help it. She still reaches out and wants to get to know people. But for today, I am just going to wallow in my grumpy for a while. I am ignoring my optimist. She might be back tomorrow.

Maybe.

Chinese lesson 1.1

Now that I have been studying Chinese for a while, I feel it is my duty to share this knowledge with you all. Don't worry, I will go slow. Actually, I just want to teach some of our favorite words and phrases. Most of these are now so part of our lingo that even when we are speaking English sometimes we use one of these because it just says it so perfectly. So let the lessons commence.

But first, I feel like I need to give you a little background. Each Chinese character has a reading (the way you pronounce it) and meaning. Put various combinations of the 1000s of characters together and you form words. But unlike English, each character is usually a word on its own. But when combined with another character(s), it forms more complex words. Are you tracking with me so far? During the 1950s, someone came up with a way to transcribe these characters in order to teach. This pronunciation method is called pinyin. Nowadays, people also use pinyin to input Chinese into computers and when sending texts. But where it gets complicated is that while pinyin uses the English alphabet, most of the letters are not pronounced the same way. Are you still with me? 

Because it would be too complicated to teach you how to say each thing in pinyin, I will show you the character and the pinyin, but then in parenthesis I will write it out phonetically the way it sounds. Okay, we have all of that out of the way. Oh, wait. I forgot about the tones. Hmm, maybe we will leave that for another day. Just know that the marks above the letters mean something and we will get there.

One of our favorite and a very useful phrase/word is: 差不多 pinyin: chàbuduō (cha-boo-dwoe). The meaning:

1. Similar or about the same. e.g. You and I are about the same height. 差不多

2. Approximately or just about. This is my favorite usage. For example: Is the part for the machine the right size? 差不多. 

Do you know the way to go (when asking a taxi driver)? 差不多. Ah, the uses are endless.

Alright, that is the lesson for the day. Astound your friends and neighbors with your knowledge. Or at least, impress us when we come back this summer.