buying the essentials [bali day 1]

After our crazy day of travel, we woke up ready to enjoy the beach. But there was just one problem, the kids and all of my clothes still had not arrived. But the airline had given us some money, and we headed to the mall next to our hotel to buy the one essential thing for the beach. . . swimsuits!

Thankfully our sunscreen and most of our other essentials had been packed in Andy's suitcase. We lathered up, and spent the afternoon at the pool. Later that night, we ate at one of the restaurants at our hotel by the beach and were given quite the show. Look at this marvelous sunset. (these are in order of when taken)

Mightier than the thunders of the great waters,

mightier than the breakers of the sea --

the LORD on high is mighty.

Psalm 93:4

Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD;

let us shout aloud to the rock of our salvation.

Psalm 95:1

Truly magnificent.

We got back to the room, and our suitcase still had not arrived (much to the dismay of the kids). But after they were in bed, wearing the same clothes for the 2nd full day, the luggage finally made it.

Sprint through Seoul

I have been absent. But with very good reason. We just spent a week at the beach with limited internet. But I am back in the land of wifi, and have many stories to share.

Our adventure started with just getting there.

We flew from Shanghai to Seoul, then Seoul to Bali. Almost 3 hours to Seoul and then from Seoul to Bali was 8 hours. We flew a new airline, Korean Air. And I have nothing but good great things to say about them. On-demand TV, kids' meals, and enough leg room. But transferring in Seoul?

Was a nightmare.

We had an hour and a half. Which would seem like enough time. But our plane was slightly delayed, and when we got off we had to wait in this incredibly long line to go through security. As we stood in this group that was not exactly a line, people got ugly. Name calling, cursing at others, and just general nastiness. YIKES. And all the while, the line was going nowhere and we were running out of time. I stayed in line, while Andy searched for someone to help us out. After talking to several not-so-helpful people, finally one attendant showed us that there might be another security line. We ran down a hallway, found the other security that had no line. As we went through security, we heard the final call for our flight. Ran down another hallway, and gasping made it on to the plane.

The flight was uneventful, but we arrived in Bali at 1:30AM. But the fun was not over yet. As I waited at the luggage carousel, I saw a sign with our name on it that we needed to report to the service desk (never a good sign). Neither of our bags had arrived. We waited in another line and after another 30 minutes, one of our bags arrived. Another 15 minutes in line, we found out that our other bag would not arrive until the next day. Of course, it was the bag with the kids' and my clothes in it. We got through immigration, found a taxi and got to our hotel at 2:30AM.

You can imagine the state of the kiddos. Honestly, you can imagine the state I was in. But our mantra the whole time: Just get there and tomorrow the beach. (And we said it many times throughout the day!)

thwarted

You ever have one of those days?

Where it seems like everything is not going right?

Today was one of those for me.

We were having some friends over for dinner. I was planning to make spaghetti and meatballs, but needed to go to one store for the meat and another for the pasta. After Tori got home from school, we got on the e-bike to go to both stores. We hadn't even left the neighborhood and my e-bike died. I pushed it back home. I think that a wire rattled loose. After getting back home, I decided I would take my bike. But since buying my e-bike, my bike has sat lonely and was therefore so dirty. Cleaned it off, T and I got on only to discover that both tires were flat. I got the air pump, filled the front tire. But I then discovered the back tire had a hole.

Fine, guess that means we are walking to the store.

The problem is that the two stores are about a block and a half away from each other and our house sits in the middle. But in China where everything is bigger, that block is HUGE. I knew that T was not going to make it walking to the one store, walk to the second, and then walk home without major grumping. I had to decide which was more important: the meat or the pasta?

I decided to walk to Tesco (the store that usually has a selection of pasta) because sometimes they also have ground beef. Not always, but I decided to take a chance. Get to Tesco to discover that they do indeed have ground beef (and we bought the only 2 packages in the whole store), but no spaghetti. In fact the only kind of pasta that they did have was lasagna noodles. Okay fine, no spaghetti we will have lasagna instead. I think this is the first time I have cooked a lasagna in China! In fact, when we sat down to eat Tori asked what it was. When I answered her, she then replied with, "What is lasagna?" And then as she was eating, she exclaimed:

"This tastes really familiar, but it looks really strange."

Yes, that would be my daughter's view on lasagna. The same girl who adores tofu.

stories of life

You know how there are stories within a family that almost become like legend? I have a few that I tell of our kids first couple of years that they each love to hear me tell and re-tell.

Tori being the exuberant force to be reckoned with that she is, has quite a few stories. But perhaps my favourite is the jumping story.

As soon as she started walking, walking was not enough for her. She needed to climb. And explore. EVERYTHING. But being T, it didn't stop there. She also loved to jump. So she would climb someplace (often way too high for my comfort) and call out: jumping, jumping, jumping.

Then after 3 jumpings, she would jump. Didn't matter if the place was way over head. Or dangerous. Once she got to that 3rd jumping, she would launch herself.

I love that you can actually see her saying, "jumping, . . ."

I got to the point where I would listen carefully for her early warning jumping alarm and would rush over to have her hold my hand as she jumped.

Didn't stop her from jumping, just kept her safe as she leaped. But isn't that what we as moms are called to do? Not to limit our children. But be there to catch them as they fall.

And I have a feeling that our #3, our force to be reckoned with, is going to leap far. With her determination, her independence, her clever mind, we just see great things in store for her. Oh, the places she might go.

Counting down to New Year

With the weather turning colder and rainy, we are starting our countdown for Chinese New Year. CNY is really early this year. The official day is 23 January. But we leave for vacation in just over a week, 19 January.

For Andy, CNY does not start until the company New year party is over. Each year, he gives a speech to start the dinner off. The past couple of years, he has given the speech entirely in CHINESE. Needless to say, he prepares for this for a long time and it stresses him until it is over. The company dinner was this past Saturday and he did an AMAZING job. I was so proud of him as he looked relaxed and gave a great speech. [just to brag a little more on him, he talked for more than 5 minutes!]

You know it is successful when you tell a joke in another language and people actually find it funny and laugh. Because I have found that humor can be so unique to culture. He told several jokes in Chinese and each was greeted with laugher. Success! Countless times, I have said something that I thought was funny and no one laughs. Then other times, I say something, everyone laughs and I have no idea why.

So now we are looking forward to our annual trip. Each year during CNY we visit someplace in southeast Asia. This year we are going to Bali, Indonesia. Beach, jungle, volcano . . . bring it on!

**Just as an aside: Honestly, we have a great camera that takes wonderful pictures. But do you ever find that it is just hard to always have it on hand? I must confess that I am amazed by the blogs where every picture is phenomenal. Because while I love to take pictures, sometimes in everyday life it is just not practical to drag the camera on the bus (or e-bike). So I make do with my phone. And as a result, share crummy-quality pictures with you.

How is it that every picture I took of Andy giving his speech he had his eyes closed? One would think he was concentrating really hard or something!

 Part of the New Year's party is games. In the past they have hired performers. One year there was a magician who was entertaining. There were dancers one year that were slightly alarming. I wanted to cover my boy's eyes. But overall, the employees prefer games that get people on stage having fun together. Because the company has only 2 foreigners (Andy and an intern), all of the games were in Chinese. Some I didn't quite get everything that was said (understanding Chinese through a microphone is hard much like over the telephone). But one was a game that a team of 2 people had to make various letters of the alphabet. They started out with easy ones like A and D. But the grand finale?

T.

Here they are thinking about how they are going to pull it off.

The end result?

And yes, the picture quality is terrible. But I think I was laughing too hard to keep my phone still!

Becca so wanted to be part of this game. A bit later, she got her chance as they asked if any kids would like to participate.

Can you tell the letter? I really enjoy the mom (who is the HR manager) giving directions in the front.

As we are down to just days before vacation, I am wondering if we are going to get our medical check done for the adoption before going. [sigh] We are still waiting to hear about to-notarize/not-to-notarize.

I continue to furiously gather papers and put things in motion in the US. Thankfully, all of the things I need to do right now are just on the US-side. Because nothing is going to be happening in China for the next couple of weeks. This country shuts down for a couple weeks around CNY. Just as an example, Tori's Chinese school gets 3 weeks off!

While I know that delays are part of the process, I so want things to keep moving forward. One thing I know this journey is going to teach me every step of the way is patience.

There are so many things we love about living in China. Our diverse neighborhood. Traveling. The adventure of everyday life.

But one of our absolute faves?

天府之乐! (Tian fu zhi le) One of our favorite restaurants that is just around the corner from our house. I had been busy working on various things today and just did not have time to get to the store. So I texted Andy that is was going to be a Tian Fu night.

When I ordered each of the kids called out their must-haves. Jiaozi (dumplings), eggplant, broccoli, spicy noodles, green beans, and rabbit legs.

But the only problem is that I am used to ordering for a crowd. And there was just 5 of us tonight. Hmm, I think that I ordered too much. When this picture was taken we had already eaten the rabbit, cucumbers, and noodles. Definitely, too much! Yummy lunch for tomorrow though.

But the best part of it all? This whole meal only cost 110 RMB (about $17.50).

adoption update

With the holidays over and Chinese New Year looming around the corner, my list of things to get done seems huge. At times things progress smoothly and at others we seem at a standstill. We have requested countless papers. I have discovered that my FedEx number does NOT work when shipping things from China. I have figured out where to notarize and ways to get money orders (ask a friend in the US to do it for you). 

But we are still firmly in the paperchasing mode. We hope to have our home study after the new year (Chinese New Year, the only one that really counts here). So I am in a race to gather everything that is needed before we leave for our holiday in 16 days.

Though mostly it is slow, I am encouraged to see things checked off my great list. Well, actually my bulletin board.

If only I could move a few more things to the FINISHED column.

Will keep you posted as things progress. Right now it is just frustrating and a little hard to be doing this from China. I know that we will reach a part of the progress that will be easier (like visas- already DONE or travel, that will be no problem). But for now, I am off to figure out just how to get the forms for our physicals notarized. Because for some reason the doctor is unwilling to accompany us to the consulate to have them notarized {and yes, there was just a little sarcasm there}.

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Because this humored me in the grocery store this past week, I feel the need to share.

Just what makes the brown sugar maternal? FYI - the literal translation is pregnant brown sugar. Which is still not making any sense to me. I opted not to buy this kind. Was leery of how brown sugar could get pregnant or be maternal.