K: Routine Interuppted

I'm feeling a little bit lost today. Being a stranger in a strange land makes you flexible, if nothing else. Ologists call this survival skill "tolerance of ambiguity." So, I have flexibly developed routines for myself that make my China Life feel normal. My routines are so normal that the absence of them sends me here... to write about them in hopes that when I finish my "communications" which is actually scheduled for Monday, I will know what to do next.

It all started on Saturday morning, when we got up to get ready for fellowship. Every Saturday morning we hail a cab and make the 45ish minute commute to the other side of the city for fellowship with other foreigners. As we were getting ready to leave, I sent a message over to a friend we would be seeing to ask if it would be alright if we retrieved our bikes from her balcony (another story). She said sure, but when were we thinking of coming because she was going to a wedding. I said, "After fellowship, of course." And she said, "Oh, didn't you hear, no meeting today because the officials are asking questions." No, I didn't hear. We have never cancelled fellowship before.

Sunday morning, A and I go for a run while N makes breakfast and then we sit around and drink coffee and eat and listen to a message. After that, I do laundry (which is a routine in itself) and care for my plants. But yesterday, since we hadn't gotten our bikes on Saturday because we weren't in the new city when we should have been, we decided they couldn't wait any longer and we made the trip over and the ride back. This took the afternoon and though the plants did get watered, the week's laundry is not done, and I didn't meet my quota of grad reading.

I don't teach on Mondays, but N and A do. (A doesn't teach on Wed and N doesn't teach on Fri.) So A and I run at 8:00 on Mon morning, and this is usually my jump start into a productive day. But because our residence permits expire before we get back to China at the end of August and we want the nice people at immigration in Beijing to let us in, we have to have new ones in our passports before we leave China at the end of June. This means that we have to have physicals done and that means that I got up this morning earlier than usual for a Monday and I didn't get to run but I did get to be hungry and thirsty (nothing after midnight) and have a hole punched in my arm and get x-rayed and sonogrammed (N is not pregnant, and neither am I) and cardiogrammed and more...

It's a good thing the ologists don't call flexibility "enjoyment of ambiguity." Tolerate I can do and now that I've done it, I'm going to go look for what's left of my routine. 

P.S. Happy Memorial Day! May you Americans in America enjoy a day away from your Monday routines.

Where Credit is Due

Did you notice that we changed the banner? Cool, huh? A fresh picture for... freshness' sake. And a shout-out goes to Stephanie Staley, A's older sister, of Creature Bug for her design. There are more where that came from too so stay tuned in the months ahead for even more coolness. Thanks, Steph, for making us look good!

Also new on the site, in case you didn't notice, is a list to your left titled "China Lit." There is a plethora of published literature about China and rightly so as it is a fascinating country. As is always the case with literature, some of it is remarkable and indispensable in forming an educated and balanced view of the country while lots of it is skewed and insufficient. For those interested in China, here are some books that we have reviewed.

K: Information Junkie cont...

One of the unfortunate side effects of N's thirst (or should we call it obsession?) with accumulating information is that it sometimes gets into the realm of relationships and then if he's not listening carefully (as can happen to any of us) he gets his wires crossed and has to dip into his store of wit and charm to diffuse an uncomfortable situation.

Example: In college, one of N's go-to questions when casually talking with a friend or acquaintance who was known to be involved in a romantic relationship was to innocently ask how it was going. On more than one occasion, in fact often enough to discourage the less nosey, N found himself frantically searching for something to say to the response that the relationship had recently and usually painfully ended. It's a good thing he's witty and charming...

Apparently this knack for awkward relational information gathering/dispersing translates. We meet weekly with a group of three high school students. Their relationship with the foreign teachers started five years ago when our predecessors got drafted to spend time with the children of important people at our school as a favor. They've been handed down through the years and while the obligation has more than been met, we've kept the meetings going because we just really like them.

Last night, Rex, Toby, and Felicity (their English names) were here and we were doing what we do when Rex mentioned his girlfriend. You could almost see N salivate. We didn't know he had a girlfriend. We looked at pictures, we heard the get-together story, and then N asked if his mother had met the girl. Nope. Does she know about her? N hears static...

Awhile later the kids leave and we realize that Rex has left his keys so N calls his mother (who is also a good friend of ours) so she can let him know. Surely, you see where this is going... before A and I can stop him, the words are out of his mouth and he's scrambling to manage the damage... "I wouldn't worry about it. Teenagers are the same all over the world. Mothers are the last to know...." A and I cradle our foreheads in our hands.

Before he gets home, Rex realizes he's left his keys and comes back to our house. A and I feel it's only fair that Rex knows what to expect when he gets home so we force N out the door to walk with him and explain what he's done. Rex reacts as though a gun has gone off nearby throwing his arms over his head and ducking for cover. N apologizes profusely explaining that he missed the part of the conversation where Rex mentioned that the relationship was still a secret. Rex recovers and seems to see (if not appreciate) the humor in the situation.

Fortunately, N's wit and charm translate too. We still have the friendship (and hopefully trust) of a teenage boy and his mother. 

N: Information Junkie

I love information.  I learned to make Tea Eggs the other day because my curiosity got the best of me. I read the news almost everyday.   Movies, China, USA, Living in China, Cooking Techniques, strange laws, Type 1 Diabetic treatment innovations, almost anything.   I thought I would give you folks some of the links that I have read recently. 

Aural Sculpture

Micro-HOT

Air Quality and the Beijing Olympics

The Hui People  - the people we live among

Article about Imams in Ningxia from 2003

Children Too Busy for Play

A Picture.  Police Preparing for Football Hooligans.  Those fake hooligans make me laugh everytime.

ZGBriefs: Kim and I get an email every week from ZGBriefs.  In their words "ZGBriefs is a condensation of China news items gathered from published sources."  Easy to sign up and free.  Sign up if you are interested by going to the link. 

And one more bit of information:  I bought soccer warmups today.  I am a size XXXL.

A Lunch in the Life

Here we are, eatin' noodles.

N: Saturday is Tuesday

The past week has been filled with reading for our graduate classes, slow mornings, visiting a friend’s home and simply enjoying the break from teaching classes.  Labor Day is celebrated on May 1^st here and it turns out to be like Spring Break for many people in education.  As we approach holidays, the conversation with the English department regarding our teaching schedule is always entertaining for me.  You see, even though we have a week long holiday, we have to make up for the days we miss by teaching classes on the weekend.  The conversation usually goes something like so after engaging in some small talk:

Me: So…we’ll teach this weekend, right?  (*head nods in response)  What day is Saturday and Sunday then?

Department: What day is Saturday?  Saturday is Saturday.  Sunday is Sunday.  OH!  Saturday is Tuesday.  Sunday is Wednesday.

Me:  What about Monday?

Department:  Monday is Monday.  We do not change Monday.

Of course they don’t change Monday.  How silly of me.  I ask a couple more questions checking my comprehension and making sure that I have all the information I need before setting off to call my class monitors and cancel class for “Tuesday” and “Wednesday.”

Speaking of grad work, Kim had an extra couple hours of reading when we were coming back from our friend’s house.  The bus we were on got a flat.  No jack in hand, the bus operators flagged down a car and went somewhere to get one.  No spare in hand, they took off the flat tire, flagged down a truck, loaded the tire and went back to somewhere to get it fixed. It took about 2½ hours longer to get home.  The people on the bus weren’t worried about the time, so neither were we.