House Husband, Food, & Meiguoren

House Husband

Every working mom should have a house-husband!  Yes, there is the fact that I haven’t done laundry in a month.  Then there is the fact that I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually had to change a poopy diaper.   And I can’t even remember the last time I had to get groceries myself.  But all of those things pale in comparison to the new understanding my husband and I have come to.   For example, a couple of weeks ago I came home from work an hour and a half late.  I had planned on doing this and told him the day before that it was going to happen.  Apparently he forgot.  I opened the door and children were running around the house screaming and I couldn’t take two steps without that “crunch” under my foot.  As I scanned the room for my husband and saw his face, I couldn’t help but smile at the crazed look he gave me.  Then to top it off he says “I SET MY FUSE FOR 5 AND YOU WEREN’T HERE AND I AM DONE!”  OK, yes I feel for you but now I am laughing out loud.   Not too many days later he said “You know, I didn’t think that getting up in the middle of the night so often would make me so tired!”  And then my favorite:  after I came home from work, he sits down on the couch and says “I just don’t want anyone to touch me right now!”

Food

So for a month before we left Michigan I naively told myself that once we got to China I would likely drop the rest of my pregnancy pounds without working too hard at it.  I figured (rightly) that I would be walking a lot more and that I would have a hard time finding food to eat that I enjoy enough to overindulge.  Actually, I got the second half of that wrong.  It is nearly impossible for me to find anything I consider worth eating that would qualify as meal worthy food.  Then what, you ask, is the problem?  I get so frustrated trying to come up with something relatively easy to make/get/eat that I generally give up and eat cookies for dinner.  And lunch.  And breakfast.  And in-between snacks.  Having realized this pattern, I decided that it might not actually be too bad to eat out more often.  Especially considering a few of the places I have found cost less than three dollars for a full meal.  Rob and I decided to try the restaurant at the foot of our building.  Somehow feeling quite confident, I walked in and ordered for all four of us.  As we waited for our lunch, the owners son, who I think is probably about two, came out and played with the boys.   The owner and a couple of the workers came out and oogled over them as well, which of course always makes a mother feel good.  Having had my pride bolstered I waited for my meal with renewed expectation of something edible and found to my delight that it actually was!  I think I could actually even call it tasty!  As we finished our meal we marveled over finally finding a place to eat, and so close, and so cheap! And then it happened.  Our dear bare-bummed restaurant owner’s son squatted down right next to my chair and pooped.  Yup.  RIGHT BY MY CHAIR!  If ever there is a time to leave the details of a meal to your husband this was it.  I was gone.  Cookies it is.

Meiguoren

Meiguoren.  The Chinese word for “American.”  As life begins to settle down here, I find that the idea of “finding my place” has become important.  Call me crazy, but I think there might be something different about me and my family compared to the others in our neighborhood.  Yes, in a kind of big picture of humanity kind of way, we are not so different.  We all want our children to be happy and healthy, we all have goals and dreams, and we all have the same basic needs.  But now that we have figured out how to survive here our differences really make us isolated.  It’s funny to stand in the middle of 14 million people and realize that there would be more opportunity for socialization in sparsely populated farming communities of America.  As I was beginning to feel aware of this isolation something strange happed.  Just this week actually.  I stopped by the drug store by our house to buy something very similar to a “fruit roll-up”.  I walked in and stood in front of the shelf where I knew they should be and the clerk ran over, dug around and pulled out exactly what I wanted.  She knew me!  Then, the next afternoon on my way to work, I stopped by Ichi Ban, by the way this is the only place I have found that makes bread taste like bread, and before I said anything the clerk pulled out two packs of rolls.  She knew me too!  As if that weren’t enough, the most bizarre thing happened on my way home!  I stepped in my building’s elevator on the heels of a gentleman I could swear I had never seen.  As I turned toward the number pad he punched his floor, number seven, and then immediately hit mine!  He knew me too!  As funny as it seems, somehow knowing I am known is actually kind-of a good feeling.  It certainly isn’t the same as belonging, but somehow it’s a start.

Blessings and Peculiarities

Of all the strange things in this world, right up near the top is the way you can travel to the other side of the world and plop yourself in the middle of millions of people (14 million to be more precise) and in no time discover people who know the same people you know or have actually spent time in your own home town.  In my case that is a township of 2,700 people…really I looked it up!  Imagine!  Of the 14 million people living in Shenzhen, it really can’t be possible than more than one other family has been to my hometown, and yet somehow, it took only 3 weeks to find them!

This past week has been a week of many blessings.  Obviously it was fun to meet new people, but even better was the fact that I was able to go to church with them.  I was surprised at how amazing it felt to worship with such a small group of people in a city that largely does not know Christ.  As we walked in, the congregation was singing “You’re the God of this City, you’re the God of these people…”  I have no idea how many times I have sung that song before, but this week it took on such a powerful new meaning.  My God is God EVERYEWHERE!

On another heavenly note…I got a HOT SHOWER!  It took two weeks and a lot of going around and around and around, but once we were able to inform the right people of the problem, it was only a matter of a couple of days.  Good timing too, since we can’t seem to get our apartment to heat up above 66 degrees. 

Also, since it is Valentine’s day I should tell you that I think I fell in love.  Yes, I love my husband and my sons, but really today I discovered ONLINE grocery shopping!  I am at this moment expecting all of my groceries to be delivered to my apartment!  I can’t think of a better way to accomplish a task I have despised for as long as I can remember, and despise tenfold now that it literally takes three to four hours to locate and purchase them.  Before I make you too extremely jealous you should also note that while this is the only store where I have actually found chocolate chips, they cost about seven U.S. dollars a bag.  We won’t be making chocolate chip cookies anytime soon.

In other news, you might actually be able to hear Rob’s audible sigh of relief as we have found out that my training, which starts next Monday, will be in this city.  He will not be left alone with the kids for an entire week.

Regarding the peculiar Chinese ways:

 I have discovered that everything I have read about the Chinese lack of etiquette when it comes to waiting turns is actually very true.  Yesterday on our way home, our friend had to push a man out of the elevator since after pushing his way past the crowd, he literally stood in the way of the door, preventing it from closing!  Oddly enough, he stood there for quite some time and seemed oblivious to the fact that he was preventing the elevator from moving!  I am sorry to say, such incidents are not an anomaly.

I have also discovered that the Chinese lack of personal space goes far beyond standing too close in the check-out lane.  Twice now I have been walking with the boys and a complete stranger has run up and grabbed Aiden for a photo op, very much against his will. 

One last thing that I don’t understand:  Why is it that when it is chilly outside, the Chinese are compelled to dress their children in so many layers that it looks like an entire city of Ralphie’s little brothers.  They are astonished that in 65 degree weather I do not act overly concerned that my 9 month old refuses to keep his socks and shoes on, and yet their children run around with a split in the crotch of their pants so obvious that if you watch all of Ralphie’s little brothers run in one direction you would see nothing but hundreds of bare bottoms toddling their way home?  Now, which place would you rather feel a cool breeze?

We Did It!

As I begin typing this entry I am sitting in my new Chinese apartment, for which I still do not know the address, listening to the remaining sounds of the Chinese New Years celebration, which began over four hours ago.  While slightly annoying, as fireworks are continuously booming all over the city loud enough to set off car alarms, I still have to smile.  I AM LIVING IN CHINA!

This past week and a half has had plenty of trials, but triumphs as well.  Starting with over 36 hours of traveling to get to our hotel in Shenzhen, only to realize that while our bodies said it was the middle of the night, the clocks here said otherwise.  When it was all said and done we finally collapsed into what I can only now assume is a typical Chinese rock hard bed.  Seriously. The concrete floor in your basement has more cushion than any mattress I have discovered here.

A day and a half of paperwork later including a bizarre medical check in which Rob and I were ushered into room after room where goodness knows what test was coming next and nobody spoke two words of English, and we were ready for apartment hunting!

We had set our budget at around 5000 Yuan, which seems like a lot for we got, but is definitely on the low end of what’s available here.  Hence, apartment after apartment after apartment we traipsed our exhausted family through were nothing I could imagine my family living in.  Even considering hiring someone to clean them, there was still the rotting doorjambs, battered walls, rudimentary kitchens, and nasty furniture to deal with.  After significantly lowering our expectations, we finally found an apartment we agreed would suit us.  It was, if nothing else, big enough and in a really great complex.  However, when I met with the landlord, realtor, and my interpreter to sign the lease we found out that the landlord refused to rent to a foreigner.  After listening to four Chinese people argue about whether or not I was permitted to live in what I was thinking more and more looked to be an UNfavorable apartment, we left with no apartment.  Two hours later, my realtor showed us an apartment that nobody had yet lived in.  Brand new, well done, nice neighborhood.  Even a cute kitchen…..albeit no oven or microwave and I feel like a giant in it every time I hit my head on the cupboards and range hood that are installed at least eight inches lower than in any American kitchen.  We agreed, signed the lease, and moved in!

Our next task was to fill our new apartment with new apartment things!  This called for a trip to WalMart!

Yes, this is a picture of the inside of one of the eight Wal-Mart’s that exist in Shenzhen, China!  Scary place!  Actually, my guide decided that this Wal-Mart was too busy so we went to a different one.  I will admit the next one was better, but still felt like I was pushing a cart through a subway station at rush hour.  It was here that I realized that while 90% of what we buy in the U.S. is from China, you can still get almost all of it cheaper in the U.S. that you can in Shenzhen.  At least if you are shopping Wal-Marts.  But I was able to get enough stuff to get us through a few days until we could find shops selling other goods cheaper.  I should tell you though, that near the end of our trip to Wal-Mart I remembered that I needed an electric heater since apartments here do not have heat systems and it still gets down to the  mid 40’s at night.   We found the one option available and tossed one on to the cart.  That evening we ended up all sleeping in Aiden’s room because we were all FREEZING!  Task number one of the next day was to find a second heater!

So we filled our new home with enough stuff to live semi-comfortably and the following days have been filled with exploring our new surroundings and searching for those items that we did not get at Wal-Mart.  Only now, I have no escort, guide, car, or translator so it is not uncommon to head out intending to find an iron, or highchair, or some such thing and accomplish nothing more than discovering a new place to eat.  By the way, today’s discovery was a fancy grocery store in an extremely ritzy part of town (next to Cartier, Rolex, & Swarovski), that sold turtles and alligators in their meat department!  We had intended on finding IKEA to pick up a highchair.  We didn't find IKEA, but the experience was interesting anyway.

We have also found that we live right next to the Shenzhen Botanical Gardens and Expo Center. 

That whole sculpture is made of real flowers!  Everything in the city is decorated for New Years and the park is no exception.  The most thrilling part of finding this park, however, was for Aiden.  He found a playground with sand!  I imagine Rob and the boys will be spending a lot of time here in the months to come.

There are literally hundreds of things we have yet to figure out.  But for the time being, we are quite pleased.  We have a great home to come home to.  Every grocery store I’ve been too carries Huggies, Pampers, and formula.  When all else fails, cookies fill the tummy just as well as anything nutritious.  And when I wake up in the morning this is what I see out my 18th floor bedroom window.