Laughter is Good Medicine

Things we’ve laughed abt this week:

• Joey teaches computer class.
• Our friends bought a dryer that we (and them) refer to as the Barbie dryer. You can dry approximately one pair of underwear at a time. This comes in handy on days when you don’t want to wear any clothes because it is approximately 439820483290 degrees outside.

• There were 4 meltdowns in my classroom yesterday. Not a single one of them were mine but they all happened because of me. Just call me the kindergarten whisperer.
• The new paint in our bedroom smells like Cheetos that have stinky feet.
• The cockroaches that live in our house are smart enough to know that if they hide in a corner, I can’t hit them with my shoe. Little rascals.
• Today I planned to spend Saturday cooking. Desperation is such a great motivator.

Ratatouille

I’ve explained my fear of rats before. Yesterday in fact. While you may not have any desire to hear about rats again, you are reading a blog about the Middletons living in China and 50% of those Middletons spends many of her waking thoughts and nightmares focused on rats and how to avoid them.

When I hear the rat squawk squeak, my initial reaction is to duck because I think a bird is about to fly at me and land on my head. My second reaction is to get as far away from the ground as possible. Do you know how hard it is to duck and fly at the same time?

The other night at around 8:30pm it was pitch black outside. I’m walking back to our apartment and I hear a LOUD squeak just as I am about to step into a little path surrounded by bushes. (If I could avoid all bushes, I totally would but that is an.impossibility here. This garden is serious about landscaping). Anyways. I hear this squeak. I literally jump/duck/fly 1 foot up and 3 feet over onto a bench that is occupied by a grandma and baby. I almost squish said grandma who is tiny tiny tiny. Even smaller than my abuelos who are very little people yet birthed a family of giants. (This confuses me as well). I try to apologize in English and my little bit of Chinese which is a whole other mess of Chinglish – emphasis on the ‘nglish’ part of that statement.

The list of things I can say in Chinese does not include the words for I’m sorry. 

While I am making up words in chinglish all of the families that are playing on the playground in.the.dark are laughing their faces off at me.

So I’m sitting there trying not to hyperventilate and also trying to avoid wrinkles. Do you know how much I raise my eyebrow during the day? This little fearless girl looks at me, stomps down the path where the squawk came from, turns around, points at me and runs away laughing so hard she trips.

This is my life. My how things have not changed.

 

 

 

 

FIrst Day

In this post first day of school coma that Joey and I are experiencing, I keep thinking to myself – teachers are amazing people. I don’t think that I can call myself a teacher yet because all I’ve managed to do so far is get half of my kids to line up in a straight line.  Yep. 6 hours and their takeaway (half of them anyways) was how to line up. I did get some of them to remember my own made up sign language so that was good! No more MISSSSSSS ANNNNNNNAAAAAAAAAA I have to go PEEEEEEEEEEEE.

We are making progress peeps but…

 I.am.in.over.my.head.

 So this post is dedicated to my teachers who let me go to the bathroom 9308429320 times a day and who didn’t call me out on reading while they were talking.

 This post is for those teachers who sent their kids home today excited about this year.

 I on the other hand, spent the entire day with my eyebrow as high as it would go.

 Here’s the deal. My kids are pretty frickin great. But DANG. I am exhausted.

 Things I am thankful for today:

–       the painters came and finished our whole apartment on Saturday. We love the colors and I’m so excited to hang stuff on the wall and get this place feeling like home.

–       A trustworthy burger and fries for dinner (I hope bahaha) If not – I’ll know soon enough.

–       Our bed got delivered! Softness cannot ever be overrated in my life ever again.

 

Strange things I experienced today:

–       the sudden urge to listen to underoath

–       an equally ridiculous sudden urge to listen to enya. Baha

 Sidenote: rats kind of sound like birds. As somebody who is kind of terrified of birds and definitely terrified of rats – this is the worst possible combination of animals and their sounds. Everytime I hear one, I have 2 heart attacks. One for the birds and one for the rats.

 Second sidenote: I have not actually seen any birds or rats in the entire time we’ve been here. This does not stop my heart from stopping with every squeak/squawk. I am aging prematurely wah.

 Third sidenote: Joey is serenading me with a rap right now. I definitely married the right man.

 

 

 

Oh Ikea.

This is about to get wordy. 

 

Oh Ikea.

I had such high hopes. 

Broken Chinese Cardinal Rule Number #2 – Check!

(Never have expectations of any kind) 

In China, those $1 cinnamon rolls are replaced with $0.16 fish balls. Feel free to read that sentence again if you’re a little bit confused. Now imagine living that confusion while 1000 people try and push you into the line to get said fish balls.

If you’re now expecting to leave the ‘café’ area and get into the relatively peaceful model home maze, check your expectations at the door.

Be careful where you wander, you might find yourself disturbing the sleep of entire Chinese families while they slumber in a single bed in a fake ikea apartment. Sidenote: whoever said that people in China don’t like soft beds clearly hasn’t been to the Ikea in Guangzhou. They and their entire families love them enough to SLEEP in them during the mayhem that is a Saturday afternoon at Ikea.

While looking at the kitchen models, you might see a baby in crotchless pants sitting in the sink. Not too sure where they think that baby’s pee is going. I’m pretty sure Ikea doesn’t have plumbing in their model kitchens that don’t have running water.

Ok so you’ve made it past the fake living rooms, the fake bedrooms, bathrooms, and kitchens and now you’re in the kid section. The only thing that would make this more like a McDonalds play area for both kids and grownups would be those little plastic balls everybody drowns in. The kid section is pure and utter chaos. Yet, right smack dab in the middle of this, you might witness a mother tuck her child into bed and that child going straight to sleep. It is a different world here. 

You have finally made it to the second level where you can actually buy everything you saw upstairs. Do not expect to notice that you are buying a ‘set of cutlery’ that doesn’t have any knives until said set has been delivered to your house and you are trying to make a peanut butter sandwich.

You may have to fight with an old woman to get to the glasses. DO NOT LET HER PUSH YOU AROUND. Just keep yelling *TING BU DON and eventually you will make it through. There are certain things you will not be able to find in the kitchen section. These include cookie sheets, and basically anything other than a wok. Persevere. You are not even close to being done with this trip.

You have made it to the curtain section. This will be the highlight of your trip because after half an hour of trying to make decisions while people scream in Chinese in your inner eardrum, you will have a javelin (ie blackout shade) with which to jab people in the back. Your weapon of choice may be different than theirs (an umbrella) but it will achieve the same result.

Are you done yet?

NO

Go into the bed section and try and load your one stuffed cart with pillows. Fail. Get another cart to pull while you push the loaded one. Keep the javelin one in the front.

After all of that, you will see a beautiful beautiful pillow top bed. You will buy this bed for a ridiculously low price and it will be shipped to your house for $25USD. 

In the end, is it worth it?

Most assuredly, yes. And like a sucker for punishment you will probably find yourself back there sooner than you’d like. 

A little bit at a time ladies and gents. You’ll (I’ll) (we’ll) make it through.

 

 

 

 

 

Chinese Surprises

–       crotchless pants for babies (yep, you imagine correctly). Logically that doesn’t make any sense to you because you most likely do not just allow your child to pee wherever that child is. Sidewalk, park, middle of Ikea, in a restaurant, classroom, in the elevator, on your shoes.

–       the sun only exists between 5:30am and 7:30pm

–       Subway shipped straight from the US. Shockingly not so fresh when it gets here.

–       How long everyone in a household with one western toilet can have diarrhea

–       Rice Krispies for $17USD

–       How loud little women (everyone) can be when they talk on the phone

–       How hard you will laugh at Duck Dynasty on a lazy Friday night. The constants are nice.

Joey’s Southern Chinese

The Apartment Renovation Saga

Dear Mr. Painter Man,

I take full responsibility for this predicament we are finding ourselves in. You see, I broke the cardinal rule of living in China.

Impatience has no place here. Do not allow it to influence your decisions.

Not only did I break that rule BUT I broke it willingly! All I could think about was how nice it would feel to have a place that felt like home. That thought was sharply coloured by the thought that said (rather loudly) ‘you don’t want to wait a week for the trusted painter’. Silly me, I DID want to wait a week for the trusted painter. I just needed you to prove that to me.

And prove it you most certainly did. If you had ever seen our bathroom back in the states you would think to yourself, this girl is a TERRIBLE painter; You would be completely right!

Herein lies the problem. You beat me!

Tape has no place in your workplace, nor dropcloths.

I wouldn’t anticipate that being colour blind would be an asset to your chosen career path.

Yes. Yes that is pink in our living room. Isn’t it so tan like in colour? Matches the colour card we picked perfectly!

I think I would have been able to overlook all of that if I had not come home one evening to one of your workers lying half naked on my couch watching chinese cartoons. You might understand that that was the.very.last.thing. I wanted to see probably ever in my lifetime.

One last thing, while you might LOVE the neon Kentucky blue you painted in our bedroom and on our front wall – it somewhat assaults our eyes.

Oh hey iphone picture!

Sidenote: We are doing our best to learn as much Chinese as possible. If though, we can’t understand what you are saying – it is highly unlikely we are going to be able to read it. I appreciate your persistence in this matter.

Sorry Mr. Painter Man, I don’t really think this is going to work.

In the words of Mr. Donald Trump,

YOU’RE FIRED.

Don’t worry. You’re not the only one. You can take my impatience with you.

Sincerely,

The Middletons (mostly Ana)

Our about-to-be-renovated Apartment

-Things you need to forgive before you read this post:

— Fuzzy pictures. Jet lag makes it hard to see, stand up straight and hold a camera steady apparently

— The silly order. It should be pretty clear by now that I’m not a blogger haha.

— All of our mess laying around. We didn’t really want to touch anything until we got cleaning supplies. Believe me when I say though that we have the cleaning supplies and its STILL a complete disaster. I think the typhoon happened inside the apartment instead of outside.

Without further adieu – I give you Casa de Middleton

[{translated into our version of Chinese: CHING CHONG BING BONG}

You never know who’s going to spiderman up 12 floors and try and break into your kitchen to steal your dish sanitizer. This is why you always need half a window barred.

The fridges in China make North American fridges look like fatties that ate the chinese fridges for snack.

Sometimes I wonder if our apartment is going to take off into outer space.

It is a huge blessing to have so much natural light. This is what you see when you walk into the apartment.

Built in shoe cabinet and takeout menus. Important things in life.

Does anybody else see the Star Trek theme? Apparently the previous habitant i.e. cat did not appreciate the look.

The TV doesn’t quite fit into the Star Trek set…

This picture is pretty true to colour. We bought a GORGEOUS light for over the dining room table. I will miss the whatever you call those things though. The doorway on the right side is our first spare bedroom.

Master bath. I love me a Western toilet. With this room design, we can be extremely efficient: shower, sit on the toilet and brush our teeth all at the same time 🙂

Built-ins are a lovely thing to have. Clearly I need to put things away haha.

If you would like to experience a little bit of China in wherever the world you are tonight, just sleep on your kitchen floor (carpet doesn’t count). You might need to find a typhoon to lull you to sleep and you will definitely get extra points if you stick a couple of bed springs in your hip and maybe your cheek. Both cheeks.

Built-ins in the second spare.

Walking into the second spare. To the left is a huge corner window complete with window bench.

Floating shelves in the study!

Our suitcases more so exploded than really got unpacked.

You can’t flush toilet paper down a squatty pot apparently. In all the public bathrooms, there will be a little garbage beside you filled with everybody’s toilet paper. This is usually at eye and nose level when you actually use a squatty pot.

Hall bathroom

The view from our 12th floor balcony. I keep waiting to see people doing tai chi on the tennis court but its yet to happen. I have however witnessed people doing laundry on their balconies. The man that lives next to us has very strange underwear baha.

That time we moved to China

The view from our 12th story apartment.

Probably about 3 times a day I have this moment where I realize that I live in China. It is the wierdest feeling and it usually happens when i’m in a taxi. It always catches me off guard and then somebody pokes me in the back with their umbrella or herds me into a street and I stop being philosophical and focus on survival. 

It is a different world here peeps. AND I’MA GONNA TELL YOU ABOUT IT.

We left Canada on August 10. That was only last Saturday but it seriously feels like a lifetime. Our connecting flight from Beijing to Guangzhou was canceled so we spent the night in the airport which was an experience to say the least. Well first, we got into a bus to go to a hotel that was ‘3 minutes away’ and complementary. After an hour of driving on nex roads with no lights in backwoods Beijing, we finally arrived at the hotel where we got the one worker who spoke english to get our bus driver to take us back to the airport. We wandered around Beijing International for about 3 hours before we f i n a l l y found the Starbucks and crashed.

Things I witnessed during this time:

-little ladies literally screaming at airport workers (crowds immediately gather – everybody wants to watch a good fight)

-one fat man without very many clothes on

-parties going on at 2 in the morning

-a KFC that serves chicken and duck congee

-one very goodlooking and patient husband (mine)

-2 24-hr massage parlors

-a glorious starbucks that had food we could read and comfy chairs.

The point is: WE BE HERE and we are learning how to live.

Sidenote: I counted approximately 15 pictures being taken of us. These people were not shy and neither were we. It is kind of both liberating and exhausting being in a country where you can only understand very few people and they mostly cannot understand you. You can talk about errybody while they talk about you!