On driving in this town

We love our car and we love what our car has allowed us to experience as a family much more easily than if we did not have one.

However, driving in this town has become way more of an adventure than I would like at times. 

I try to control what I say out loud when I drive, usually it is just shock and amazement not anger that is coming out (it used to be anger, but I have gotten used to it so that subsided). I say things like: 'oh my,' or 'what is he doing', or 'what in the world?'  I have now come to just state simple facts. As I told Sophia that driving in China is different from the U.S., she finished the sentence saying something she has obviously heard David or me say: "because they just started driving like ten years ago". And she is right for the most part. Here are some stats from our own surveys/observations/questions of the locals:

• 15 years ago a lot of these roads weren't paved, 
• 10 years ago there were hardly any red lights in our town and hardly anyone  had personal cars.
• 5 years ago people really just started learning how to drive cars, really.
• Most people these days just got their drivers' license and have been not driving long at all. 
• I have been driving for 20 years, most of the time in a country with nice roads and enforced laws.
• I think after driving here for a few years I really could become a stunt driver, not kidding.

 We, and other ex-pats we know living in Asia, tend to take our newly acquired driving skills back to the U.S. with us. David and I often recall to our ex-pat friends the text he received from a friend who was driving behind us back to his house (in the U.S.): "Chinese drivers=no survivors". 

I personally remember being scared to death in the U.S. when someone would FLY up to a stop sign as I was driving by, I cringed and winced waiting for impact many times. But they always came to a complete stop. Always.  I have never seen a stop sign in China. Not in our town, and even at red lights when turning right on red, no one ever comes to a complete stop. This would explain why a friend of ours that lives in Asia got pulled over in the U.S. (and issued a warning), for doing a 'rolling stop'.

They also recently started being much stricter with certain parts of the traffic laws, supposedly, seat belts, for instance. And they now do the points on license system too. David and I have our fair share of parking tickets (I even talked myself out of one with a local Police officer), but the parking fines were minimal.

There you have it folks a little documentary of the history of driving in our little town.. 

Other tidbits

• We had visitors for just over a week, and then my electric moto stopped working. At first we thought the battery had been stolen (not an uncommon occurrence around here), but we realized it was the ignition. The temporary fix had the moto being unable to 'turn-off', which is quite dangerous when kids are involved (or a pregnant lady with brain mush). I rode it that way one time and then took it the shop. 20 bucks later I had a new ignition.
• I received a huge shipment of Homeschool stuff, the box all taped up by the China Postal Service and 10 items missing (not the postal service's fault, but the sender's). The company immediately put all the missing stuff in another shipment and said they didn't know why it wasn't sent in two shipments, being so heavy. 
• I have yet to dig into the aforementioned HS stuff, though I am so excited about it, good changes I hope, for the new year, a whole other post
• We will go to Malaysia as a family for 2.5 weeks. All sleeping in one room, in a guest house with at least a total of 15 kids that I know of, but I think more like 18. Fun times. In Malaysia we will get a look at baby Coke 4 around 20 weeks! Yes we will try to find out the gender. We will also get a look at Subway, and Chili's restaurant. More cravings this pregnancy than any other, but I have been controlling myself, and some I have no control over since I can't get what I want anyway.
• Our helper looked at what we were having for dinner and asked if she could take some 'western' food to her friend who is always asking to try it. I said 'of course, but it is going to be so simple, not the best western meal I make'. (Chicken and cheese quesidillas with pico de gallo, I didn't have time to make my real salsa or mock jalapenos).

TidBits in pics

 The other day while the girls were at school, the house got really quiet and I went to go find Tobin. This is what he was doing, just like this. Priceless.

 At the last minute, I got a text from Sophia's teacher saying they needed to wear their uniforms the next day, so I put both girls in their uniforms, they look so cute!

 The school just got a whole new building and revamping, it is more like a little park now. 

Bella and I waited while half of Sophia's class came back from a little field trip up the street.

Here she is with one of the twins. 

On the weekends we eat out a little more and since our town is booming with so much new stuff we try new restaurants. This was a Taiwanese restaurant promising steaks. I did try one, it was decent. The pizza was more like a cheese danish. BUT it had a salad bar that was decent, considering this town has never seen a salad bar before. And the french fries were good too.

CC Fine Arts week 17: Michaelangelo

 Our little Michaelangelo's painting their chapel! 

This was a fun activity but complaints from Sophia started when she first even attempted lying on the floor. Ugh. Really? I finally put these mats down and they worked for about 15 minutes and then moved to the top of the table. I told them very jokingly that I was glad they were not contracted to do the Sistine chapel or it would have never gotten done! It took Michaleangelo 4 years...painted entirely while lying on his back!

 These is pretty hard though, I tried it too to show them what I meant!

I told them one day we hope to show them the Sistine chapel in real life. Traveling parts of Europe as a family is a dream of ours.....

Pregnancy update: 17 weeks

According to dates I am just over 16 weeks, according to an early ultrasound, I am right at 17 weeks prego.
I feel and look like I am already 6 months, oh well. I did have a Chinese friend whom I had just told say, oh, so are you about six months? uh, no not quite. Love the honesty though.

Differences:

•  Nausea lasted all the way through 14 weeks. I had zero with Sophia and Bella, and about 12 weeks of morning sickness with Tobin, this has been the worst. 
•  I do have cravings. I really wanted subway yesterday, really. Oh well. I also crave the local MaLaCai pretty consistently.
• caffeine, with previous pregnancies I drank decaf coffee and some coke in the afternoons, with this one, REAL coffee (half a cup) in the mornings, and some coke in the afternoons. I plan on weaning off of this in the next few months. 
• No re-surge of energy in the second trimester so far, this may have to do with age and busyness. I am tired.
• exercise: I was pretty consistent in previous pregnancies. I am hit or miss these days. I do kettlebells about 1x/week (was 2-3), which is my first pregnancy with them, and then I try to walk or jog 1-2x/week. But the weariness often has me napping. Or like right now, my one hour mid-day 'rest' is spent trying to blog/journal our life.
• First trimester weight gain is supposed to be between 1-5 lbs. We were in Thailand for weeks 6-10, not good. I certainly gained more that that! Trying to not let it get the best of me and stay active, I just get round everywhere, I never have just those belly pregnancies.

Miscellaneous:

• no serious discussions on names yet. (feel free to offer any and all)
• no predictions on gender, I somewhat feel it is a boy, only because this pregnancy is more like Tobin's but I am not sure that means much
•  we will have an ultrasound around 20 weeks + when we go to Malaysia as a family in a few weeks, and we will find out the gender!
• I have terrible varicose veins which started with my 2nd pregnancy, got very bad during Tobin's, and already are flaring, but not too bad yet. They look horrible, but the pain is not bad yet.
• At times I am overwhelmed with the reality of four children, mainly just wondering how I will do it...but this is a good place to be, keeps my reliance not on my self but on the God who blesses with grace and life and strength in him!

Birthday package

 We received an Easter/birthday package from Poppy and CC, what a blessing.

 A card with truck stickers!

 Blue-eyed boy gets a cool blue shirt and handsome shorts. The shirt says: 'dad's wingman' LOVE it.

The day before this David and I were talking about needing to get a basketball hoop in our house somehow. This was the perfect gift!

Bunny ears for all. Fun. And yummy fun candy. And of course PEEPS, my favorite. They know the way to their daughter-in-law's heart!

 

 The following day, new clothes, new toy. He played basketball a lot!

 Handsome little two-year-old. Thank you Poppy and CC!

Water splashing in the village

We decided to visit some friends in the village. This was day 3 of water splashing and things had really died down. Our girls put on their minority dresses, unprompted by me, this is just what everyone does during water-splashing.

 This dad is great with our kids.

David put on his minority shirt as well. Handsome! (obviously this was back at our house)

 BABY DUCKLINGS! This was so fun for our kids to see.

 I know you are thinking: bird flu. But they all washed their hands well.

The son had a new tattoo. This is actually English, and he has no idea what it was supposed to say, it really made no sense. It reminded me of the tattoos of Chinese characters I have seen on some Americans that make absolutely no sense. 

This family has a 'fighting chicken'. They went to get another one so we could watch them fight (not to the death I was assured). David says they do not fight to the death here.....

 He then got his chicken and off they went.

 Wow.

 Interesting. They never hurt each other, they just flopped over each other. It was quite funny. Then they put them away.

Meal prep. 

 We had a delicious meal. I even ate the fish, it was so good. Sophia said it was smiling.

Yummy watermelon, they had just harvested these. 

 Hot peppers.

 The son and his girlfriend. He took David down the street to meet her and some of his friends. The kids and I stayed back and watersplashed with our guns. This was so much fun. David had a great time hanging out with these guys. We love going to the village. Another fun water-splashing festival.

Water Splashing Festival 2013

 Every year around Tobin's Birthday is also the local water-splashing festival. This has gotten more fun over the years. Our kids love it, of course. And now that Sophia has some really good neighborhood friends, she played hard all day every day for three days! I avoided it as much as possible. But I still filled 50 water balloons and refilled the guns umpteem times. And I was able to watch well from our first floor apartment! The outside sink was a huge blessing.

 Yang Yang and Sophia take on LuHaoZhe.

 The weather actually brought rain interspersed with sunshine.

 Mud pies were made, of course.

 We found a good gun for Tobin and he caught on quick!!!

Time for a break and some hot chocolate (it was a cool day and they had been soaking wet and freezing). These local girls loved it! We added marshmallows of course.

Sophia and Bella's school had an afternoon activity. David tried to take them to participate but they got stuck in traffic for twenty minutes and decided to turn around. Oh Well, they had fun in the neighborhood. David did take them out a few times to splash others. He always serves me in this way.