June-August 2010

June

It was about half way through the month when I realized that I had been sleeping all through the night, thus Nathaniel was too. Of course, at one and a half, he should be. But he actually hadn't slept all night since he was 5 months old and wearing diapers. After he quit using diapers, he'd wake up to go potty. So even after he quit nursing at night, he would still wake me once or twice to pee. It just became so natural, I never thought much of it until it ended! Although it was a lot of work in the beginning (and just plain weird...I mean, teaching a seven week old to pee in the toilet? My cousins don't do that with their kids!), I don't regret potty training him. It's made life much easier (no handwashing diapers) and cheaper (no buying disposables for night time).

July

I spent 15 days giving lessons, six hours a day. Exhausting. Then just as they were about finished, I found out that I couldn't get a new work visa because I've been working here for five years. There's a national policy that limits foreigners to working five years, but it's never been enforced until now. In May I heard of a lady, in our province, who was told she couldn't work any longer due to this. But on the email list I belong to, no one had known this policy to be enforced. And then I became the second one (at least) to be told I can't work anymore. So for the next two years I can't work here. At least in this province. I have four friends in other provinces who have been here just as long or longer and are still teaching. Strange. But I'm so happy to be staying home now. I have wanted to ever since Nathaniel was born, but for various reasons, one of which was the visa, I didn't. Now we know it's pretty easy to get a "visiting family" tourist visa (before the school took care of obtaining it). Since the only benefit to my job was my salary, it's not a huge deal otherwise.

August

I had planned to have the month free but after several phone calls begging me to teach, and since I would no longer have a regular income, I spent ten days tutoring two girls who had just finished highschool. They barely knew each other, were as different as night and day. One was an only child from the city that was sent to preschool at one year old. The other is the third of four children from a village. I learned a lot from them and hopefully helped them, but two hours a day with just the two of them was pretty boring. Near the end of the month I went up to Beijing to meet a friend who brought our iPad to us from Wisconsin. I also had a chance to meet the friend of a friend who is married to a Chinese man. We had only briefly talked (about visa issues) and emailed a few times, but we talked for 3 hours at Starbucks and then for another two hours over dinner and shopping. It was such a nice day away from the usual routine and all the hours I'd spent teaching English to little kids!

March-May 2010

March-

The school extended the winter holiday without bothering to tell me until I called two days before classes were supposed to begin and I found out that I could have spent another week in the US. I spent a few weeks in March and April tutoring a girl who planned to go to study in Ireland. I am always confused about why students wait till just a month or two the exam/leaving for a foreign country to begin studying and expect dramatic results. (Just in the last month I've had three students want to study for their remaining 10-20 days before leaving for various countries where they will be educated in English!) She didn't pass her English exam so I don't think she made it to Ireland.

April

Nothing much happened in April. Well there was the Tomb Sweeping Festival but since we don't celebrate it, the only impression I have of it is that it messed up our work schedules for a week. Gotta love the holiday schedules here.

Oh, our house buying saga began when our neighbor (there are three houses on each floor, we are in on the west side, this neighbor is the one in the middle house) decided they would sell their house and offered it to us for 200,000. We wanted it so that we could take out a wall and have a larger house. Their asking price was pretty high considering the house is about ten years old and so many new houses are being built for just a little more than that. We got them down to 190.000 and later the wife said she'd ask her husband if she could accept 180,000. (She was the one in charge of selling the house it seems.) She later came back and told us that her friends told her she should charge 220-230,000 for the house. Santiago told her to forget it.

A few months later they moved out and workers came in to renovate it. My father-in-law met the new owner one day and found out that they'd paid 220,000 for it. So now we have new neighbors. A young couple, not sure if they are married or not, not friendly and they can be quite noisy when their friends come over (and recently they've been fighting, a lot. So much that one night I was up til midnight cause it was that bad!). The other family had a 14 year old and the husband was only home once or twice a year, so it was pretty quiet, except for the girls daily piano practice session.

May-

Santiago and I had five days off due to International Labor Day, the third longest vacation of the year. Tour agencys put together various outings and we considered going on the one to the Beijing Zoo, but but we decided not to since there is little flexibility with a group and if we were to go on our own it would be super crowded because everyone travels.

About a week after the holiday we went up to the zoo for the day. We took the train up with the stroller, only to find that they do rent strollers at the zoo, but upon seeing babies with uncovered bottoms being taken out of them and thier less than sanitary washing process, all the hassle of taking the stroller seemed worth it. Nathaniel was a little more impressed with the zoo than on our previous trip there last November. Even though there were many other foreigners there he got tons of attention. There is a Dairy Queen nearby so we had blizzards too! That was quite possibly my favorite part of the day :)

January-February 2010

January-

The first half of the month was spent anxiously awaiting for Nathaniel's exit visa to arrive. Then when it finally did, we were suprised to see that there was a fee on it but we'd never been asked to pay. I was busy packing and finishing giving exams to my 200 some students. I had to give exams earlier than the Chinese teachers, but then I have to wait and wait until they open the website to input scores. Why it can't always be open and have the teachers able to input scores throughout the term, I'll never understand.

February-

In February the three of us went to Wisconsin. Santiago was there for 12 days, Nathaniel and I stayed for 24. We had a great time visiting some family and friends, but we mostly stayed put and hung out with my parents and siblings.

Santiago and I did go out to New York and tried to get to DC but got stuck in NYC due to snow storms. Nathaniel got to visit his first farm, library, Pizza Hut, chili dump and so many other things. Oh, and his first car seat experience. That did not go over well the first two days. He screamed from Chicago to Marengo where we stopped at McDonald's for a quick bite to eat and bathroom break (he wasn't keen on the airplane toilets, either). Then back in the carseat he screamed for another 20 minutes until he fell asleep. The second day I had to renew my liscense, deposit our money in the bank, make an eye appointment and a few other things. Each time I drug him into the store with me, explaining the car seat to him. By the fourth stop he was cool with it and never made a fuss again. He did tend to fall asleep on longer trips.

My brother took us to Chicago via Amtrack, complaining the whole way about how terrible the train was. We just laughed at him and told him as long as we could sit, no one was smoking, there was no garbage anywhere, we thought it was just wonderful. We had to go to the Chinese consulate to get a visa for Nathaniel but after much confusion and headache, we could only get him some Chinese document to let him travel. We hadn't gotten a paper from the local police saying that he gave up his citizenship (never mind that he has an American passport and SSN already!), so they still consider him Chinese. Then went to Navy Pier and to the IMAX to see Avatar.

Spent one Sunday afternoon with lots of friends who were able to stop by and visit with us for awhile. That was one of Nathaniel's few days ever without a nap and he did really well. Of course he fell asleep on the way home and slept all through the night!

Nathaniel was not too happy to be left with my parents while Santiago and I went to NY, but he survived. We stayed with a 60 year old through CouchSurfing.org. He was a neat guy with tons of knowledge that he was all too willing to share with us. But he saved us lots of time and money during our time in the big city. We went up in the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, Times Square, China Town and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The flights went way better than I hoped to imagine, especially coming back by myself with a toddler, three carry on bags, two checked suitcases and a stroller. Yes, I take full advantage of suitcase weight limits...gotta have cheese, bbq sauce and deoderant!

Merry Christmas!

Yes, I know it's a bit early, but if the VPN decides not to work for the next week or so, I won't be able to post on here. Plus we are going up to Beijing for Christmas and I won't have my computer. On the agenda for our trip to the big city is to add more pages to my passport (did you know that it costs $82 to do this??!!?? They add a tiny booklet of 26 pages to your passport. The good thing is that it's done in an hour and not 6-8 weeks for those who have it done in the USA.) Also buying cheese and cocoa powder, celebrating a friend's birthday on the 24th, and maybe visiting with another friend if she's around. I'll take Nathaniel up a few days early and Santiago will come up on the 24th. Then Christmas on the 25th! I haven't had an "American" Christmas since 2005, so this is very exciting.

I added some new photos to Snapfish for those of you who want to see them. Nathaniel's aunt and her son came for a few days last week and we celebrated my birthday one evening.

I hope you all have a Merry Christmas!

Family

Dots Brown Sky 5x7 folded card

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Nathaniel's New Look

I don't have photo just yet, but Nathaniel is now sporting a gauze bandage over his chin! On Sunday morning while I was teaching and he was at home playing, he fell while trying to climb off of a stool. We aren't sure what exactly he cut his chin on, though one of our plastic wash bowls is cracked badly, but he had to get 3 stitches and 4 shots. Luckily he was able to be treated at Santiago's hospital so the cost was minimal, but Nathaniel has a strong feeling to the doctor who treated him. "Bad aunt!" he says when you ask him who helped to make him better. Poor kid! But he's doing well and the stitches should come out early next week.

Photos

Okay so these two photos just took over ten minutes to upload...pictures may be sparse unless I can get my trusty assistant to upload them from the USA (that's you Mom!).

So the one picture is my new bookshelf. I've been wanting one for the last three years and finally we bought one. Spent about 2 hours looking around a giant furniture store to find it. Ironically it was the first one and the cheapest one we saw. It's nearly full now, I have a lot of books. Poor Santiago doesn't know how many are still at my moms! Nathaniel keeps his toys in one of the cupboards and I use one for fabric. Let's see how long I can limit my stash to that space.

And the second photo is obviously Nathaniel, playing in an old box while I was cleaning one day. He also loves to play in a large red pail that we have and Santiago will pick him up and swing him in it.