Nihao,
That is how you spell it but you really need the tones marked above the appropriate letters to have the exact word.....I can only get them if I cut and paste the word and I am too lazy.
Yesterday I went and played at the Elementary School library for the morning. He, John, the head of the ES library put me on computer right away doing something for him.....I didn't dare tell him of my virtual incompetence with all things electronic.....I survived and got the job done, yahoo for me....and John's teaching skills.
I was picked up from there by my friend Keary, we went out to lunch and one of the markets not too far from here. Actually very near where we go to church. We went to a noodle restaurant, my first one here. You get this huge bowl of noodles served in a broth of some sort, mine was supposed to be peanut butter but it was so mild as to not really taste like peanuts. You are given chopsticks to consume this meal........This is why you slurp, they are all drippy and you barely have a grip on them. Or, I barely have a grip on them, still not skilled in the use of chopsticks. I did manage to eat my lunch without major mishap. We asked for water and were given a liquid that looked like water but was sweetened and tasted like roses or flowers, neither one of us could actually drink more than a sip. She speaks Chinese, she has lived here 11 years, but we could never get another server to come so she could get plain water. After lunch we went into a market where you have to bargain.....not either one of ours favorite thing to do. We did better than some but probably not as good if we had been more aggressive. Practice, practice. I could even give him my offer in Chinese as I have learned most numbers...you count to 10 and then add a word to make it above that.......11 would be Shi yi......shi (10) and yi (1), 12 would be shi er, 20 would be er shi.....er (2) shi (10). You get the idea I hope.
We are getting this barbecue thing outback fixed up and the guys putting the bricks around it came while I was outside doing something.....they tried to talk to me......I could only say a little but I did understand him asking what I spoke so I told him Meiguo ren, again need tones, then he goes on again in Chinese like I might now understand.....so funny. I am getting to under stand more. Lessons are going well.
Love, fondly, sincerely,
Zaijian,
Ramona
Not necessarily the cats point of view.
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Good Day, Bad Day.
Just a little something I wanted to show you. I (Olivia) figured out for my mother how to post pictures.
See the difference?
China #5
Nihao,
Things keep going on around here....some good, some not so good.
We have had this moldy smell in the hall part of Olivia's room as well as increased humidity also her shower seemed to leak onto the bathroom floor. So...first they caulked the edge of the glass against the wall....no good, still leaked, then they decided the bottom of the shower needed re-grouting along it's perimeter.....no good, still leaked and now, as they have washed the excess, cement like caulk down the drain, the drain is barely functional....All weekend Olivia showered in our bathroom......her bedroom was not longer humid or smelly.....However, when the crew came on Monday to assess the drain they were also looking into the smell, humidity issue....they pulled up a floor board in the hall and it is all wet and moldy under there......Today they had to chip out the tile in the shower and replace the waterproof whatever under the shower.....when that is fixed they have to rip up the floor boards in the hall space of her room and replace the sub-floor and the finished floor........So fun, NOT. At least we have a guest room with a full bath she can move into until all that is done. These houses in the compound are all cement construction and they do not take very good care of them.... maintenance is non-existent....they just repair/patch in a half _____ manner.
Friends say that is not just here in our compound but all of them, so wonderful.
I had my first day working in the school store today. Items are not priced....just a list on the wall, makes it a bit challenging when you aren't even sure what the items are. Oh well, I guess I will learn. I have two co-workers. We will work together every other Tuesday. One is from Italy, one from Finland.....truly and international community at the school. We ended up walking across the street and having coffee together then going to the market where they showed me some Chinese products they have found that work well. And I shared a cab home with the one from Finland. They both live in our compound so now I have more friends in my neighborhood, Yipee!!!!! Cabs are very cheap here and they are like ants....tons of them. I usually walk to and from school but it was nice to have a lift as it had gotten quite warm.
We have has some glorious weather after those horrible days on Thursday and Friday. We got rain Saturday afternoon and evening through a good part of Sunday morning. Brought the air quality index down to 45, I think Olivia said that. Blue and clear....could see all the way to the mountains in the west. I got pictures so when I get it figured out I will show you the difference.....amazing...scary.
Mike was very happy to play hooky from work this morning to watch his Monday night football game. LIVE from Virginia Tech. (our Tuesday morning). I am not sure how it worked out, I left before it was over.
Olivia had her first swim team practice yesterday morning.....It nearly killed her as she is a bit out of shape and today she has very sore muscles. Lots of massaging going on here......That 6:27 bus was early!!
Enough for today, need to practice my Chinese so the teacher will be happy and I can communicate with the cabbie as well as Katja!
Love, fondly, sincerely,
Zaijian,
Ramona
Things keep going on around here....some good, some not so good.
We have had this moldy smell in the hall part of Olivia's room as well as increased humidity also her shower seemed to leak onto the bathroom floor. So...first they caulked the edge of the glass against the wall....no good, still leaked, then they decided the bottom of the shower needed re-grouting along it's perimeter.....no good, still leaked and now, as they have washed the excess, cement like caulk down the drain, the drain is barely functional....All weekend Olivia showered in our bathroom......her bedroom was not longer humid or smelly.....However, when the crew came on Monday to assess the drain they were also looking into the smell, humidity issue....they pulled up a floor board in the hall and it is all wet and moldy under there......Today they had to chip out the tile in the shower and replace the waterproof whatever under the shower.....when that is fixed they have to rip up the floor boards in the hall space of her room and replace the sub-floor and the finished floor........So fun, NOT. At least we have a guest room with a full bath she can move into until all that is done. These houses in the compound are all cement construction and they do not take very good care of them.... maintenance is non-existent....they just repair/patch in a half _____ manner.
Friends say that is not just here in our compound but all of them, so wonderful.
I had my first day working in the school store today. Items are not priced....just a list on the wall, makes it a bit challenging when you aren't even sure what the items are. Oh well, I guess I will learn. I have two co-workers. We will work together every other Tuesday. One is from Italy, one from Finland.....truly and international community at the school. We ended up walking across the street and having coffee together then going to the market where they showed me some Chinese products they have found that work well. And I shared a cab home with the one from Finland. They both live in our compound so now I have more friends in my neighborhood, Yipee!!!!! Cabs are very cheap here and they are like ants....tons of them. I usually walk to and from school but it was nice to have a lift as it had gotten quite warm.
We have has some glorious weather after those horrible days on Thursday and Friday. We got rain Saturday afternoon and evening through a good part of Sunday morning. Brought the air quality index down to 45, I think Olivia said that. Blue and clear....could see all the way to the mountains in the west. I got pictures so when I get it figured out I will show you the difference.....amazing...scary.
Mike was very happy to play hooky from work this morning to watch his Monday night football game. LIVE from Virginia Tech. (our Tuesday morning). I am not sure how it worked out, I left before it was over.
Olivia had her first swim team practice yesterday morning.....It nearly killed her as she is a bit out of shape and today she has very sore muscles. Lots of massaging going on here......That 6:27 bus was early!!
Enough for today, need to practice my Chinese so the teacher will be happy and I can communicate with the cabbie as well as Katja!
Love, fondly, sincerely,
Zaijian,
Ramona
Thursday, August 30, 2012
China #4
Hello and welcome to China letter #4,
We have this VPN (Virtual Private Network) now, currently it is on a trial basis but Mike says we will get it. It is the only way I will be able to blog from China, or do Facebook or look at any of my favorite blogs (Quiltville, Shakti Dove:) and some others. The great 'Fire Wall of China' is very strong.....I can't look at video clips anyone emails me and stuff like that. I also don't seem to be able to access my email when I have the VPN on.......things we have to work around/through......I may end up using another email provider if I can't get it to work but it isn't a huge issue so it can ride.
Today is a 350 on the air quality index, almost to hazardous! I have to take some pictures of good and bad days (got the bad) out the window for comparison and as soon as I can do it post them here.....Olivia says she will help her old mother learn the posting process.
It doesn't feel like I live in a huge city because we have trees and green out the front and back windows of the house. The government does a good job of beautifying the city. Flowers and trees are planted everywhere....there are even flower boxes on the railings of some of the expressways full of begonias, marigolds and flowers I don't know. Not sure how they water them but they must! All sorts of trees, roses everywhere too. Dust everywhere too!
I hired an Ayi this week. She comes in five days a week for 4 hours. She has very limited English but we are able to communicate. She cleans, does laundry and yesterday we walked to the market together and the vegetable shop. Many of the veggies are the same, just maybe a different variety and they seem to cost less than in the states. Of course there are many unfamiliar fruits and veggies too. We got a huge bag of veggies at the shop for about $7.00 US. I don't think I could have gotten that at home. Having help here is the norm....my main concern was to have someone in place when we travel......in SC we had friends come feed the kitties....here all our friends will travel when we travel as they want to get out of town when they can too. Everyone I spoke with said it would be hard to find an Ayi who would come just to feed the cats and not work for us. I may change her hours as I don't think I can keep her busy all the time......time will tell.
Olivia has tried out for swim team.and will begin practicing on Monday.....oh yea, practice is at 6:45 am three mornings and 7:00am on Saturdays. Really looking forward to making sure our teenager is up and on the go that early. At least they provide a bus, otherwise she would have to head out 30 minutes earlier to walk there.
We have restarted our Chinese lessons this week. A woman comes to our house two evenings a week for two hours. Since we haven't worked on it much since June we are almost at square one:( She is also having us work on learning characters.....so challenging, the hope is we will be able to recognize some basic words as time goes on. Our Ayi is also helping me and I teach her some English. Basic stuff related to house and home, food, etc.
We have found our fourth bihou lizard in the house. This one still lives here as Olivia was not able to catch it. They have all been babies, we don't know how they get in. Olivia takes them out to the tree in the back yard. I haven't been able to find out much about them, they appear to be a variety of Gecko.
Enough for now,
Zaijian
We have this VPN (Virtual Private Network) now, currently it is on a trial basis but Mike says we will get it. It is the only way I will be able to blog from China, or do Facebook or look at any of my favorite blogs (Quiltville, Shakti Dove:) and some others. The great 'Fire Wall of China' is very strong.....I can't look at video clips anyone emails me and stuff like that. I also don't seem to be able to access my email when I have the VPN on.......things we have to work around/through......I may end up using another email provider if I can't get it to work but it isn't a huge issue so it can ride.
Today is a 350 on the air quality index, almost to hazardous! I have to take some pictures of good and bad days (got the bad) out the window for comparison and as soon as I can do it post them here.....Olivia says she will help her old mother learn the posting process.
It doesn't feel like I live in a huge city because we have trees and green out the front and back windows of the house. The government does a good job of beautifying the city. Flowers and trees are planted everywhere....there are even flower boxes on the railings of some of the expressways full of begonias, marigolds and flowers I don't know. Not sure how they water them but they must! All sorts of trees, roses everywhere too. Dust everywhere too!
I hired an Ayi this week. She comes in five days a week for 4 hours. She has very limited English but we are able to communicate. She cleans, does laundry and yesterday we walked to the market together and the vegetable shop. Many of the veggies are the same, just maybe a different variety and they seem to cost less than in the states. Of course there are many unfamiliar fruits and veggies too. We got a huge bag of veggies at the shop for about $7.00 US. I don't think I could have gotten that at home. Having help here is the norm....my main concern was to have someone in place when we travel......in SC we had friends come feed the kitties....here all our friends will travel when we travel as they want to get out of town when they can too. Everyone I spoke with said it would be hard to find an Ayi who would come just to feed the cats and not work for us. I may change her hours as I don't think I can keep her busy all the time......time will tell.
Olivia has tried out for swim team.and will begin practicing on Monday.....oh yea, practice is at 6:45 am three mornings and 7:00am on Saturdays. Really looking forward to making sure our teenager is up and on the go that early. At least they provide a bus, otherwise she would have to head out 30 minutes earlier to walk there.
We have restarted our Chinese lessons this week. A woman comes to our house two evenings a week for two hours. Since we haven't worked on it much since June we are almost at square one:( She is also having us work on learning characters.....so challenging, the hope is we will be able to recognize some basic words as time goes on. Our Ayi is also helping me and I teach her some English. Basic stuff related to house and home, food, etc.
We have found our fourth bihou lizard in the house. This one still lives here as Olivia was not able to catch it. They have all been babies, we don't know how they get in. Olivia takes them out to the tree in the back yard. I haven't been able to find out much about them, they appear to be a variety of Gecko.
Enough for now,
Zaijian
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Almost time to go
As I sit and write this on our living room floor I am struck by the fact that this is probably the last Saturday I will sit in our living room. We have four more days of living in our home, then one night with friends and we fly out of Florence on Thursday morning at 7:00 am. Our passports came back a couple days ago, that was a process unto itself. They wanted so many additional documents from us and all the documents Mike had not yet gotten in China......finally done!
Packing was crazy...it has been done for nearly a month now. We had a great trip to Indiana to visit my sister and her family.....too short. I have been chief cook, bottle washer and head lawn girl since Mike left....I am not friends with the weed whacker yet, maybe after a few more uses.....Oh, that's right we leave in four days.....no time left to become friends. My to do list is nearly done, I am glad not to have to write 'yard work' on it again. Most of what is left to do cannot be done till the day before we go.
Our tenants have been moving stuff in for a couple weeks now...gives the cats something new to sniff since all our furniture is on a slow boat to China. I want to change the name of my blog.....anyone got any good ideas?
Olivia had friends over last night and she has gone home with one of them today to spend the night there. I am glad she has gotten together with them, it was challenging to find a day that worked for everyone. Another friend is coming from Columbia on Tuesday and she will see her too.
I have been locked out of facebook now due to some pop-up glitch so I cannot even post a goodbye at this point. I am going to have Olivia try to fix it so I might be able to right before we go. She is my own personal IT department. We don't know when we will have internet once we get there. We have to get a VPN........don't know what that is exactly but it is necessary if we want to get past the Great Fire Wall of China.
Sparkles has taken to sleeping in her carrier, little does she know what that carrier will mean to her in the coming days. We are pretty sure after the flight she will want nothing to do with it. The cats have paper work too and I have not heard but can only hope that has gone smoothly as I am running out of steam to handle anymore bumps in the road.
Our house has passed the air quality tests so we are set to move in. Our air shipment has passed through customs, yahoo! It will be delivered to the house on Thursday, the day Mike gets back from Switzerland....We get to China Friday afternoon.......Busy Crazy!!
Enough for today.
Zaijin
Packing was crazy...it has been done for nearly a month now. We had a great trip to Indiana to visit my sister and her family.....too short. I have been chief cook, bottle washer and head lawn girl since Mike left....I am not friends with the weed whacker yet, maybe after a few more uses.....Oh, that's right we leave in four days.....no time left to become friends. My to do list is nearly done, I am glad not to have to write 'yard work' on it again. Most of what is left to do cannot be done till the day before we go.
Our tenants have been moving stuff in for a couple weeks now...gives the cats something new to sniff since all our furniture is on a slow boat to China. I want to change the name of my blog.....anyone got any good ideas?
Olivia had friends over last night and she has gone home with one of them today to spend the night there. I am glad she has gotten together with them, it was challenging to find a day that worked for everyone. Another friend is coming from Columbia on Tuesday and she will see her too.
I have been locked out of facebook now due to some pop-up glitch so I cannot even post a goodbye at this point. I am going to have Olivia try to fix it so I might be able to right before we go. She is my own personal IT department. We don't know when we will have internet once we get there. We have to get a VPN........don't know what that is exactly but it is necessary if we want to get past the Great Fire Wall of China.
Sparkles has taken to sleeping in her carrier, little does she know what that carrier will mean to her in the coming days. We are pretty sure after the flight she will want nothing to do with it. The cats have paper work too and I have not heard but can only hope that has gone smoothly as I am running out of steam to handle anymore bumps in the road.
Our house has passed the air quality tests so we are set to move in. Our air shipment has passed through customs, yahoo! It will be delivered to the house on Thursday, the day Mike gets back from Switzerland....We get to China Friday afternoon.......Busy Crazy!!
Enough for today.
Zaijin
Monday, June 25, 2012
They gave me a two hour window
nǐhǎo,
This is it from this room.
It is highly unlikely that I will live in this house again:(
The packers gave me an estimated arrival of 8:30 to 10:30.....how do they run a business with such vagaries? Besides, as much as I dread the next three days, I really want to get on with them. Dragging it out does not help my stress level.
Perhaps then I might sleep past 5:30 in the morning. Speaking of sleeping, I apologize to anyone who has used our foldout couch in the past few years....Mom and Dad.......I slept on it last night, what am I thinking that I can do that for a month?? Tonight I think the mattress goes on the floor, we will try that. It didn't used to be like this but I guess everything sags with time, haha!
I am so sad about how little of my fabric and other supplies I think I can bring. It is hard to know what they call reasonable amounts....The things I have selected look like such a pitiful amount.....I will have to come back here as often as possible to pick up more!
Mike is going to look at another house today or tomorrow...hard to be sure as they are going to bed as we get up. They have used the day we are just starting. He thinks this will be the better choice. I trust him to get the right one. My bedroom will be on the third floor. My aching knee! I never even came house hunting when we moved back to Florence 6 years ago. The town is small and I knew the location of the neighborhoods he would look in, he did good!
Enough of this. I have a bit more to organize today. I think I did half the work for the movers already. Maybe not, I don't lift furniture anymore:)
zàijiàn!
This is it from this room.
It is highly unlikely that I will live in this house again:(
The packers gave me an estimated arrival of 8:30 to 10:30.....how do they run a business with such vagaries? Besides, as much as I dread the next three days, I really want to get on with them. Dragging it out does not help my stress level.
Perhaps then I might sleep past 5:30 in the morning. Speaking of sleeping, I apologize to anyone who has used our foldout couch in the past few years....Mom and Dad.......I slept on it last night, what am I thinking that I can do that for a month?? Tonight I think the mattress goes on the floor, we will try that. It didn't used to be like this but I guess everything sags with time, haha!
I am so sad about how little of my fabric and other supplies I think I can bring. It is hard to know what they call reasonable amounts....The things I have selected look like such a pitiful amount.....I will have to come back here as often as possible to pick up more!
Mike is going to look at another house today or tomorrow...hard to be sure as they are going to bed as we get up. They have used the day we are just starting. He thinks this will be the better choice. I trust him to get the right one. My bedroom will be on the third floor. My aching knee! I never even came house hunting when we moved back to Florence 6 years ago. The town is small and I knew the location of the neighborhoods he would look in, he did good!
Enough of this. I have a bit more to organize today. I think I did half the work for the movers already. Maybe not, I don't lift furniture anymore:)
zàijiàn!
Friday, June 22, 2012
Pack Day is coming Fast!
Long time no post.
Mike left for China this past Sunday:(
The past month has mostly been spent sorting through the accumulation of our lives. We have purged and purged. I just don't want to come home to tons of stuff that should have been taken care of long ago, ie. if we stay in China five years.
The packers are coming Monday morning, as of this post they have not told me exactly what time. I don't expect it to be the crack of dawn as they are coming from the beach and that takes about an hour and a half. (Of course, I scheduled Olivia to have an eye Dr. appointment at 9:00 Monday morning...that was what they had available. Thank goodness for friends, Martha is coming to my rescue and can take her.) I am trying to figure out what to put in the air shipment....this stuff will arrive first and may be all we have the first month in the house. A box approximately 54" x 54" x 56" , or some such size. These have to be practical items like dishes, blankets, personal items, and a few fun things like books to read and puzzles to do. And of course a bit of sewing. I may include my sewing machine...less time in transit to get injured. And a way to keep my sanity.
I have been loading up my Kindle like crazy with free books. I figure if I don't like it after the first chapter I can go on to the next. I will read most anything except all these vampire things that are out now a days. Not much in the way of a library with English language books in Beijing. They do have an English bookstore though.
And, speaking of our house....Mike went house hunting his first full day in Beijing. He saw nine houses and narrowed it down to 3. One has a giant bowl for the Master bath tub...looks pretty funky! When I figure out how to do pictures......
Then another house became available the next day so he will look at that next week. He thinks that will be the one as the location in the compound is better.
This is a holiday weekend for China so Mike is having a four day weekend.......Not bad for a first week on the job.....I don't think he knew it when he decided on his start date.
Enough to let you know we are still alive and kicking.
Olivia and I leave here on the 26th of July.
Back to organizing. I am so over organizing.......
Mike left for China this past Sunday:(
The past month has mostly been spent sorting through the accumulation of our lives. We have purged and purged. I just don't want to come home to tons of stuff that should have been taken care of long ago, ie. if we stay in China five years.
The packers are coming Monday morning, as of this post they have not told me exactly what time. I don't expect it to be the crack of dawn as they are coming from the beach and that takes about an hour and a half. (Of course, I scheduled Olivia to have an eye Dr. appointment at 9:00 Monday morning...that was what they had available. Thank goodness for friends, Martha is coming to my rescue and can take her.) I am trying to figure out what to put in the air shipment....this stuff will arrive first and may be all we have the first month in the house. A box approximately 54" x 54" x 56" , or some such size. These have to be practical items like dishes, blankets, personal items, and a few fun things like books to read and puzzles to do. And of course a bit of sewing. I may include my sewing machine...less time in transit to get injured. And a way to keep my sanity.
I have been loading up my Kindle like crazy with free books. I figure if I don't like it after the first chapter I can go on to the next. I will read most anything except all these vampire things that are out now a days. Not much in the way of a library with English language books in Beijing. They do have an English bookstore though.
And, speaking of our house....Mike went house hunting his first full day in Beijing. He saw nine houses and narrowed it down to 3. One has a giant bowl for the Master bath tub...looks pretty funky! When I figure out how to do pictures......
Then another house became available the next day so he will look at that next week. He thinks that will be the one as the location in the compound is better.
This is a holiday weekend for China so Mike is having a four day weekend.......Not bad for a first week on the job.....I don't think he knew it when he decided on his start date.
Enough to let you know we are still alive and kicking.
Olivia and I leave here on the 26th of July.
Back to organizing. I am so over organizing.......
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