The Tomorrow after Tomorrow

We tried to go to our neighborhood post office to pick up a package (thanks Coco!) yesterday, and it was closed, in the middle of the day on a Friday, with a sign taped to the door. I wasn't the only one surprised by this, and many people were crowding around to read the sign. Of course I might have been the only one who had no idea what it said. Our driver got out to offer his help and read the sign and I guess didn't know how to explain it in English to me, so he simply said, "maybe tomorrow?" And then added "or the tomorrow after tomorrow." While not grammatically correct, it struck me as a beautiful turn of phrase. Maybe we should start using it.

Easter Egg Hunt

Found all the eggs (and the chocolates)!

Found one!

There it is!

Jello-Dyed Easter Eggs

I wasn't really planning on doing eggs this year, as obviously Easter isn't really celebrated in China, and I didn't think Amelia knew anything about it. But when we bought some regular old eggs at the store and they happened to come in a small plastic basket, she said "We can use that basket for our Easter eggs!" I don't know where she learned about Easter from, or if it was just coincidence that she said this 2 days before Easter, but I took it as a sign that we should color some eggs. Next problem, of course there are no egg dying kits and I also couldn't find food coloring, so what to dye the eggs with? I weighed some options and ended up going for...Jello! It was relatively cheap, colored the eggs well, and Amelia and I had a lot of fun decorating them. They ended up rather sticky, but it turns out that washed off and still left all of the color, so a successful venture after all. The Easter bunny hid the eggs and some chocolates in the yard, and both kids had a great time finding them, in fact so much fun that we have been playing Easter bunny all week and hiding all kinds of things in the house and yard. 

In case you were wondering, the bandage on Amelia's chin was a little too much twirling in the shallow end of the baby pool. Healing nicely now, and after the first day she didn't seem to notice it too much.

No match for an eager 3-year old

Boxes of Fun

We received word recently that our container that left our house in Aveiro on February 29th and started it's long journey around the world a few days later, was held up in Spain and waited out nearly the entire month of March there. So what we thought would be 6-8 weeks of waiting is already stretching longer. The current estimate is arrival in China the first week of May, followed by 7-10 business days to clear customs, puts us at about May 15th for the earliest possible arrival, though I think the smart money is even later. Luckily our house is semi-furnished, so this time around we have beds, sofas, and a dining room table. Plus our air-shipment arrived with a couple of boxes each of kitchen supplies, clothes, toys, and a few other miscellaneous essentials. However, after a month the kids are already getting a little bored of the few toys we have on hand, so we had to create something to bridge the gap until the rest arrives. So, those boxes from our air-shipment are now doing double duty and keeping the kids entertained. 

Baking up a Storm

 A New Home for the Dolls

4-wheeling!

Once we made the Doll's House, we had to go bigger!

We've only got one left though, any ideas? 

No Foolin'

In what I hope to be the first of many installments of interesting and amusing signs we see during our stay in China. Here is a good one from our walk yesterday:

Ooops, forgot a very important word here...what could it be?

And a little family photo. Currently Spring is in full force with trees in bloom everywhere you look.

Amelia is still not fond of everyone wanting to take her picture, however, when we saw a wedding couple taking photos in the park and they asked Amelia to be in one, she could not say no, after all she was going to get her picture taken with a bride, a BRIDE! And she had flowers, and a tiara, and PINK SHOES, and did we mention that Amelia is a little obsessed with brides and weddings at the moment? 

Time Change

Adjusting to our new time zone happened fairly quickly for all of us, but now I am working on adjusting to the cultural differences in how time and schedules are kept. In Portugal it was a well known fact in our household that our German friends would always be right on time, and right on time to our Portuguese friends was 20-30 minutes late (or even more). Dan reported that was also normal in work situations. I seemed to adapt pretty fluently to the Portuguese schedule, though having two small children to get out of the house contributed significantly to our never actually being on time to anything. Here in China it seems to run in the opposite direction. If someone is scheduled to show up at our house at noon, they are always there by 11:45am. In addition to getting the kids ready we also are suffering from the phenomenon of it always taking twice as long to drive somewhere as it does to drive home. Hopefully that will change over time as our driver learns the location of the places that we generally want to go. Once Amelia actually starts school next week I will have an actual schedule to keep in the morning and we will need to get out the door on time, so I guess we better adjust to that time change as well. After 4.5 years of Portuguese time, I think that will be a harder than changing time zones.

Paparazzi

View of the City

Flowering Trees

View in the Park

One thing Amelia really doesn't like about China is all of the attention she gets for being a cute, blond, little girl. Yesterday we took our first real family outing and went to XuanWuhu Park, a beautiful park on the islands of the big lake right next to downtown. There were tons of other people there since the weather was great and it was a Saturday (and, um, it's China), and I think the children had their picture taken at least 100 times (we still don't know what they do with these photos). Tristan of course doesn't understand or mind, but Amelia does not enjoy it, and it happens daily, even when we go to the grocery store. I guess it gives us a taste of what it must be like to be famous, and I must admit I do not enjoy having to try to protect them from that, and to explain to people in a language I don't speak that I won't force my daughter to get her picture taken for the sake of a stranger who is the 20th (or 50th) person that day to try to do so. If she wants to cover her face with her hat that is just fine with me. An ice cream cone was able to diffuse her anger, but unfortunately she will have to develop a thicker skin over the next few years here. Luckily she still seemed OK smiling when I held the camera.

Preparing for the Onslaught

Still Smiling for Mommy

Language Barrier

You would think I was talking about the one that exists between our family and nearly everyone around us, but really it is the one inside our house that I am struggling with lately. Tristan seems to have had a word explosion in the few weeks since our arrival, is repeating everything, and is starting to string two words together. However, we still run into the problem where one word that sounds the same to us, actually means four or five different things to him. So "do-do" apparently is helicopter, cracker, tractor, and 1 or 2 other things that I forget, and if I guess wrong the shriek that follows is usually pretty eardrum shattering. At least none of the Chinese people we have met have done that to me yet.