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This evening at the park I had a chat with some neighbors. I'm so thankful for people who have made the effort to learn English AND who are not to shy to use it. I visited with Mr. Florida and Ms. Nurse. I wish I knew their real names. They both told me, but I'm ashamed to admit that I don't remember them. I have a hard time remembering Chinese names. Shameful, I know.

Chris was with me this time, so we all four chatted in a mix of Chinese and English. Sometimes they would ask him how to say something in English and other times he would ask them how to say a certain word in Chinese. I find it funny the words that he doesn't know at times. For example, he had to look up how to say "dust the house", but he knows the words for specific types of flower blossoms and cranes (that comes from him studying classical literature.) Ms. Nurse has a son the age of Petey. I invited her and her son to come over on Saturday to play. As we were chatting, she asked me how big our home in America was. I'm sure she thought we lived in a huge home before we moved here, but the truth is that this apartment is a little bigger than our apartment in Arizona was. I couldn't really explain that to her, so I just told her we had two bathrooms back home :) We ended up staying out at the park much longer than we had planned. Zack and Petey found a kid who spoke some English and they played together for quite a while. The kid (his English name is Harry. Petey kept mistakenly calling him Potter.) made some grass wreaths for the kids to wear on their heads. They were tickled at such a novelty. Remember, we didn't have easy access to grass in Tucson. It reminded me of when I was a girl and would spend a lot of time and concentration on making dandelion chains.

After we finally rounded up the kids to head home, Mr. Florida asked us to stop by his home. He lives in our building. We all trooped into his house. His wife, who had no idea we were coming, showed no dismay at us bursting in. She just smiled and welcomed us warmly. He gave us a map of Nanjing on which he had marked the best markets in the city. He also pulled out his photo albums of his trip to America so we could look at all the pictures. It was neat to see what types of things they felt were worth photographing. For example, remember the pics I posted a few weeks ago of the Wal-Mart here? They had pics of Winn Dixie. One of the pictures was of his wife standing in the middle of the frozen food section. The reason they took the picture is because they thought it was so unique that they were the only people on the whole isle. In China, you will never find yourself alone on an isle in any store. There are always people around, wherever you go. While he showed his America pics to Chris, his wife pulled out her grandchildren pics to show me :) It was so cool, because she can't speak anymore English than I can speak Chinese. Yet we could both ooh- and ahh- over a beautiful baby and know exactly what we each other meant.

The boys are starting to stay up later and later. I suppose they are adapting to the Chinese schedule, as most kids here stay up late and take a nap during the day. I wonder if my kids will start napping? If only....

Two of Five

I was just getting ready for bed, with my mind made up that I wouldn't log on tonight. I mentioned to Chris that I was too tired to update my journal even though I really did want to. He said "You know you have to sign on and see what's going on in everyone's lives. You can't stand to be severed from the collective." *grin* he's right, of course. I must check in to see how the rest of the world is functioning.

So, today was such a great day! Julie came over to babysit and did an excellent job. Her hubby, Cameron, also came over towards the end. The boys loved him. Even tonight Petey said "Can we go to Cameron's house tomorrow?" I thought he was talking about a Cameron he knew back in AZ. It didn't even occur to me that he would remember Cameron's name, much less want to go hang out with him :) That's cool. She took the kids down to the playground and played limbo with them, which they loved too. I think it does wonders for both the boys and I to have some breathing room from each other. Being together all day, every day, it gets hard to always be patient and loving (it goes both ways.) They need the time off as much as I do.

While Julie watched the boys, Chris and I went to the city gate. He led a group field trip today. Initially it was only going to be his class (5 students) but when the other kids heard about it they decided to come to. It was so cool to see Chris standing in front of the group teaching them all about the city gate. It amazes me all the info he has in his brain that I don't know. I'm not sure if I'm explaining that right...I just sometimes assume that we always know the same things. Not so. He knows so much that I don't know, because he's studied for so long. I was very proud of him.

After the gate, the group walked over to the Confucian temple. We tried to hang around them initially, but they seemed to have no idea what they really wanted to do. I, on the other hand, knew they had live pet turtles for sale somewhere in the market and I really wanted to check it out. We finally ditched the group and took off on our own.

The pet market was so amazing. Turtles of every size, from the size of a quarter all the way up to your average turtle size. I even saw snapping turtles. Why would someone choose to have a pet snapping turtle? There were also lizards and snakes of all sizes and colors. The boys would have been going nuts there. And of course, the prices were so cheap. A few booths down, we found the mammals. Kittens, rabbits, chipmunks, pigs and puppies all for sale as pets. They sell pure bred puppies for about $100. Ohhh, so tempting. Dalmations, beagles, basset hounds, chihauhaus, sharpaas (ok, I have no idea how to spell all these dog names!) Petey's birthday is at the end of this month and he did ask for a puppy :) We couldn't help but wonder what sort of custom problems we'd have to go through to get the dog back home to the US. Yup, just what we need to make our life a tad bit more complicated....a dog....

Traffic. It is so bad here. Today I almost got run over by a moped. I was running out of the way of a bus and suddenly I noticed a moped coming straight at me. I froze like a deer in the headlights for just a split second. It's amazing how long those split seconds can seem. I took of running again and finally got out of the road. So very scary. I always try to cross the road when the locals cross. I figure I can trust them to cross when it's safe. Somehow this time I found myself still crossing the road when the traffic started coming. Like I said, scary.