Beijing night market

As promised, I'm going to start catching up on my Beijing trip posts. I thought I'd start with my favorite pics first: the night market. This is a street in Beijing that is famous for it's exotic small eats. Vendor after vendor are lined up, all willing to sell you anything from banana donuts (sooo yummy) to grasshopper-kabobs. Ironically, even the Chinese think most of the food offered there is strange and they were taking just as many pictures as we were. In this picture, you see starfish, snake (Chris is pointing at the snake), octupus tentacles, and sea mushrooms (that's what they vendor called them. They are the black shiny things.)

Behind the cut you'll find the pic of me eating the scorpion. I'm putting this warning here for you, risingpheenix!

( and now the real fun begins )

(no subject)

We've hired a new nanny and today was her first day. It went great! She has experience working with expat families. Before she began working for us, she had previously worked for a French family who had 3 children. I was really glad to hear that she'd already worked for both a foreign family as well as a family with more than just one kid. Her name is Mrs. Tzou, but I think we'll just all call her Ah-Yi (Chinese for Auntie and the usual term for nannies in China). She spent most of the day today cleaning. It was wonderful :) She did a great job too. I liked Chen, don't get me wrong. But she didn't use cleaners. I even saw her washing the dishes without soap a couple times. (After she'd leave, I'd re-wash the dishes. I know, I'm a wimp.) Mrs. Tzou not only used dish soap, but she was surprised and dismayed that we have no hot water in the kitchen (that problem should be remedied soon.)

She didn't do much nannying today, but that's ok as I was home all day long. She has to ride a shuttle out to where we live. I'm so thankful that she's willing to make the one hour each way commute. Connor wasn't too keen on interacting with her, but she tried really hard to get him to loosen up around her. She would scoop him up and twirl him around. He loved it, but of course he had to pretend that he didn't. As she was leaving for the day, she reached to hold him and say good-bye. He looked at me with skepticism and I assured him that it was fine. He conceded and let her pick him up. She promptly pretended like she was going to take him home and started walking out the door with him. He looked so panicked! After she put him down, I kept telling him it was just a joke. He must have forgiven her, because he blew her a kiss good-bye when she left.

So far, I love living out here. Yes, it takes an hour to get to Nanjing. Yet, I don't mind so much. The boys absolutely LOVE living out here. Zack has told me at least twice "Mom, thanks so much for moving us here. I'm glad we live in China now." Finally we live somewhere that they can roam and explore. Since we've lived here they've caught 3 praying mantises (manti?), 3 millipedes, 2 caterpillars, 2 grasshoppers and 1 mole cricket. That's just in four days. They love it. Everytime we go outside, they grab their "bug-catching" containers.

We have a lot of interesting neighbors. These are not our work-mates who live in our building, but the Chinese neighbors who live in the buildings next to us. When we first arrived, two women came running up to us to greet us. They were so excited and pleased to see us. Whenever we go outside, we always seem to have one or two neighbor ladies who come up to try and talk with the boys and I. Andy told me that several of the neighbor ladies have already taken a tour of his apartment :) Earlier today, as the boys were trying to catch their first millipede they just couldn't get it in the container. I tried to help them scoop it up, but I didn't want to actually touch the thing. One of the neighbor ladies watched us try and fail for a few minutes and then she walked over, picked it up and put it into the container for us. She gave us a big grin after that. I like her.

Another facet of living here is that the grounds outside are still under construction. There are piles of bricks (ha, I accidentally typed "pricks"), gravel and a pit of wet cement. Talk about a little boys paradise! Thankfully, the kids have left it alone thanks to the allure of bug hunting.

As I've been trying to type this, Chris has been trying to teach me Chinese. We get frustrated with each other on this subject. He thinks I'm not trying hard enough to learn it and I think I have too many other things demanding my attention (home school, kids, my own classes, just basic survival, etc.). We have spats about it often.