The Sonnichsens

Joe May Silly Song

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 05:48:55 GMT

These Robeez Were Made for Walking

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 06:39:03 GMT

We're proud to announce that our little Anna started walking this last Wednesday (March 14). I was talking on the phone with my mom and Anna was standing next to me. Suddenly she turned and walked over to the bookcase, almost as if she didn't even realize what she was doing. It was fun to share the moment with my mom on the phone and also with Livi and Gabe who were watching from the top bunk of the bunkbed.

The main reason I'm blogging about this is because I'm now going to attempt to embed a video onto our site for the very first time, and the video will be... what else?...

...but Anna taking some steps. Hope you can view it, and if you can, enjoy!

And since that seemed to work, here's a little movie of Anna climbing up the ladder to Olivia's bed. You can also consider this video a prayer request against sleepless nights of worry for Grandma Norma Sonnichsen in Prosser, Wa. who will now be concerned about Anna falling off the ladder onto her head.

Actually, there is really very little need to worry. Anna was bribed during the making this movie. I put a My Little Pony on a high rung of the ladder. She doesn't climb unless she has something up there that she wants.... yet. And if she does start climbing up there at random times, I can easily put away the ladder. Thankfully it's detachable. So, rest assured that Anna is safe from herself. I just wanted to document the determination of our crazy little daughter.

The Quest

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 12:34:20 GMT

I admit I was worried when we left the house. The adrenaline really kicked in when we made it to the airport and hauled all our luggage inside and I said, "Okay, I'll go look for the ticketing office." I hurried upstairs and faced a solid-looking double door, an intercom and an enormous wall-mounted listing of all the airlines and their corresponding office numbers. I finally found Egypt Air and typed in the combination. Ring... Ring... Ring... No answer.

My brain turned over with a flop, like an engine having trouble. What am I supposed to do now?

I started to head back downstairs, but then saw a convoy of uniformed men heading toward the menacing double doors. They opened them without typing a combination and went in. I ducked in after them, asking one of them on my way ... "I need to buy an infant ticket, but no one's answering the phone." He looked evasively at me, and then sighed and looked at the chart of airline offices posted on the hallway wall. I found Egypt Air before he did and pointed to it. "This is the one I need to go to, but no one answered."

The uniformed man shrugged his shoulders and looked helplessly at his colleagues. They were trying to help another passenger with luggage in tow find United Airlines. The other passenger spoke English so I tried to help him get his point across to the men in uniform. They finally pointed vaguely down the second hallway and moved off by themselves. The man with the luggage and I looked at each other and started after them.

The airline offices at the Beijing Airport are set in a maze. There are two very long hallways running parrallel to one another. And when I say Long hallways, I mean Long hallways. I wouldn't be surprised if they ran the length of the entire airport. I headed toward the second long hallway, hoping to find a sign pointing me to the Egypt Air office. I couldn't find any group of numbers posted above either one of the hallways in either direction that gave an indication as to where my destination was located. The United passenger and I wandered up and down the second long hallway for ten minutes. Sometimes we jogged to hurry it up a little bit. Anna's little head bobbed in the baby carrier on my front. The numbers didn't seem to be leading me anywhere towards the Egypt Air office so I headed back, leaving the United passenger to fend for himself.

I asked a security guard at a small desk where the office was. I gave him the number from the table posted on the wall, but he just shrugged and said he didn't know.

I headed for the first hallway and started down one direction, running to save time. No office.

I started down the same hallway in the other direction. I came to the end of it where it met up with another hallway, and finally I saw a sign pointing me to a group of offices that should contain the Egypt Air office.

I jogged down the corridor until I finally came to it. The door was closed. There were no lights on.

I should have known, I thought drearily. No one answered the intercom, so I should have known there would be no one in the office. I knocked just to be sure, and then, disheartened, headed back down the hallway to the exit. I asked a few women in purple and green uniforms congregating in some sort of break room if they knew what I should do. "I need to buy an infant ticket and I was told to come to airline office, but no one is there..." They smiled and cooed at Anna and then told me that I would need to ask downstairs. So, half an hour after I had begun my search, I headed back to Aaron and the big kids with just a big waste-of-time failure and a lot of good exercise under my belt.

"Well that was pointless," I told him. "I guess we just need to get in there and hope that they can sell us a ticket at the check-in counter."

Aaron went to get some Kentucky Fried Chicken for our starving children, and then we headed through customs and tackled the check-in counter. While we were standing in line, I urged the kids to pray with me, hoping that their childlike faith would make it possible for us to get on the airplane that evening. Aaron tried to feed me a spicy chicken wrap but I wasn't feeling very hungry. We didn't have very much time to check in and we still didn't have an infant ticket, thanks to my ingenious idea of ordering tickets through an online ticketing site that doesn't issue infant tickets. "Contact the airline directly" they had told me. But I hadn't been able to find an office listed in China. There was one listed in Hong Kong, but when we tried the number it was bogus. Two days before our trip my friend had given me the office numbers for Egypt Air (she had had no problem finding the Beijing office listing online -- go figure!) and I had called to reserve a ticket and was told to come pick it up at the airport office, and you already know how successful that attempt was!

Just as I was nearing my twentieth time around our baggage cart, pacing, I heard a voice say in English, "I'll just go up to the office and then..."

I looked up to see a well dressed Egyptian man with a clipboard at a nearby counter speaking with one of his associates.

"Did he say he was going up to the office?" I whispered to Aaron.

"Yes," said Aaron. "Go talk to him."

I smiled widely and headed over to the distinguished looking gentleman. He listened to my problem and said, "Yes, I can issue a ticket, but you should have come earlier. The office is closed now."

"I couldn't come any earlier and I told the people on the phone…” I began, but then decided to drop it, because I was asking a big favor of this man, and I could tell my excuses were falling on deaf ears. "I'm sorry," I said.

"I will meet you up at the office in a few minutes. Do you already know the way?"

Good! So my fruitless jog up and down those long, white hallways feeling like I was trapped in some sort of stressed-out nightmare, was not completely in vain. "Yes, I know the way," I replied.

He headed off in a different direction, while I got Anna's and my passport from Aaron and headed through customs again; up the stairs, through the imposing double doors (which were just a sham because they weren't locked) and down the seemingly endless string of hallways. I almost beat the gentleman and his friend to the office. (They had come the non-secure route, I suppose) and waited patiently at a polite distance for him to unlock the office and turn on the lights. He welcomed me in and had me sit down. When I sat down, Anna got cranky. She likes to be on the move. She liked the jogging; she didn't like the sitting. So, I stood up.

"Infant ticket? To Bangkok?" He pulled out a stack of paper ticket forms and began writing out a ticket for us. The process seemed painstaking for me as I tried to keep Anna, who was fed up of standing around in that little office, from screaming in the good man's ear. I couldn't help but notice a Muslim prayer site up on the screen of his computer giving directions on how to figure out prayer times when you are in a country where the prayers are not broadcast from a loudspeaker on the pinnacle of the local mosque. He spoke from time to time to his friend or colleague in Egyptian. I found it beautiful to listen to. I was so grateful I kept saying, "Thank you, thank you. I'm so embarrassed."

He returned my thanks with a wave of his hand.

He and the man had a hard time figuring how much they should charge me for the ticket. They had an equation in front of them that helped them to calculate an infant fare, but there was some problem with the tax. The minutes ticked by as he called people on his cell phone. Anna shrieked and complained. I anxiously looked at my watch. We had less than an hour until take off.

Finally the paper ticket was issued. He told me how much we owed him, which was about 3 times the price of what the woman on the phone had told me. But I wasn't about to argue. I was just glad to be going to Thailand that night! I didn't have enough money on me to pay for the ticket, so he agreed to meet me downstairs where Aaron was with our money.

I headed down the long hallway, filled out my customs form again and hurried down to the check-in counter, Anna happily shrieking all the way with the excitement of moving again. We finally checked in and went through Chinese immigration -- a long line -- and barely made it onto our airplane before they closed the doors.

It was dark outside. The passengers were louder and more excited than any passengers on any flight I have ever been on before. They were a rowdy bunch, mostly Chinese, with some Middle Easterners mixed in. The plane was heading to Cairo after a short stop in Bangkok, we discovered. We couldn't account for the restlessness of the other passengers. Everyone was loud and wiggling like loose teeth.

We sat through the video introduction to the aircraft, giggling behind our hands at the cartoon character used to show basic airline safety tips, such as how to fasten a seatbelt and inflate a life vest. The character in the video was a portly, Arab gentleman with large jowls, sporting a generous moustache and large, squareish tinted glasses. He bore a startling resemblance to a former infamous world-leader who has since been executed.

Despite the rough beginning, our flight to Thailand proceeded without any hitches. We reached our hotel at 2 a.m., precisely when I had estimated our arrival. Amazingly, our children were so wide awake getting off the plane and getting through customs and to the hotel that they had a hard time falling back asleep once we were all in bed... But we had two carefree weeks to recover from that strange phenomenon. Ironically, we had been praying that we wouldn't be carrying three sleeping children and all our luggage through the airport in the middle of the night, and God apparently answered our prayer all the way into our hotel room... and then some. We had to turn around and pray that our children would go to sleep at the end of it!

The rest of our vacation is another story for another time...

Merry Christmas, Tianjin!

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 08:34:36 GMT

I have a confession to make: my house is a mess; there are dishes piled up waiting to be washed; I’m way behind on laundry; I haven’t even thought about what to cook for dinner tonight. And yet, as I stand in my living room looking around at the toy-strewn floor, hearing the churn churn of the washing machine as I try to wash a couple loads, I feel a strange peace. Maybe it’s because I know that my time lately has been better spent than keeping a pristine house. Maybe it’s because my heart is full to bursting with blessings during this Christmas season.

Last night was surprisingly one of the highlights of my life. We left Gabe and Olivia with our good friend Patti, hopped on board a bus bound for the Shi Da, Tianjin’s teachers college, and went to a Christmas party for three hundred AA English Club students. There were lots of us there from our team, to help facilitate conversations about western traditions, to teach the students how to make Christmas cards, to sing songs and carols with them. But our part was to perform a nativity drama. I was playing Mary, Aaron, Joseph, and Anna, Baby Jesus.

At a little past six, we put on our costumes and made ready. Anna was wearing white tights and a white long sleeved onesie. I had a scratchy white towel to wrap her in. The party was divided into three large classrooms, so we were planning to perform the play three times. We entered the first classroom, where Mary listened to the angel’s message and submitted to God’s will, told Joseph of her pregnancy and feared his rejection of her. The class gasped and cheered when Joseph accepted Mary to be his wife. They set out on the long journey to Bethlehem, and arrived in the town exhausted, only to find that there was no place to stay. A stable would have to suffice. Then the narrator announced the birth of Jesus and in came someone carrying little Anna, who was holding her sign that read “Jesus” in English and Chinese. She was so happy to see me that her face lit up with a big smile, and the students laughed and applauded when they saw her. I took Anna in my arms and she just lay there cooing and gurgling, sucking her thumb. When the shepherds and wisemen came in to visit, she held out her little chubby hands to them and laughed and giggled. She was like the little Jesus in a Raphaelite fresco. And the miracle is that she performed perfectly all three times!

As we were getting ready to leave for the party that evening I had told Patti that I might have to use a doll just incase our real baby Jesus was too fussy to be used. After all, “the little ############, no crying he makes” (not biblical, but still, expected). Patti said to me, “You just watch. She’ll be a perfect baby. All the babies that play Baby Jesus always are. It just works that way.” Well, she was right.

I don’t know what it was about doing that drama for these enthusiastic English students that filled me up with so much excitement today. I guess it was the joy and the wonder they had in the story. It wasn’t just the same old thing they had heard every Christmas. For most of them, this was the first time they had heard the Christmas story. It was all new, amazing, a reason to gasp and cheer and applaud. So, thank you Lord God, for making a dumb little play that we hardly rehearsed into something magical and meaningful, something that gives a hope and a future to these students, who are all lost in a blur of faces on this huge, impersonal campus. In a few years, the campus that we visited will be a thriving university city. One hundred thousand students will attend school there. “This little light of mine…”

But the story doesn’t end there. This morning I had the privilege of going with my friend Megan to the Tianjin Orphanage to bring home her new foster daughter, Rose. Little Rose’s story is a tragic one, and yet, even though I want to cry every time I think about her, there’s still so much hope in trusting God to work all things together for good.

Rose was born with spina bifida and came to the orphanage as a newborn baby. Although I don’t have a lot of details about her early life, I know that while she was still a relatively tiny baby, she went to live with an older British lady who was living in Tianjin. There was an older boy with mental retardation also being fostered by this woman. Rose had successful surgery for her spina bifida and is able to walk and use the bathroom with no problem. She lived with this British woman until a few weeks ago when the foster mother abruptly had to return to England. Rose and her older brother were returned to the orphanage. When I went to the orphanage last week, I asked about Rose and heard that she was crying every day, that she wasn’t eating, and because she speaks only English, the ayis couldn’t understand what she was saying. My heart was so heavy when I went home thinking about this little girl’s situation. It isn’t nice to be abandoned twice before you’re even five years old.

My friend Megan told me a few days after my visit to the orphanage that she and her husband wanted to foster care for Rose until she is adopted. What an amazing answer to our prayers! I was so happy when Megan said I could go with her to the orphanage to meet Rose. This little girl had been so often on my heart and mind in the few weeks since I had found out about her situation. We had so many uncertainties as we headed to the orphanage today. Neither of us had met Rose and we weren’t sure how she was dealing with the trauma of her abandonment. When we got to the orphanage, Rose was in a room with other mildly disabled children her own age. She was making little dumplings and steamed buns out of play dough. I was stunned by what a beautiful little girl she is. She has bright black eyes and perfect, delicate features. She was taciturn at first. Megan played with her for awhile and then we went to sign the foster care papers. A little later they brought Rose to the office all dressed in a little blue coat with black trim and a large fuzzy black hat. We took her upstairs to visit her brother and say goodbye, but neither of them reacted to the other at all. Rose would hardly even look at him. It broke our hearts.

We got into a taxi with her later on, and Rose just stared out the window. The first sign of life was when she saw a McDonalds and told us, “I want to go to McDonalds.” “No problem!” Megan and I promptly responded. By the end of our McDonalds trip, little Rose had started to come out of her shell. She and Gabe were chasing each other and laughing. She was tickling Anna. She was jumping and shrieking as she walked down the road. Her big smile was balm to our hearts.

I know it will still be a long road for little Rose. She’s going to have a lot of issues to deal with as she gets older, and there will still be some valleys ahead as she faces adoption and going to yet another family. But at least now she is in a place where someone can help her through the transitions. She’ll have Mama Megan and Baba Mark to tickle her and cuddle her when she’s ready. And she’ll have a whole community of us eager to be her aunties and uncles, not to mention a whole brood of English-speaking children to interact with.

When I came home after our morning at the orphanage and McDonalds, I looked around my messy house with the dishes piled up and toys from yesterday’s play still scattered on the floor. Usually it would have bothered me a lot that my house was such a wreck, but today I knew all that stuff would get done, eventually. For now, I’ll read a book to my three year old who won’t stay three forever, and give thanks during this Christmas season for the reality of His story in our lives.

And finally, a little video from Olivia's Sunday School Christmas performance...

Perfectly Happy

Wed, 23 Aug 2006 06:00:13 GMT

I always keep a gauge on my emotions so that when I’m feeling “perfectly happy” I can take a mental photograph of the moment to store in my brain. Some past “perfectly happy” episodes include sitting on a rock next to Perfect Pool on Lantau Island in Hong Kong when I was a teenager; wandering around the beautiful gardens of the Columbia Gorge Hotel and looking out at the beautiful river on the evening when my husband and I got engaged; gazing at a peacefully sleeping infant; riding a bike down a Chinese street on a perfect fall day with the wind in my hair; and exploring the trails between rivers, waterfalls and evergreen trees in Camas, WA. I like to store up all these perfectly happy moments so that when I have a not so perfectly happy moment, or a downright difficult moment, I can caste my mind back and remember something truly beautiful.

During our time in Prosser we took several trips over to the Westside. Most of these were for appointments for Olivia at Shriners hospital where she was scheduled for surgery on July 14. We had some preliminary appointments with the surgeons, as well as hearing tests and a meeting with the speech pathologist before the surgery. On that first trip we had the opportunity to spend a couple nights at Canon Beach on the Oregon Coast in between appointments in Portland. Driving to Canon Beach was a “perfectly happy” time. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such beautiful country: little farms tucked among rolling hills interspersed with towering pines. In the forests, the trunks of the trees were thick and the slopes were covered in large, gorgeous ferns. We were listening to a Nickel Creek CD as we drove, and the two older kids were happy and chattering in their carseats.

The conversation from the backseat went something like this:

Amy: Kids, let’s look for yellow signs on the side of the road. When you see a yellow sign, tell me what you think it means.

Olivia: There’s a yellow sign! It has a deer on it. It means “Watch out for the deer.”

Olivia: (after seeing a sign with a wine glass on it, warning that you should not drink and drive) That sign means don’t drop a glass in the road because the deer could step on it.

Olivia: (after seeing a sign with a fire truck on it, warning that a fire station was ahead) This sign means if a person drops a glass in the road and the deer steps on it, the fire engine can come and help the deer.

Amid all this hilarious preschool reasoning and precious chatter, I couldn’t help feeling how blessed I was; and, as cheesy as it sounds, it occurred to me that I need to treasure moments like this, and count my blessings, and appreciate every day I have with my family, because time really does fly a little too fast sometimes. I thought so as I looked back at my little children in the back seat, at my tiny baby sleeping, and over at my husband to whom I’ve been so happily married for seven years. My heart felt like overflowing.

We drove on to Canon Beach and spent a wonderful couple of days at the Ecola Inn with my parents-in-law. The boutiques in Canon Beach are so charming; it’s just fun to buy a waffle cone filled with some sort of fudgy ice cream and to stroll down a street lined with perfectly manicured flower beds, with the smell of good food wafting out of the quaint little restaurants and sidewalk cafes. Gabe and Olivia wanted to spend all their waking hours at the toy stores, while Norma and I scavenged the boutiques for bargains and beautiful things. The first night we got to watch the sun setting over the pacific, with the gulls rising on the wind and calling to each other over the surf.

Back in Prosser, another place where it’s easy to be perfectly happy, we enjoyed Grandma and Grandpa’s beautiful backyard. Gabe helped Grandpa Yeye “dig in the dirt” -- Grandpa even bought him his own little rake – as Grandpa was busy laying down some stonework in between some newly devised flowerbeds. Anna lay in the shade of the big tree on a blanket, watching, fascinated, the green leaves rustling against the brilliant blue sky. Olivia, meanwhile, spent a lot of her time soaking up the rays while splashing in the swimming pool with her daddy. Our lazy days in Prosser were also characterized by walks after dinner in “the cool of the day”. Grandma NaiNai bought a wagon at Costco, and Gabe and Olivia loved to be pulled around town in it. We saw a lot of Prosser’s cat population on our walks; learned the history of many of the houses that we passed – who had once lived there, who had considered living there, and so on; and just enjoyed the trees that gave shade and the friendliness of the people, who all said “hello”.

And now it’s just a matter of remembering these times and keeping them like a bookmark in my brain, so that when all three of my children are wailing for me at once, the Sister’s Restaurant won’t deliver, and my pet hermit crabs are all dying and/or escaping and/or eating each other, I can call to mind those peaceful times when the adults outnumbered the children and everyone was happy. I can take heart, knowing that it may not be that long before I’ll be waking up to another perfectly happy moment.

Travel Mercies

Wed, 23 Aug 2006 05:20:53 GMT

We began our vacation with a short-by-comparison, three-hour plane flight to Hong Kong. Ahhh - Hong Kong. Even when it's 90 degrees with 95% humidity, we always love going to Hong Kong. It took us absolutely forever to get through customs and immigration, thanks to emergency potty breaks and a miscommunication about which travel documents we had to fill out, but finally we emerged to find my parents waiting patiently for us. Before we could even leave the striped "no waiting" zone, my dad produced a package of m n' m's from his pocket and was bribing our young children: "Look what Grandpa has for you!"

While in Hong Kong, we visited Disneyland. There was a rainstorm warning and it was the day before we were flying out to the U.S., but we threw caution to the wind and went anyway. While walking to the park entrance from the bus station, we were caught in a torrential downpour that almost made us turn around and go home. But we persevered, finding shelter while we waited in line to buy our tickets. As it turned out, it was a great day to visit the park because it was not crowded at all. My mom and I rode Space Mountain twice in a row because we could basically walk onto the ride without a wait. We even got to ride Hong Kong Disney's most popular ride -- Winnie the Pooh -- and only had to wait for 10 minutes. (When we went at Christmas the wait time for Pooh and his friends was over two hours.)

We were pretty tired the next day while boarding our flight bound for Portland, Oregon, but God was good, and even our one-month-old baby girl, who at my mom and dad's house was only happy when someone was holding her and bouncing on the trampoline, slept for almost the entire trip. The times when she wasn't sleeping she was nursing, and that was fine too. We got off the plane in Oregon absolutely amazed that a transcontinental flight with three small children could go that smoothly!

We did run into a little, tiny problem in immigration when the Immigration officer asked us for our "papers" proving that we were Olivia's legal guardians. Because we had never been asked for this information before on any of our previous trips into the U.S. (surprisingly) with Olivia, I had failed to have the guardianship letter from the orphanage translated, so we spent a nervous few minutes (that felt like several hours) leafing through our folder of "stuff" looking for evidence in English that we would be returning with Olivia to China and weren't planning to sell her on the black market. We produced Aaron's contract, as well as all the letters from Shriner's Hospital that we had ever received. This seemed to appease the gentleman behind the counter, but I walked away trembling, vowing never again to make such a blunder.

In customs, as if one interrogation wasn't enough for one day, the officer asked me if I was carrying any counterfeit goods into the country. Beside the fact that every item of clothing on Aaron’s body was “counterfeit”, right down to the Calvin Klein underwear, and being the ultra-truthful person that I am, I stammered, “Well, this bag I’m carrying isn’t a real LeSportSac.” The officer wanted to know how many bags like that I had with me. “Three or four – I’m taking them home as presents for our family…” “How many?” “Four.” “I’m going to let you through this time, but don’t ever bring in items like that into the United States again.” I sheepishly moved on, wondering what the next officer was going to accuse me of – but she only handed me two U.S. Customs coloring books for Gabe and Olivia, who were asleep in the double stroller. When I looked at the books later, they were filled with boldly drawn outlines of customs officers and their drug-sniffing dogs, detailed illustrations of contraband items, such as bombs and fingernail clippers, and defeated-looking terrorists behind bars. Thankfully they didn’t include the more important jobs of U.S. customs officials, like corralling remorseless young mothers carrying in the dreaded fake LeSportSac.

A Fishy Business

Tue, 14 Mar 2006 13:46:05 GMT

This story was taken from an email written by my mom, Peggy Pardini, who lives in Hong Kong:

The cats I feed outside want to be sure I am never bored. They like to hunt at
night and often bring home what they catch, leaving it on the stairs or in
front of the door. Some would say they are bearing gifts. I don't know if
that's true or not. They won't say.

Two weeks ago there was a small dead goldfish on the stairs. I thought it was
curious but didn't think about it much. Last night I found the cats in a circle
pawing at something on the ground outside the entrance to our building. Another
small fish. This one was black and had graceful, flowing tail fins and bulbous,
googly eyes.

Poor little thing. What wicked cats! I picked up the fish with a tissue and to
my surprise it weakly wiggled in my grasp. I went to the water bucket that I
keep full for the cats to drink from and put him in. He barely moved but was
alive. I took the bucket inside and put it in a safe place away from the
equally wicked indoor cats, expecting him to be dead by morning. By morning,
however, the little fish was looking quite well, although somewhat tattered
from his ordeal.

Where had he and his friend before him come from? Those evil cats were
certainly stealing fish from someone's outdoor fish tank. But where was it? How
far had they traveled to bring the little fish home still alive?

I took the fish and bucket next door where I knew they had a large fish tank.
No one was home so I looked in the tank. It was covered with a screen and had
large, lethargic carp inside. Our fish was definitely not from this tank, but
not knowing what else to do with him I raised the screen and slipped him into
the water. Won't the neighbors be surprised to find a new fish in their tank!

I hope that the little fish's real owners will count their fish and realize
that there has been some pilfering going on. Maybe they'll cover their tank
before the crafty cats get them all.
The End... for now

A Visa Story

Mon, 13 Mar 2006 09:49:21 GMT

By 12:30 on Thursday afternoon, Olivia and I were speed walking to the gate of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing where a normally large crowd of anxious people were assembled. We pushed our way to the guard at the entrance and I showed him our passports. We were waved into the Disneyland-style maze of metal dividers and wound our way to the Embassy entrance, where we waited in line twice before being able to hand in the application form for our much-anticipated visa appointment.

I always am a bit of an anomaly whenever I take Olivia in to get a U.S. visa. I am the only white face in the room and I often get looks of "Why are you here?" when I flash my U.S. passport. I always point to my little daughter and try to explain the situation as best I can. "She's my adopted daughter," I always say in Chinese, though even this explanation isn't quite accurate. "I am her foster mother," I continue if the person looks confused. At this point I always get the thumbs up and the phrase I've come to know well - "Ai xin", which literally means, "loving heart." I've noticed that every Chinese person who hears our story, almost without exception, is touched by it. Some don't understand why we would foster Olivia -- "Why would you when you can have your own? Why when you could have gotten one without a problem? Why?" -- but everyone, without exception is touched. And if they ask why, and I feel that they may understand, I tell them the truth. "God gives us love." My Chinese isn't good enough yet to go into the long explanation of how I've been wanting to adopt a little child from China, especially one with a cleft lip and palate, since I was in high school. Going through the process of getting Olivia a visa every time we want to go back to the States was not part of my original "dream", but it's a means to an end until Olivia can be officially adopted, when I'm old enough by Chinese law to be her mother.

So here we stand in the crush of human bodies. It's hot in the room and my feet are already hurting. I think how glad I am that I'm doing this now when I'm seven months pregnant and not when I'm nine months pregnant. We shuffle forward until we reach the front, and I hand in our application form. The woman looks a little bewildered as she looks at it. "Oh please let the picture be the right size!" I pray, because that's what I got wrong last time. She circles a few items on the application form in red pen and slips the application back through the window to me. "This part needs to be written in Chinese as well as English," she explains. "You need to find someone to help you fill it out."

"Who can help me?" I ask. I have no idea how to write all this information in Chinese characters and all the people around me are strangers.

The man standing behind me in line explains in Chinese that if I take the application out to the street, I can pay someone to translate it into Chinese for me. Reluctantly I gather up Olivia and head out the exit, through the guard station, explaining that we'll be back to the very sympathetic guards on duty, and meander through the metal grids to the crowded street corner where we entered.

"Photo? Photo?" one woman in a heavy green jacket asks me. "No, but could you help me write my application in characters?" I ask her, in Chinese. She takes me over to her little table and helps me, writing Olivia's name in Chinese, our address (though neither of us are sure of the correct characters to use for the different Romanized words on the application form), the school's address, etc. "Just guess," I tell her, shrugging my shoulders. I'm sure there are at least ten different characters pronounced Jin, ten different characters pronounced Sha, and ten different characters for Li. And that's just the name of our housing complex, not to mention our neighborhood or our district. She fills it out for me, and I pay her ten kuai, and head back into the embassy thinking, "Well, that could have been worse!"

On returning, we find that all the lines we previously waited in have doubled in length. But the sympathetic guard who I had begun befriending in the security section came in at an opportune time, went to get the guard on duty inside the embassy and had us moved to the front of the line that we'd already waited in. To make a long story short, we waited in three or four different places for about the next hour, had our interview with a very nice American man who simply asked to hear our story and then issued us a visa immediately without looking at any of our supporting documentation. (I guess since this is our fifth visa, he trusts us to bring Olivia back to China as we have promised.)

I joyfully headed to the last line in which I would have to wait -- the line to have Olivia's passport and visa mailed to our house (this procedure has changed since the last time we got a visa, because last time I had to return to Beijing the next day to pick up the visa). I located the correct mailing slip and filled it all out. Then I waited in line, realizing with dismay that I only had about half an hour to make it to the hospital for my doctor's appointment. We reached the front and I handed the slip through.

The conversation, all in Chinese, went something like this:

"We can't accept this. You need to write the address in Chinese characters."

"But I don't know how to write my address in Chinese characters."

"Well, we can't accept it."

"So what should I do?"

"I don't know - go think about it."

"But my phone number is right on the form. If they can't read the pinyin that I've written, can't they call me to hear me say my address?"

"No, they'll return the package to us. We can't accept it like this."

"But we receive lots of mail that's written in pinyin."

"Sorry."

The man next to me tries to be helpful. He looks at my address, but since he's not from Tianjin, he doesn't know which are the right characters to use.

I see my friend the guard standing talking to a man a few feet behind me. Helplessly I approach her, trying not to burst into tears. "What should I do?" I ask her in English. "They won't take this without it being written in Chinese."

In desperation I look around me. "Is there anyone here who is a Tianjin person?" I ask in Chinese.

A soft-spoken man who had been three or four people behind me in line, with a round, kindly face, raises his hand timidly, as if he is in school. "I'm from Tianjin," he says.

"You are?" I say. "Would you help me fill this out please?"

"Sure," he says. "Let me get mine turned in and then I'll come help you. You'll need a new form."

The man with the kindly face was true to his word. He helped me write my address, and since he was familiar with the area I live in, was able to use all the correct characters. By this time, the embassy was near closing time and there were hardly any people left standing in lines. I kept thinking, "What were the chances of a person from Tianjin being that close to me when I asked if anyone was from Tianjin?..."

Sometimes the most frustrating situations are the ones where God inevitably and unfailingly buoys us up on grace. We've had lots of opportunity to test this theory with the five U.S. visas we have obtained for Olivia over the last four and a half years. Let me tell you, it's some kind of faith walk having a child that you can't take out of the country without the permission of two governments and an orphanage. There's always something popping up - another hoop to jump through. Yet with all the weird experiences and challenges, God has been faithful to us every time. Yesterday we just received Olivia's visa number 5 in the mail, and hopefully the next time we need one, she will be officially adopted and we will be obtaining a visa to take her back to the States for her U.S. passport.

24 Hours

Fri, 16 Dec 2005 08:41:40 GMT

Wednesday, December 14, 8p.m. - Olivia and I are lying in bed reading "The Long Winter". Aaron is getting Gabe dressed for bed. Suddenly we hear a click and lights go out; the computer flickers off. Olivia says, "It's dark!" Aaron gets out the headlamps and the lantern and heads out to look at the fuse box. I stay in bed with Olivia. We hear Gabe coming. He jumps in bed with us and we realize that he has no diaper on. We shriek and laugh in the dark and spank his little naked bottom. No electricity is fun.

8:15p.m. -- After a thorough search, Aaron reports that our electricity card is out of money. There will be no electricity until the next morning when our maintenance man can go to the electricity office and get more money on our card. (This was very strange because he had just come the month before and put more money on our card, and usually the money lasts for 3-4 months. We weren't expecting to run out so quickly.)

9p.m. - Having no electricity is still fun. We light candles; the kids are asleep. Aaron grades papers using his headlamp. Amy reads by the light of the lantern.

9:30p.m. - We take showers before the hot water cools too much in the heaters and then go to bed. We talk about how thankful we are to have centralized heating, and how, in these circumstances, no electricity really isn't so bad.

10p.m. - I am roused by a gagging sound from the little pallet on the floor where Olivia is sleeping. "Aaron, Olivia is throwing up!" I cry, leaping out of bed. I go in quick search of a bucket through the darkness. Olivia has already thrown up all over her pillow and quilt. The bucket comes much too late. We carry her, dripping, into the bathroom and put her in the bathtub, hoping the hot water holds out long enough to clean the vomit out of her hair. Aaron brings washcloths and manfully begins cleaning up the mess in our bedroom. I work on detangling slimy chicken nuggets from Olivia's lovely long locks. (She had been at a birthday party that afternoon and had eaten a lot of chicken nuggets and french fries.) The hot water holds out, but Olivia is throwing a screaming fit. She continues to scream and fight while we brush her teeth and only settles down when she is lying snug in our bed. "Do you still feel sick to your stomach? Do you think you might throw up again?" I ask her. "I didn't throw up!" she cries, looking angrily up at me, her black eyes flashing. After a few minutes of conversation I realize that she was sleeping so soundly that she doesn't remember throwing up. She just thinks we have thrown her in the shower and brushed her teeth to be mean. She still doesn't believe me when i explain that she did throw up. Aaron has to bring in the besmattered Piglet doll that still has a big chunk of chicken nugget on its nose, to prove that she did, indeed, throwup. Olivia looks at the piglet doll and then finally admits that she must have thrown up.

10:30p.m. - We all go back to bed. Aaron goes to sleep in Olivia's room.

11p.m. - Olivia throws up again. Not so much this time, but still gets her hair and all our sheets messed up because, of course, I was too spacey to think of tying her hair back or putting towels on the bed. We change the sheets, wash the gunk out of her hair with the last of the hot water, and I thank God for the presence of the latern and the head lamps. I guess life without electricity isn't so great after all.

Thursday, December 15, 12a.m. - Olivia throws up again. This time it is mostly dry heaving, she has her hair tied back, and there is a bucket next to the bed and towels under her. It is virtually mess free.

1a.m. - Olivia dry heaves again.

2a.m. - Olivia dry heaves again.

3a.m. - Olivia dry heaves again.

4a.m. - Olivia dry heaves again. I go in search of an illusive bottle of anti-nausea medication that we had been given for Gabe when he got hit by the swing. I think I find it and give Olivia the correct dose according to her weight. We fall back into a fitful sleep.

5:30a.m. - Gabe wakes up inconsolable. I go into his room, but am so tired that I can hardly hold him. I go and ask Aaron if he can try to help him. Aaron brings him to bed with him and they both sleep in Olivia's bed. I head back to sleep.

6:30a.m. - Aaron gets up to get ready for school. We talk about the day. I am supposed to go to Beijing. After a long discussion, Aaron decides to go to school and teach his first two classes and then leave his afternoon classes with review work and come home early. Based on this decision, and the fact that Olivia hasn't thrown up in a few hours, we decide that I should keep my appointment and try to go to Beijing. I go back to bed. Aaron runs out to get sprite for Olivia to drink and to take our cell phone down to a neighbor's house to charge. He also stops at our maintenance person's hosue to tell her about our electricity problem.

7a.m. - Olivia throws up again. On looking through the cupboards I find the correct bottle of anti-nausea medicine, and wonder what the stuff was that I gave her in the night...

7:30 a.m. - Aaron goes into school in time to teach his 8a.m. class.

8:30a.m. - Gabe wakes up.

9a.m. - Ayi arrives. I give her all my apologies and explain that Aaron will be home early to help her. I ask her what the mystery medicine is that I gave Olivia in the night. It turns out to be cough medicine, which might explain why she slept so well for a few hours. I leave for Beijing. I spend one hour in a taxi stuck in traffic trying to get to the train station.

10a.m. - Thankfully, I arrive in time to buy my ticket and get on the 10:30 train to BJ.

12p.m. - Arrive in Beijing. Wish I had worn my long underwear. Walk to the subway, ride to schlotsky's deli and get a sandwich for lunch. By 12:45 I am in a taxi on my way to the hospital for my 1:30 ultrasound.

1p.m. - Arrive at the hospital (I thought traffic would be a lot worse) and head up to the OB clinic. They admit me early and I enjoy an almost 20 minute ultrasound. It's so much fun! One shot was of the baby's tiny little feet. I get a "baby picture" to take home to add to our collage on the refrigerator. This is ultrasound number 4!

2p.m. - Meet with the doctor and have a wonderful appointment with her. She is a very thorough and understanding doctor - I think the most useful and informative visit I've had to the hospital yet! I leave feeling very well taken care of.

3p.m. - I finally leave the hospital and walk to the foreign grocery store to buy doctor pepper and pretzel bread. :)

3:30p.m. - I get in a taxi that takes me a very round-about way back to the subway station. Still with time to kill, I buy a very weakly-flavored steamed milk at starbucks and some cheap classic books at a bookstore in the mall. Then I find gummy candy at a grocery store and buy some to take back "for the kids".

4:30p.m. - I arrive at the trainstation and wait for the Tianjin gate to open.

4:35p.m. - I am almost crushed to death by the crowd trying to get to through the platform gate. But make it to the train and thankfully sit down in a very comfortable window seat.

5:15p.m.- Devour half of the gummy candy I bought "for the kids".

6:30p.m. - Arrive in Tianjin. Decide to save Y30 and take a bus home. It can't take MUCH longer than a taxi, right? I push onto a crowded bus, thinking, "I'm getting off at the other terminus, so surely it'll clear out and I'll get a seat before too long."

6:45p.m. - We're plowing along the street. The doctor pepper and classic books I bought are starting to feel heavy. The driver lurches around a lot. I shift from foot to foot and wonder how long this light can stay red!

7p.m. - We turn onto some streets I recognize. I think, "It's not so bad that I'm standing. We'll be home before I know it!"

7:20p.m. - The bus is in sight of the Wang Ding Di Interchange (home) when there is some commotion at the front of the bus. The bus stops. The driver turns off the engines. The whole bus explodes into cries of protest. I think the bus has broken down, but I figure I am close enough to home that when she opens the doors I will be able to walk without a problem. I am still making pretty good time to get home, I think, and I saved a lot of money.

7:35p.m. - the bus is still sitting there and the driver has not opened the door. The crowd is angry. I am vaguely afraid there is going to be a bus riot. We are apparently waiting for something. I ask the lady next to me, "She can't turn on the bus or open the doors?" and receive an affirmative response. I assume the bus is broken down and that the doors are broken down too. I call Aaron on my cell phone. I suggest to the lady next to me that we could open the windows and get out. She looks at me like I'm crazy.

7:45p.m. - I finally realize that the bus CAN go, because the driver turns on the engine and drives a little further down the street. Everyone is pulsing mad. I hear little bits and pieces of conversation and realize that I have been wrong about the doors being broken. "Someone's cell phone has been stolen," the lady next to me explains. "We have to wait here for the police to come." So, we keep standing on the dark bus, waiting for the police. I wonder what they will do when they arrive... The bus is so crowded. Will they search every one of us? I unzip my coat, because it is very hot on the bus. A couple of men at the front of the bus start smoking. I tell myself I will never complain about being cold again. I am glad I did not wear my long underwear. I am thirsty too. The woman sitting near me sees that I am pregnant once I unzip my coat. She cries out and jumps up and pushes me to sit down. I politely decline. It can't take that much longer, can it?

7:50p.m. - Finally the police arrive. They open the doors and we all file off the bus. The policeman at the door looks at each of us closely as we get off the bus. People are all wandering away. Some people stay on the bus. I have no idea how long the bus will sit there, so I ask a policeman if it's okay to go home and he says "Yes," so I walk away. I do not know why we just spent a good half an hour on that bus waiting for someone to LOOK at us as we got off the bus. I have no idea if the woman found her cell phone or not.

I buy a pineapple (pineapple in December!!) from a street vendor on my way home. It seems to be my prize for the long, hard bus ride.

8p.m. - I arrive home safe and sound and ready for bed. My family is deliriously happy to see me, and I am deliriously happy to see them. Our electricity is back on, Olivia is hopping around, happy and well. Gabe gallops around the house like a little horse screaming, "Mommy! Mommy!" It's good to be home!

Pregnant In China

Fri, 09 Dec 2005 13:12:34 GMT

While most cultures, including our American culture, have interesting traditional ideas concerning pregnancy, it’s fun to be living in China and to hear all the advice and precautions that are generously offered me from a Chinese point-of-view.

I visited the Chinese hospital with a friend of mine about a month ago. I watched fascinated as several women were guided into the waiting room, flanked, not by their husbands (who are not permitted to come to appointments with them, by the way) but by their mother and mother-in-law, one on each elbow. These women were not enormously pregnant. They looked more like they were in their fifth or sixth month. But their entourage fussed around them, finding them a seat, helping them to sit down. When they had to walk around, they walked slowly and deliberately, as if at any moment the baby was going to drop out onto the floor.

My friend warned me, “Don’t sit with your legs crossed.” Or, at least, this was the advice she received from her mother-in-law.

Even though I don’t have a Chinese mother-in-law, I do have a domestic helper (who we affectionately call “Ayi”) that comes in twice a week, and I get all the advice I need from her.

“Don’t stand up on that chair!” she cries, panicking, almost tackling me to the ground to get me down. Of course, this advice does have its roots in common sense – a fall wouldn’t be a good thing for me, and pregnant women are known to be clumsier than their non-pregnant counterparts. But Ayi is more concerned that I am stretching too much when I get up on a chair to reach a high shelf. I guess stretching my stomach muscles is not a good thing to do. That is why I must not take down the laundry hanging up to dry on our enclosed balcony.

Spending time on the computer isn’t good either. My Chinese teacher and friend told me that her pregnant acquaintance wears a heavy, repellent apron (like people wear when they are getting x-rays) at work to keep the radiation from the computer away from her unborn baby. I received a lengthy lecture from Ayi on this subject the other day, as I sat typing up minutes from an orphanage meeting. “You shouldn’t be on the computer so much. It’s not good for your baby,” she told me. I stared at her, hardly believing my ears. I couldn’t help the smile that crept across my lips. “Zhen de ma?” I asked, Really? “Aiyahh!” clucked Ayi. She could tell I didn’t believe her. “You’re not careful enough,” she scolded. I wiped the smile off my face and nodded respectfully as she continued to lecture me… but I kept typing my minutes.

My favorite traditional faux pas is one that my Chinese teacher and friend, Lydia, told me about the other day. “When a woman gets pregnant here in China, she needs to get rid of her cat,” she told me.

“That makes sense,” I replied. “I mean, changing kitty litter can cause certain illnesses that can hurt the baby, and after the baby is born, cats have been known to sleep on top of infants and smother them. It’s probably a good idea.”

“Oh,” she laughed. “Well, what you said makes sense. But the reason I’ve heard for it doesn’t make sense… Some people think that if you look at a cat while you’re pregnant, your baby will have problems.”

I didn’t ask what kind of problems a child born under the influence of a cat would have. Hairballs, perhaps? This superstition reminds me of the fury of the father in the book Papa’s Wife, when he thought his wife was producing red-headed children because a couple of red-heads sat in front of her at church. As the pastor of their local congregation, he had the authority to make the red-headed offenders move to the back of the church, out of his pregnant wife’s line of vision.

So, in light of the theory that my unborn child may have problems if I look at a cat, I must appeal to my dear mother for help… Mother, for the sake of your unborn grandchild, get rid of those felines of yours before we head down to Hong Kong for Christmas!

First Day

Thu, 18 Aug 2005 03:17:14 GMT

The sky is washed clean -- a gorgeous, opal blue that we don't see very often. I think, as we step out to unlock my bicycle, that it is a perfect day for a ride. I am carrying Olivia's little pink and purple backpack in my hand. My heart feels all soft and mushy when I look at her standing there, in her yellow dress and white sandals with her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Such a big girl now. "It seems like just yesterday you were a little baby in my arms," I tell her.

"But now I'm a big girl and that's why I can go to school. Babies aren't allowed at school," Olivia replies.

I swing her up into the white child seat on the back of my bike and set our bags in the basket in front. The air is cool and pleasant on our faces as we start riding, through our apartment complex, the sound of cicadas churning in our ears, and out the back gate. A hello to the parking guard, the elderly man who sits there day in and day out; hello to the vegetable seller and the woman who sold me a watermelon the other day. Out onto the narrow back street we whiz,and then through another housing complex, where pipes are piled up on the side of the road and workmen are digging ditches. Another hello to the woman who sews clothes on the side of the road with a treadle sewing machine. We see a stray puppy with dirty white fur playing with a live crab in the mud. I wonder where the crab came from. Workers in baggy clothes are entertained by the dog's antics; they are distracted for a moment watching us ride by. Foreigners are always good for a few moments of entertainment.

"I wonder where that puppy got that crab," I say to Olivia."We're so far away from the ocean."

"What?" she says. She can't hear me over the pounding of a jack hammer across the road. We pull through a big puddle and out onto the street where the bicycles and cars, trucks and busses meet in a jam of wills. There's honking and slow traffic. We slide gingerly through the crowd; I try not to get stuck in a muddy pothole or caught between the fenders of two cars. Otherwise, there isn't much danger. Just exhaust, slimy mud that shines in the sunlight and huge, and murky puddles with cigarette butts bobbing like toy boats in a pond.

We ride easily to the bridge, in the bike lane, but already the traffic on the road is starting to pile up. There's always an impass here, but this morning, after the big rain of two days ago, afterwhich these roads ran like rivers, the conditions are rediculous. Every vehicle, whether three wheeled bicycles loaded with plums, luxury cars blasting impatient horns, or big trucks tailed with black plumes of exhaust, is jerking its way forward in whatever direction it can find an inch. The bikes in the mix don't help much. We're all trying to make our own way, and since three roads meet here, and there's a wholesale market to our right where all the private vendors come to buy their produce, we're all stuck. "Try not to breathe, Olivia," I call to my daughter over my shoulder, over the din of horns and the roar of motors. Clouds of black, tar-like fumes hang in the air. My sandals squelch in the clay-like mud under my feet as I dismount and walk my bike through the maze of twisted traffic.Ten minutes later, I'm pushing my way between the last pair of fenders and scooting down the road. The air is clean and gloriously cool again. We turn at the next corner and coast the last five minutes to school.

When we arrive, Olivia is grinning ear to ear. We park the bicycle behind the school with all the other bikes, and take the back entrance. The main lobby of the school is large and lofty, mostly white marble, with big columns that hold up the second floor that winds in a balcony around the perimeter. Olivia knows exactly where to go. This is Baba's school, but now it's her school too. She holds my hand, though, because even though she's completely familiar with this place, it's never been "her" school before.

"Are you excited?" I ask her.

She nods and smiles. She is polite to the people we meet, smiling and answering their questions. I am bursting with pride at her good behavior, at this maturity that is suddenly springing up in her at this new challenge. We greet her new teacher, Miss Barsalou, and the teacher's assistant, Miss Yue. Olivia puts her pink backpack, marked "Sonnichsen" in permanent marker, in her own special cubby with her name on it. She finds her name on the caterpillar next to the door. For a few moments she holds my hand, observing her surroundings, while I chat with the other moms. Aaron comes from upstairs to join us. There are pictures taken and hugs and kisses, and then Olivia breaks free. She heads straight for the shopping cart and is immediately busy at work. From time to time she'll catch my eye and show me one of the contents of her cart. Occasionally she'll wave and smile.

"It's time for all the parents to go up to the library for an informational meeting," says Miss Barsalou, guiding us all towards the door. We move reluctantly.

I watch Olivia, feeling helpless, the heart strings that have connected us for these last four years twanging as they're pulled tighter. I watch her for a few moments from the doorway, then I go back in to give her a quick hug and remind her to use the toilet and not to go potty in her pants. Of course, there is an extra pair of underwear in her backpack for good measure...

"Bye Mom," says Livi. I have to remind myself that I'll see her at 11:30. It's not like I'm leaving her in a college dorm. Not yet, anyway.

"Alright sweety, be a good girl," I say bravely. I'm the one that's having to be brave. Olivia's doing fine.

I meet Aaron outside the classroom door. "I didn't know it would be this hard to leave her," I tell him as we go together to the foot of the stairs.

When I hit the road again half an hour later, it's solo. I decide to go a different route, over the overpass, but by the time I reach the overpass I realize there are too many cars to make it any kind of a pleasant ride. The fumes would be overpowering. I opt to take the pig route, which is so muddy and potholed that my feet and sandals are splattered with mud and refuse. I figure that a little mud on the feet is better than a lungfull of exhaust. In the past this is where the wild pigs have roamed, which is why it's called the pig route. It's a stinking, slushy, unpaved road, which offers even more precarious a ride after the rain. A car, pulling up backwards almost runs me off the road into a ditch filled with stagnant water. I dismount and pick my way through bedragled bits of muddy grass until I'm back on the road again.

People along the wayside are burning paper coins. The coins are sold in sheets of 50 or so, and some of the women squatting there by the roadside are counting their sheets up to tally how much money they are sending to their dead. It's a tradition here that burning up this paper money will provide an income for their ancestors in the afterlife -- "hell money", they call it. The tiny fires slowly nibble at the white paper, as women and men squat in the dry spots along the road, fanning the flames.

I reach home a little dirty, but otherwise unscathed. Gabe is waiting for me, holding up his arms, calling "Mommy! Mommy! Harry movie! Harry movie!" Ayi tells me he's been asking her to watch T.V. all morning. The "Harry movies" are some new dvds we picked up in America that are all about the adventures of a cheesy genie character named Hard Hat Harry who learns all about cars, trucks, helicopters and trains. Of course, this is currently Gabe's main line of interest -- anything with wheels! I take my little boy in my arms and listen to his little voice prattling on in its infant way, asking for a snack, showing me the scrape he got on his elbow in the market with Ayi. I try to picture the first day I'll have to take him to school and leave him there. At the thought, I hold him just a little tighter.

Raw Dumplings

Sun, 08 May 2005 12:19:25 GMT

“Jiaozi,” I told our ayi in Chinese. “Can you make jiaozi tonight?”

Jiaozi are known as “pot stickers” in the western world, but when you eat them in China, the stuffing folded in freshly-made rounds of dough, they are a taste sensation that the westernized pot sticker simply cannot match.

“What kind of jiaozi?” my ayi wanted to know.

“Niu rou xi hong shi,” I replied without hesitation. Beef and carrot jiaozi. “My favorite!” I explained in Chinese.

Our ayi’s eye brows creased a little and I wondered why she looked confused. She had made beef and carrot jiaozi for us many times. I wondered if she was anxious about getting to the beef stall in the market in time to get back in time to watch Olivia and Gabe while I went to my Chinese class.

“And tomorrow?” she asked. “Do you want me to buy any vegetables for tomorrow?”

Our conversation continued and she soon went out to the market to buy the things we needed. The day quickly passed.

That evening Ayi left the raw jiaozi sitting on cutting boards covered with kitchen towels.

“Now, you’re sure you know how to boil these?” my ayi asked me as she collected her bag and put on her shoes, preparing to leave.

“Yes, thank you,” I said. “No problem, no problem.”

We said goodbye and Ayi left. When Aaron came home I started the boiling water in the pot and dumped a good amount of jiaozi in for the first batch. The rule for jiaozi is to stir the jiaozi so that they don’t stick to the bottom of the pot, then to wait until they bob to the surface of the water. Once they have surfaced you pour a small amount of cold water into the boiling water so that it is no longer boiling. Then you wait for it to start boiling again. You repeat this process. After the water resumes boiling, the jiaozi are ready to come out. I used a hand held sieve device to get them out of the water and slid them onto a plate. It was time to eat!

We all sat down eagerly at the table, with our dipping vinegar on hand. After Olivia thanked Jesus for the food, the family dug in. I noticed that Olivia seemed to be enjoying the jiaozi. She had already eaten one. Aaron had eaten two. I began to cut Gabe’s jiaozi into small pieces when I stopped in horror.

“Stop eating!” I yelled.

Aaron stopped chewing. Olivia ignored me and stuffed another jiaozi in her mouth.

“This jiaozi is still raw!” I cried, looking closely the filling in the jiaozi I was cutting up for Gabe. There was clearly red meat in the filling.

“How in the world?” I exclaimed, picking up the plate and taking it back into the kitchen. “I cooked them long enough! How could they be that undercooked? Oh I hope you guys don’t get sick!”

Aaron was in the process of extracting the jiaozi from Olivia’s mouth as I dumped the jiaozi back into the water and turned up the flame. I boiled those jiaozi for three more minutes.

“They must be done now,” I said as I returned meekly and put the jiaozi, which had started to disintegrate around the edges from over-boiling, back on the table. I took up a jiaozi in my chopsticks and dissected it.

“I can’t believe it! This is still raw!” I cried. I took a piece of the red meat in between my fingers and studied it closely. Then I emptied the whole contents of the single jiaozi into my bowl and poked at it with my chopstick.

“I don’t see any carrot in here,” I said. “I wonder where the carrot is –“

And then it clicked.

“Go ahead and eat it,” I said, burying my face in my hands and laughing with relief. “You’re not going to believe this, Aaron. I told Ayi to make niu rou xi hong shi jiaozi when I meant to ask her to make niu rou hu luo bo jiaozi. I asked for beef and tomato jiaozi, not beef and carrot. This is tomato in here, not raw meat.”

Later I asked a Chinese friend of ours if there is such a thing as beef and tomato jiaozi. The answer was no. Tomato is used as an ingredient in jiaozi, but never with beef.

And so I struggle on with the Chinese language, making mistakes and making a fool of myself at every turn. But it’s just one of those things that makes life more interesting, and making a few mistakes along the way is a whole lot better then getting sick on raw meat.

The Dangers of Falling Asleep

Fri, 08 Apr 2005 15:54:26 GMT

We were peddling fast down the road. I had one hand on the handle, the other behind my back holding up Olivia's head because she was fast asleep.

It's not unusual for our children to fall asleep in their bike seats on the way home from church. The movement, the heat, tummies full of after-church lunch, a long, exciting morning in Sunday School with lots of friends to play with, all contribute to tired children.

This particular Sunday afternoon we were riding down a narrow road. Aaron was slightly in front; I was following behind. The road allowed one lane of traffic going either way.

I turned my head slightly as a white van slowed down beside me and rode abreast of me for a few moments. A man I had never seen before was hanging out the front window and motioning at Olivia.

"Ta shui jiao le," he yelled to me. She's sleeping.

"Xie xie. Wo zhi dao," I replied. Thank you. I know.

We peddled on.

Several seconds later, a red car pulled up along side. A woman vigorously rolled down the front window and called out to me.

"Hey! Hey! Ta shui jiao le!" she cried. She's sleeping.

"Xie xie. Wo zhi dao!" I replied. Thank you. I know.

We kept on peddling.

Literally moments later another concerned traveller pulled up along side my bicycle. This time both the passenger and the driver were yelling at me out the window.

"Ta shui jiao le!" they both cried. She's sleeping!

"Mei shi! Mei shi! Wo zhi dao." I was starting to get irritated. It doesn't matter. I know!

As the van pulled forward and moved away down the road, I called up to Aaron. "Can you believe it? That was the third car that pulled up next to me to tell me that Olivia was sleeping! Do Chinese children never fall asleep on bicycles here?"

But as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized that I had never actually seen a Chinese child riding on the back of a bike asleep before.

I didn't have too much time to ponder this interesting phenomenon because a fourth concerned vehicle soon pulled up next to me, with a person hanging his arms out the window gesturing violently, calling, "Your child is asleep! Wake her up!"

"Mei shi! Wo zhi dao!" I hollered back, shaking my head in exasperation.

As the van pulled away, we reached the end of the narrow road and rode across an intersection onto a fairly empty, wide, recently repaved road where Aaron and I could ride next to each other.

"It's not like I can keep her awake, can I? She's the type of child that when she goes to sleep she really goes to sleep. What did they all expect me to do?"

Neither Aaron nor I could come to any logical conclusions.

The next week in Chinese class, I mentioned the incident to my teacher, Lydia, who speaks excellent English.

"In our culture, we believe that if a child sleeps outside they will get sick," she explained. "They were just worried that Olivia was going to get sick sleeping on the bicycle."

So once again, a cultural difference that initially caused me a considerable amount of annoyance actually turns out to be another way that the Chinese people amongst whom I live demonstrate their genuine concern for me and my family.

They weren't commenting on my child being asleep because they were being nasty, or because they were trying to tell me that I'm a bad mother or a stupid foreigner. They were showing me that they care.

Therefore, I have added "not sleeping on a bicycle" to a long list of things I must keep in mind for my children while living in China.

On this list is also dressing my child in plenty of layers of clothing even on relatively warm days to avoid the elderly women who approach us and check to see how many layers we have on. If my children aren't wearing enough they ask the child in a pitying tone, "Leng bu leng?" Are you cold?

When I ask the child, "Are you cold?" and the child says, "No", we get the age old exclamation, "Waiguoren bu pa leng." Foreigners aren't afraid of the cold.

We're not generally afraid of children sleeping outside either.

But if I was living in America and riding my bike and my child had taken the helmet off her head, I would hope that three or four cars would pull up along side me and make sure that I knew. I would hope that total strangers would exhibit the same amount of genuine concern as we've experienced here in China.

Gotta Go Bathroom

Fri, 08 Apr 2005 13:53:12 GMT

Olivia, Gabe and I were at the store together one day. I was carrying Gabe on one arm to keep him from getting into mischief, and holding the basket on the other arm and trying to maneuver my way through the narrow aisles with Livi in tow.

Suddenly...

"Mommy, I have to go potty!"

"Okay, hold on. Follow me, honey," I said bravely to my three-year-old, scooting quickly towards the door where I dropped my basket.

As we left the little grocery store, I felt a surge of thankfulness that we live in China. There aren't many public restroom facilities, so it is common to see little children squatting out in public to relieve themselves. In this land where all children who aren't yet potty trained wear pants that are split from front to back to make pottying easy where ever they happen to be, it is no problem to take your small child to the nearest bush, or telephone pole, or hey, flight of concrete stairs, to take care of their business.

We won't start a discussion on hygiene at this point; I was just thankful for the convenience of being able to take my daughter to go potty at the side of the road.

I headed for the nearest planter, complete with scraggly tree, and squatted down, holding my daughter in front of me. Livi hasn't mastered the art of squatting by herself to go potty, so where ever a squat is required, I crouch down first and hold her legs up so that she doesn't pee all over herself. (This can be particularly tricky in the swaying, stinking toilet compartments in trains, by the way.) But suddenly it occurred to me that this arrangement wasn't going to work. My very active toddler was quickly toddling away from me into the road, and since I wasn't born with a third arm to grab him with, I was momentarily bewildered.

Dropping Livi on her feet I pursued Gabe, wondering how I was going to help Olivia go potty but hold on to Gabe at the same time.

Thankfully, it was still cool weather and Gabe was wearing a nice, sturdy sweatshirt. I took one of his sleeves in my teeth and bit down for all I was worth. He tried to squirm away, but my teeth held fast, as I quickly held Livi up to pee.

A few curious bystanders gathered around, shaking their heads and clucking their tongues at the crazy foreigner. I'm sure in their minds they were praising Mao's presence of mind to encourage families to only have one child. Having two can prove not only to be a handful, but a mouthful as well.

Shrieking Eels

Fri, 08 Apr 2005 12:13:02 GMT

I took Olivia and Gabe with me the other day to order some food from our favorite restaurant around the corner. As we finished ordering and were saying our goodbyes, the owners of the restaurant gave Gabe and Olivia cans of almond-peach juice as a present. Our children usually come away from trips to the market with fistfuls of something or other.

On the way out we passed by a big tub of fish, and Gabe stopped for a look. “I’ll give you some to take home!” said the owner excitedly.

“That’s okay!” I insisted, but it was too late. The owner’s son had already been sent on a mission to put water into a little white baggy. He returned and the owner scooped her hands into the water churning with long, slippery fish and slid a couple into the bag. She handed the bag to me with fervent delight. We thanked her profusely and left the restaurant.

On the way home, the two fish lay placidly in the bag. They flopped around a few times, and I hurried the children along home, worried that there wasn’t enough water in the bag for the fish to survive for long. On getting home, I pulled out a small bowl from the cupboard, put some fresh water in it and slid the fish in. They were lively at once, and upon closer inspection, about the ugliest, creepiest fish I had ever seen. They flipped themselves around in the bowl of water, which I had at first set on the counter. After a few seconds, I realized, with horror, that the larger one was about to flip himself out of the bowl. I quickly moved the bowl into the sink – just in time. The larger fish flipped himself right out of the bowl and lay panting on the bottom of the sink. I starred at it.

This fish was ugly: dark grey in color with little catfish-like tentacles around its mouth, no scales, throbbing gills and a long, squirming body. I took a plastic bag and grabbed at the thing and maneuvered it back into the bowl, but it wasn’t long before both the fish had flipped themselves out again. I screamed every time the fish flipped out of the bowl. I screamed so much and so loud that Olivia was afraid to come into the kitchen.

It was time for a bigger bowl.

I filled the largest bowl I owned up with water. The fish thrashed around some more, but this time could not get out. After awhile they calmed down and slept side by side at the bottom of the bowl. I inspected them more closely. It occurred to me that they were small versions of “the shrieking eels” from The Princess Bride.

When Aaron got home, I recounted the story, and we decided to keep them until the next day when our helper was coming. I figured that she liked to eat fish, so maybe she would like to take them home to eat. After all, they were originally in a tub in a restaurant. Well, when “Auntie He” arrived the next day, I showed her the fish and told her I didn’t want to eat them.

Auntie He said, “Those aren’t fish. They’re eels. I don’t like to eat them either. You don’t want them?”

I said that I didn’t want them, and when I came home from my Chinese class they were gone. Olivia filled me in, saying that “Ayi threw them in the trash can.” I was glad I wasn’t there to see the eels writhing around to their death in a trashcan. It seems a cruel way to die, even for an eel.