Flowers

"Um... I think the girls are out cutting the blooms off your flowers..." my auntie informed with some amusement yesterday afternoon.

"They're deadheading," I said, hoping they were. Sure enough, EHJ was outside carefully explaining to Bei Bei where to trim. A pile of exhausted blooms lay on the picnic table.

 

Just before the blog went into lock down, we planted flowers around our patio. It was Mother's Day weekend, and I was anxious to get something green in the ground. We decided on snapdragons, marigolds and a variety of mum. Working on a citrus palate with glimpses of pinks EHJ dutifully helped me select flowers (that ranged from .8 yuan to 1 yuan or 12 to 15 cents per plant.) She delighted the dark skinned countryside vendors by carefully selecting the nicest plants and putting the stragglers and fragile ones to the side. They made a sport of offering her a poor plant and giggled thru glinting gold capped teeth as she politely pointed to another instead. They were delighted by her asking the price and telling them, in precise Mandarin, how many of each plant we required. 

The snapdragons have already been deadheaded and re-bloomed several times since then. The marigolds... those sturdy and pompous flowers have flourished. The variety of mum is now dead, so we will soon be darting back to the countryside vendors to find some more annuals for the planters. 

Bad China Days

Bad China Days: the days when living in the Middle Kingdom proves most challenging, not the smells or language barrier but the days when everything seems difficult, people seem out to rip off the foreigner, and my frustration level soars. They are the days our cultural trainer encouraged us NOT to blog. The days my facebook status might read something like: Jen is ready to implode or Jen is wondering where the easy button is or Jen is really not a xenophobe but is considering becoming one.

Compounding matters is that my family is here. I want them to see the best and brightest side of our international living experience. (Because, after all,  overall our time here has been  mostly positive. Yes, we have been stretched and challenged. We've had times we've been humbled. But we probably wouldn't trade our experience.) And, this is what I must remind myself of when yet another red capped inland Chinese tourist takes a picture of our girls whilst be picnic seaside, when the delivery man taps his watch and rolls his eyes when I inspect my shipment for damage, and huffs even more impatiently when I find broken items at the bottom of the cardboard and styrofoam mess. The list could go on, but I think you get the point. And really I'm not bitter, I promise. I've just had a few Bad China Days (or is it a Bad China Daze?)

Beijing Bound

Not to be redundant, but no sooner than MGJ returned from her class trip to the capital, it was Tai Tai Johnson's turn.

Mom jetted off to the city of 17 million Sunday morning, for a few hours among the masses at IKEA before heading back to Beijing Capital airport to collect her sis and auntie flying in from Vancouver.

We'll post more pics soon (sorry, readers, but it still very difficult to get posts up as blogger remains blocked.) We enjoyed three great days in Beijing before heading back to QD where the girlies were anxious to see their aunties.

We've had one day to chill, and today will head out to the Western end of the city for a seaside picnic and some spelunking around the Old German end of town.

MGJ's Peking Pics

Pengyous in Peking

 

When you send a 10 year-old-off with a digital camera there is a high probability you'll get back a SD card full of fuzzy self shots, pictures of random things (a particular favorite of this age, and to be fair even older kiddos, is out-of-focus shots on and from moving vehicles.) I was pleasantly supprised that MGJ's pengyou (friend) shots were were cute and playful, in-focus, and thankfully, not excessively plentiful!

They clearly had a great time together, but saw great sights too. (Will post her photos with a cultural focus next.)

Beijing Bound

Lock Down

It's now been over a week since my last post. In the meantime, our host country has in all its paranoid wisdom decided to block all access to blogs. That means I can't post for our home computer, nor can I peek in on the blogs I usually follow.

It's frustrating. Especially since I have gone to great lengths over the course of our time in China to only send out mass communication that has favorable info about our Asian home. I have had friends who have written disparaging blogs, or perhaps just ones that are particularity accurate, and they have been very promptly blocked. I've tried to keep ours upbeat, positive, and discuss things in terms of differences and culture. But, apparently to no avail.

For like two seconds I was flattered that we had been blocked, because sometimes it's a sign that you've said something profound enough to get noticed. But, it's a mass block, not a slap on the wrist for the foreign mom blogging from the Middle Kingdom about outdoor naps and book week.
Of course, since I've not been able to post, I've been all the more keen to do so.
Here are some topics I considered:

Beijing Bound—which would have featured cute pics of MGJ pulling her faux (but fairly close) Louis Vuitton roller case down the sidewalk in front of our apartment home, bound for her first ever spend-several-nights-away-from-home-field-trip.
“Mom, would I have been able to take a trip like this if were still living in Lisbon?” she had queried. I answered no, that it would be a Cubs game or a day trip to the state capital. I think she got the significance of the event, although when she called after her first day and a trip to Great Wall she still said her favorite part of her day was chillin’ in the apartment suite @ the hotel with her friends. (Which Sean thought was saying something, since she'd just been to one of the Seven Wonders of the World!)

Flowers and Gardens and Snails--There would have been pics of the flowers we planted in our small backyard. You would have been regaled with a retelling of EHJ's love for nature both in flora (she is the only one who sticks with it ‘til every plant is in the ground) and fauna (at one point this week she had a snail in one hand and a lady bug in the other.)

Windex Clean vs. Bleach Clean – I've been ruminating on this one since we arrived in China. Just because things sparkle doesn't really mean they're clean!

Perspective- No matter how frustrating our day has been there is always something going on here that makes me thankful for the most basic of things.

Block Party
No… I’m not talking about firing up your Weber or joining a Conga line with your neighbors. Instead I’m proposing we take it back from the Great Firewall of China. Here’s how it will work: you vote on one of the above proposed topics, and I’ll generate something based on popular demand. We may be blocked; but we’ll try to publish anyway. (I won’t go into details as to how.)

Use the comment section to cast your vote. And remember, as they say in Chicago, “Vote early and often!”

Later, Tai Tai Johnson

Favorite Mother's Day Quote:

"Excuse me Mother's Day girl that I love"
Beatrice Clair, 4 

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mom's Day to the Many Sweet Moms I know... 

.... to those mothers who are my contemporaries and still experience crayon on the wall and discover forgotten sippy cups under the couch

... to those mothers who are my mentors and haven't forgotten the fingerprint days, but are now on to new challenges like parenting teenage daughters, researching colleges, and contemplating their daughters' boyfriends 

... to my grandmothers who managed parenting in a different age 

... to my aunties who have sometimes been like second moms

... to my mom-in-law who raised three boys

... and of course to my own sweet mom whom I hope to be like when I grow up!

A heartfelt Happy Mom's Day to each of you! I love you.

And thanks to my three sweet girlies who make me a mother, and for their sweet comments and cards on my special day in May! Thanks SWJ for a pancake breakfast and the bouquet of lillies that perfume our home.

Just one more...

After cropping out our girls, I e-mailed this photo to my editor with the subject line July/August combo issue cover. (It also will not make the cut!) Speedos are scary... that's all there is too it!

The Alfresco Nap

So... I was scrolling through some of our pictures from past summers in QD to find a great cover photo for our summer issue of the Qingdao Expat Magazine, and came across these pics from last summer that would seem so random from a Western perspective, yet so completely normal from a Chinese one. These were taken along the seaside walkway in the west end of QD last June. (They will not grace the cover of QEM!)

I was actually reminded of this outdoor napping phenomenon again when I left my morning Chinese lesson yesterday @ noon. Maggie Lao Shi (teacher) has a beautiful new office in one of two new, glass state-of-the-art twin towers that but up against one of the "in-town" mountains. (Don't get me started on the fact that there was probably plenty of jackhammers and dynamite involved in creating the footings, and that probably much of the base of the mountain was destroyed in the process.)

As I said, it was noon... typical siesta time for workers. So, as I exited the building from the rear, and walked down the driveway that leads from the underground car park, I passed at least three construction workers, laying on concrete, shoes & flimsy helmets off, basking in the glorious May sunshine. No cares about dirty toenails or sleeping in broad daylight in front of anyone who passed by. In a way its refreshing... when was the last time you saw someone take a nap on the sidewalk, or garden wall, or the craggy rocks @ the beach?

Modestly Pumped

I was excited to learn that our blog "The Johnsons in China" has been added to another list of noteworthy blogs. 

This time it was picked up by CN Reviews, who was wondering why more men than women tend to blog about their China experience (business, teaching and/or daily life.) 

So, they started to catalog women bloggers, who blog about Zhong Guo. You can find our family blog as part of that list. Look for Mrs. Johnson's "The Johnson's in China" (second from the bottom in the Personal Journal category.)

 http://cnreviews.com/people/bloggers/china-women-blogger-directory_20090504.html

TEN

Ten... as is our eldest offspring is 10... double digits... half-way to twenty. She is sophisticated, savvy, multi-lingual, stylish, smart, strong-willed, passionate and quirky. She is our first child. Our first daughter. Our first of so many things... in short our guinea pig (sorry Charlie, but we had to try the parenting gig out on someone first-- we're glad it was you!!)

Happy, Happy birthday, MGJ!

We love you!

Snapshots of Seoul

Seoul Searching...

Seoul is a funny word to type. Lots of vowels in a row, and not the way I think it should be... the e  always stumps me. I try to type Soul. Seoul plays up on this in fact, billing itself as Seoul... the Soul of Asia.

Whether or not is is the heart of the multi-faceted continent we call home is probably up for debate, but let me say this-- Seoul was a lovely surprise. SEoul (emphasis on the E... I'll learn to type this city's name soon!) is just a short 60 minute flight from QD (shorter even than it is to Beijing or Shanghai.) We stepped off the plane and were met by good smells, familiar brands, clean public spaces (and even-- or perhaps especially-- clean toilets.) The city was kid friendly, polite and head bobbing.

Korea has a delicate way of greeting people with a simple nod of the head, an abbreviated version of what was once, perhaps a bow. I used to tease our Korean neighbors that they were going to give their kids whip lash by bopping them on the back of the head every time they saw an adult they knew. I used to think it was cute, but now I realize its as much of their culture as eye contact and firm handshake are an integral part of ours. 

It wasn't long before I was bouncing my own head like a caricature bobble head doll. The girls greeted taxi drivers with a friendly An yung, and Millie threw in the extra phraseology she's acquired after three years of mainly Korean classmates at her international schools.

We'll post pics soon.