August 1st - a Swiss Celebration

Please allow me to introduce to you two of Switzerland's newest citizens:

I promise you, they are happier about it than they look in this photo!
As this year was a little extra special (we received word of Vivi's paperwork being completed just last week) we decided to have a little party to celebrate Switzerland's Indpendence Day, August 1st. In the past we have always been so fortunate to participate in the awesome activities hosted by the Swiss Club of Central Indiana, but this year we were on our own.

The history of Swiss Independence dates back to the Federal Charter of 1291. This year Switzerland is 721 years old! Happy Birthday Confoederatio Helvetica!

We started the day in our Switzerland shirts, waving our flags, having breakfast with Daddy. Then he had to go to work-seems silly that SwissLog China doesn't observe the most important Swiss holiday with a day off for its local employees! We passed some time playing the iPad apps "Name the Canton Flags" (I don't mean to brag but Mommy can score 26 of 26 in less than 1:00!) and "Coin-Rolling", in which players try to keep a five franc coin rolling around an earthenware bowl, which eventually resonates with a continuous humming tone. Then it was on to the main attraction: the water sports! (The Swiss are known for their water sports, right?) Seemingly unrelated, we recently participated in a focus group for one of the pool makers here in China, Bestway, which makes most of the inflatable pools sold in the States and as a result got a free backyard paddling pool! Perfect for the festivities! But filling it up was quite a challenge. Our hose attachment is quite, er, Chinese so when turned on strong enough to get the water out the other end, 70% of the water was shooting straight up into the air. Time to do my MacGyver act!

A dishtowel on the faucet to funnel the offshoot, a few buckets to make a brigade, two goofball children and we're on our way! Problem solved; the pool was full in 20 minutes instead of 2 hours! 

Which left me just enough time to finish decorating and setting the table with all of the snacks.

The guest list was quite varied: our German AuPair, a British family, an Australian family and a friend from New Zealand. Sadly the invited French and Chinese families were unable to join us. A few of the kids colored the flags we made for them but mostly they all just ran around the backyard and shot each other with water guns! We had a wonderful time with wurstsalat and cheeses for lunch and ice cream sandwiches for dessert.

Unfortunately, as always happens when I play hostess, I pretty much forgot the camera duties so much of the festivities remain undocumented. Maybe next year some of you can join us, when I hopefully celebrate my own (dual) citizenship. First I have to pass that background check...

Happy First of August to you all~

Ode to a Friend

Rest gently, my sweet boy. You were a brave soul, Barney. You are greatly missed.

Last November we discovered an ominous growth in Barney's mouth. We had it removed and, sure enough, the biopsy (by a German testing company, if that matters) determined it was cancer, a particularly agressive canine type. So the clock started ticking. And the realization that he would not make that 14 hour journey back to the States with us again settled in. 

At that time I happened to be reading "Peony In Love" by Lisa See. In it the main character spends about 2/3 of the book as a ghost. Although this was not my first exposure to the beliefs of the Chinese regarding death, it was one of the most comprehensive. Many Chinese believe that there are 3 levels of afterlife that the soul must travel and basically the success of your journey is directly related to the actions of your surviviors after you pass on. Kinda frustrating, huh? Without their help you cannot continue to the next level. You may have seen stories or pictures of Chinese burning "money", "clothing" and "food" during memorial and funeral services. This is because they believe that the soul needs all of these things to live in the next life, as in the current one, but can only obtain these things through ancestor worship. (Lately there have been stories of people burning effigies of iPads and iPhones!)

Through the inattentiveness of Peony's parents (not due to their grief I might add), her funeral rites are not performed correctly and she is doomed to forever inhabit the wasteland of the first afterlife. Her description of the world in which she now lives is incredibly bleak and hopeless: her clothing is in tatters, she is starving and her loved ones don't seem to remember her at all. As she describes this miserable existence, numerous times she mentions the mongrel dogs also cursed to languish forever in the first realm, starving, mangy strays sleeping in the cold. Unloved, just like her.

There is never an explanation why the dogs are this way in this Chinese version of what happens after, but it stuck with me. If we live in China now, are we subjected to their beliefs regarding what comes next? We will not live here forever but if Barney passes away here, what happens to him when we leave? Will he become a mongrel stray, starving and freezing in the next life? I never had to worry about these things in Indiana. I could leave him "behind" if we were in Australia or Switzerland. I can't leave him behind in China!

The good news is that we shared 8 more months with him after the initial diagnosis. Sweet fuzzy face. And when the end came it was fast and without question that the time had come. It was a sad, but not an agonizing decision. For this I am grateful. I am also grateful that we will be able to have him cremated so when we do leave China he can come with us. Maybe he will be returned to his yard in Indianapolis. Maybe we will have to find another permanent solution. All that matters to me is he will not be left behind. 

Godspeed my friend. I hope you stay well-fed and warm on your next journey. You started out as a stray but you are well-loved in this life~

Does China have the Fourth of July?

The challenge of helping your children maintain a sense of their home culture's identity when you live in a foreign land was weighing especially heavily on my mind this year. With all that we had going on last week with school entrance exams it had escaped me that it is actually July already. So I was a bit unprepared for how to celebrate the 4th.

Last year you may remember we had a big party with our friends from the neighborhood but last year's holiday was a Monday, easy enough to celebrate on a Sunday, the day before. With the actual day falling on a Wednesday, it's very easy for it to get lost in the local shuffle. An American neighbor of ours is having a barbecue but all of the invited guests speak French so she apologized that she could not invite us as well as she thought we would be a bit uncomfortable. True. So with Heinz away in Australia for work and all of our other American friends away, the kids and I are on our own. 

I decided that at 5 1/2 Conrad is old enough to understand a bit about History so we pulled out a globe and talked a little bit about the story of American Independence. I think the best part about having kids is that when you have to revisit topics that you think you know and study them to understand how to present them to childrens' minds, it gives you a fresh perspective. At first I found my little history lesson leading us down the Pilgrim's path and I thought "Oh great! Some history teacher I am; my children will forever have Thanksgiving Day and Independence Day confused!" So instead I changed course and used the "Big Brother Bullying the Little Brother" angle, where Little Brother got tired of Big Brother always imposing more rules and taking more and more of Little Brother's allowance until Little Brother said "Enough! I want to be independent!" Like I said, I'm no History teacher! But I think they got the jist. We talked a bit about Britain, home of our friends Charlie, Henry and Miss Lisa, and with our recent celebration of the Queen's Jubilee, it all had a lot of unexpected layers. (The good news for everyone is that we are friends with Britain now!) I told them about the Pledge of Allegiance. I sang some songs for them. Vivienne liked America the Beautiful the best so we turned on the VPN and found some videos of patriotic songs on YouTube. As usual I teared up over the National Anthem.

We did a United States puzzle on the iPad and talked about how Old Glory has 13 stripes and 50 stars, and why. I drew some flags and we colored them.

While we were coloring them Conrad said "I wish I had a t-shirt with a Flag on it."
My first response was the simple truth: "It's pretty hard to find shirts with the American Flag on them in China." But then, my creative juices flowing, I got an idea. And my blue and red Sharpies. 

Instant flag t-shirt! (Who needs Old Navy?) So today we are all wearing our colors, even me!

Of course China has the 4th of July, as the old joke goes; every calendar does. But Americans are the only ones for whom it has such great importance. For us it is The Fourth, in capital letters. We haven't got any fun fireworks this year and will miss the beautiful show over the Indianapolis skyline, viewed from the comfort of our own backyard but we've learned some things and had some fun. How did you celebrate this year?

Happy Fourth to you all. Freedom, Independence, Love and Peace. We wish these for you all~

Summer Toes! (And where they might lead you...)

Summer has arrived in Shanghai with hot, hot days and sandals. Two weeks ago I was out and about and found this great confetti/metallic nail polish and thought to myself "This would be great for my toes for the summer!" (Those of you who know me, stop laughing. It is not that unthinkable that I might actually paint my nails sometimes!)

So I took it home and started putting it on and a certain little girl wandered over and said "Mommy, your toes are so pretty!" Hmmm, I'm sensing an opportunity here. So I said to her "Vivi, would you like your toes to be pretty too?"

"Yes!" she said, so we got started.

She was very patient waiting for them to dry and really enjoyed the final product!

Summer Toes!

Could it be? Underneath Cousin Zachary's hand me down Soccer t-shirts (as seen in the pictures above), Conrad's old jeans and neighbor Gabriel's cast off tennis shoes might we find... a   g-i-r-l??? (Grammy and Aunties can keep your mouths shut here about hereditary natures...) I was afraid to hope. I thought we had lost the plot earlier this week when I tried to suggest that she wear the adorable pink skort from Aunt Fran. It's probably already too small but it obviously hasn't had enough wear so I brought it out and when she saw it she screamed at me "No! That's pretty!" And that's bad why? "I want cool!" 

I'm not sure where to go with that, have tried to convince her that pretty and cool CAN coexist, but as you know with toddlers, some days are better than others. Well, hope surged anew when she came downstairs this morning very proud of her clothing selection for the day:

The first dress she has worn in over 18 months!

From summer toes to a summer dress. My tomboy is showing her feminine side!

Happy summer to you all~

Sleeping in Shanghai

You've all heard of "Sleepless in Seattle", right? Well, on the other side of the world the polar opposite happens everyday, far outside of what one would expect from a regular sleep schedule. One thing I have learned in my time here is that the Chinese seem to have a unique ability to sleep ANYTIME, and ANYPLACE. So much so that Bernd Hagemann, a German who has lived in Shanghai for nearly 10 years has devoted an entire website to the pictures he has captured in that time. If you have a few moments and need a good laugh, I recommend that you check it out: www.sleepingchinese.com

Unfortunately for me I don't usually have my camera handy when I see some of the more bizarre circumstances. Last Tuesday however, I did. I was on my way into our local superstore to do some grocery shopping and passed by the nail salon stall out front. 

And saw this:
I don't even know where to go from there. It doesn't even look comfortable!

I hope you are all well and getting enough sleep~

A Diamond Jubilee

I've said it before: the best part of living abroad is the exposure the kids get to International culture. The imported foods section of one of our grocery stores has a little flag next to the label/price of each item identifying its country of origin and Conrad and Vivi have a lot of fun looking at them, identifying some, naming the friends they have from each country, what languages they might speak and on and on. (Who needs Pre-School?) But mostly it is a lot of fun to learn about their friends' cultures from their friends themselves.

Some of you may or may not have noticed that this past weekend was the 60th Anniversary of the Coronation of the Queen of England. Not an event my children would normally have celebrated in our life in Indianapolis but, as you know Toto, we don't exactly live in Indianapolis anymore.

One of our weekly highlights is a standing playdate with some friends on Tuesday afternoons. One of the families, my friend Lisa and her boys, is British and as they had offered to host this week Lisa decided to use it as an opportunity to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee. We started with a yummy chocolate cake made by one of the other British mums. All of the flags decorations were made by Lisa and her boys.

Vivienne plays in the Royal paddling pool under the bunting of Union Jacks.

Conrad decorates his crown.

His official coronation!

Vivienne makes a crown and a Union Jack~

Queen Vivi asks: Badminton on the lawn, anyone?

The Royal subjects pose for photos;

(Lollipops for anyone who stands pretty for the picture!)

After dinner and bath that night I turned on the tv to find the BBC's live footage of the Queen's motorcade heading to her luncheon at St. Paul's Cathedral. I asked "who wants to see the Queen?" and Vivi and Conrad came running to watch. I was trying to explain to them what a motorcade is when Vivienne asked "Is that the Queen in the front on the motorcycle?"

All in all, it was a really fun day. The kids enjoyed all of the activities and I enjoyed chatting with the British mums, as they shared their "Do you remember the Silver Jubilee?" stories and sang some of the songs appropriate for the occassion. At 84 years old, Queen Elizabeth is an amazing woman. Congratulations to her on this momentous occasion~

Do 2 Halves Make a Full?

No, of course they don't, and I'd never be so bold as to try and say they do. But as I "Run the World", persisiting in my quest to complete 2 half marathons a year, I have found some very interesting things about China Running and thought some of you fellow runners might want to get a glimpse into what the sights are like and how it works on the other side of the world. Or doesn't work.

Last December the morning of the Shanghai Marathon dawned clear and cool, with a beautiful view of the Landmark Pearl Tower across the river. 

Sometimes, usually when I least expect it, I get a visual reminder of the fact that this is a Communist country. This line of cadets separated the "Fun Marathon" runners' start corral (5k) from the half and full runners start corral. They stood there at attention for this civilian event for at least 90 minutes.

This is the view in the Half/Full corral, down the Historic Bund, formerly Shanghai's International Settlement, home to numerous International banks and trading houses in the early 1900's. Almost looks like Europe, doesn't it?

Another fortunate shot across the river to the Pudong side at sunrise: the Shanghai World Financial Center, often referred to as "the bottle opener" for it's odd shape (where Mom stood on the glass floor, 400 meters above the street!)

Can some of you more experienced runners explain this sign to me? I cannot come up with a reasonable translation that makes sense....

I was looking forward to an overall flat course but knew that the ramp up to the NanPu Bridge crossing was going to be tough. Up we started at about the 2km mark

and around we wound, 2 full circles,

and across we went, just as the clouds were starting to clear away.

It felt good to go back down the other side. Unfortunately, however, it has become clear the more I run races in China that the Chinese really don't get the whole "water station" idea. I saw a lot of "drink stations" listed on the course map and decided against wearing a water belt but quickly came to realize that the Chinese seem to prefer a tea drink while they exercise, over water, and most of the stations were providing only this thick, brown muck in a bottle that looks to me like dirty pond water. And quite honestly does not smell much better! I was a bit panicked but luckily one of the local hotel chains was handing out bottles of their complimentary water in front of one of their locations on the race route. I was so grateful I nearly grabbed 2! 

As I carried my bottle, we continued on through the Expo 2010 site, getting nice views of the iconic China Pavillion.

In any race in any town you will see people wearing some unexpected "running" gear. Racer 13363 certainly doesn't fit the expected profile, but she was ahead of me until about mile 7 (km 13)!

We had some local cheering squads lining the streets, yelling "Jiāyóu" 加油, Chinese for "Come On!"

Even a local Boy Band!

All in all, it was a beautiful day for a run. I was not very happy with my time but I did stop and take a lot of pictures. If I had not done that perhaps I would have hit my middle range goal. And perhaps not. Either way, the sight of my adoring fans waiting for me at the finish line makes every step worth it!

To kick off 2012 I recently participated in the Suzhou Jinji Lake Half. With this race I pushed the envelope further than ever: how little training can I get away with and still finish? (2012 hasn't quite been the year I was hoping for!) I'd chosen to race in Suzhou, about a 2 hour drive away, because I had heard it was a beautiful course, but in the end there was very little about it that struck me as particularly unique, or picturesque.

A colorful fireworks display marked the start of the race, and the death of my watch battery.

This was my stick-on timing chip.

I saw the most entertaining sight early on: it looked to me as if this beautiful Yellow Lab was running with the girl in the green jacket. I guess she's done a few races in China before too, and knew that she had to make accomodations for her own water! I just hope he's not like Barney who used to love to chew holes in his plastic bottles!

This time I wore my water belt, but I still hadn't learned my lesson because I foolishly only filled 2 of the 4 bottles. This was the scene at the 10k station.

When I got into the scrum, I found this:

I think the cups they serve pills in are bigger than the cups they were using here to serve the water. And the guy had to constantly take a break because the 25 gallon water bottle was too heavy for him to keep pouring to the demand! Not to mention that the little blue punch tab across the top of the jug made the water just splosh out everywhere! It was a disaster. The idea that I was going to run out of water, planted so early in the race, had a hugely negative psychological effect on me. And yes, by the 18km station, they had simply run out altogether.

But along the way we had these little hills that look really mean and ugly from this angle, (Check out the guy on his phone! And look how flat his shoes are! At one point we were running in the bike lane and a guy running in front of me asked a pedestrian on the sidewalk if he could have a drag off the guy's cigarette! The pedestrian gave it to him!)

but much more picturesque from the side.

In the end, for numerous reasons, it was quite simply the worst race I have ever done. I was really surprised by the high percentage of people walking late in the race and gave in to the desire. But I wasn't a DNF. My time was u-g-l-y, but I made it across the line. And there were no water bottles, no bananas, no bagels or chocolate chip cookies to greet me. This was my finisher's packet:

It included indivivually wrapped pieces of beef jerky, about the size of a gumball,

and these packets of some kind of freeze-dried chicken something or other.

Great. I'm already dying of thirst, let's fill my mouth with a bunch of dried, salty junk! But again, I did it, I crossed the line to meet my adoring fans

and we all headed back to Shanghai.

The following weekend I did the local 8k, the only race in the world that I have ever run more than once. And this year, like last year, the water stations were really poorly managed. But I've learned this same lesson enough times that I wore my water belt, with enough water to get me through. It was a very uneventful run but when I passed this sign, I had to stop and take a picture.

All of the errors aside, apparently I've been too well conditioned by Chik-Fil-A because my first thought was "Wait, where are the cows and the chicken joke?"

So the Spring Racing Season in China is officially closed for me, (and perhaps even less inclined to consider doing a Full), the Fall Season won't kick off until well into September and I have been gripped by a horrible torpor. Someone come run with me? Please?

Love, hugs and happy running to you all~