The kids were on Spring Break in Utah and Alauna and Mikayla
flew to Nanjing to see me. (Thanks for everyone that helped watch our kids
while Alauna and Mikayla were gone). It
was a great trip. It was so good to see
them. Alauna was pretty nervous to fly
to China her first time without me but they did a great job. While they were here they were able to see
our house that we will be renting as well as the school the kids will be going
to. We also visited a couple medical
clinics (I hope we don’t have to use them too often), grocery stores and went
to church.
It will be great to get Alauna’s perspective on the
trip. It was a lot of fun taking them
different places and having them experience different things. On Wednesday night we went to their first
traditional Chinese dinner. There were
five of my Chinese co-workers as well as Alauna, Mikayla and myself. Jason Chen, my friend and coworker took the
lead on ordering. He ordered many dishes
that were pretty “safe” for Westerner’s taste buds. We had Beijing roast duck, beef ribs, many
different vegetable dishes, some tofu dishes (Alauna loved this), a sweet and
sour fish, Nanjing Salt Duck (local specialty) and a few other small
dishes. He also ordered a couple “risky”
dishes. He ordered duck tongues,
thousand year old eggs and bullfrog. When
the bull frog arrived he told me to not tell them what it was until they ate
it. The bullfrog was really spicy so
Mikayla didn’t like it and it had a lot of bones so Alauna though it was too
much work for a little meat. They did
eat the duck tongues and the thousand year old eggs. Both of them they said the taste was ok, but
the texture was weird. I would tend to
agree with that. I am finding that each
time I eat the duck tongue I like it more and more. I guess when we return home I’ll have to
request my friends at First Wok in Highland to add duck tongues to the
menu.
I picked them up at the Pudong Airport and we went straight
to the Shanghai train station. When we arrived
at the train station we had a bit of time to wait. Alauna and Mikayla both said they needed to
go to the bathroom. My spontaneous
response was to chuckle a bit. I didn’t
mean to, it just came out. They both ask
why I was smiling. I reached in my back
pocket and handed Mikayla a small packet.
She asked what that was for. I
told her to just take it. She would need
it. Mikayla walked in and then walked
right out. She had a pretty concerned
look on her face and asked if this was the men’s bathroom. I walked in with her and explained that in
many bathrooms the sink area was both men’s and women’s and then they had separate
areas for the toilets. I then explained
that I handed them a small packet of tissue because there probably was not
toilet paper in the bathroom. They both
came out a few minutes later with a look like “What just happened???” They had their first experience with using a
Chinese Squat Toilet. Alauna came out
and said she had to roll up the bottoms of her pants and to make sure nothing
touch the floor. Mikayla didn’t even
want to talk about it. Alauna hates
camping because there are no toilets in the wilderness. Maybe she will enjoy camping after a year of
China.
Bathrooms in China are often one of the biggest culture
shocks for Westerns. It’s not just the
squat toilets, but also they don’t put toilet paper in the stalls. They don’t flush used toilet paper down the
toilets, they put in a small garbage can next to the toilet. Because people are squatting their aim is not
always the best, so the area is not the cleanest. And, for some reason the men cannot pee
directly in the urinal. There is always
a decent amount of pee below the urinal.
I’m not sure how or why they do it, but when you go to use the urinal
you need to strategically place your feet between the puddles on the
floor. When I was in a train station
there was a sign in Chinese above the urinal that asked them to step
forward. It basically said “one small
step for man, one giant step for becoming civilized”. I thought that was pretty funny. There are some western toilets and you
quickly learn where they are and use them when you can.
While here Alauna and Mikayla saw a lot of grocery
stores. One of the purposes of the trip
was to get comfortable with China and understand what items they could get here
and what they couldn’t get. I think by
the end of the week they realized that they couldn’t find most of what we would
need here or at least a suitable substitute.
Or, we would just do without.
There are a few things like vitamins or some medicines (cold, allergy
med etc.) that are very hard to find or are very expensive so we will bring
some of the basics over.
We also went to our house.
Alauna and Mikayla loved the house.
It will be a great house for us.
It is smaller than our house in Utah but very large by Chinese
Standards. It’s even pretty big by
American standards, but we have six kids so of course we need a big house. It will be nice to for the family to have
some room and not be cramped for the time we are here. It was a great feeling for Alauna and Mikayla
to walk through the house and love it as much as they did. It will even have a small garden in the back
for us to grow our tomatoes and peppers.
We will just need to find some tortilla chips this fall so we can make
some homemade salsa. (That sounds so
good right now.)
We had an hour scheduled at the school and spent more than
2.5 hours there. We had to wrap up our
visit because we had a dinner appointment in the city. It is such a great school. The program that the kids will be in will be amazing
for each one of them. Mikayla was even
impressed with the drama facilities.
They have a huge theater, a large and professional looking hair and
make-up room and also a black room for rehearsal. She had a ton of questions about the
productions they do and the quality and the answers all seemed to meet her
expectations.
Every classroom in the school has projector with a smart
board that makes learning more interactive.
They also have a very good visual arts program. They have a dark room for photography (young
kids ask your parents what this is), a pottery kiln, 3D graphics arts and a
great space to work in. They focus on
the process of developing visual arts.
Not just the end result and you succeed if you are a good artist. They want the students to go through the
process developing a thought and a concept and then taking it all the way
through to completion. While we were
there they had a student art show for the students that will be
graduating. It was really amazing to see
the work they had completed. It was a
great representation of the quality of the school.
At the end of their trip I kept thinking of one of my
favorite movies. The Princess
Bride. Buttercup and Westley travel
through the fire swamp where they face many tough challenges like the quick
sand, the fire holes and the ROUS’s, Rodents of Unusual Size. They faced each challenge and come to a
realization that they can make it through the swamp make it safely out the
other side. At the end of the trip I
felt like Alauna and Mikayla faced the own fire holes, quick sands and ROUS’s. They made it through the squat toilets, the
food, the shopping, the school, the housing, and the medical clinics. By the end of the week I think they felt like
they could live in China and be ok. It
won’t be easy and there will be many more challenges to figure out, but they
have the confidence to know they can do it.
Now we just need to get 8 people with 20+ suitcases, carry-ons and
backpacks on a 24 hour journey and arrive in Nanjing.
Have a great week and thanks for reading.
Boyd
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