24 week pictures

Thanks to Grandma Leman and Aunt Divya for the adorable clothes......

Yesterday we went to Hua Xi hospital to check out the facilities. They have two private rooms that would be great if we could get them for the labor and delivery, but it is kind of hit and miss on their availability. We are praying that one of them will be available when I go into labor.

Tomorrow we are going to check out another hospital in town which is primarily a Mother's and Children's hospital. Supposedly the rooms are more comfortable. We would appreciate your prayers as we decide on which hospital to deliver at.

We have been checking out various baby stores around town. We are having a horrible time finding newborn clothes. We can't find onsies in any size, and they don't really have newborn sleepers like we Americans dress our babies in. Interesting huh?!?! I'm not exactly sure what they dress their newborns in...maybe they just swaddle them. I'll have to ask my Chinese friend who recently had a baby.

23 weeks

Here's my 23 week picture.

Nothing too new here. We sent our living room curtains in to be drycleaned a few weeks ago. After we got them back and were hanging them up, I noticed that they had shrunk nearly a foot. So now we have ridiculous looking curtains in our living room :) We can't move the curtain rod because of the window, so we are trying to think of a different solution. At least we have clean curtains now though.

Jenny is staying at our house this weekend. She had lasEK surgery done on her eyes on Friday. She felt fine all day Friday and Saturday morning, but by Saturday afternoon her eyes had really started hurting. Hopefully she only has one more day of pain. Nate also wants to get his eyes done. He may be able to have the lasIK surgery which involves a lot less pain. It is so cheap to get the eye surgeries done here. LasEk- total of $500, and LasIk total of $450.

22 weeks, and it's a .............................

..............................GIRL!!!!! We had our detailed sonogram on the 3rd. We are very excited to have a girl, although I have to admit that I was convinced that we were having a boy. I can't believe that I am already 22 weeks into my pregnancy...how time is flying. I have been able to feel her kicking on a regular basis for about a month now. Nate loves feeling her kicking. Today was the first time we were able to watch from the outside. It was so funny watching my belly pop out when she was moving around. My belly isn't that big yet, so I was surprised that we could already see the movement. I can still get away without looking pregnant, but I love to show my belly off. :) I am glad though that I can still hide it, because Chinese people have a very different idea about what is okay and not okay for pregnant women to participate in. For instance, no swimming, bike riding, physical labor of any sort, no exercise, etc. I often have to explain to my Chinese friends that Americans do things a little differently, so it's okay that I go swimming or mop my own floors etc. :)

Nate's parents were here for the past two weeks. They helped us find the perfect stroller. We spent a whole afternoon a store trying to pick out the perfect stroller/car seat. Thanks mom and dad for your help!!!

Here is the link to see my most recent sonogram pictures. I was disappointed that the pictures weren't clearer, but at least you can see baby bun a little. http://cedarville.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2028165&l=747cc&id=141303528

fun times with family

Nate's family was just here visiting. I met Nate in Beijing on June 28th. We then waited at the Starbucks in the airport for his family to arrive. We spent a few days in Beijing seeing the sites. We had a ton of fun, although it rained on us almost the whole time. Our last day in Beijing was hot and sunny, so we spent the afternoon at the hotel pool before going to the airport.

We had fun going to different places in Chengdu. We had a few really hot and humid days, but the weather was pretty good other than that.

Here is a list of everything we did....

-Beijing-

*Great Wall

*Tianamen Square

*Forbidden City

*Starbucks

*HuTong Tours

*Yummy Chinese food at various restaurants

-Chengdu-

*Panda Reserve

*McDonalds

*park with a lake

*Floraland

*downtown Chengdu (which included hours of stroller shopping for baby bun)

*an afternoon at the pool

*eating at Peter's Tex Mex

*Pizza Hut

*lots of Chinese dumplings and noodles

*travel by bus, taxi, bikes, foot, rickshaws, and hired drivers.

*lots of yahtzee and cards

*Starbucks

*IKEA

*night market in Xipu

*trying to BBQ (which didn't work)

*walking the dogs

I posted a lot of pics at this link...http://cedarville.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2028784&l=7f05b&id=141303528

Mahjong

Last week I celebrated the Dragon Boat Festival with some Chinese friends. The girl on the right is my Chinese tutor. We had a traditional meal that they made. Notice the nine dishes and how they are placed in rows of three. This is the traditional way to eat with your family. After dinner we played Mahjong. It was my first time playing. I really enjoyed it. Now I want to buy my own mahjong set. Everybody in China knows how to play mahjong. Shop owners sit around outside playing mahjong with each other during the day. There are mahjong tea houses all over the place. It is similar to gin rummy, just a little harder.

bubble tea

in my last post, i mentioned the chocolate milk tea that i had. it looked exactly like this. the brown things on the bottom are sticky, floury, balls that you drink with the tea. Once I had finished my tea, Grant had a great time using the leftover "bubbles" as spit wads. They seriously stick to anything they are spit at.

fun day at floraland

This McDonald's is opening up right across the street from our school. I think it is going to open on the 22nd. It is the first free-standing/drive-through McDonald's in Chengdu. We are all excited for it to open. We'll all be fatter teachers next year :)

Today I met up with some of our students at a fun park called Floraland. I took the 703 bus to get there. It took about 35 minutes from school to Floraland on the bus. We had a great day. The park was really fun and beautiful. It was like a small rendition of Disney World. There were different "countries" that you could visit. Two of the girls and I tried to tandem bike around. We were hilarious. The bike didn't have brakes that worked, or very reliable steering. It took us a long time to figure out how to ride together. We kept falling off and running into things (and nearly people many many times) Because we couldn't stop or steer, we just kept yelling and beeping at people to get out of our way.

As foreigners, we constantly have people coming up to us asking for our picture, or just taking it without asking. All day long, there were people taking pictures of us. This is very normal, and we kind of get used to it, although sometimes it does get kind of annoying.

Unfortunately, the park didn't have any yummy hamburger places or tacos or great icecream shops (you know, parks in America always have great food). I did have some pretty good spicy beef rice noodles, chocolate milk tea with these funny little flour balls that sit at the bottom of your cup, yummy fair popcorn (that doesn't taste anything like popcorn in America, but is still yummy), and a few other yummy snacks. It's funny how your taste buds adjust to the country you live in.

more prego pics

Yesterday I went downtown and met up with some of our highschool girls. We had such a great time shopping and talking. They talked me into buying the pink sundress pictured above :). Yeah for girl time.

It is cool and rainy today. So nice. The dogs hate peeing out in the rain, so I have to make sure to send them out every once in a while or they will sneakily pee in the house.

Everything else is going well. I can feel the baby moving nearly every day now, especially after dinner. I love it!!! I love being pregnant.

memories from last summer

A year ago from today, we were spending our first week back in America for the summer. I can't believe that it has already been a year. This year went by so quickly. It's crazy to think that in just 5 more months, we will have a new little baby in our family. So crazy!!!

The power was out today from 8-5. This is a fairly common occurrence. I think the city turns off power in different parts of the city to save on energy. Fortunately, it was a nice day. I'm glad that our stove is gas, otherwise I would have to eat cold food all day. :)

Last night I went to a new little restaurant down the street. It is a chicken/icecream restaurant. The chicken kind of tastes like KFC. The icecream didn't taste too bad, probably because I have been in China for 3 years. Probably the average American wouldn't like it. Not very much like American icecream. :) Also, it came with cherry tomato halves on it. Chinese people eat cherry tomatoes as we would eat strawberries. On their icecream, cake, etc. I'm still not used to that, so I just pick the tomatoes off. :)

another Chinese cultural story

Yesterday afternoon some workers came to install another air con in our guest/soon-to-be baby room. (quick note: buildings in Chengdu don't have any kind of central heat/air or anything...just big cement blocks; so if you want hot or cold, you have to buy air cons to put in each room which help keep it hot in the winter and cool in the summer) Okay, so the workers came to install the air con. There are two different types of air cons, one which hangs on the wall (think Motel 6) and a bigger one (about the size of a skinny fridge) which sits in a corner in a room. They were installing the wall one.
The workers arrived about 4:30 and were working on it for three hours. I thought it would be fun to list some the differences between home improvement workers in china vs. america.
1) The workers don't have a work van, they either come on foot or on their bikes carrying their tools either in a basket, in their hands, or strapped down in some other fashion.
2) They don't bring ladders with them, so they will use whatever in your house looks semi-sturdy to stand on. Chairs, stools, boxes, etc..sometimes stacked on top of each other so they can reach what they are working on. At one point last night, one guy needed to get up high to look at the air con, so they put the front two legs of my dining room chair on top of the bottom half of the air con, the back two legs of the chair were just hanging off the edge. One guy held the back of the chair while the other guy climbed on top to reach what he needed to work on. Think Chinese acrobats stacking chairs. :)
3) At one point, one of the guys was welding metal right in my hallway (that is what the picture above is. You can't see the flame very well in the picture because I had the flash on).

4) Workers will often smoke in your house. Fortunately, they didn't smoke directly in my house last night. Instead they sat in the window and smoked (so that most of the smell would go outside :) (another side note: most men smoke in China)

5) When a worker comes to your house to do something, they will do just what needs to be done and nothing more. For instance, if a pipe needs changed, they will come and rip open your cement wall, fix the pipe, and if your lucky, plaster the hole back up. They don't sandpaper the plaster down, paint, or anything; so now instead of a leaky pipe, you have a nasty looking mess on your wall. (we have this on our living room ceiling from a broken pipe last year) Fortunately, the workers last night didn't have to put any holes in our walls, so everything is pretty much back to normal. (quick funny story: when our friends moved into their apartment last year, there was a leaky pipe. They called the pipe guys to come fix it. When they opened the wall up, they found that the pipe had been "fixed" once before- a towel had been tightly wrapped around the hole. The workers fixed the pipe and then were going to leave without putting the wall back together. I think my friend told them that they needed to fix the wall before they could leave. )

6) This one kind of fits in with number 5. When a worker has finished, they collect their tools and leave...with the mess still in your house. It is not customary for the worker to clean up after themselves. They leave everything for someone else (me, for instance) to clean up. Trash, wall, cement, glass, etc. etc. Another example, if you have someone to come paint your walls, they will paint the walls and then leave with the paint still sitting out, drips on the floors, and so on. Also, they won't cover anything up before they start, so it's important to remember to cover everything and move things that you dont' want to get messy.

7) This is just a funny "lost in translation" story from last night. When the workers were finally done, one of the guys told me that I needed to leave the air con turned on for "shi ba ge xiao shi". "shi ba" mean 18 and "xiao shi" means hours. I was a little surprised that I needed to leave it on for 18 hours. It uses a lot of electricity. One of my Chinese friends was coming over to watch a movie, so I decided to ask her what she thought he had said. She said, "Oh, he said to try it for half an hour". "shi" means both "ten" and "try" in Chinese, depending on the tone. I had heard"shi ba" which means "18", but what he said was "shi ban", "shi" meaning try and "ban" being part of the rest of the sentence "ban ge xiao shi" which means half an hour.

Here are some cute pictures of our "doggy day care"

end of school!!!

Today was our final day of school. Hurray!!! We survived another year. This makes the end of our third year in China. I can't believe how quickly the time has gone by. It is always so hard to say goodbye to students who are returning to their home country. We get really close to our students and then they leave. It is pretty rare that a student is here for 3 or more years. I guess that is the nature of an International school.

Nate and I have a few days together before he leaves for Beijing. We might go to Starbucks in the morning for breakfast. Hopefully on Monday we will meet up with a few of our students to eat lunch and go bowling. Aren't we cool...we bowl for fun. :) :)

It is beautifully sunny today, but very hot. I love when the sun is out, but it is almost too hot to do anything outside, especially since pools don't open here until the Chinese kids are out of school, which is still for a few more weeks.

Jenny left early this morning for America. She heard yesterday that her grandfather had passed away, so she bought a ticket yesterday to try to make it back for the funeral. I am pr*ying that she doesn't have any flights delayed so that she gets there on time.

Well, time to go home and enjoy the rest of our day.

fun times

Some of my band students enjoying an icecream party.
















We had a staff banquet Monday night. You can see Nate in the background.



















My growing belly. :)


One of the families in the community is moving, so they gave us this wardrobe. Someone else had given us a bunch of baby boy clothes, so I put those all in the wardrobe. If we have a boy, then we have a good start. :)



















This is a picture of us leading music at our fellowship. We had the little kids come up and help lead a few songs.


















Nate all dressed up in his "I want to be at the beach" superhero costume.

it's peach season

Peach season is here. There are fresh peaches everywhere. You can only buy certain fruits during certain times of the year here. One of these seasonal fruits is peaches. Right now the fruit markets have baskets and baskets of peaches for sale, but in a few months, there won't be any peaches and some other fruit will be in season. We are at the end of strawberry season (so sad), so we won't see strawberries again until next winter. We can buy apples and oranges year round, although there is definitely an orange season when there are oranges everywhere.
Last night I made freshly squeezed lemonade with a couple frozen strawberries mixed in. It was a nice refreshing drink for the end of a busy hot day.

Our visit with Eric, the Starbucks guy, went great. He seems really nice. He is 32 and has done a lot of travelling in and out of China. He had some fun stories to tell. His parents are originally from Hong Kong, but it sounded like Eric was raised in America. Nate took him to the dog market after lunch to look at dogs. Jenny and I went shopping. :)

Yesterday morning, we left really early for fellowship so that we could attend one of our student's baptism. He got baptized in his apartment complex's swimming pool. It was a nice, small ceremony. After that, Jenny and I went to breakfast and then to fellowship. Nate had a meeting so he couldn't go to the baptism or breakfast. After fellowship, we attended a graduation party for one of our seniors.

Nate leaves for Beijing on June 6 for master's classes. He will be gone the whole month. :( I think Jenny has to go back to America for a family emergency, so I will be all by myself for about 3 weeks. At least my Chinese tutor will be housesitting out in my neighborhood, so I can spend time with her. I will have three dogs also, we are dogsitting for a friend over the summer, so I'm sure I'll stay busy with all those dogs running about. Our poor Bennett dog still has skin problems. Some days his skin is more irritated than other days. It's been worse recently. We don't know what causes it, so we don't know how to treat it.

it's the weekend

Only one more week of teaching. Mon.-Wed. are finals, Thursday is field day, and Friday is just clean out lockers, etc. day.
Last night we had the High school Awards Ceremony. This was our first year doing it at the school instead of going to a restaurant. We served the students and parents dinner outside on the commons, but the flies were horrible, so I don't know how much everyone enjoyed their dinner. After dinner, everyone retired to the auditorium where the awards were presented. Nate and Jenny had thought up a super-hero award with a description that matched each student's personality. They also put together a slide show with the student's head photo shopped onto their "superhero". It was really funny. For instance, one kid was "Spiderman", so there was a picture of his head on Spiderman's body. The kids loved it.
Another award that was recognized was the National Merit Scholarship program. Out of our thirty-some student high school, we had THREE students who were named National Merit Semifinalist. Here is a description of the National Merit Scholarship Program........

The National Merit Scholarship Program benefits students scoring extremely well on the PSAT taken during the junior year of high school.
The first step of the program is based entirely on PSAT scores - juniors with the highest PSAT scores (ranked by state) are named National Merit Semifinalists. A national total of 16,000 Semifinalists are chosen in this way, although the state-by-state rankings means that there are state PSAT cutoffs but no definitive national cutoff.
The next step of the National Merit Scholarship Program is to name about 15,0000 National Merit Finalists. While this phase of the process involves school records, SAT scores, and an application, most Semifinalists are also named Finalists. Exceptions are those with weak grades, poor records, or other issues.
National Merit Scholars (who receive aid and awards) are picked from the pool of National Merit Finalists.

We really do have an incredible student body. Most of them are extremely smart and work really hard. It's so interesting to have such a small student body with so many brilliant minds. Most of us teachers feel quite dumb in comparison to some of our students.

We are getting ready to go into town to meet up with one of Nate's new friends. A few weeks ago, Nate was at Starbucks and met the Starbucks' Distract Manager. He had just moved here from Boston. Nate has met up with him a few times for lunch in the past weeks. Today, we are meeting him at Pizza Hut. (quick note: Pizza Hut in China is a very nice, sit-down restaurant :).

Okay, I am starving, so I am going to go eat some breakfast.

I really didn't mean for this to be the first picture...sorry if you hate spiders. This little critter was in our school auditorium. Pretty gross huh!!!

















This is the band that I have been teaching. Aren't they cute. We had a performance on Tuesday. They did a great job.


















I had another ultrasound on Tuesday. Everything looks great. It was so neat being able to see our little baby. He/she was moving all around. We could see the baby's face, hands and fingers so clearly. It was amazing. These pictures are blurry and not very detailed, but during the ultrasound, the picture was so clear. The bottom pictures are pictures of the prenatal part of the hospital. This hospital is pretty old. I am going there for my prenatal care because there is an excellent doctor there who speaks English very well. I will go to a different hospital in town for my delivery.