Skip to main content

noisy morning

I started back with a Chinese tutor yesterday morning. 3 hours, 9-12pm. It was great. I've been such a slacker in finding the time and energy to study and for whatever reason I've gotten motivated recently. I knew I needed to just do it and it needed to be done all in one shot. 3 hours is a long time to stare at your teacher, or Chinese characters or talk only in Chinese. I'll meet with her every Wednesday morning. We meet at a bakery, Leanna's Bakery. So, it's a nice place to meet and I get a good lunch out of it.

As I'm writing, a funeral tent is being taken down. I can't see it from where I sit but I can hear all the metal poles hitting the cement. They started the process before 6am. The tent went up in our apartment courtyard at the beginning of this week. It was a long rectangular shaped structure made out of poles and tarp. I never peeked inside but I guess the body was in there and there were folks hanging out with it 24 hours a day. The first night a van pulled up with several mahjong tables. I guess there's not much to do during those midnight hours. What a bad time for our camera to be broken.

We had the most beautiful day we've ever had in Chengdu 2 days ago. Again, no camera to capture it.

Popular posts from this blog

still cooking

As of today we are 4 days late. That is assuming that man can accurately determine the day a baby should be born. Which, obviously, he can not. So, we wait. The thing with pregnancy is that most woman began to really anticipate that Big Day about a month before the due date and so when that day comes and goes it has been a long time of waiting. I keep trying to remember 2 things. One, when she comes our nice little family of 3 will be forever altered and two, she will come. In fact, she will come by the end of next week if not sooner - thanks to the ability to induce. So in the mean time I'm able to blog with both eyes wide open, take Madeleine swimming on a whim, have dates with Phil whenever and stay up late watching "Numbers" without worrying about my sleep debt. Not so bad when you think of it that way.
Read more

sun shiny days

This past Friday, 6 days after arriving home from Thailand, we finally had a sunny day.  Thank goodness because otherwise I was about to pack up the family and head south.  It is amazing how sunshine can affect our moods. Lilian is 8 months old.  She was extremely busy in Thailand.  She began crawling the day after we arrived.  Within just a couple days of her crawling her first pearly white started poking through. Then 2 days later another started pushing through.  Her hair had a growth spurt and it all grew straight up.  Her funky hair was the delight of many. Madeleine has said a couple really fun things lately.  1 - "Why does Lilian have that on her forehead?" (a red, speckled birthmark in the middle of her forehead)  "Did she fall out of you?" --2 - " Shhhh , I hear snowing, I think" (said on a particularly cold evening while playing outside). Getting back home after vacation seems to be difficult no matter who you are or where you live. I don't ...
Read more

facebook killed the blogger

Well, it's that time again.  The time when I remember that I have a blog and think about writing something. With coffee in hand, I've sat down in front of this screen and, I'm not joking, within seconds Abe is crying in his room.  Fortunately, for me, I can ignore him. We have a mountain behind our apartment.  It's literally behind our apartment.  I walk out the back gate, up a short road and BOOM, there's the mountain.  I like our apartment but I sometimes think about all the other apartment complexes that seem better.  Some are closer to the girl's school. Some have lots of other expat kids that the girls could be out playing with.  But none of them have their very own mountain.  And so, even with the things I'd like to change about this complex, I'm praying we can live here for a long time.  Phil tires to climb the mountain everyday.  I was inspired and I try to climb it every other day - I don't want to get too buff.  I never...
Read more