February Updates
Hello everyone! It's been about 2 weeks since our last blog post.
Our excitement happens in spurts. We'll try to tell you the fun stuff.
We survived Spring Festival. Kristin had a bad cold for the entire holiday. We still managed to see some great landmarks and sites. She was a real trooper.
To describe Spring Festival think Independence Day on steriods. Canons and firework finale every day!
Being a foreigner in China is hard to describe. You miss weird random things. We miss having a real oven. We miss having a clothes dryer. Matt misses his beef jerky, and Kristin misses her Monster energy drinks and candy (twizzler, tootsie rolls, gobstoppers). China doesn't seem to believe in canned goods. You can't just go to the store thinking "we'll have canned chili" or "we will have a frozen lasagna" for dinner.
It's frustrating to be on a bus and everyone around you is talking. About what? Who knows, you can't understand them.
Ordinary things become the highlight of your day. Saying hi to the security guards at our complex for example. There's one that gets just as excited to see us as we him. He will happily say hello back. The others mumble or wave. But when we see that one guard, we smile.
Kristin has blogged about her bathroom fears, but let me tell you a recent bathroom event. The stall in my work building is a shared bathroom. The door to one of the squat toliet is broke. I go in and there's a Chinese person squatting and smoking. He looks at me and says hi. I will clarify here to give you a better idea of the akwardness.....it's the male bathroom. So the chinese guy is squatting going #2 while smoking and says hi to me.
The annoyance has moved beyond the lack of Western facilities to the public bathrooms do not have toliet paper. And the faucet is always cold water. I really hate washing my hands with cold water. We carry around hand sanitizer.
Today we hear a band playing at 6:30a outside. It's cold out! 20 degrees. Too cold for a bunch of people to practice their instruments. As we watch through the window, we see a coffin being carried. Apparently it was a funeral coming through our apartment compkex. Weird huh?
Our excitement happens in spurts. We'll try to tell you the fun stuff.
We survived Spring Festival. Kristin had a bad cold for the entire holiday. We still managed to see some great landmarks and sites. She was a real trooper.
To describe Spring Festival think Independence Day on steriods. Canons and firework finale every day!
Being a foreigner in China is hard to describe. You miss weird random things. We miss having a real oven. We miss having a clothes dryer. Matt misses his beef jerky, and Kristin misses her Monster energy drinks and candy (twizzler, tootsie rolls, gobstoppers). China doesn't seem to believe in canned goods. You can't just go to the store thinking "we'll have canned chili" or "we will have a frozen lasagna" for dinner.
It's frustrating to be on a bus and everyone around you is talking. About what? Who knows, you can't understand them.
Ordinary things become the highlight of your day. Saying hi to the security guards at our complex for example. There's one that gets just as excited to see us as we him. He will happily say hello back. The others mumble or wave. But when we see that one guard, we smile.
Kristin has blogged about her bathroom fears, but let me tell you a recent bathroom event. The stall in my work building is a shared bathroom. The door to one of the squat toliet is broke. I go in and there's a Chinese person squatting and smoking. He looks at me and says hi. I will clarify here to give you a better idea of the akwardness.....it's the male bathroom. So the chinese guy is squatting going #2 while smoking and says hi to me.
The annoyance has moved beyond the lack of Western facilities to the public bathrooms do not have toliet paper. And the faucet is always cold water. I really hate washing my hands with cold water. We carry around hand sanitizer.
Today we hear a band playing at 6:30a outside. It's cold out! 20 degrees. Too cold for a bunch of people to practice their instruments. As we watch through the window, we see a coffin being carried. Apparently it was a funeral coming through our apartment compkex. Weird huh?
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