Carey Jane Clark

Finally Home

March 19, 2012 by Carey Jane Clark

Jet lag is in full force and along with the lack of sleep, the cold and the adjustments have come a range of emotions. But the overwhelming feeling from this week is one of gratitude. There are so many little things I’m grateful for. With each box I open up, I pull the lid off a memory, a regret or two, or an almost-forgotten treasure. And it has been wonderful to catch up with old friends and to make new ones.

The regrets have come in the form of the kids’ clothing. When we first left, we intended to be back much sooner. I saved dozens of items of clothing that no one will wear now–all kinds of cute outfits that will no longer fit. They’re just things, but it brings a twinge of sadness, nonetheless.

Some things have been just plain fun to open up–like our old photo albums and a bunch of clothing I left here and haven’t worn in almost two years. When we left, I was pregnant, with the expectation of being too large to wear most of my clothes for the duration of our time in Canada. After the miscarriage, I needed only the few items of clothing I had brought with me. So I recycled the same couple of pairs of jeans for most of our time there. In less than a week back here, I’ve actually worn three or four different pairs of pants. How refreshing!

And there’s the kitchen. It’s so nice to have all my own things so close at hand and get back into the routine of cooking and baking here.

This week, I’m grateful for so much:

171. Old friends.
172. New friends.
173. Speaking Mandarin. Sounds funny, but I enjoy the challenge of language learning, and I enjoy speaking Mandarin. Back at the market, I remembered just about all of my fruit and vegetable vocabulary. Just one pronunciation problem slipped me up, but I still came home with what I went to market for.
174. My lovely new kitchen.
175. My “old” kitchen things. Everyone joins me, for example, in appreciation of our handy-dandy apple slicer.
176. Fruit we haven’t tasted in a long time, like pomello and truly fresh pineapple.
177. Buckwheat (soba) noodles. Gluten-free and so yummy!

Sprout Eats Noodles

178. We have begun to appreciate just how well JavaMan did at finding us this apartment. Everything is close at hand and very convenient. Our old place here was great too, and we miss it a little, but it wasn’t as practical for the area we needed to locate in now.
179. IKEA. While we lived in Toronto, we lived near IKEA and furnished our home with a number of items from the store, but while we were in Canada, we didn’t set foot in the store once. What would we buy? Certainly nothing we would want to bring back across an ocean. But our city has a store here, and for old times’ sake (and as somewhere to keep warm for a few hours), we visited the store on Saturday. We walked out without buying a thing, but we had a lovely time window shopping.
180. Being together. JavaMan will start work soon, but it has been nice to have the time to settle in and just be together again. We were apart for three weeks. It’s good to be a family again under our own roof.
181. Our landlord. We’ve had a couple of problems since moving in (like a water heater with only 3 minutes of hot water), and our landlord has been very responsive and cheerful about it all.
182. Internet. We were without it for a few days while traveling and until it was hooked up on Friday. It’s easy to take it for granted, but the break from it was good too.
183. My own cell phone. I didn’t bother to get a phone in Canada, although a few times, I wished I’d had one. Here, it’s hard to live without, and we won’t be getting a home phone.
184. My children. There was a pretty major disappointment just before we arrived. We were unable to locate puppy. We left him with a friend who subsequently left town, apparently without a trace. Our kids–especially Sprout–were very upset and disappointed. But they’ve warmed to their new home and rediscovering their toys and treasures, and have even begun making new friends with very few tears over what we “don’t have.”
185. Warmth. We made a project today of getting books and games put away in the homeschool room and clearing out enough bins to consolidate a bin for each child’s clothing until the dressers and wardrobes arrive. Pumpkin took the temperature in the homeschool room at one point and declared it was 1 degree Celsius. It’s sad to realize that some people live in that kind of reality all the time, and a good lesson in appreciating just how blessed we are that we can usually say we are warm and secure.
186. I’ve made a quilt for each of my children, and they’re all here. We were concerned about the ones that spent two winters in the south of China, since the climate is damp. A number of things are being laundered, since they smell a little musty, but by and large, things fared very well.
187. The long-range forecast. It promises to get warmer here. It will be good to shed some layers indoors. Today I wore a fleece shirt, a long sweater and a ski vest. Comfy.
188. Technology. There are always a few things I don’t know how to say or a question I’m not sure how to ask. Our favorite trick when buying things is to take a picture of the item with us. Today, JavaMan took a picture of tomato paste from the internet and I took his phone to the market. I returned with the item I wanted, and we had chili for lunch!
189. Homeschool. What other lifestyle would afford our kids the flexibility we have right now? We are doing some math online with Dreambox and studying Chinese. That’s it for now, and probably until the temperature cooperates.
190. An online community of homeschoolers. Now that there are no homeschoolers close to me, I appreciate my online buddies even more! (Thanks Jimmie for your advice!)

What are you thankful for this week?

Multitudes on Monday

- Carey Clark

March 3 in 30: Slowly Slowly Come

March 17, 2012 by Carey Jane Clark

In Chinese, there is a phrase, useful in many situations: “man man lai.” Literally, it means “slowly, slowly come,” but the intended meaning of the phrase is roughly equivalent to “one step at a time” in English–the idea that some things don’t come quickly, they take patience and perseverance. Like language learning. Like all my goals for this month.

Sleep well before the move and beat jet lag as quickly as possible after – We all slept through the night the very first night here. But the next night, the girls woke up at 5:30 a.m. and came into our room. So we all were awake. I’ve been crashing at the kids’ bedtime, and that makes me wake up early–like last night, when I woke up, convinced it was morning, before 4:00 a.m.
Maintain a healthy exercise schedule coming into the move so I can get back at it as quickly as possible afterward. Didn’t get that last workout in before getting on the plane because I realized it would leave me with sweaty laundry and I knew I didn’t have time to do anything about that before we left. Haven’t exercised since arrival, unless you count hefting heavy bags of meat, vegetables, cooking wine & soy sauce up the hill to our house, and the trip back to get the buckwheat noodles that I forgot to buy the first time (which I think you should).
Finish packing before the move, unpack and organize the kitchen, bathrooms and homeschool room after the move to get things up and rolling ASAP. My ideals are meeting with reality here, although I am making slow progress. We’re hampered a little by the heat–or rather lack thereof. On Friday, I was out meeting a friend and getting my cell phone SIM card in the cold and rain and came back to the cold house with a bit of a chill. Holed up in the warm rooms for the rest of the night and didn’t even do the dishes! (Don’t tell my mother.) I just couldn’t face the freezing kitchen.

- Carey Clark

Off to a Great Start

March 16, 2012 by Carey Jane Clark

Chinataxi

We arrived safe and sound on Wednesday evening and were settled in our apartment. It’s a little cold. For anyone moving in after the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year), there’s no heat being turned on, since the date for the heat to be turned off for the season is just a month away. Although North America has, by and large, been enjoying a milder, shorter winter, here in China, the winter has been longer and colder than usual. How lucky for us!

Fortunately, JavaMan brought some heaters from the south (where there is no central heat) and we’ve been huddling in the couple of rooms that are warm, making forays into the rest of the apartment to unpack and make and eat meals. The long range forecast looks more encouraging than the next week or so.

On Thursday, it was bright and sunny, and the kids and I were feeling adventurous and happy to be back in some of our old stomping grounds. We decided to take a little trip to our old neighborhood and look up some old friends. We also had the excuse of going to the market there so I could find something I hadn’t been able to find in our local market. I was sure it was possible to buy the item (brown rice) in the local market, but couldn’t recall the proper Mandarin word for it. I knew right where to go in the old neighborhood.

We had a lovely time. As we walked through the market, several people recognized us and struck up conversations, remarking at how much the children had grown. It was a little sad to me that Sprout seemed to remember nothing of either the market or our old apartment complex, but the older two children recalled plenty. We ran into the mother of a former classmate of Sweetpea’s from the brief few months they studied part-time at a Chinese kindergarten, and some other old friends. We were even invited in for tea at the home of some friends who lived in the complex. When JavaMan was away on business once for an extended period, she helped me watch the kids while I ran to the market, and generally looked out for us. She has us call her “nai nai” (grandma).

We were more than pleased with our little adventure.

And then it was time to go home.

Blame it on the jet lag, perhaps, but it hadn’t occurred to me when we left our new home to find out any information about how to get back to it. I knew the area. I used to pass it when I came home from the university I taught at for a semester. But I didn’t know the proper names of the streets or any significant landmark. I could tell you that it was across from a high school and close to railway tracks. I could even do this in Mandarin. But I couldn’t name a single distinctive feature of the place.

I decided to take a taxi and tell him to go to a place I knew was supposed to be near our home. However, on the way there, I reconized none of the apartment buildings. I also noticed that the taxi fare was twice as much as the way out, and the road we took seemed wrong to me.

We disembarked and wandered around for a while, at which point, I told the kids it might be a good idea if we prayed. I told them I was lost. Finally, I decided we needed to be closer to the other road, and the best thing to do would be to get in another taxi, because I was sure we were not within walking distance of our new home.

When we got in the next taxi, the driver looked at me and asked, “Where to?” and I proceeded to explain that we were lost, that I had just moved back to the city, and wasn’t sure exactly where my new home was. He looked at me rather dubiously and asked again, “where do you want me to take you?” I described, as best I could, our new apartment building, adding a description of the local market. He threw up his hands. “There are many markets like that here.”

He started driving, and trying to follow my very vague instructions. The conversation in the car went something like this:

“Maybe you could call your husband.”

“I don’t have a phone.”

“Here. Use mine.”

“Umm, I don’t know his number.” (It was on my Facebook, and we had no internet yet. My computer was, of course, at home.)

“You don’t know his number?”

“No.”

“How about his workplace? Where does he work?”

“I’m not sure. I know his boss, but I don’t know where the office is.”

“Where is his boss?”

“In America.”

“How long have you lived in China? Your Chinese is not bad.”

“Two years.”

“Two years, and you don’t know where you live?”

I explained again we had just moved back the day before. I wasn’t earning any smart points, and I could see that he was getting agitated. He pointed at the meter. I told him it wasn’t his problem, and that it would be okay. I suggested we drive back in the direction of the old neighbourhood.

This seemed to satisfy him for the moment, and within minutes I noticed some familiar landmarks. We had arrived home.

I thought that finding ourselves again would restore my childrens’ confidence in my navigating abilities, but as we walked through the door of our home, Sprout, who has lately taken on a flair for the dramatic, declared, “I’m never going shopping with Mommy again!”

Today I bought a new SIM card for my cell phone and learned the name of our bus stop.

- Carey Clark

Expat Blog Hop: Television

March 15, 2012 by Carey Jane Clark

By now, we’ve landed and are starting to settle in to our home in China. Today’s theme for the Expat Blog Hop is Television: What programs from our country do we watch, and have they helped to integrate or learn the language in any way?

This was our hope when we first moved to China, but TV was a bit beyond us at that point. What is great about Chinese TV is that in an effort to educate the general population, there are Chinese subtitles on every Chinese program, in simplified characters:

NewImage

The most well-known Chinese television network is CCTV, the national Chinese television network.

But since JavaMan and I aren’t really big TV watchers, we quickly lost interest in TV. We do like to watch Chinese movies, however, and I asked some of my students and friends for their recommendations to get us started. Again, these movies usually have subtitles in Chinese, which is helpful.

We tried TV as a language-learning tool for our kids, but found that so many shows for kids were filled with magic and violence, we ended up opting for other language-learning tools. For a while, our kids had a tutor and she was using a series of books we located on the internet called Sing Your Way to Chinese. They’re a lot of fun, and we’ll continue to use them when we return. Our kids are also very engaged now with Rosetta Stone, so it will be an excellent tool to continue language learning.

Now that our Chinese has improved, we may find more use for TV. One thing we did appreciate it for was watching the Olympics. We watched portions of both the Beijing Summer Games and the Vancouver Winter Games from China. The few times that we have found TV more entertaining, we watched with friends, who were able to interpret a bit more of what we were watching. It was also interesting to hear their perspectives on what we were viewing.

And we had the opportunity to see a fellow Canadian on Chinese TV. Mark Rowsell, of Toronto, otherwise as invisible as the next average Canadian, has achieved superstar status in China. He has acquired Mandarin to such a degree of proficiency that he became an emcee for Chinese television shows and executes comedy in Mandarin with skill the Chinese admire in a national. He is the gold standard for every other expat attempting to learn the language, and when Chinese hear us speak, it is not uncommon to hear “Dashan” (his Chinese name) mentioned in comparison. Rick Mercer, another Canadian icon, held this interview with him (Mercer slaughters the Chinese pronunciation of “Dashan” and just about everything else he says in Chinese in this video by the way):

- Carey Clark

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