Nose picking and other personal habits...

So I have noticed that nose picking in public is definitely OK here.  Men and women alike engage in this sport of digging for gold whenever the mood strikes them.  The worst is when your taxi driver picks a "Shanghai pollution booger" (as I like to call the black ones) out of his nose and then hands you your change- ewww.  You can observe this behavior pretty much anywhere here- on the street, in restaurants (yep, the servers do it too), elevators, etc.  And since I am on the subject of personal habits, staring at people, picking your teeth, and shouting into your cell phone no matter where you are- all OK here.  Oh, and I would be remiss to mention the Chinese habit of hitting the close door button thirty times the minute you enter the elevator (as if you were the only person in the world), regardless of anyone else trying to get on.  Unfortunately, I kind of like this habit and have adapted it myself.

And I have one other funny story to tell- since I have discovered the joy of taking the bus here, I have almost become addicted- why pay $1.75 for a taxi when you can pay 30cents for the bus?  But I did have my "I am a stupid foreigner" moment this week.  I have always taken the bus in the same direction but as my confidence has grown, I thought I would try a new route.  Mistake.  I didn't know where the bus stopped so I watched as the stop I wanted came and went.  And then, as the next stop approached (already way out of the way of where I wanted to go), I fought my way to the exit doors.  In China, you exit from the middle of the bus and enter from the front.  Well, by the time I got to the middle doors, they had shut.  When I had previously taken the bus in Minneapolis, you could simply touch the handles on the middle doors and they would open but apparently not in China!  So I desperately tried to push the doors open to no avail.  I had to wait and get off at the following stop.  I asked my ayi the next day how to get the doors to open.  She replied that the driver opened them.  "But what if you get to the door and it's already 

shut?"  "Well," she replied, "you have to shout 'Wait a minute, Wait a minute'!".   Oh.  Now I know.  Next time, instead of looking like a clueless foreigner, I'll just look like a foreigner with bad Chinese as I shout out "Deng yixiar!"  That's wait a minute in mandarin!

Singapore & Malaysia

Since everything shuts down during Chinese New Year, and it's cold in Shanghai (well, not compared to Minnesota but 30 degrees here is considered the dead of winter) we decided to head for warmer weather- right around the equator.

First we hit Singapore for a brief stopover on our way to Malaysia. It's a beautiful country in the middle of the rain forest. The city is amazing- clean (no wonder - you can be caned for littering), orderly, and totally modern. The official languages are English, Mandarin, Tamil, and Malay. So, everyone speaks english which was a refreshing change. Other than the US, I have never been anywhere that was a diverse as Singapore. There are people from all descents which makes for some amazing food experiences. We were only able to spend one full day so we chose to hit the zoo (of course). It's a fantastic zoo with a lot of animals I've never seen or even heard of before: white tigers, Proboscis monkeys, malaysian tapirs, pygmy hippos, mandrills, and jaguars.

The kids loved it and a good time was had by all.

Here is a picture of a sign at the Singapore zoo near the mountain lion enclosure.  Of course, it's only written in Chinese (even though every other sign at the zoo is posted in enlglish) and basically says don't feed the animals or get too close- you WILL get hurt (see previous post on Shanghai zoo for more info).

The next day we headed to Malaysia. This was my first time in a muslim country. In terms of religion, Malaysia is definitely not full of extremists. Although the muslim women did keep their heads covered (but not their faces), they can work and go about daily life unescorted. And, like Singapore, there seemed to be a lot more diversity than I had expected. Freedom of religion is granted even though it may not be encouraged. We saw mosques, along with hindu and buddist temples, and even some churches. After a connecting flight through Kuala Lumpur, we finally reached a small island off the coast of Malaysia, called Langkawi. Situated on the Andaman Sea, we could actually see one of Thailand's islands from our resort. Throughout our weeklong stay, the weather was 85 degrees and sunny. The beach was actually a bit disappointing- although the water was warm and extremely calm it wasn't clear and the sand was pebbly and full of small shells. But it was clean and practically deserted. The resort itself had 3 amazing pools which was where we spent most of our time. We were able to do a 1/2 day boat tour through the mangrove forest where we saw monkeys and eagles. We also saw quite a few large monitor lizards (about 3 ft long) around our resort which the kids loved and Sev and I did not! All in all, we had a great time although I would love to go and spend more time on mainland Malaysia next time.

The view from the beach.  At low tide, a sandbar would appear and you could actually walk out to the rocks in the distance.

A view of our resort from the water.

Malaysian fisherman using the traditional net method to catch giant prawns on the Andaman Sea.

Some of the many monkeys that live on Langkawi.

A giant monitor lizard at our resort.  About 3 feet long...but no worries- we were assured they only eat fish.

Grace posing with another monitor lizard.  A favorite activity for the kids on vacation was checking if the lizard was "home" under the deck- about 50 times a day.

Year of the Ox

Chinese New Year is finally over and we have officially entered the year of the Ox. Turns out that I am an Ox under the Chinese zodiac which means that since this is my year, I am supposed to wear red somewhere on my body at all times to ward off bad luck- and I thought a person was supposed to have good luck in their own year! Anyway, most people choose to wear red underwear in their year but after much debate with myself, I have decided to take my chances and forgo the red undies so we will see what happens...

Chinese New Year (CNY for short) is a HUGE deal here. All the migrant workers return home to their provinces to spend time with their families. I recently read that over 250 million people travel by car/bus and another 5 million by train. That's nearly 75% of the population of the USA to put it in perspective. Crazy. Although the holiday is technically 1 week long, it seems to stretch on for about a month. The kid's school has a big family event so I thought I'd share some pics of the girls in their traditional Chinese clothes (red is the color of luck and symbolizes wealth so you'll see a lot of red everywhere this time of year).

G & A in their traditional outfits.

The girls in A's class: Kitty (China), Aika (Japan), Clemintine (France) and little A.

Another tradition around CNY is the Lion Dance.  There is usually a drummer and several cymbal players who accompany two men dressed in a Chinese lion costume.  One guy is the head, the other is the tail.  In the dance that we saw, the "lion" jumps up on pillars which are about 10 feet high with just enough room on the platform for your foot.  They leap back and forth on the cylinders with one guy holding the other up on his shoulders- scary!  But cool if you're just watching and not participating.  The kids loved it of course!

G with some guy in a Chinese opera costume. No idea what the meaning of the costume it though..

The "Lion" perched on the low pillars.

An action shot of the lion leaping from one pillar to the next.

Here you can see the 2nd guy standing on the shoulders of the lower man.  Now imagine jumping around on the pillars like that!

Fortune Kindergarten

Just last month we had the pleasure of attending the kid's kindergarten Christmas concert. As I sat there in nervous anticipation of our own children's performance, I couldn't help but notice one of the reasons I am so glad we accepted the opportunity to live in Shanghai: an amazing expat community. And nowhere is there a better example than our kid's school, Fortune Kindergarten. Looking around the room I counted families from the following countries: China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Israel, France, Germany, USA, Canada, Senegal, Ireland, England, Czech Republic, Australia & India. I feel so lucky that we can give our kids a multicultural experience on a daily basis. They learn about other cultures from their classmates and teachers everyday. In fact, Grace was watching TV the other day and Dora the Explorer was on- in Filipino. After a few minutes, she asked me "Mom, what English are they speaking?" I told her Filipino, from the Philippines. "Oh, just like teacher Rose at school,
right?"

Another thing we love about Fortune Kindergarten is their approach to bilingual education. When searching for schools, I found that most international schools here teach only in English with a 30 minute Mandarin language lesson each day. I didn't feel like the kids would really learn the language with such little exposure. Fortune teaches one full day in English, and the next full day in Mandarin; however, both the English and the Chinese teacher are present in the classroom at all times. And when Grace finally spit out a full sentence in Mandarin today, I felt pretty good about our choice.

Of course, there are some drawbacks at the school but understand that these are issues in nearly all schools in China:

1) They like to keep the windows open even when it's 30degrees outside and there is no heat/ac in the hallways- just in the classrooms (and in the local schools, even the classrooms aren't heated). I think Grace froze her little butt off last year until I realized I needed to dress her in multiple layers!

2) No guidelines on peanuts, home backed snacks, or other big no-no's in the US. Again, doesn't bother me but I chuckled as I handed out snickers for their Halloween party thinking about how this would never fly in America.

3) Sometimes if I call the office in the mornings, nobody speaks English- Oh well, just gives me a chance to practice my chinese!

Anyway, overall it's a great little school and we plan on sending the kids there next year as well. Enjoy the pics from Fortune's Christmas Concert and Grace's 4th B.day celebration at school last week.

Audrey and her dance partner during the xmas concert.

Grace looking a little bored during the xmas concert.

Grace's Toy Story Cake (her latest obsession)

The Birthday girl blowing out her candle

The two pre-k classes looking at Grace and waiting patiently for a piece of cake (there are 15 kids per class).

The front of the kid's school

The Shanghai Zoo

This weekend we made our 3rd trip to the Shanghai Zoo. It's a pretty good zoo- lots of animals and nice open green spaces. But, as with most things in China, there are some drawbacks. First off, this zoo would never cut it in the "sue happy" USA. Of course the enclosures for the dangerous animals are adequate but a lot of the other enclosures feature low walls and wide gates (which my weaselly 4 year old can easily slip through). I just kept wondering how many stupid people have stuck their hand into one of these enclosures and gotten bitten. Honestly, if you really wanted to walk right up to an elephant, you could. On the other hand, one cool thing about going to a zoo on the other side of the world is that you get to see some animals that most American zoos don't have- giant pandas, really cool vultures, asian tigers, sun bears, and red pandas. The funny thing is that some of our common animals in America are a novelty for the Chinese- as evidenced by the huge display of seagulls. Yep, the same old seagulls that crap all over the beach in New Jersey are one of the most popular displays in the Shanghai zoo.

The seagull enclosure.

There are some really weird things going on at this zoo as well. Namely, "Pet World". I must admit we skipped this exhibit on the first couple trips because we assumed it was a standard petting zoo. Not so. It's actually a display of dogs and cats. Yep, each breed has it's own cage- collies, beagles, poodles, huskies, afghans, etc. and a display sign attached explaining the breeds attributes. It's freaky.

The Collie display at the zoo. Weird.

Ok, the next bizarre thing we noticed is that they have an area where you can pay to have your picture taken with a stuffed zebra. Not the toy kind- a taxidermy stuffed zebra. Which is old and showing it's age. Yuck.

The "stuffed" zebra

But the thing that bothers us above all else at this zoo is the behavior of the Chinese visitors. It's always the same. There are signs all over the zoo "Don't feed the animals"; "Don't throw garbage into the enclosures". Common sense in the US, right? Not so in China! If I had a dollar for every time we have watched someone throw food into a cage, we'd be rich. Of course the primates are the favorite critters to feed but I've also seen people toss crackers to the foxes, bears, birds, pretty much no poor creature is exempt (except for the ones you can't get to like the pandas and lions). On top of that, we have watched people throw their garbage down into the enclosures as well. "Hmm, let's see how this sun bear will react if we throw our empty soda cup into his cage". Sev and I have made it our personal mission at the zoo to reprimand people when they do this but I'm pretty sure it's a lost cause. And it's hard to teach the kids to respect animals and the rules when every adult they see is behaving in the exact opposite way. Oh well, we will keep trying.

Hope everyone had a wonderful New Year - my resolution is to keep up the blog a little better this year! By the way, for some reason, I can now access the blog so I can see comments- and comments are welcome! Also, I added a voting button at the end of each blog so you can let me know if you liked it or not.

The Beauty of Mandarin

I realized today that I've been studying Mandarin for a little over a year now. Hmm, I am much less further along than I thought I'd be at this point. But in my defense, it's not an easy language as it's based on tones. For example, the same word can have 4 different meanings based on the tone of your voice. But what I really wanted to share today is the interesting translations I've learned over the past year. As my language skills become better, I find that the literal translation of the words in Mandarin are very interesting, funny, and make total sense. So here is a list of my favorites (English word on the left, Mandarin word on the right):

Cash= present gold
Turkey= fire chicken
Ham= fire leg
Gym= healthy body room
Great Wall= Long City
America= Beautiful country
To boil (water)= open the water
Santa= Christmas Old Person
Computer= electric brain
Joke= laugh words
To become a priest= Leave your house forever
So-so= horse horse tiger tiger

I'll add some more as my language gets better. And for those who haven't heard, we have now extended for yet another year in China (back in summer of 2010) so I'll have plenty to time to improve my Mandarin over the next 1.5 years!

Japan

Sorry gang, it's been nearly a month since my last post and I don't really have an excuse- I'm just lazy. Anyway, thought I would fill everyone in on our trip to Japan. We went over the Chinese holiday in the last week of September. I guess I was expecting more similarities to China but other than the fact that they also eat with chopsticks, it was an entirely different world. Civilized, clean, polite, modern, and yet ancient and traditional at the same time. Since the primary purpose of the trip was Disneyland (of course) we really only spent one day exploring Tokyo. We took the train/subway from our hotel near DL right into downtown Tokyo. Totally convenient and no need for a car rental- which was good because they drive on the opposite of the road from us westerners! We first explored a traditional park in the middle of the city. Lots of green spaces for the kids to run and for our nature starved children, it was perfect. We then took a tourist boat along the river that runs through the city to our next stop at a Shinto temple. It was definitely not as interesting as the Buddhist temples that we see in China- not as ornate but still worth seeing. Then we walked around a popular shopping area with traditional Japanese souvenirs. The coolest thing was seeing many of the local women dressed in their kimonos out for a stroll. Both young and old were dressed in traditional costumes (saw some men dressed in theirs as well) and they honestly were not doing it for the tourists, but for themselves. Finally, we were blessed with both the kids falling asleep on the walk so Sev and I found a very local restaurant down a back alley and enjoyed lunch. We made friends with some of the locals, shared some beers and some sign language since their english was not so good, and had a blast pointing to everyone else's dishes in an attempt to order- no english menu of course!

And the next 3 days after Tokyo were spent at Disneyland and Disney Sea. It rained a lot and it was really crowded but we still managed to enjoy it. The craziest thing was that 80% of the people at both parks were adults- who were there without children! And 99% were Japanese. We hardly saw any other westerners which really surprised us. By the way, the kids wore the same costumes for Halloween so we got a lot of use out of them. And thanks to mom for making Grace's Snow White dress! So here is a brief compare/contrast of Japan and China based on my limited experience in the land of the rising sun:

1) People line up for things in Japan/ Not in China

2) Cars stop when pedestrians cross the street/ Not in China

3) It was extremely clean for a big city/ Not in China

4) People stopped and took pics of the kids/ Same in China

5) Hardly anyone spoke English/ Same in China

6) Starbucks opens at 8am/ 6am in China (thank heaven)

7) Lots of scary stuff on the menu/ Same in China

8) Tokyo was ridiculously expensive/ Shanghai is relatively cheap

9) Japan continues to practice whaling (unfortunately)/ The Chinese continue to eat dogs (also unfortunate)

Overall, we really did enjoy Japan and would love to go back and explore the country outside of Tokyo. Enjoy the pictures!

A busy shopping area in old Tokyo

Ladies out for a stroll in their Kimonos

Making friends at a local restaraunt

Waiting for the monorail to go to DL

Snow White- meet Snow White

Tinkerbelle and Peter Pan (note the girls in the background snapping pics of Audrey)