where we live.

My Dad recently brought up the fact that he has no idea what the city is like where we live.  We were talking about sunshine or the lack thereof, birds, and pollen - I don't remember the details exactly, but it seems to have been a Spring themed conversation, and I mentioned never having seen a bird here.  I have heard a couple.  But I haven't ever seen any....other than caged up or dead and de-feathered birds for eating at the market.  And he said, "I have no idea what it's like where you live."


So, I left the house the other morning with camera in hand to take pictures to share with you.


These are picture of our complex.  The picture on the left shows our side of the complex.  The door to our stairwell is behind that car.

The middle picture shows the front gate of the complex.  Most apartment complexes here have gates at their entrance that a gate guard mans at all times.  Some places are large enough that they will have several shifts of workers for the gate.  Our place has around 5 buildings and is not very large at all.  So we only have two gate guards, who are always there, often at the same time.  We pay our gas and water bills to the gate guards.  The gate guards also give us our mail when it arrives.  And they shut the gates every night at midnight and reopen them in the mornings at 7.


The right picture is of the path we take to get to the gate from our building.  It's not as long as the picture makes it look.

<-----Another shot of our complex, I think there are only 7 floors in each building.  No elevator.

This is our street when you go left from our gate-------->

sitting and chatting outside of
our front gate

Our street has a lot of trees on it, but they are all dusty. The leaves are constantly a gray color.  There is so much potential for a Myers Park type of atmosphere (except with small, dinky trees, instead of huge, beautiful oaks).  Actually, it's hard to tell whether or not the trees are dusty or if because the sky is always gray, everything looks gray.

After about 9:00 every night, the street gets really quiet, as there are no bars or restaurants on our part of the street.  Aaron and I enjoy the peace of the night.  Then about 8:30 every morning, the street starts to come alive as people open up their shops and start to gather around the sides of the streets.


Tea shops open up and put tables out and elderly people gather all day long to play chinese chess, mah jong  (a Chinese dominos like game), and card games.  They start out easy in the mornings with just tea and talking to friends, but by the end of the afternoon they are slamming cards down and yelling at each other.  And crowds gather around tables to see how games of chess are going to end.

Morning tea. I'm not sure whether
that guy was waving at me, or was
trying to tell me not to take his picture

Our apartment is the one above the black sign

The morning group we can see from
our window.

This is the street directly across
from our apartment.  See how there
are tables lining the side of the street.

To the left of our complex, further
down the street is a larger open
area with a lot of tables that fill
with people playing during the day

selling cabbage

Another one of the above place

Multiple times throughout the day vendors on bikes, like the lady above, will ride up and down our street calling out what they are selling.  It's like having an ice cream truck driving through your neighborhood 50 times a day.  Only, there is no ice cream.  There is bamboo, or cabbage, or shoe repairing, or something that I still haven't figured out but involves clanking two pieces of metal together to announce it's presence.

Marking the territory of this newly impassioned soul

Since last summer, Aaron and I have been practically obsessed with the band Mumford and Sons. We've worked our way through their cd playing one song on repeat, until we fall in love with another one, then playing that one.

My current obsession is the song, Roll Away Your Stone. It makes me wish I was running in an open field with my arms spread wide. And if could do cartwheels, I would do those too (I think I'm the only girl who never learned how to do them as child). I love the words. They make me reflect on the most significant rolling away of a stone in history. I often wish I could post on our blog the music that Aaron and I love right now to share with others, and this morning I thought, hey I can post a video of this song from Youtube. So here it is.

Enjoy!

Support local business (kind of a catch phrase around our neighborhood in America)

In America, Aaron and I were pretty big restaurant snobs, desiring only to eat at local restaurants instead of chains - especially if we were going to a city we had never been before. We love Chick-Fil-A and Bojangles (apparently only fast food chains win our hearts over), but restaurants that are unique to an area will get my vote every time.

Luckily, here in China, we're surrounded by local restaurants here. Chain restaurants for us now have been reserved for fancy, once in a while meals -  like when you're having a bad day and are in need of a treat. We look forward to going to Thailand and going to Outback, Burger King, Swensen's, Tony Roma's, etc., for long awaited treats.

It's nice having many local restaurants, I guess.  But my snobbish ways are quickly dying, as Aaron and I have tried local restaurant after local restaurant to be disappointed, then end up one desperate night at Pizza Hut (the first two months I wasn't able to cook anything at home, because our kitchen wasn't set up.  So there were quite a few days that qualified as "a bad day in need of a treat" after eating the same food for weeks at at time). We haven't found any gems close to our home yet (gems - as in - "I'm tired and don't feel like cooking.  Let's just run right out to _____" type of gems).  BUT we have found a few restaurants that we are willing to walk a mile to get to, and one in particular that we hypothetically would  eat three meals in a row there.....hypothetically, of course:)

This is our friend, Mr. Joe (His last name sounds like Joe in English, so we'll call him Mr. Joe for the ease of remembering).  We stumbled upon his Japanese (he's not Japanese) restaurant one day, ordered his "beef rice" (which we refer to as teriyaki beef), only to fall in love and continuously come back 3 meals in a row (that's 6 miles of walking for that beef rice).  This is by far Aaron's favorite restaurant. 

delighting in the beef teriyaki

Señor Joe makes potato salad that tastes like american potato salad, fried mashed potato cakes (croquettes), asparagus wrapped in bacon, a stir fry beef and onion dish, chicken nuggets, and french fries. This guy is amazing! He also makes sushi, but we don't sully our palettes with that :)

the new creation
yeah, he cut the carrots to look like flowers

Last week, we convinced him to make us a chicken teriyaki - with broccoli and carrots, instead of his usual mushrooms and onions that he uses in the beef. At first he was hesitant, but he tried it for us. Aaron was a big fan. This item is not on his menu, but he told us he will make it for us anytime we like.

Random blog, I know. But I wanted to offer a little glimpse into our lives of the things we're really starting to enjoy about our city.

the Shepards

Growing up, my brother was definitely my best friend. We spent many a day wandering around the woods behind our house, collecting finds from the old 1950's glass dump that was on our land. We rode our bikes up and down the same stretch of driveway over and over and over again. When our cousins came over to play Chris was Peter Pan and all the girls fought over who would be Wendy. I would inevitably win (though I did not realize the love connection Peter Pan and Wendy seemed to have, until much later, and then stopped pushing to be Wendy).
We watched the same movies over and over together - Home Alone and Wayne's World, were our favorites. Chris and I also fought.....he would get on the other house phone every time I talked to my friends and would laugh at everything we said. We tackled each other to the ground...or rather I would tackle him to the ground to defend my privacy rights....that is until he outgrew me. We played each other in Super Mario World on Gameboy, blaming each other for our losses - "you were breathing too hard!"
I drove Chris to school everyday, and was sad the day I went to college and wouldn't get to spend all that time with him. He called me as my family started decorating the Christmas tree, the first Christmas I ever missed the decorating of the tree.
Last weekend, Aaron and I went home to watch my brother get married to a girl I remember hearing about when he was in high school and I was in college. They went to junior prom together, and years later would reconnect and fall in love.

I am really excited for Chris and Maria as they start their married life together. I am happy for Chris that he found a wife like Maria, a real sweetie who fits so easily in our family. I am also happy for Maria that she has Chris. Chris, who is competitive, imaginative, sensitive (despite outward appearances or ever admitting it), and who is sure to make her laugh. I know it won't always be smooth. There is sure to be conflict, as in all relationships, but seeking God and learning to compromise, I am sure they will grow together.
Welcome to the family, Maria!

shifting weight

I'm sitting on the couch in our living room waiting for the washer to start beeping like crazy again, because it can't handle the 2 kgs of weight that I put in it. The bulk of the weight always ends up on one side of the machine, so I have to get up every few minutes and shift the weight. The three loads of laundry that I have to do are going to end up taking the whole day. Which is not a surprise at this point - things over here almost always seem to take longer than you would expect them to.

Like for instance, living in your home for a whole calendar month. Aaron and I moved here December 6th, and since December 6th we haven't been in our house for the completion of any month - December we visited friends, January and February we were out traveling, and we won't be at home for the entire month of March either.

Getting over sinus problems takes longer here....but I don't know that this is related to the location as much as my expectations for sinus relief to have come a lot sooner.

Communicating with the vendors at the market takes longer than i expect.  Their dialect and accents are so thick, that I often have them repeat what they are saying a few times before I realize that they are saying "I DON'T HAVE THAT."

Even time in between blogs is longer than I initially expected because life seems uneventful or uninteresting when i sit down to write or I am spending hours studying Chinese which is probably the only thing taking about the amount of time i would expect it to take (FOREVER) and don't make time to blog.

Lately I have been reflecting on how much of my life is done on a time schedule I create, when in reality I have an eternity to live. So unexpected lines and delays are reminders that it is okay when things move slower. Thank you, China, for challenging me to change perspective.

And because it has been my goal for our blog not to become my personal journal, but to be more like a photo album or slideshow of our lives for our families. Here are recent pictures from around the house. So I can at least feel like I didn't compromise that goal with so many words written above:)

Two things we're pretty excited about:

Making brownies in my new oven!
Thank you to both Moms & your friends,
for praying for me to find a good oven.

Aaron standing at his desk he installed as a wall desk.