Revolving Door

This week has been a series of children coming and going.

Taylor had four days with the sixth grade in Beijing for a cultural experience, with the biggest cultural experience being the pollution index.  The second would be the experience of spending the night with peers. She's almost 12 and this was her first overnight trip (other than the grandparents) without Jeff and me. I wasn't really planning on it being such a dramatic first experience. Beijing? Really?

Claire also had her first overnight (other than grandparents), and she was really nervous. So, the day before she left, she looked over at me and said,
"Mom, I really, I mean really, love you.  But, I wish I could love you without missing you." She's only gone for two nights in the New Territories, a part of Hong Kong that is just too far by bus for me to enjoy.

This is the letter she left for Taylor (the girls share a bedroom).  I think the "heart planet" is a nice touch. 

As typical of Ellis, he just seemed to disappear without me getting a picture.

As all the children did, he packed himself (I try not to think too much about that). I did hand over his passport and HK ID that he is required to have to get into China, but that's because those documents stay in our hands whenever possible.  I drove him to the school where he boarded a bus for a five hour drive into China to Qing Yau, where he will stay for five days. His back pack was terribly light for five days. Then, I drove away and realized I didn't take one photo!

Forrest is home all week enjoying the solitude, I believe.

Diseases and other school tales

She's always the witty one!

Claire: "Mom, today at school Subin and Minhee and I started our project creating our own culture."

Mom: "That's great."

Claire: "We named it Chlamydia" (I'm sure she didn't spell it correctly), "but our teacher told us Chlamydia is a disease and we should probably come up with at new name." 

Thankfully, no one thought to ask the teacher the nature of the disease.

Last night, we were at dinner with Ellis and Forrest and Claire (Taylor is still in Beijing trying to breathe), when Jeff decided to ask the boys if they could name the prettiest girls in their grades. I thought Ellis was going to spew water out of his nose, but not from laughing.  Forrest couldn't even eat his pizza.

Forrest: "Dad, I can't answer."

Jeff: "I have a reason for asking. There's a follow-up question."

Forrest and Ellis: "What's the follow-up?"

Forrest:  "I can't answer the question without knowing the follow-up."

Jeff: "I don't want to tell you the follow-up yet.  Just tell me about the girls."



No dice, the boys weren't budging. Jeff finally had to tell them his follow-up question, which was going to be, "What makes the girls pretty?" This led to a short discussion (not the long meaningful discussion we hoped for) about true beauty.

Claire was quietly listening, and then, suddenly she had something to say.

Claire: "Dad, how many girls did you kiss before you kissed mom?"

Bingo, the boys were off the hook. Ellis was glad to get on that bus to Qingyuan, China this morning.

First-aid supplies don't always work

So,  maybe I did double my first-aid supplies in response to two boys playing rugby, but there are some things bandaids can't fix - heads and teeth.  Remember the broken tooth (Ellis) in preparation for rugby season? Case in point. When this picture was taken, Ellis was at his rugby game while his mouthpiece sat in his bathroom! Honestly, how many teeth will he have left after the season. Needless to say, Forrest had a lot to say about the forgotten mouthpiece. 

Forrest, the responsible older brother, returned from his Shanghai rugby tournament seemingly fine. He didn't have gashes in his face or legs, but four days after his return I get a call from the school nurse. He finished PE with a headache that caused his teeth to hurt, so he went looking for help. He loves this nurse. (Of course, she told me that Forrest was her favorite, too!) But, once he got to her office, he started vomitting - three times in all. She asked him if he received a head injury in Shanghai, which he did. Somehow I didn't know that because I didn't board the plane and go to the tournament. Next time!

Of course, I was in Central, not at home, which is only five minutes from the school. I grabbed a taxi and called the friend I always call when I'm at a loss. I asked her to meet me at the school with her car, which she did in a New York minute - she's from the South so we are bound together in that deep southern way.

She got us home to drop off the mass amount of things children are required to carry in a backpack to school, and then she got us to the next taxi stand, so we could be off to the hospital.

So, we waited for the CT scan. By this time, Forrest is fine. He's playing with the scale and we're trying to convert kilos to pounds.

The technician comes to get him for the scan. Do you know they don't let mamas go to the scan room with a 16 year old? I'm thinking, "who's going to hold his hand?" 

But, the hospital is great. As long as  you are a paying client, they are incredibly efficient. The receptionist even took my phone and recharged it while we were waiting on the doctor to read the scan. 

To the doctor we explain how the concussion happened and we promptly got the doctor's thoughts on rugby. After listening intently, we had to tell him we had only two days before Forrest was to board another plane, this time heading to Cambodia to work in service at an Orphanage with his classmates. The neurologist was fine with this. Although I don't think he was really listening because he was too busy trying to convince Forrest to take up tennis.

But, Forrest returned without slurred speech or a limp. Jeff, - also one not to heed advice - promptly took Forrest hiking to Dragon's Back because it was a public holiday and he couldn't enlist anyone else in the family to join him. Forrest can't handle the guilt, so he always says, "yes." He would have been a good Catholic.

Ellis spent the week off from school attending a sailing course, so he can be eligible to sail in the regatta in March.  He came home each day with absolutely no injuries. He did, however, get the lovely Chaco tan the boys are always trying to acheive. Check that one off.

Who Knew?

 Life is funny. I would have bet my house on Forrest NOT choosing to play rugby in his lifetime. This is my boy who loved organizing the neighborhood in games, but not at his physical expense! I can remember when he dressed Ellis in a life jacket - turned backward so Ellis had full coverage over his chest - and a GT football helmet so that he could be the catcher for a game of baseball played with a TENNIS ball.

But last weekend he boarded a plane from HK to Shanghai to play in the China Cup. All the high school rugby teams, boys and girls, traveled.  They won. Forrest played almost every game - and there were loads of games over a three day weekend.  And he returned injury-free.  He loved the competition, but he also loved Shanghai with it's houses and open spaces. His host family had a proper house with a back yard! The host mom also had recently taken up baking and decided to feed her rugby boys tiramisu and cheesecake for breakfast. No wonder he loves Shanghai.

But I must say, games are typically not injury-free. Those boys wear short rugby shorts and no pads.  There aren't many calls made for rough play. At times it looks like a free-for-all to us. Jeff is there for every game and is doing his best to understand the sport, but we always leave with him saying, "I still don't understand what they're doing out there." 

I would have bet my house on Ellis NOT choosing to play rugby, too. He loved his Playmobil and his stuffed animals and his dog! He was a cross country runner! He loved it, but even there he would always fall on the trails. Once, he fell in a pond at one of the meets, and this seemed normal to the entire team because they knew Ellis just had a tough time staying upright.  

So . . . Ellis drank the Kool-Aid.  Middle school rugby. Now, I have double the first-aid kit supplies.

Finding the joy

I have to admit that I really love living here, but there are times when I miss all things American, like Target, and nice big SUVs, and roads that are forgiving if you don't know the way, and Target, and Target. 

But, then I find myself in a situation where there is just a little comfort from home given to me from above.  Like, the Fonz in the bathroom at dinner! Right in the middle of Mid Levels, Hong Kong above the toilet. It brings a smile to the face of 70s American girl. Right?

And, then there are times like these that allow me to find joy right where I'm standing. You just can't get this out of our middle aged American men.

But, then I have the grocery store (which I can't say because it's a "market' and no one knows what I'm talking about when I say "grocery store"), which is a painful reminder of all things missed in America. 

It's not that I can't get wonderful things in my local market. I can. For instance, I have an entire isle of canned fish, and I have seaweed in lunchbox servings, that my youngest actually likes, so I shouldn't complain. But, I don't really need an entire isle of canned fish. I really want to be able to buy Cherrios that don't cost $10 a box.

Then I have the take-home facial. Seriously, I have to pay $10 USD for Cherrios (actually, I don't pay for the Cherrios, I buy the silly HK version that cost $6), but I can buy these "Flower Face Up Rollers" to tone my aging face for the $2 USD.

But, this is the greatest reason I love living here. It's easy to find joy with him around!

Bringing home the bacon

Between fishing at the oil rigs and Chef class at school, Ellis is starting to give Taylor a run for her money in the food department.

Our Chefs (yes, Ellis' glued tooth his still holding)

Fishing 60 miles off the coast in the South China Sea.  He vomitted only three times! 

From sea to plate. Yes, we made this without our helper (it was her day off)!

Okay, the Chef class in the middle school is amazing. The teacher is a trained chef from Le Cordon Bleu in London - honestly. Ellis made beautiful moon cakes for the mid-autumn festival, but none of us ate them because they had red bean filling. Really? Who eats that stuff? He told me a girl in his class seemed to really love the ones she made, so I sent a note to her mom, and I found out she took in her own filling - Nutella!  

Okay, this picture is not exactly Ellis' mooncake, but his looked exactly like it! I can't believe I didn't take a picture of the moon cakes he made, but took a picture of the half-eaten vegetable dip.  

Forrest says I have issues with my photography. I tell him the gift skipped a generation and he needs to be thankful.

I became inspired from my little chefs and started making my own mayonnaise. I had no idea how easy it is. It's only one egg, 1/2 cup extra light olive oil,  fresh lemon juice, a little dijon mustard and a little salt. You have to use one of these hand held blenders, but it works in about 30 seconds. Crazy. 

 Taylor is always making wonderful things in the kitchen! These are her brownie cupcakes and her very buttery chocolate chip cookies. She even made my giant  birthday cookie from scratch, but I can't find the picture. Claire, on the other hand, runs when people start working in the kitchen. She's going to be hard to repartriate.

Mongol Ponies, Girls at Boy Scout Camp, Horse Milk, and more

Oh my gosh, this was the best set of scout camp pictures ever! Jeff and Ellis joined other expat boyscouts (truly Boy Scouts of America troops) and dads and moms from around Asia for an nine day Mongolia adventure.  

The mongol ponies are small, fast, and due to the crazy wooden saddles, leave their mark on the man for weeks! Jeff and Ellis didn't fare well after a few days in the saddle.  I love this picture of Ellis, who is not a large boy, yet looks 6'5" in this picture! 

I've added the Mongol Derby 600 mile race link (the video is short and gives views of the amazing landscape of Mongolia) that's called the toughest horse race in the world. The riders get to use their own saddles, it seems, which Ellis noted straight away.

 http://www.theadventurists.com/mongol-derby/

Local co-ed scouts joined the boys for the week, which probably added a little motivation in the daily tasks, but not enough to get Ellis to a shower. Two times! He said he only showered two times in eight days. He came home and said three, but the third one was when they got to the capital, Ulaanbaatar, on the ninth day, just before flying home. I'm not sure why Jeff was even there.

So, these tent-like structures are not called Yurts in Mongolia. Gers are the Mongolian term for these structures. The boys didn't sleep in them, but they did get to construct it, and visit families living in them.

This little girl captured Jeff's attention. I love that face!

The boys said their food at camp was the best camp food ever! They ate traditional Mongolian meals all week, and then had a few extra fun snacks like horse milk and other things they opted to eat without knowing the origin - it's just better that way sometimes.

And, my favorite pictures - the wrestlers! These local guys did a little smack down for the boys. Sumo wrestling with more variety in the attire.

Ellis said this camel just showed up one day, so they tied him up to the tree. I'm guessing this was for safe-keeping until his owner arrived.

still strugging with teeth

Thankfully, this was not in the clubhouse, because, as you know, we are banned from pulling teeth in the clubhouse. Of course, technically, Ellis didn't "pull" half of his tooth off. The pull-up bar broke half the tooth while Ellis was attempting to work out in preparation for rugby tryouts. 

I know this is preparation for rugby season in more ways than one. 

Leaving his mark on the pull-up bar.

Do I have no real depth?

While I find it fun to post these absolutely silly things, I really mourn the fact that I seem to have no talent for posts that are philosophically unsettling, or, at the very least, spiritually moving.  

No, it seems I have a subconsious need to keep all of those things hidden deep in my brain.

As for today's topic of enlightenment - Forrest apologizes for the poor quality, but he was in the men's washroom and felt his photography needed to be somewhat stealthy just in case the other men felt he was being somewhat sleazy. 

Ironically, the girls and I were in a washroom today that had absolutley no sign, yet not one of the toilets flushed (HK is not a third world country - we were in a fabulously nice building with nice western toilets).  Strangely enough, Taylor knew exactly what to do.  Near the sinks was a large blue garbage bin full of water with a large, matching blue scooper floating in the water. She walked right out of her stall, scooped the water, and poured it into the toilet. She had to do the same for Claire because Claire was having nothing to do with this kind of manual labor. I shutter to think what Ellis would have done in a washroom with no flushing toilets - he notices nothing that resembles sanitary measures, yet can tell the difference between a Scarlet tananger and a Summer tanager (song birds) with a mere glance.

You can't make this stuff up

Heavens, she looks so innocent, but is nothing but.

There he is standing at my door.  One of the many guards who roam the premises, doing . . .

It's Sunday afternoon and I know the girls are indoors, surely no killer bees indoors. 

Anyway, I smile and say, "Hi."  Immediately, "One of your daughters finds you." 

"Excuse me," I said in the kindest, most understanding, and not I'm-making-fun-of-your-English-in-my-head voice that I could muster. 

I knew the girls were playing in the clubhouse, so I was sure someone was causing some disturbance.

"Your daughter finds you in the club house," he said. 

"Oh, my daughters asked you to come and get me?"  I know, I should have just followed him instead of correcting him, but I feel it's a duty if he's trying his English out on me. I shouldn't make fun, but I do.  Although, there's no way I could say in Cantonese, his daugther finds him. He's definitely flying high above me. 

I walk to the clubhouse and find Claire sitting in front of the desk with a bloody tissue in her hand and two adults with walkie talkies standing over her. I wish they would tell me where the Costco is - Lord at the number of walkie talkies in this place. I digress.

I knew instantly she had pulled her tooth because she had been working on that tooth all morning. On the way to church I told her to stop because the taxi driver would make us exit the vehicle if she succeeded without a tissue (I had none, nor did she). 

She was completely together. . . no tears.  The guard holds up the tooth in another tissue and tells me she came out of the bathroom with this tooth. He was not happy. 

"Does she need a doctor?" I'm beginning to wonder if there is one of the premises. Next time, I'm saying, yes.

"Um, no, it's a baby tooth."  A molar, but nonetheless, a baby molar.

"Oh, she did this by herself?" He is shocked.

"Can you please tell her not to pull her teeth in the clubhouse anymore?"  

"Yes." I'm pretty sure I can get her to comply.

She was thrilled with herself because this is the third tooth she has pulled without the help of a sibling or parent (long ago she lost faith in all of us because we always told her we just wanted to feel the tooth just before the final jerk. Not a lot of trust happening around here).

All in a day's work.

Jelly Side Up

I recently heard this idiom used to describe someone's life. It's an idiom that apparently derives from the unlikely probability that a half slice of bread with PB&J dropped will land "jelly side up."

Jelly side up indicates that everything turns out in favor of this person when the circumstances say it shouldn't - therefore, Jelly Side Up.

He's running late, and has no possible way of making a flight; but, he gets to the airport and the flight has been delayed, so he makes the flight.

As soon as I heard this, I statred using the same idiom to describe Jeff becasuse, honestly, it seems everything turns out in his favor.

Now, I think it's genetic.

Forrest finished his required hours for his driver's license with just one day to spare before leaving the States for another year. Yep, we were sixteenth in line at the DL office, we had many things going against us that I will not put in writing to keep the wonderful man who helped us in his rightful position, but he got that license with only one hour to spare. 

Jelly Side Up.

Forrest is off to Young Life Camp. Jeff is home working in HK.  We have a few more days in the mountains and then the rest of us head back to HK. 

We checked into the Charlotte airport heading back home to HK. The agent gave us the passports, we plopped our luggage on the scale, and found Tay's passport was gone. GONE. For once, we were really early to the airport, so we looked for one solid hour, we checked lost and found, we asked the AA agent at least five times to check around his area, and we finally had to board our flight to Chicago. 

We prayed. We sent a few texts to our praying friends. We boarded the plane to Chicago with no passport to get us back to HK. Then, we rested. I actually slept on the plane from Charlotte to Chicago. No one was upset, really. No one was in a panic. We had no idea what we were going to do once we tried to get on the next plane out of the country without a passport. 

We were sitting in front of the plane. The plane got to the gate, we stood up to get our few bags, and someone said my name. I looked up and a girl with a note said the passport was coming in from Charlotte on the next AA flight to Chicago. Wow.  We had a 2.5 hour layerover in Chicago. We arrived at gate H9, and the passport would arrive at the next gate, H10, in one hour.  We had time to grab lunch, take our melatonin in preparation for the 16 hour flight, wait for the passport to walk off the plane, get ourselves over to the international terminal, go through security (where that passport would be absolutely necessary), and get home to HK 16 hours later.

We have no idea where the passport was found. Nothing. Someone must have turned it in, and AA quickly gave it to a flight attendant on the next flight to Chicago. But, we really don't know.

Jelly Side Up

For our "Jelly Side UP" man, Jeff, I really believe it has more to do with his attitude toward life than any crazy probability.  Jeff is the eternal optimist.  He truly tries to see the good in everyone. He knows he is here on this earth for a purpose. He knows he is flawed, he knows he is loved, and he knows he wants to make a positive difference in this broken world.  He also knows everyone has a story that is often heartbreaking, so he is the most forgiving and loving person I know. Yes, it's Jelly Side Up, but I believe that's because he chooses to pick up the PB&J, once fallen, and turn it Jelly Side Up. And, he's teaching us to do the same.