Culture up the ying-yang...

Today we took the kids to a dance class to learn a little Chinese dance. In 40 minutes the teacher ran over the dance moves and then the kids performed the little dance for the parents. It was so stinking cute, I couldn't believe it. I had to be careful to actually watch the kids instead of getting caught up in the video taping process. This was a "friends of FCC" event. There were a bunch of us adoptive parents there. I only talked to a few of the parents.

There was a phenomenon in China that I noticed many, many times. Back in 1990, it was rather uncommon to see back back travelers in China. I had been in China for about 7 months and was eager to talk to "Westerners" and couldn't wait to just talk with other people who were from the states or Europe or whatever. When I would see another Westerner, I would try to make eye contact, a connection talk about something...ANYTHING! If it was a teacher, even better, we could share "war stories". So many times, though, the other Westerner would walk by and not even make eye contact. It was as if they were upset that there was another Westerner in the city ruining their "Asian Experience".
I had a similar feeling from some of the parents at the FCC event today. The feeling of "I'm more Asian than you and I'm the one providing my child with the REAL Chinese experience". Some guy was telling me about how he went and spent 4 days without his adoption group in Guilin and how he skipped going to Beijing. Wow, dude...that was totally daring and different. I wanted to say, "You know, brave dude, I've spent 2 years in China. I've been to places you don't even know exist. Don't brag to me about your Asian experience". But I just smile and nod. Their daughter probably knows how to say, "Ni Hao" and can say "Xie Xie" (pronounced shay-shay). Their so very Chinese and culturally in touch. OK, I'm not being very nice. It's better than nothing. In the end, everyone had a good time, the kids were adorable and I got some cute pictures. Sometimes this journey takes me to strange places.

And now they are 5...

Laina turned 5 in December. Min turned 5 in January. They are both so very pleased to be 5 years old. They learned how to ride bikes last month. Min learned how first, and Laina learned a week or so after. They both are learning their alphabet letters and like to practice writing their names. They go to Tiny Tots two times a week for 3 hours at a time. They're really looking forward to going to Kindergarten. Getting into the mind of a 5 year old is a challenge at times, but they're really interesting little kids that I get the amazing chance to parent. Oh yeah, and they're the cutest things ever!

It's been awhile!

Yeah, so it's been a while since I've blogged, and I miss having something to go back and look at. Let's catch up---

Last summer: bought a house in California. It's a rather ugly house, but we're working on it. Take a look:
Here's the living room before we started working on it



Here it is now that we had the fireplace re-faced, the fireplace surround re-faced, and the floor put in:



Check out the awesome kitchen:


We're going to have to live with it for a little while. In the mean time, I've re-grouted all the counter tops because the counter tops were disgusting. The grout was all rotted out and there was slimy gross junk deep in the cracks. So at least the kitchen is clean.

Here's the glorious powder room with a fantastic plastic gold tone mirror. Fan-frickin'-tabulous. Honestly, people paid good money for this look.





Here's the powder room after I got done with it. I still haven't added in the cabinet knobs or the mirror or the towel holder. I'm using the cabinets for linen storage, since there isn't a linen closet in the house. The room also houses the laundry/dryer.



Check out the dining room. Note the fantastic wallpaper on the ceiling and walls. There's are special accents such as the gold tone crown molding and the candle looking chandelier with grapes all around. Yes, it's lovely.




So, since we couldn't stand to have such a lovely room in our house, we stripped the wall paper and painted, put strand woven bamboo flooring down (that dark blue carpet was just too fancy for our taste...) and we're still picking out the perfect lighting fixture.

So the house is one thing that's been occupying the time.

I'll blog again tomorrow--I have so much to blog about!!