An update with a promise of more?

Greetings from Hangzhou! We hope to make this blog a bit more accessible, updating more frequently different things that are going on. We are finally coming to more of a grip of what life is going to be like in this city – which is a lot larger and busier (seemingly) than what we were used to in Changsha. We were also right downtown in Changsha, and our school here, Zhejiang University City College is way out with the car dealerships – which from my perspective means you’re way out there…we are a bit far removed from the city center, it takes us about an hour by bus to go anywhere really interesting…that is a big difference from the hour it used to take us to go to the complete opposite end of the city (across the river even) in Changsha. It also takes a lot longer toting Audriana around, but she has been a great trooper, and continues to amaze us at what a wonderful child she is. God has truly given us a blessed child…

Our goal is to shoot off tidbits of info with this blog, and send out another newsletter monthly with extra information. Vikki has also done a great job getting a shutterfly webpage up so that we can easily upload pictures for you to enjoy…

As to what we’ve been up to for the last month…

Audriana is completely healed, physically and emotionally from her major boo boo that we last told you about. She will still occasionally remember her boo boo and will usually mention the doctor at those times, but she’s pretty much over it. She is very daring and I love how free and independent she can be…she is also a very respectful child, and very giving. She will always share food and toys with us and other children. A very good thing is that while still daring, she has learned to immediately stop whenever we say things like, ‘be careful’ or ‘watch out for cars.’ This is extremely important in China where things like walking along the street are especially dangerous with all the traffic, people, bicycles, mopeds, and various accidents waiting to happen…there is always the occasional drastic booby trap you have to watch out for here. Audriana does a great job with running to the side of the street whenever cars are coming, and will occasionally stop and wait until it passes or ask for Daddy’s help. This has only backfired once, I think, when she did the ‘deer in the headlights’ trick and squatted in front of a car without moving…that was not a good trick…she’s already hard enough to see, squatting probably doesn’t increase your visibility if you're two feet tall.

We’re going to keep a running log (I think) of all Audriana’s Chinese words she’s learning. She is a spectacle in China, so many people will run up to her to see her…she’s pretty good about taking care of herself in those situations. I am trying to teach her to say ‘Daddy help please’ if she ever feels inundated or threatened. Otherwise, I plan to just let Audriana handle it herself. People also often ask to take a picture of or with her, and I let them ask her directly. Yesterday, she actually said it was ok for a girl to pose with her, which was a first. It is easy for her to meet people, but till now, she only has a few friends that she plays with. Our friends in Shanghai have a little girl they adopted from China whose name is Emma. Even though Audriana has only played with her a few times, she will frequently ask us to see pictures of Emma on our computer. We were able to go to Emma’s two year birthday last month, and that was a blast! Caleb is her friend that we frequently get to meet on Sundays. His father, Josh, is American and his mother, Gao Yan, is Chinese. We have been able to meet up with Caleb a couple of times outside of our Sunday visits, which is a lot of fun. Caleb is about the same age as Audriana, just a month or two older. If any of you remember us writing about a good friend of ours we knew in Changsha named Lydia, Gao Yan is Lydia’s twin sister. It’s been really cool to have the chance to get to know them better here in Hangzhou. Audriana also has a couple other Chinese friends…Tian Tian and Yang Yang. Tian Tian’s parents own (we think) a store on campus, and we had been going there frequently to buy drinks and such. Audriana would run up and down the aisles with Tian Tian, or pick up merchandise within the store to play with. It is a lot more fun to run up and down the aisles holding candy, for example. One day, they used the brooms in the store to sweep up some of Tian Tian’s toys. Tian Tian is about Audriana’s age as well. She may be about 21 months old. Yang Yang is older than Audriana, she is six years old. Audriana has only played with her one time so far, though we ran into her mother last night and Vikki and Audriana plan to go see her again today. Yang Yang’s mom owns a store outside our back gate, and Audriana had a blast playing together with her last time. Last night when we passed by her store, Audriana really wanted to see her – even though Yang Yang had already gone to bed, Audriana did her ‘bouncing with Daddy’ trick that we do whenever we are going to get somebody or something…I guess she thought we’d get to see Yang Yang quicker the following day if we did the ‘I’m gonna get you bounce.’ Our little girl is growing up fast – it is so different being a parent, but we are so blessed to have our little gift growing and learning with us.

Many of you have no doubt heard of the milk scare affecting China recently. Here is a couple of websites detailing the situation that we’ve found:

www.unitedfamilyhospitals.com - a general overview of the milk scandal

World Health Organization - Melamine.pdf - a detailed analysis of the potential risks of melamine, which has been added to milk in China to increase the apparent protein content

Although, the scare doesn’t seem to be too drastic a situation, it is very widespread – covering virtually all milk products, or anything with milk in it. There have been three reported deaths and thousands of children hospitalized. We have gone from consuming about twelve liters a week, to consuming as little as possible. Vikki and I don’t really drink milk at all right now and Audriana has just recently made the switch from milk to juice-flavored water during the day, still getting a bottle of milk whenever she goes down for a nap or for the night. Yesterday, we scouted stores around our school that would sell milk we would trust, but couldn’t really find much. The only thing we found are these little 220ml Wahaha brand containers, which we aren’t really sure if they’re milk…they’re very sweet, and fruity. Jay’s favorite store on the side streets out our back gate told us it is milk, but not real milk…and that it is for children. At least, that’s what we understood with our limited Chinese ability! They come in packs of four, but that’s not real convenient. And we’re not even sure that they’re safe. We have a list of some brands that passed China’s testing recently and Wahaha Orange and Wahaha Yellow are on the list, but I’m not sure we have that kind…Wahaha AD maybe what Audriana gets for the foreseeable future, as going to the supermarket every day to get pure milk is not too convenient. Before the scare, Jay would carry back two big boxes of milk in bulk, containing six ‘smaller’ big boxes…Bright milk is very prevalent, but we’ve heard that that brand has had some trouble. A lot of milk products have simply been pulled from the shelves. If any of you all have any additional information, we’d love to know about it! It seems that recently the government has said that all products tested were found to be safe, but another report we received made it seem that it would be difficult to fix the problem barring potentially years of corrective measures.

I may try to write more later about other things we’ve been up to…
…such as:
the Beamon budget has gone defunct…
what Chinese study?
some encouraging news about hospitals in China…
an upcoming marriage conference…
Jay’s English classes…
and our week-long holiday (Chinese National Day)