family time

A portion of a recent e-mail we sent to Jay's sister:

"Joseph is getting so fun. Now he's old enough to really laugh with you. Which is quite possibly the sweetest thing ever...babies laughing with you, I mean. Just earlier, I was changing his diaper and I had to take off his clothes because his diaper exploded in poo. When I took it off over his head, he was ticklish under his armpits and laughed uncontrollably....well I took advantage of that...I just tickled him and 'attacked' him finally kissing and blowing his neck...he laughed so much! I think it's the first we've heard him laugh as much as that. Then I would grab his feet and bring them together and kiss them and munch on them - which he likes...and then get him in his armpit and finally with the neck. . . I did this several times resulting in family fun for all. :)

Joseph also likes to be lifted into the air. You stand him up on his legs - which he likes, and then I'll sometimes let him 'power himself' into the air...when he pushes up I pick him up...that almost always makes him smile.

Yesterday he really liked pulling my hair. I don't know if it was texture or whatever...but he really liked it...I think he laughed then too. If he's upset, he likes to go outside. Seeing the sights, feeling the fresh air, calms him down. I let him touch the grass (when there is grass :), and he likes that too."



I'll have to get some new pics up at the top sometime soon...

Red tape

We've had a lot of red tape to deal with recently...

Let me see if I can remember some of the fun to share with you...

Currently, we're having to deal with getting visas for returning to China in September. Because Jay's passport expires like April 2010, we have to go to Shanghai to renew his passport before Zhejiang Normal can issue us new visas.

Also, ZUCC scheduled our current visa to expire on July 18th, even though all the foreign teachers will be completely done with their duties more than a month earlier. Apparently, there's some rule that stipulates we can't begin the next visa process until two weeks prior to the expiration of the current visa...which means that we get some extra time to tour Hangzhou and move into our new home in Jinhua! We were planning on staying a bit longer, but I don't know if we'd have chosen to stay a whole month. :)

We nearly 'lost' our return tickets home! We bought our tickets from some shady looking website that looks like a fly-by-night deal...not the first time we've taken a bit more of a risk in order to try and get rock-bottom prices on tickets. I think this was the second time in a row we've gone a bit riskier path to get tickets. This particular group (sponsored by some company named Trilix - I have found a couple of other shady looking websites also sponsored by Trilix) appears to no longer be in existence. The parent company, Trilix is seemingly impossible to find contact information for. We discussed when we purchased the tickets how we thought it was possible we might end up getting scammed. Everything seems to be in order now, but because our travel agent didn't exist any longer, it was a bit difficult to get our e-ticket numbers to give to the airline so they could find our reservation. :) We eventually had a tip from one of the airline representatives to call our credit card company, who were able to look up the ticket number in their system! We had the original e-mails from when we purchased the tickets, but they didn't have any of the information we needed....For a while there, it really did look like we were going to have to buy one-way tickets home! We still have to purchase Joseph's ticket, as well as reserve Audriana's - there was a slight hiccup in getting Audriana's ticket reservation as she had a paper ticket. Our flights home are scheduled for July 4th - which means we'll miss the festivities for Independence Day, but that was the earliest the officials at Zhejiang Normal thought they'd have time to get the visa process completed. Actually, we scheduled the tickets for one day earlier than the earliest day mentioned by our new school. They had even mentioned waiting until perhaps the 15th of July!

Fun fun. I wonder why they call it 'red tape' anyway?

口水 kou shui (mouth water)

Yesterday I learned another Chinese word...it's great to be in a place where they speak the language you're trying to learn. It really helps.

Yesterday's word that I learned is slightly interesting, and very appropriate for my everyday life. To repeat the title above, the word is 'kou shui', which literally means 'mouth water.' I get a kick out of how literal Chinese can be sometimes, and while sometimes humorous for the learner, I'm sure Chinese people rarely think about the words they use in the same way a foreigner learning the language would. I'll let you all (Americans and non-Chinese) think about what the meaning of what 'mouth water' might be for a bit before revealing the answer at the bottom of this post.

What's a good word combination set that we use in English...? How about house shoes... or butterfly maybe? This sort of combination occurs much more frequently in Chinese, where one character will be used in conjuction with another character to produce a combined meaning from both of the characters. The word for train, for example...火车 (huo che) literally means 'fire vehicle.' Or consider the characters for 'milk mouth,' (奶嘴) which are used in combination to mean pacifier or the nipple on a bottle. Incidentally, we're approaching the same category of every day use that I have for 'mouth water'...

While 'butterfly' might not be humorous to us as native speakers of English, someone learning the language might seriously wonder why we would call such a beautiful creature a margarine mosquito, for example. Thus is the source of my delight in words such as 'kou shui.'

Now that I've bantered about on one of the finer points of learning Chinese....let me appropriately tell you at this time that we have signed contracts to go to Zhejiang Normal University in Jinhua next year. We're excited, as it seems God is leading us there. We may have mentioned before that the situation to work there next year more or less developed on it's own with very little work on our part...and in many ways it seems that it will be a much more ideal situation. Whether it turns out to be that way or not, we are excited to be following His will, although we aren't sure why we are favored enough to rest in it. His grace and mercy are truly amazing.

Now, to turn back to the appropriateness of our aforementioned topic. The meaning of 'kou shui?' It is drool. A very useful word when you're the parent of a three month old.