So it's official

So it’s official.  Spencer and I stink at blogging.  But, here is an update since you asked.  My Chinese Grandma, who used to be my helper in GZ has moved here to be with us again.   It is amazing!  She is so helpful with everything!  She cooks, she cleans, she grocery shops, she loves my kids, she even disciplines them, and is constantly stuffing food in there face, and she is teaching Canaan Chinese – bad countryside Chinese, but who cares! 

So, we might have mentioned to a few of you that right before we left America we got several emails from old friends in GZ.  We thought it was a little fishy.  However, turns out they were just all trying to contact us to let us know that PoPo (Chinese for Grandma) really needed a job and wanted to move to be with us.  So that was great news to find out.  No security probs brewing and instead a grandma to come live with us.

Everyone is so happy to be back in JH.  The sun is beautiful and warm this time of year.  In fact, here is our complex, we have 15 couples from Harbin, Beijing, Shanghai that come here just for the winter.   They come on National Day – October 1st and stay until Water Splashing Festival (sometime in April – according to the lunar calendar).  Some are retired; some just have enough money that they can take off half a year!  All speak with a pirate accent (lots of aughrrrrr’s at the end of words).  It’s hilarious.  They don’t fit in here much better than we do!  They are such Northerners!  They sit out every afternoon to enjoy the sunshine on the grass behind our back window and play the flute, the erhu (a stringed guitar like instrument) and sing and dance.  It’s so lovely.  It makes my day to hear it.  It’s always just after we have finished up school and are having a snack.  I will miss them when they leave in April.

The kids and I have been doing great w/ school.  Thanks to PoPo we can school right up until 12.  She gets a Chinese lunch on the table.  Eats with us.  Then she cleans it all up while we go back to school.  Even doing so, our days are looking more like regular school days.  We are hard pressed to get done before three most days.  The kids have and hour and a half of Chinese every Tues, Wed, Thur.  Their teacher comes here to the house.  It’s very convenient and she is a very good teacher but she gives a lot of homework and it is stretching the kids a bit.  All in all they are working hard.  We go in February to Thailand for a Family Education Conf.  They will take a standardized skills test there.  Yikes!  Hope they do ok.  We will see! 

Aquoponics – Spencer has set up two systems.  One in our house!  And a larger one out at a friends fish farm.  Here is the idea – fish poop.  The water gets dirty.  They need fresh air.  So in one tank you have fish.  You pump the water out of that tank and into another.  The second tank has exploded clay rocks in it.  They filter the water.  They grow a bacteria on them that breaks down the poop and the ammonia to nitrate.  So, this second tank also has plants.  The plants need the nitrate.  Then, this filtered water flows out of this second tank and back into the first.  Clean water that is aerated for the happy fish.  Happy fish swim more, eat more, grow faster.  The Dai eat a lot of tilapia.  They all grow them.  So, this is an idea that we can hopefully use in Dai villages.  Grow happier fish, grow healthier veggies.  No fertilizers.  We will keep you posted on how it goes.  Here is a pic of our mini system.   

I’ve done a mini photo journalism type project - “Here’s a look at my life w/ a week’s worth of pics” for all my friends that haven’t been to see us yet here in our new city and for some new friends we met this last time in the States that are having trouble picture what in the world life in China might look like.  That will be the next post.  And at our rate…..that would be set to go up in……April’s end.  But I will try very hard to get it up before then!