Dear Friends & Family:
So, here is the first installment of the China Chronicles. Read on if you dare...
We got here about 9 Wednesday evening and amazingly received all 19 pieces of our luggage. Yes, I said 19. We had 5 of those luggage carts filled to the rim and required 2 large transit vans to get all of our luggage and our family to the hotel. It was quite a circus, and amazingly (or maybe not?) the customs officials chose not to go through our bags. Albert was bemused by this since China is so strict on contraband. We could have set up a Macy's with all the stuff we had in our suitcases. Anyhoo...we have a nice 3 bedroom hotel suite at the Marriott while we are waiting for our apartment to be ready on August 1st. The first night we finally got to bed around eleven. I had only slept about an hour or two on the plane so I was totally tired and looking forward to sleeping all night. So of course Sofia got up 2 times and then finally was up for good at 4:30 am. Alicia also woke up vomiting at about 2:30am. Luckily she didn't barf again till the next morning but it was still a pretty horrid first night. Jet lag alone as an adult is bad enough. Jet lag with kids multiplies everything by ten. Ugh. Another day with just a couple hours of sleep.
The views from the hotel are gorgeous. We are on the 35th floor with vistas of the skyrises all around plus lots of neat and compact living quarters. A river flows through that is filled with boats of all kinds. The only thing that mars the view is the haze of smog, but we can't have everything, can we? The only other thing about which I can complain is the water. Oh man, it is literally the grossest water I have ever tasted. It is not really made for drinking, but even having to rinse your mouth out with it when you brush your teeth is brutal. It tastes completely like dirt; a really rich brown soil that you imagine would be divine for plants but not as a water condiment. It even smells like dirt, even when you are just showering. We will have to drink bottled water here and so far I am pretty low on my regular water intake. It is inconvenient to always have bottled water but I will get used to it again. We had the same thing in Mexico City but it wasn't nearly as bad tasting. I used to drink little bits of that water and it never bothered me even though Albert thought I was crazy for doing it. Here I don't think I will ever be tempted. I thought that Franklin's metallic tasting well water was bad in Michigan but this is ten times worse.
Anyway, in the morning the kids and I went over to the apartment to show them the complex and stuff. Albert stayed home with Alicia who was still really miserable. It was REALLY humid and hot outside and I blessed the person who designed air conditioning several times in my head. The kids liked the complex although Braxton was bemoaning the fact that it was not a house with a yard, etc. but at least he liked the basketball court and the weight room. The apartment looked nice although it was dusty and dirty; I don't think it had been showed or cleaned since we agreed to rent it in April. We went for lunch and then went next door to check out the big French grocery store, Carrefour. I needed to buy a few things to have in the apartment which has a kitchenette and washer/dryer. The place is HUGE, like one of the SuperWalmarts, with probably about the same quality of products, which is to say on the cheap side. I am more of a Target girl, myself. It is always odd to be thrown back into the non-literate world. You look around and everything looks strange and distinctly un-food-like. It seemed to me like everything was noodles or condiment sauces. We had been there for about 20 minutes and I was about halfway through my trip. I had found some laundry detergent which looked like Tide, so I thought it was safe. Whether or not it had bleach I don't know- I will find out when and if I ruin my colored clothes. I also had some snacks: Koala cookies and Pocky, which I was familiar with from Japan, and some Seaweed flavored Pringles, just for fun. They were a bright green color. I got a few other things and then was heading over to the fresh fruits and vegetables. Unfortunately for me, on the way we passed a living zoo of eating possibilities. The boys were clustered around a display of desperate looking turtles and GIANT toads, all stuffed in cages and waiting to be chosen. Honestly I thought it was pretty interesting in a creepy kind of way but then the smell hit me. I was just beginning to process it and think about moving away when Sofia says (while she is sitting in the cart): "Mom, it smells really bad!" Literally two seconds later she chunkily vomits the large bowl of Spaghetti bolognese and garlic bread she just consumed. I start screaming and running, abandoning a pile of pink vomit to some poor soul to clean up. I try to imagine where a bathroom is. The boys scatter, shrieking and laughing with embarrassment. I am panicked that she is going to continue, but when we get out of the "bad smell" area she is totally fine. Of course, she has vomit all over her arm and skirt with some on her shirt as well. I have NO IDEA where the napkins or paper towels are in the gargantuan store, or how I would explain that I needed to open them before I purchased them, neither do I have any wipes. I also don't know where the bathroom is, let along how to ASK where it is, (that hadn't come up in any lessons yet). I am pretty much stumped. I grab a plastic grocery bag and wipe off her arm and shirt as best I can. I find the boys and we head to the registers. I ignore any looks from interested bystanders. We check out with only minor bumps when I realize that there are no grocery bags- I have to buy some of the reuasable bags near the front. When we get outside to our van, I strip Sofia's skirt off and leave her in her underwear, putting her skirt in another plastic grocery bag. Our driver watches curiously although I don't even try to offer an explanation. I will certainly not be taking Sofia to the grocery store for a while....
We went home for a bit to see if Alicia was feeling better. She was, and so we all headed over to my cousin Matt's house who happens to live here in Shanghai. Go figure that I have to move to the other side of the world to live close to family. We went over to his apartment and met his gorgeous exotic Brazilian wife Jucinete (nick-named Juci) and her son Eric, who is Chandler's age and only speaks Spanish (how lucky is that!) We had a great afternoon enjoying Brazilian beans with beef and several side dishes she had made. The good thing about the dinner was that it forced us all to stay awake later than we would have been able to do had we been home. We left about 8, and it took us thirty minutes to drive home. When we got to the hotel, all seven of us had fallen asleep. ha! Luckily we had the driver getting us where we needed to go, but it was pretty funny when we arrived at our hotel and I looked back and every single person in the family was dead asleep. It was a chore getting us up to our rooms. Of course Sofia stayed asleep and was transferred to her bed. The rest of us also went to sleep as soon as possible. Alicia woke us up vomiting again sometime around midnight; I was too miserable to look at the clock. Then Sofia woke up for good at 3:30am. Worse than the night before. After several attempts to get her to go back to sleep I gave up and put on a movie for her then read for a while. Just when I was getting horribly sleepy again around 5:45 she was done with her movie again and ready for breakfast. Alicia was awake by then too, so I gave them both a bath to stall until 6:30am when the buffet opened. All of the boys got up somewhere around that time as well and we were all down there breakfasting before 6:45. Albert stayed in bed for a while since he had gotten up with Sofia the day before and actually had to go to work, poor guy.
Since Albert had to work I was left to my own devices for that day. I called the chaffeur and he picked us up at 10 to take us to the Shanghai Aquarium. It was there that I had my first Chinese fight. In the country for only 2 days and already people are ticking me off. I waited in line to buy tickets (outside in the sun, when it was already like 90). The tickets were pretty expensive. About 22 dollars for anyone about 2nd grade or higher (they do it by height, which always ticks me off because it is a quiet prejudice against foreign children, who are generally taller than Asians). First irriation. When I figured out the cost for my family, I calculated it was going to be about $165 to get in. Then I noticed that they had an annual family pass for almost the same price. Oh, cool, I thought. So I got to the front and asked for the pass, only to be told that I had to go inside to get the annual pass. Second irritation. Okay, so deep breath and we go inside with all the family. I go find the window inside and ask the girl for an annual family pass. She gives me a form to fill out. It has space for 3 names, two parents and one child. Of course it does...we live in CHINA, where EVERYONE has one child. No wonder the family annual price looked pretty good to me. So, then I start reading the fine print. As I metioned, it says that the family pass is only for the three people; if you happen to have more than one, you can pay an additional $25 PER child. All of the sudden the $165 annual family pass isn't looking quite as good. Thus, my third irritation. I tell the girl we have 5 children and ask how much that would be. She looks incredulous and looks out the window to make sure I am not lying, or trying to pass off someone else's children as my own. Of course, LOOKING at my children when Albert is not here would probably convince her that we were certainly cheating...Sigh. She seems to be frozen into paralysis, so I do some more calucations in my head and figure it is still probably worth doing the family pass even if I have to pay an extra HUNDRED bucks for the other four kids. It would pay for itself if we went ONE other time during the next year. So, I tell her I still want to do that. She shows me the spot at the bottom where I put the extra children's names. However, there are only two extra spaces. I mention this to her and she gets confused and goes to find someone who speaks some English. After a few more minutes a youngish guy comes out and repeat everything that I have just already read. I wait patiently. Then he explains to me that company policy is only to allow the addition of two extra children to the family pass for a total of 3 possible children. Fourth irritation; my blood pressure begins to rise noticeably. I look at him blankly, and tilt my head, with eyebrows raised. "So..... what do I do if I have FIVE?" He looks confused and studies the form conscientously for some time. All of this time the girls are twirling about my legs and whining about when we are are going to go in, which is understandable since it had been about 30 minutes so far but it only adds to my stress. He finally looks up brightly: "Well, you could buy a FAMILY Pass, then pay for TWO additional children (at $25 each), then pay for TWO EXTRA individual yearly passes (at about $55 each) to cover your family. I give him a dubious look. "Are you kidding me?" I exclaim. "That is ridiculous! Why can't I just pay the extra $25 to add the four kids? You are still getting quite an extra fee, and I can just write their names below even though their is no line for them." "That is not company policy," he replies. I give him my best withering look (and I can do some good ones.) "So, I am basically being punished for having five children? I realize that you are not able to have more than one HERE" I say, "but I am not FROM here. I just arrived yesterday and this is how I am greeted? My first day in China and I can't even purchase a family pass?" Boy was I ticked off. To make a long story short, this went back and forth with absolutely no change on his part. I wanted to strangle his calm, irritating, inflexible neck! I came within a hair-breath of ripping up the form in front of his face and walking out. Then I reconsidered, thought about the humidity outside, the fact that we really had nothing else to do, and decided to chalk it up to costs of living overseas and cultural differences. I took a deep breath and ended up buying a "Family" pass with ONE child (Alicia) and then adding Sofia as an additional child ($25) and then paying for 3 individiual day passes, figuring that the boys would honestly probably be in school when I came back with the girls anyway. What a fiasco!
The aquarium was OKAY, but since I was in such a bad mood it took a while for me to even be able to appreciate anything. The best parts were the jellyfish display, which was huge and had the black lights which change color and illuminated the drifting, translucent jellyfish with muted colors. Love that. The next coolest thing was a 155 meter tunnel of connecting aquariums with different habitats and fish species all kind of connected. Very cool. The third best thing was watching Sofia in all her glory being a mini-celebrity. I think she had about 15 people stop to take her picture, or take a picture WITH her, or with their children. She very obligingly smiled, posed and even did ballet for them. Pure Sofia. I am sure she will eventually get tired of it, but not on the first day. The boys were kind of freaked out by it, and I told them it had been exactly the same with them in Japan. Alicia was less willing to be photographed now that she is older. Anyway, by the end of the trip I was feeling fine and thinking that at least it would make a good story. Hope you enjoyed reading it more than I enjoyed experiencing it!
Well, this is getting LONG and I am sure all of your have better things to do, but I miss you all already and can't wait for visitors. I hope you will still want to come after reading this! ha ha. Hugs, Tiffany & Crew
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