China Musings Thus Far

Everyone stops and stares at girls which is much more alarming than I thought it would be.  They start by gasping when they see them, which usually leads to calling their friends over to stop, stare and point and occasionally ends with pictures of the girls or even touching their hair.  The girls don't seem to be bothered by it too much- Everly is just her typical easygoing, oblivious self, but Emma finally did say 'I don't want people looking at me anymore'.  When I see people taking pictures, I always try to jump in and say 'no pictures' and swinging my arm out wildly so they get the idea :).  I am just wondering if I will ever get used to this.

We have already eaten at McDonald's and it was delicious.  We were driving by a McDonald's closer to where our house (~20 minutes away) is and our relocation consultant told us that it had closed down; Emma quickly piped in, 'oh well, guess we will just have to go to the one at the boat.'.  She refers to the Chengdu Global Center as the boat which I think is hilarious and endearing at the same time.

I had my first meltdown.  Ok, maybe it was my second meltdown because I had one on the plane too ;).  When we arrived at our temporary living location, it was late at night and we were tired so we went to bed, but the girls were up just a couple of hours later.  This is when we noticed that they had only given us three bottles of water at our hotel.  Like 10 inch bottles of water.  I headed down to the front desk to ask for more bottles and they said that it wasn't in my contract.  That was the worst thing they could have said to me, it brought me to tears, the girls were concerned to see their mommy crying.  A few stern emails later, we were greeted by some upper level management of our hotel and promptly had a huge bottle of water (those kind on the stands) delivered to our room :).

Our first outing by ourselves was to Starbucks- it is attached to our building, but you do have to walk outside to get there.  The girls were acting absolutely adorable on our walk there, garnering lots of attention- from me included :).  We are already missing our favorite Starbucks drink- a White Chocolate Mocha- they just don't have those here.

One morning, we ate breakfast at our hotels and had spicy dumplings for breakfast.  I am not sure I will ever get over that what we would consider traditional lunch or dinner food bleeds over into breakfast food.

Our sleeping schedule has been the worst part of adjusting to life in China.  The girls sleep schedules were so messed up- they would fall asleep at 3 in the afternoon and wake up at 1 in the morning and be ready for a nap at 7 or 8am.  This wouldn’t have been so terrible, if we didn’t have things that we needed to get done (visit the house for a walkthrough, grocery shop, set up a bank account, buy small appliances, etc.) and people that were taking us to do all of these things.  Slowly, but surely we are coming out of the fog.  My first day at work was Tuesday and Wes worked really hard to get the girls a proper nap and we all had a good night's sleep last night as a result.  We know that we will get there, but this has been much harder than I imagined.

We found bread at IKEA of all places and we have already purchased five loaves (it only comes in packages with 8 slices).  It is something that we told would be hard to come by so we were over the moon excited that we found bread for the girls to have their beloved peanut butter and jelly or sometimes just jelly sandwiches :).  We also found ice cream ;), Emma was taking a nap on my back so Ev's was the only participant this time.

The girls love our house and they affectionately refer to it as a castle.  We have been by a couple of times, but we don’t move in until Sunday and I can't wait to show you some pictures!!

We saw the sun three times!!! And it was glorious every single time.  It is true that sunshine improves your mood and make everything around you seem better.

Our first holiday abroad (Easter) was anti-climactic to say the least.  I didn’t want to upset the girls that the Easter bunny wasn't coming and that there wouldn’t be an egg hunt (we are still living in a hotel) so we didn't even mention it.  If you have been reading for long, you know that birthdays and holidays are part of my love language.  I love making the holidays special for the girls so I was a bit torn up inside that we did nothing.  I know this is just temporary and that even though our holidays will look a little different the next couple of years, we will still be able to make them special. P.s. this picture is from our church Easter egg hunt that because of our delay we were lucky enough to participate in :).

We are lucky to have an indoor play place (where we have had numerous tea parties) and a swimming pool in our temporary living facility- in all pools over here you have to wear swim caps.  It was definitely one of our first purchases so we could get the girls back in the swimming pool.  Added bonus, I feel like they look ridiculously cute in their swim caps :).

That is it so far- for the most part, we are settling in nicely and recognize that this will be a process and will not happen overnight.