In 1980 I was busy applying for and preparing for my year in the US. One of the most exciting periods in my life then. China was far, far away. In all respects. Exciting things were happening there. Shenzen was established as a Special Economic Zone. Without that historic detail, my family would not be as it is now. Some people ventured to China then, across the border from Honk Kong and took these pictures of Shenzhen. I am fascinated, only knowing Shenzhen as one of the vastest urban areas ever. Inbetween our last visit in 2010 and recently they quickly add a new tallest building (and 9th tallest building in the world). During my first week alone there I will be staying near it, though not in it. A bit decadent, 6 stars, even for my taste for nice hotels. But I am going to take a look for sure.
I had hoped in vain and totally unrealistically that he would by a stroke of luck in the genetic lottery game inherit his maternal grandmother’s good eyes. But no, the short-sighted majority won. Ian caught it when they were playing on the Wii and Liam simply had to stand not more than a meter from the TV. -2 and -2.5! Now I hope he does not reach my level of shortsightedness ever and especially that he does not have to deal with retinal detachment and all the crap I have had. He took it with poise and is amazed at what the world looks like now! He did insist of a heartbreaker shot without glasses though:
It has been a while since I posted in this category. We diverted from cooking Chinese on Saturday, partially because we wanted to cook some other dishes that require time which we do not have during the week, partially due to schedule, travel etc. Now Ian is away in Barcelona for a long weekend. Help, I am lost – the embarrassing truth is, Ian is more involved in running this household than I am. So I had to do the grocery shopping on Thursday, a chore that I had not done in ages. Took me forever, I hardly remembered where they keep what. Not that the ingredients needed for our Saturday dish were tricky.
So the kids and I had a noodle soup feast. I start by making a big pot of broth using a combination of chicken and vegetable stock cubes, some chunks of ginger and some spring onions. All gets tossed into water and I let it simmer for an hour or so, about the time it takes me to make fresh noodles, or pasta. And in this case a stir-fried meat topping. I had bit of ground beef left (from making empanadas, South American, completely different …). I fried that, then seasoned it with a bit of light soy sauce and Shaoxing rice wine and kept it warm on very low heat.
Now the assembly. I prepared the bowls first by tossing in some spring onion rings, a dash of light soy sauce and a dash of oil. Then I transferred about 4 ladles full of broth into a smaller pot, quickly blanched some fresh spinach in it, took it out, put on the side. Then one portion of noodles is boiled in the same broth. When they are done, they get transferred into the bowl, then the broth is added to fill the bowl, spinach and meat topping added, plus for mine I seasoned with salted chiles and black rice vinegar.
Yesterday, after Liam had been attending school for about half a year, his class participated in the show his school organizes at the end of every month. The littlies in Liam’s class did a spring dance. He seemed so tiny, even among kids of his own class. Here he is, in the middle with the orange shirt.
How big the older kids looked. I was particularly impressed by one of the older boys doing a breakdance solo when his class was on stage.
Yesterday, I went to watch the the show the school organizes at the end of every month. Liam was the boy doing the breakdance solo when his class was on stage.
I am crying a bit while writing this. How can all this happen so fast?
A short while ago somebody pointed out these to me:
In principle I agree and am known to have good goes at people who think otherwise. Like the idiotic skiing teacher Fuwei had in Switzerland two years ago. She claimed Fuwei could not ski in her group because due to his fingers he could not use the tow lift. For f…’. sake, as if any of the other 5 year old could. I explained that I was zero impressed with her attitude because last time I had a skiing lesson it was all about posture and legs. Hands were not mentioned at all. I did not see why Fuwei can be in boys gymnastics on the rings and the high bar, but not in her skiing group. Not that I wanted him to be with her anymore anyways. Luckily, one of her colleages had more common sense and no issue with Fuwei.
We have not been back to Switzerland, but Fuwei is still doing gymnastics. Last Saturday they had a mini-competition in his club. His wonderful gymnastics coach has got the attitude it takes. She is happy to push him onwards and is rightfully proud of it, too. Because when I watched Fuwei do his part on the high bar and the rings compared to his team mates, well, what can I say – don’t underrate 10 fingers either. They do help with the grip. He compensates with his arms and gets cramps (see last image, walking away holding his arm). Great achievement!
And after that he still went to horse riding on a pony that needs short reins. I don’t ever observe other kids getting the reins pulled out of their hand, but that happens to Fuwei regularly, when the horses pull with their heads a bit or sneeze, cough etc. But again, he worked super hard to stay on top of it, looking really good. So all in all overrated, 10 fingers, got to get the t-shirt.
No fingers needed to blow our your birthday candles.
On the cake that I made for him as the only other creative element of his birthday besides the invite. How weird to host a party in some indoor playpark rather than creating everything from scratch for a home-made party. Almost relaxing, no kids in sight for 4 hours. Maybe I overrated the self-created events …
Fuwei totally insisted on having his party at an indoor playpark. I tried to manipulate him into a home-made one, but he would not have it. I am sad that I cannot develop my kids-party-creativity to the fullest, but he is the birthday boss. So I had to resign myself to photoshopping for his invite with the goal to express what the day and the child are about. This:
He is one happy boy today. He loves his birthday, so much, that he simply has one on another day too, if the opportunity arises, which goes like this:
He went on his first 2-day school trip on Monday and Tuesday this week.
Half of the kids from grade 3, 4, 5 went, the other half joined on Tuesday to stay until Wednesday.
Talk about a busy and exciting week, that would have been enough as such. But why not add 2 birthdays. So somehow my cute little big boy managed to make everybody believe that it was his birthday on Tuesday, when everybody was at the schooltrip location! And they celebrated his non-birthday. How do I know? Because when I took Fuwei to school yesterday on Wednesday I asked his teacher if it was ok that he brought his treats for the class the next day (today), his birthday. The teacher looked at me in amazement, saying his birthday had been on Tuesday. I returned an amazed look, saying that as far as I was aware, the documents say 19 April. And I could not keep my mouth shut, saying that of course the 17th might be his birthday, but we tend to not celebrate for 2 weeks around his official birthday. That confused the teacher even more. So I just said I assumed they were aware of kids’ birthdays. I mean, usually they have a timeline and the teachers ARE aware. On the other hand, Fuwei is such a salesman … At the same time, I do not think that he actively brought this on, I am a bit worried about him lying. It probably was more a situation of not saying anything to put some confusion right and let the party go on … So birthday on Tuesday, today and the party in the indoor playpark on Sunday. You only turn 8 once …
Waeren es, sind es aber nicht. Weshalb Fuwei ein Geschenk kaufen und auf Dein Grab legen will, J. in den Himmel winkt und Liam Dein Andenken in Ehren haelt und eine super Praesentation hinlegt in der Schule. Ich zuende 3 Kerzen an und erinnere mich. Beim Backen fuer Fuwei’s Geburtstag. Geschichte und Zukunft. ♥♥♥
Four days off in a row. Bliss. The both parents working full-time schedule can be so busy that just staying at home for four days in a row is a gift. The kids actually had to go to school on Friday. Good Friday is not really a public holiday here, some companies let you have the days off, others don’t, most schools do, the kids school does not. More bliss. A kids free morning, made me remember my time as a stay-at-home-mom. Fondly. Not that I was always fond of it then. Not that I am always fond of working either. I like the pay check at the end of the month. So I better stick with it as long as we have not won the lottery.
The kids has their traditional Easter breakfast at school. What a relief that I can pretty much stay out of crafting the breakfast boxes that they have to prepare for another child. Working and having to deal with all the extra school stuff can be quite challenging. I just do not feel like making Easter breakfast boxes after dealing with requests from last minute cultures all day long (for example). I delegate the design to Liam and the operational bit of purchasing and production to the au-pair. Turned out pretty.
I was productive this weekend as well. For weeks, months maybe, I have been talking about how in the past I used to bake a cake for every weekend and how nice it would be to revive that tradition. Sure, on Saturday we are busy with horse-riding and this that and the other, on Sunday I am basically exhausted only. But this weekend I made up for three weeks of empty promises. I made an Easter (pound) cake, a cheese cake (Lindy’s cheesecake, best cheese cake in the world) and finally helped Liam to make the chocolate chip cookies using a really good recipe! It is quite cool that he can work pretty independently on these things now, so he mainly needed help with understanding the US system of cups and spoons.
The overall result.
We enjoyed some family time with my mom who came over. Unfortunately my sister could not make it as my nephew is sick. Too bad. Next long weekend hopefully!
Last but not least, we managed to hang up a few pictures in our the new extension, meaning this is it for now, we are done, no more building site and loving the extra 20m2 of space.
Last weekend I spent about 10 hours in the southernmost area of Denmark. The minute I got there, I went … bird watching. Starlings. Millions of them. In the spring and in the fall migrational starlings gather by the lakes in the area in gigantic flocks at dusk. They fly back and forth, in unison, like a ballet. Zen. Just don’t think of the Hitchcock movie. Then, all of a sudden, it is over, the starlings settle amongst the tall reeds for the night. Amazing, a truly amazing wildlife experience. I am not at all much of a birdwatcher and can hardly tell one kind of bird from another. But this was something else. I did not take any pictures, because they would be insignificant. Sometimes you just have to watch and remember in your head. As I don’t film, I have to steal from others to get the image across here.
The reason for my trip was the 40th birthday of one of my few, long term and certainly best friends. Such events are always a reason for contemplation. Life goes by so quick, throws so many things at you (less at me in this case). We shared rooms when at university and look at it all now, so different, so many life events. Good ones and very sad ones. Among our life events: migration – her move to Denmark and mine to the Netherlands, invariably a topic of conversation when we meet. I suffer from an immense feeling of alienation living in the Netherlands, a feeling that peaks to unbearable heights whenever I come back from a trip. It is not a subjective feeling, the Netherlands do badly in the Forbes survey of the world’s friendliest countries for expats. That is based on the HSBC Expat Explorer Survey. If you use that and only click “Fitting in the new culture”, “Integrating into the community”, “Local culture”, “Making local friends” and “Social life” the Netherlands are ranked 31st and last. Luckily there are plenty of people with an immigrant background around here who are kind enough to perceive me as one of their bunch, so I am included somewhere. Very comforting also that I have expat colleagues who go through the same alienation pains. We can share. And I can click the button for “Raising children abroad”, then the Netherlands come in second. The happiest children in the world live here. Maybe it is a deep fall into adulthood and can only result in it being so dull and miserable.
Why am I still here? Because I don’t want to uproot my younger son again. Maybe because we made the mistake not to move 3 years ago for the same reason. Also, then we would be moving again right now. Migration is difficult, not so much of a pretty dance a lot of the time.
So I try to enjoy every minute I am away, even the 20 hour total (train) travel time last Saturday and Sunday. For the first train to stop, I even had to press a button, it was an on-demand-only mini trainstation.
And a free outlook to the front across the train driver’s shoulders.
Even if it is as non-exotic (to me) as a Northern German village.
Contemplating life.
In the meanwhile, my children were being happy back home. Here’s Fuwei having his horse-riding lesson outside.
It is hard to be an older brother. I know, because I am an older sister. Our younger siblings have some traits in common. Being overwhelmingly at the forefront kind of personality. The other day L said he thought we loved him less and wondered what we liked about him. Poor thing, what a useless set of parents we are. There are loads of things to like about him. His creativity for example. He has an idea, like pimping his old skateboard, then spends hours learning about how and then doing it.
