Singing in Chinese

We had a Chinese family over today who wrote down the Chinese words to the song Jesus Loves Me. Abigail knows the English version of this pretty well, now she is learning the Chinese as well.

And so am I...

Activity

Our house has been a beehive of activity lately, and while Abigail certainly contributes to it, she is not the sum total of it. I think it has to do with growing up. When our boys were little, a large pile of Legos in the middle of the basement floor kept them occupied for hours. This was accomplished in a rather small space. It also left little foot-mines all over the place that would unexectedly show up underneath your stockinged foot at exactly the same time that you placed all your body weight on it.

Now the Legos have grown up. They are teenagers now. What used to be little pieces of plastic the size of a quarter are now life-sized bikes and cars. And those foot mines? No longer made of plastic, they are now made of steel and rubber and copper. They are now shaped like bolts and nuts and extension cords and miscellaneous car parts and ... tools. They are ready to connect with the unsuspecting foot in the garage, the barn, and even in the house. Fortunately, the garage and barn are places for footwear sturdier than cotton socks.

Legos were also nice quiet things that would only make noise if you dropped them. And then they would split into zillions of pieces and contribute to the foot-mine problem.

Last night we were treated to the sounds of David's latest project. He bought a car. Not just any car. A Thunderbird Super Coupe. With a supercharged 3.8 v6 engine. Non-functional, of course. Functioning would have been beyond his budget. This car now occupies the space in the garage formerly allocated to the van. The driver of the van is not pleased about this new turn of events, because now her car sits outside. But Deb reluctantly but graciously allowed this to happen (temporarily), knowing that it is much easier to work on a car when there isn't two feet of snow on the hood.

David and his friend, Patrick Roersma, a mechanic and auto-body "wizard" of Carlisle Auto Body, worked on the car last night. I was downstairs with Abigail. I could hear various noises filtering in from the garage, but it wasn't until after David came down and gave me a status update that the symphony really began. He told me they disconnected the mufflers in case they were plugged.

The next noises I heard were considerably louder. A sudden roar erupted from the garage, rising and falling in crescendo, accompanied by all sorts of banging and popping sounds. This went on for perhaps thirty seconds and then the night was silent again. This happened a couple more times, then David burst in, asking for the camera. "The smoke is so thick in the garage, you can't see from one side to the other!" he exclaimed.

He missed his picture. The smoke had already begun to clear by the time he returned to the garage.

Meanwhile, for the last several days, Josh has been refinishing the kitchen door that leads into the garage. This door has been looking very tough as it is the main portal in and out of our home for ourselves and nearly every piece of furniture that has entered or exited our home. After over 17 years of this, it was time for a facelift. Josh stripped it to bare wood, re-stained and re-varnished it. It really looks nice now.

So for the past several days, the main path into our house has been the garage walkway littered with car parts, fighting our way through the plastic sheeting hanging over the open doorway, over the dust and old varnish which came off the door, and finally into the kitchen. Several of our visitors have had the privelege of running this gauntlet along with us.

Abigail thinks this is all normal.

Perhaps she is right.

Construction Projects

I've done a few construction projects with my boys over the years. We've built a barn, built an addition to the barn, done numerous things to our house, renovated a large 100-year-old house, and restored a car, to name a few. Now that I have a daughter, it will be interesting to see what we can get involved in together.

Deb found one of those things a few days before Christmas, on sale at a local grocery store. It was a gingerbread house kit, complete with everything needed to make a gingerbread house. It became one of the gifts that Abigail opened on Christmas day. She was thrilled.

We set up a table by the woodstove and spent a few hours on it on Christmas day. I had to remind her many times that the ingredients were not to be eaten yet as they were needed to build the house. She managed to snoop more than a couple gumdrops, mini-jawbreakers, and colored sprinkles before the project was done. She also wanted to begin eating the house as soon as it was done and I had to convince her that Grandma needed to see it before we began eating it.

I did most of the icing as the bags were rather large and difficult to squeeze, but Abigail dictated where all the candies were placed. The two gingerbread people almost didn't make it as they were coveted by a girl with a newfound taste for candy.

We did have enough ingredients to complete the house. The leftovers strangely disappeared over the next day or so. There are other candy lovers in our household.

The Gift

Among her other gifts, Abigail received eleven dollars for Christmas. For her, it's been one sensory overload ever since we came home from China and now having her very own money was just one more new thing that had to be experienced to the fullest. She counted it multiple times, usually at the top of her voice. "ONE DOLLAH ... TWO DOLLAH ..."

She keeps it in a purse that she found in her dress-up box, a shiny black affair that might be seen in the movies. All her worldly cash is in that purse, ten one-dollar bills, a one-dollar coin, and a bunch of small change.

The other day, she was trying to communicate something to Deb. "Mama, money, car," she told Deb. After a little bit of exchange, Deb figured out that she wanted to buy a car. She thought first that Abigail wanted to buy a big car like David just bought.

"No, little car," Abigail corrected. "Scott, Chad."

She wanted to buy matchbox cars for her cousins. Wow. This is probably the first real money she has ever had and she wants to spend it buying gifts for others.

She went along with Deb to Target so she could buy cars for her cousins. She also wanted to buy cars for her brothers. At the checkout she had to have a quick lesson in sales tax because the cars were a dollar each and the total was more than four dollars. A little extra small change and she had her gifts.

Deb ran into her sister outside the store, and they decided to send Abigail in after her cousins, who were still in the store. David was with them. Abigail ran back into the store shouting the names. For a little girl, she has a rather big voice and it could be heard all over the store.

The boys were in the video game section, playing one of the video games. When Abigail came up to them with her "secret" gift, they scarcely acknowledged that she was even there. Abigail does not cry easily, but Deb could tell she was near to tears. As she hustled David out of the store, she gave him a quick lesson in receiving a gift from a sister. "When we get outside, I want you to give her a hug and let her know that you like the gift," she told him.

David, who still is learning how to have a sister, shot back, "I don't want to create a scene!" Giving his little sister a hug in a public place is like suicide for a teenager.

They did manage to get that situation patched up and when Abigail came home she was quite excited about giving her last "secret" to Josh. Deb managed to coach Josh briefly ahead of time so he made the proper noises and Abigail was happy. She had a chance to spend some of her Christmas money which she was dying to do ever since she got it and she was able to give gifts to others in her family.

Good News for All the People

Along with our CD of Chinese Christmas Music, our missionary friend left us the DVD of the children's version of the Jesus film. This DVD has been dubbed in 17 different languages, including Punjabi Indian, Tagalog, and Mandarin. We have been watching the Mandarin version with Abigail as a family. She has been absolutely riveted by the story. Sometimes she scarcely moves or blinks her eyes. And even though we've only been able to understand three Chinese words the entire time (Hello, Father, and God), we, too, are riveted by this true story.

"The Word became flesh and dwelt among us."

"Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift."

This is indeed good news for people of every tribe, tongue, and nation.

Merry Christmas from the Friend Family.

The Great Wall of China, David Style

[Deb Speaking] Today was a hectic, busy day. Since it's right before Christmas, I really didn't have time to read to Abigail like I like to do every day. I am a firm believer in reading aloud to my children as I think it exposes them to good writers and it's a wonderful way to spend time together. I still read to my 17- and 15-year-olds several times a week.

Today I decided I needed a little help, so I asked David, our 15-year-old to please read to Abigail. I had selected the book The Great Wall of China by Leonard Everett Fisher. I thought Abigail might enjoy seeing the Chinese characters on the side of each page, and David could learn a little bit more about the Great Wall, which we had seen in China.

It's sounds like a foolproof win-win, doesn't it?

As I bustled about the kitchen, I stopped to tune in to what David was reading in the living room. I was hearing that King Bob and his general Kluken were involved in this great building project. I had never heard of a Chinese emperor named "Bob", and "Kluken" is David's favorite made-up word.

I did not have the time to interrupt, but later David said to me, "Mom, I hope you weren't intending that book as a history lesson for Abigail. I didn't know how to pronounce the names, so I made up my own."

I then took the book and read the first paragraph. It reads as follows:

About twenty-two hundred years ago, King Cheng of Ch'in conquered the kingdoms of Han, Sun, Yen, Yueh, Ch'i, Chou, Chao, Ch'u, Wei, Wey, Wu, and Lu. Tiny Ch'in became a huge empire: China. And King Cheng became Ch'in Shih Huang Ti, the First Supreme Emperor of China.

Hmmm. Sometimes a little improvisation IS necessary.

A Multicultural Christmas

Abigail loves to dance. We discovered this after she went to the ballet last week. She was enthralled by the ballet and has dipped into her big box of dress up clothing for some strap-on wings and a baton with streamers at each end. She will use these props when she dances around the kitchen.

A friend of ours came over last night. This person is a missionary to China and has lived in China for several years and so knows the language. He talked with Abigail for quite a while last night. Or, rather, she talked to him. She has a way of dominating the conversation.

One of the things he gave us was a CD of some Christmas music, all sung in Chinese. Deb put it in the player today while she and Abigail were washing the dinner dishes. Abigail perked right up when the music started and immediately asked Deb to make it "bigger" (louder). So they did the dishes to a choir singing well known Christmas music in Chinese, loudly. I could hear it quite well from downstairs where I was building the fire.

When the dishes were done, Abigail began to dance. Soon the Clifford-the-big-red-dog slippers came off and the baton and wings came out and she was choreographing all kinds of moves to such favorites as O Come All Ye Faithful and It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.

She took a short break to call me upstairs and ordered me to participate in the dancing. So I danced, and Deb grabbed the video camera. Not a good combination. But it's all on video anyway, this big Dutch guy and a little Chinese girl dancing the Virginia Reel to Christmas Choir music sung in Chinese. Deb was laughing so hard that she couldn't hold the camera still.

She finally stopped at track 13, sweating and complaining that she was hot.

So if you want to experience a different way of celebrating Christmas, come on over, and Abigail will show you how. And this time, I will be holding the video camera.

Cooking with Abigail

[Deb Speaking] The headline in my cooking magazine said "Awesome Asian Dinner: Try something new tonight! This delicious menu with Asian flair is guaranteed to shake the winter doldrums out of any weeknight."

Perfect, I thought. Abigail will be happy because she likes most anything. I'll get to try out some of my new Asian oils and sauces, and the guys will love it.

I soon had Abigail happily stir-frying the vegetables. I was doing it in my regular frying pan and she was showing me with exaggerated motions how it was supposed to be stir-fried. My pan did not allow for such Chinese cooking ballets.

Next, we made the sauce for the cod using the sesame seed oil. Definitely a different smell than my olive oil or canola oil. Well, that oil certainly spread its aroma all through the house. Josh claims it nearly knocked him off his feet when he walked in the door.

The stir-fry vegetables were tasting pretty good until I added the cornstarch broth mixture. There's something about stir-fry vegetables in a gelatinous mass that just doesn't seem right.

As I'm writing this, I'm looking over the recipe, and I now know why it was a gelatinous mass. I was so busy teaching Abigail what was a tablespoon, teaspoon, etc., that I used four tablespoons of cornstarch instead of the four teaspoons that were called for.

Abigail had been busily sampling the stir fry vegetables three our four times before I created the gelatinous mass. After that, she quit sampling it, but dutifully ate it all at dinnertime.

I had not yet made rice for dinner since Abigail has been home, so I got out my new rice cooker, my Jasmine rice, and decided to add part of the package of fried rice that I bought from Meijer. I thought, "Hey, I'm so good at making minute rice, this can't be so hard."

I threw the two together and didn't bother worrying about the correct amount of water. It will all just boil away anyway. When Abigail tasted that mushy disaster, there was such a look of stricken horror in her eyes. She tells me my Chinese is bad, but to add insult to injury, I can't even cook rice. I quickly decided to redeem myself.

I threw the mush in the trash and measured the rice carefully along with the water. It's amazing what happens when you follow directions. The rice was good. I cannot say the same for the rest of the dinner. It did shake us up as promised, however, and the smells of that dinner now captured in my stairway will continue to remind all of us of it.

The next meal I'm making: beef roast with potatoes (with NO Asian flair).

Language Issues

One of the big fears that people (including ourselves) have about attempting to speak a different language is that a mispronunciation of a word will be funny or perhaps even offensive to the listener.  This is especially true in languages like Chinese, where a difference in tones can change the meaning of a word entirely.

I never stopped to think it could also be true in the other direction, until now.

Abigail has been picking up English words rapidly, and has begun putting two or three words together occasionally.  She knows the words for her favorite treats.  Chocolate was easy.  The Chinese pronunciation is actually quite similar, sounding more like "chocaLEET" (at least according to Abigail, who asks for chocaleet often).

Abigail has also discovered chocolate ice cream.  She was asking for this yesterday and we were so focused on the language that we missed the pronunciation.  It took one of our teenagers to point it out to us.  Josh asked us, "You know what she's saying, don't you?  She's asking for chocaleet ass cream."

We will be working to correct the pronunciation.

Cook's Privilege

Over the last decade or so, ever since the kids have become aware that the choice of food they eat is made by someone within our own household, they have sought to influence the type of foods that are put on our table. They have used such methods as bargaining, complaining, mini hunger strikes (sitting with a still-full plate long after the meal is over), and even horse-trading with a sibling ("I'll trade some of your hot-dish for that bowl of fruit").

This all reached a head on Monday, when we had a mixture of stir-fried foods (chicken and vegetables) served in pita pockets. David, after requesting that his food be served out-of-pocket, commented rather wryly, "You know, the height of civilization is when the meat is put here and the potatoes are put there." With this, he pointed to opposite sides of his plate.

Our self-proclaimed kitchen-diva, Deb, is aware of these techniques, mostly because she pioneered most of them on her own when she was a kid. So we've developed the concept of Cook's Privilege, which basically says, (s)he who cooks the meal gets to decide what the meal looks like. Since she handles the majority of the meals, she sets the agenda and the menu. Deb also has the final trump card. She does all the grocery shopping.

An extension to Cook's Privilege is this: The cook gets to lick out the bowl, or distribute the frosting-coated spatulas to whomever the cook chooses. I invoke Cook's Privilege whenever I make our malts; I get what's left in the blender. Depending on how the ingredients go together (and sometimes how thirsty I am), this can range from nothing to several ounces.

The cook also can experiment. We have been introduced to new dishes over the years, some really good, and some not so good, because Deb occasionally finds a recipe in a magazine or from a friend that she wants to try out. Sometimes she will change the ingredients to suit her taste.

I've done my own experimenting over the years and have discovered that just a little bit too much of certain ingredients can make the difference between a good malt and a great malt.

With all the chaos in our normally well-run household, the cook was changed for Saturday's dinner. Deb was running behind in many of the things she was wanting to do, so she assigned David the task of preparing dinner. David's assistant was Abigail "I'll-eat-anything-except-peas" Friend. The menu was already set: we always have pizza on Saturday evenings. David just had to make the pizza and get it in the oven.

This time, it was David who had Cook's Privilege. Another aspect of Cook's Privilege is the ability to snoop on the ingredients as the meal is being made. Abigail caught on to this really quick. Pepperoni slices, eaten one by one, are really good when it's getting close to dinner time. So are small wads of cheese.

We had, by far, the cheesiest pizza on record. I think there was extra sauce under all that cheese also. David made the pizza how he likes it and he likes extra cheese.

Now I think we need to introduce the concept of Cook's Curse. With all the extra cheese, the sides of the pan were very crusty from the cheese that had become fused to the pan, and that made the pan very difficult to clean. It took three days to get the pan clean. I think David got out of cleaning the pan this time, but Cook's Privilege may result in Cook's Curse next time.

Abigail really likes to help out in the kitchen. It will be interesting to see what happens there when she has Cook's Privilege.

Information Gathering

It's amazing what you can find out about a person when you can actually communicate with them. We had the chance to do this on Friday with Abigail, sort of.

We had an exchange student over from Hong Kong on Friday afternoon. Deb had a whole list of questions that we wanted to ask our daughter. Up till now our communication has been using a very limited vocabulary, usually one word at a time, accompanied by hand gestures. Abigail understands quite a bit, but asking her something about her past or how she feels something (for example) just isn't in the range of possibilities for us right now.

They started out by looking through a couple picture books that we had from the orphanage in China. Abigail started out fairly quietly but it didn't take long before she warmed up to the situation and began to talk non-stop. It became very difficult for Deb to inject anything into the conversation and Abigail dominated the conversation for the most part. Once in a while, Deb would be able to interrupt to ask a question, and often times the conversation just continued on through the question, with Deb having to interrupt again to ask for an answer.

This went on for an hour and a half. I had set up the video camera ahead of time, so I got the whole conversation recorded. The next day we were back on our own and Abigail was telling us she wanted to listen to some Chinese tape. It took us a while, but we finally figured out she wanted to watch the video that we had taken the day before. So she watched herself for a while. I think she would have watched the whole thing again if we would have let her.

We did manage to get a fair amount of information, despite the difficulty in asking questions. We found out that she was not allowed to go to school for at least two years, and when she did go, it was usually for three hours per day or less. She didn't really know why she did not go to school, but it did answer the question why she seems to be a couple years behind in her math skills.

She did say she likes it here. That was good to hear. She said it was a bit boring at times. I think the 'boredom' may be mostly the difference in environments. She helped care for the younger children quite a bit at the orphanage. Here, there are no younger children, only two older teenagers who are still grappling with the concept of a little sister.

The boredom can't be from the lack of activity. Our household, to a large extent, is still operating in chaos mode, where things are happening faster than we can process them. David bought a car on Tuesday and the boys and a friend of ours trailered it home on Thursday night. So in addition to a new child in the household, we now have a non-functional car sitting in the driveway: David's new project. We had a visitor when Deb and Abigail left for a church function on Saturday, and Abigail was amazed to see four cars in the driveway. She counts rather loudly and announces the result at the top of her voice. "FOUR!" she shouted, as she and Deb got in one of the cars. With our little scorekeeper away with Deb for a while, David and I spent a couple hours trying to get his car started. We were unsuccessful.

In the chaos of the day on Friday, Deb lost her list of questions and so wasn't sure if she had covered them all. Perhaps she will get another chance. Deb and Abigail are meeting the student again on Monday to take a trip to the Siagon Market, a local oriental food store, to shop for food that Abigail might like.

We'll have to see what kind of dinners are served at the Friend household in the next several days...

Noise

Abigail has discovered the intercom.  Now she is not only noisy, she can be noisy through the entire house at once.

Some Observations on Adoption and Adoption Travel

Here are a few random observations from when we were in China

• A year spent doing paperwork is an incredibly long time.
• It seems like only yesterday that we first received Abigail's referral over a year ago.
• Mixed race families are something to be stared at. We've been stared at from a distance of two feet, we've had numerous cell phone cameras stuck in our faces and I think Abigail got sick of all the questions that were directed at her.
• Personal space isn't.
• Chinese people talk too fast. Everything sounds jumbled together.
• Pavement lines and traffic lights are only a suggestion.
• There's always room for one more on the city bus.
• Life in China is a continual game of Chicken. The first person who flinches loses the right-of-way. And one person in our travel group who has adopted five times said it is now much better than when he first was here six years ago.
• Gotcha Day is hell. There really is no other way to describe it. The days following are much, much better.
• Little girls look much better with longer hair than they do with a buzz cut.
• You haven't experienced the REAL China, up close and personal, until you have had to throw up into a squatty potty.
• Hong Kong currency is prettier than US Currency.
• Chinese currency is a pain in the neck. I ended up with a whole pile of paper bills, many of them worth less than 1 Yuan. The money exchanges wouldn't take anything less than 10 Yuan, so I have lots of souvenirs. In addition, the Chinese appear to use their paper currency until it is completely worn out. Some of those souvenirs I have look like torn rags.
• It's a lot easier for a young person to learn English than it is for an older person to learn Chinese.
• Pizza Hut pepperoni pizza tastes exactly the same in Xi'an as it does in Grand Rapids.
• Chinese pepper is white, looks exactly like flour, and makes you sneeze violently, even in small amounts.
  

Cash and Travel

I saw this announcement a few days ago:

The CCAA has sent a notice to all agencies that they are increasing the $3000 orphanage donation. This is referred to as a "donation" but it is actually a required fee paid by all adoptive families. It is now being set at 35,000 RMB which at the current exchange rate (6.8812 to 1) is approximately $5086. This increase is required of all families traveling after January 1, 2009 and must be paid in RMB not dollars.

This is a fee that all adoptive families must hand carry, in crisp, new $100 bills, to China. Since many of the other fees are also paid in cash, the amount of cash carried to China adds up to many thousands of dollars. While the major hotels will accept credit cards, it appears that many transactions are still done in cold hard cash.

So I flew to China with a stack of $100 bills hidden under my clothing, feeling like a walking ATM machine. Traveling after January 1 will make that stack 20 bills larger.

China is actually quite safe for foreigners, and we never really felt threatened while we were there. We could walk around the streets by ourselves and even though we were very obviously foreigners, we really didn't have to worry about crime. The one problem that does exist pretty widely is pick pocketing. I read several accounts of people getting pick pocketed right outside the Bell Tower Hotel in Xi'an, where we stayed. When we were in Detroit on the way home, we ran into another family coming back from China. They lost $2100 in Guangzhou to a pick pocket who used a cigarette burn as a distraction.

So we were pretty vigilant about how we handled the cash, and kept most of it in the hotel safe when we were able.

I also really didn't understand why they required NEW $100 bills. It seemed to me that used bills were just as legal tender. And some of the Chinese money we received when we exchanged these new $100 bills looked like tattered rags.

I know now. Counterfeiting is also a problem in China. So when exchanging money at a bank, all the bills are run through a universally finicky scanner, which seems to reject about half of the bills. It was not uncommon for me to carry some money into a bank and then sit there for a half hour or more while the teller ran several of the bills through the scanner again and again and again. Then they would hold them up to the light and examine them. Then they would get the manager who would run them through the scanner 10 more times, bending the bill, snapping it between their fingers, or waving it in the air between each pass. On a couple occasions, the manager finally signed off everything just to get things moving again.

So money was always a concern. Especially since the financial "burn rate" was so high. Looking at the dwindling pile of bills in the hotel safe, I felt like a personal economic stimulus package. I bailed out the airlines, the railroad, several taxis, the orphanage, way too many government agencies, several hotels, numerous restaurants, a bunch of street vendors, and even a rickshaw driver. I figured the economy would collapse immediately after I left. Several times Deb asked me if the money was going to last longer than the trip or if the trip was going to last longer than the money. I assured her of the former.

We did make it with some to spare. We did not get pick pocketed. Everything worked out. God is good.