You had me at NI HAO! Or E is for Efficiency, or Everybody Ought to have a Mandarin-Speaking Daughter

We’ve been in China for less than a week, but in that short time we’ve smiled immeasurable times at the pleasures large and small that will be our experience in China.  [We’ve also had some less stellar moments, but who wants to hear about those?  I believe I will focus on what makes me SMILE this year in my blog…I hope that doesn’t mean fewer entries as work gets going!]  We’ve seen the cutest babies in the world do even cuter things, doted on by ever attendant happy, relaxed grandparents (that’s the job I want, except when the parents blame any of the child’s transgressions on the grandparents at parent-teacher conferences), exceptional efficiency in many of the daily experiences (government bureaucracy not-withstanding), and all of it has been tempered and enhanced by the arrival and invaluable assistance of Daughter #1 from Chengdu.  She has translated our AC remote controls so we can stay cool, translated the directions on the washer so we can have clean clothes, and made straight our path through conversations with the real estate agent who helped us find our wonderful apartment, the sales people in stores, the coffee vendor downstairs, etc.  We now have best friends in several of the neighborhood haunts because she is a beauty who speaks Mandarin very very well, and they are rightly impressed.  They will be deflated once they hear my ~100-word fluency in Mandarin…

In our “neighborhood” (Daughter #1 calls it the “burbs”) there is a mall directly across the street, and the best thing in the mall is NOT the supermarket, but the AJI CHIBAN, the world-famous Japanese candy store.  Yes, it was written in the stars that I should come to live close to Sugar Mecca….  They have upped the game on Boston Baked Beans (yes, MKG, I’m talkin’ to YOU), found new ways to combine gummi delight and mango flavor, and, new number 1 treat, sunflower seeds dipped in chocolate and sealed with a chocolate M & M style shell.  They are divine, and attractively packaged in a small vial that I believe I will have several dozen of by the end of our stay.  This is like a new-age Glenn’s, the nickel and occasional dime corner Mom & Pop store we grew up a block away from.  I’ve gone full circle.

The new next big thing in appliances has already arrived here, in several areas.  We have new everything since the apartment is brand spanking, so when the clothes washer only took 5 minutes to fill with water this morning, I thought it was malfunctioning, then remembered someone in America telling me new washers are incredible savers of water.  I don’t know how much clothing to put in as a result, though, so if anyone has read about this via Hints from Heloise (is she still clacking on the keyboard?) let me know.  Also, I used our new microwave for the first time this a.m. and thought someone who shall remain nameless had thrown away the glass plate for revolving the food.  WRONG, I think.  I cooked it without the plate, and it came out the same way, so I guess those plates are now obsolete.  Either that, or I just made them so.

I’m sitting in our almost-completely unpacked apartment drinking a huge pot of tea (Rishi’s Hibiscus and Berry, very yummy, available at all Whole Foods stores) and taking a well-deserved break from errands and figuring stuff out.  We had pillow and garbage bags day, hangars and towels day, and then a mega shop twice for a lot of little things that one needs to run a household. Whew! I’m thinking of a new minimalist approach to all things except chocolate.  One should never compromise on the things you hold dearest.

So the adventure is off and running in Suzhou, where it’s so hot and muggy you’d think you were in….Iowa in August.  Thankfully, Iowa weather will NOT be mirrored when it comes winter here,

August Haze in The BURBS?  High rises in every direction...

which is a brief 2-month affair with intermittent rain, or so I was promised.  I started work last Friday, and there is a fun group of international faculty that will be fun to be around.  So far I’ve figured out that the MOST difficult accent to understand is Australian…or at least I THINK that’s what they are, because I can’t understand them about half the time.  There will be cultural learning, too, as there was a big whoop that went out when the principal declared the name of the bar that would show the Great 15, or something like that, apparently a rugby competition of some sort.  We met our new New Zealand neighbors last night on a grocery run and they said they lost by one point, but they were still smiling.  I believe there is a healthy beer culture in that part of the world that they might hold as dear as I do my chocolate.

We have a few challenges in front of us this week, like determining if S. will need to return to the U.S. to get official authentication from the Chinese Consulate in Chicago that we are indeed married (not sure what we’ll do if we find out we’re not), or if we can hire someone at great cost to go to the consulate twice for us and Fed Ex back the Chinese stamp and seal on our marital bliss.  One universal truth is that government bureaucracy is just whacko wherever you go.   Other than that, a week of PD at school and figuring stuff out.  We had some tech PD on Friday that made me want to slap my forehead and roll my eyes, it was so disorganized.  I wanted to beam up Des Moines nephew J. to make some order out of it… It finally fell apart when everyone went to a website that the server wasn’t ready for and it shut us down.  It was divine intervention.  But, you get those moments in any beginning of the year, and move on.  It was rather ironic that the one thing we all wanted to learn was how to apply for reimbursement for our airplane tickets, and that’s when the server said “Enough”.  I’m sure we all have plenty of incentive to figure that out anyway. 

No time for exploring beautiful Suzhou yet, but we hope to do that a little later this week after I get home from work.  We’re off to find a gym today, because Chengdu daughter already found us a yoga studio on the block, but couldn’t deliver on the gym… Other faculty members want to hire her to label THEIR remotes, but we had first dibs a long time ago.