I'm back. Been back to China ........

Well I've been a bit recalcitrant lately....that's a nice big word isn't it? I sort of went off the boil, and as we are back in the same house on the Gold Coast, there wasn't a lot to talk about really, and somehow the old writing bug sort of went to sleep.

However, its time to revive it. The catalyst really was a friend of mine, Lyn from New Zealand who asked me to take part in a month long thingy on facebook, which just entailed putting up a picture a day on a given topic with a brief  note. Now, I thought, that would be easy, so I have started it, and then I thought, well they might as well go on here too. There are also some new things happening, so I thought I'd talk about them.

Since I was last here, and I can't remember the exact date, we have travelled a lot. The owners of this house sit, who live in Europe for most of the year came back for five months and we found other house sits, and visited family.

So over the summer we lived out of suitcases for five months, and it gets a bit tedious after a while. Here is where we went.......Brisbane (stayed with son for a few days) Tingalpa Brisbane, (house sit) Cleveland (house sit) New Zealand (my mum was very sick) Brisbane (sons house for a few days) New Zealand ( my mum passed away) Brisbane (sons house) Perth to visit another son, Melbourne to visit daughter and new grandson, Brisbane (back to sons house for two days) me to China for three weeks while Peter did another house sit on the Sunshine Coast.......then back to our original house sit on the Gold Coast.

Now this might sound like a lot of travelling, but really the costs are minimal, mostly only paying for the fares and food, as the house sitting means we care for their homes in exchange for free rent for those weeks. Even in China, I stay with friends, so there is little accommodation costs involved, and anyway everything in China is so cheap, relatively speaking.

So I will add a couple of pics here of my trip to China to visit Alex and his wife and daughter who is now one year old, and in his words, getting very  naughty.

 

Alex and baby, Xi Ying...her English name is Lana.

We went out for a family dinner...fabulous meal here.

The dinner table...this was a seafood restaurant, all
sorts of fish and shellfish were on the menu.

 It’s really interesting to see this Chinese family care for their baby. They make really hard work of it. They are terrified the baby might hurt herself, so walk around after her making sure she doesn’t fall. She cries when in a high chair so they follow her around feeding her. She has gone off milk, so give her water most of the time. She is a community baby, as there are relatives living one floor up and they are good with her, and care for her quite often. And Alex’s father lives with them, and he does a lot of the work for them, he really is a huge help.

She is as bright as a button, just getting some steam up with
her walking.

Mandarin fish, one of my favourites, deep fried then
covered in the most fabulous sweet and sour sauce.

All the furniture had rubber edgings sellotaped on so that
if she fell she would not hurt herself.

One of the problems is that there is so little education for parents in China. They know nothing. When I went to visit them in December 2012 they asked me lots of questions about the forthcoming birth. They had no idea really apart from what they tried to find out on the internet. When I asked them ‘what do you know about the birth of a baby?’ the wife said…..’well it comes out between your legs and it hurts’. And that was it.  So I dispensed a few words from my own experience of five births, and tried to be realistic without scaring her to death.

Anyway, they are doing their best, and it must be remembered that the Chinese way of doing things is very different from the western way, and both ways have their good and bad aspects.

The one thing that is for sure….they love her to bits, and that is one of the most important things.

While I was there I spent a few days with Debbie, our teacher friend from Longyan. Here are a couple of pics from the bus ride into town. It was about 4pm, and the primary school was out, many kids were getting rides home on the bus. On Fridays the kids have to take bucket and mops to school and clean the school. It's a tight fit on the bus at this time of the day.

The buses are crammed to capacity when necessary. The driver
is there somewhere at the front left. It is armpit city for those sitting
down...lol....you can see the mop handle here. 

Young boy sitting next to me with his bucket and mop.

Okay, that is enough for today. I'll be back tomorrow.