Dreams

Aaron had a dream on Wednesday night that a little Chinese boy was standing next to our bed trying to wake him up.

I wish I would have a sweet dream about a Chinese bubba. (Instead the last dream I can remember having consisted of my mother phoning me at work to tell me, through huge sobs, that Britney Spears had committed suicide. It was bizarre. When I woke up I thought, 'why was she crying?, 'why would she call me at work to tell me that?' 'why is she even interested in Britney?' Bah!)

In other news, I got the book I left on the plane back! What were the chances!

Chinese New Year

Happy year of the pig! We had a great weekend packed full of celebrations for Chinese New Year.

Saturday night we went to a 10pm celebration at the local taoist temple. There was a lion dance and some kung fu demonstrations. Sunday we went to lunch with other adoptive families / prospective adoptive families. The state newspaper was there and took a photo of the gorgeous children - which made it to the front page of yesterday's paper!


Sunday evening we headed into Chinatown, joined by Aaron's brother and his family. We enjoyed watching a dragon dance and another lion dance, before checking out the markets and having dinner at a Chinese restaurant. We thought our 5 year old neice would be scared of the lions and firecrackers, but she was so excited that she was squealing and wanting to get as close as she could!

The local low-down

Five families in Queensland received referrals last weekend. I'm not sure why we find out a week later than the rest of the world, but it must be torture for the families concerned.

That's it for the 2005 LIDs from Qld, so it's not likely that there'll be referrals for a while now. Hangin' in there for Batch 8 & 9 who are next and have a February '06 log-in.

Mandarin Labels

This will probably only be of interest to those learning mandarin - and even then, just those in the early stages. I created some labels to stick up around the house to remind me of what things are called.

I couldn't work out how to add a file for download in blogger, so quickly made a webpage for them. Go here http://mandarinlabels.googlepages.com/ to download them. They are in a Word doc, set up to be printed on sheets of business cards (but will also work fine printed on regular paper or card).

In other news, Aaron bought me a neat book called The Chinese Have a Word For It, about Chinese phrases and culture, but we went away last weekend and I mistakenly left it on the plane! Tomorrow I'm going to phone the airline and the airport of where we went, but I don't like my chances..!

Simpsons Episode - Goo Goo Gai Pan

There was a Simpsons episode showing tonight (repeat from 2005) about adopting from China. Selma adopts baby Ling. It was cute. Completely inaccurate and all that, but all in good fun.

China banned the Simpsons from prime time tv last year (read one of many articles about it here from ABC).

Nì Hǎo Pod-buddies!

Hey, Checking Boxes is famous! We got a shout-out on Chinese Pod's Saturday Show this week. Thanks Aric, Colleen and Jenny.

You can listen here: (it's at about the 20 minute mark, but you should listen to the whole show... afterall, it is the 'greatest saturday show in the world')

	周六35 The Saturday Show for February 03, 2007
	Visit ChinesePod.com

Just a wee lil tacker

I turn 29 today. Have you ever met a girl so desperate to turn 30? This time next year our file can be sent to China. I think the rest of the process for our local requirements will take about 6 months, so that will take up half the time. I also think we will have to wait a few more months to progress any further, as the Dept is focusing on getting those who will be ineligible after May sped through. It looks like the timing will all work out nicely in the end.

I just scraped into the Year of the Snake. Here's a pic of me in China in 2003 - we found a set of the twelve Chinese zodiac statues, so had a photo with our respective animals.

I learned something when talking with a Chinese friend recently about birthdays in Chinese culture. She said that when a baby is born in China, they are considered to be one year old on the day they are born. Then, at Chinese New Year they become another year older (well, everyone does! New Year is seen as a rebirthing for all, so it's everybody's birthday). Essentially this could mean that if a child is born very close to Chinese New Year, within a few weeks they could be considered two years old already!

If anyone knows more about this I'm interested to hear it. There's only a tiny snippet about it at Wikipedia. I can't find much about it online, though I did come across this informative article about birth rites and customs in China.

Shāng rì kàui lè!

Our new friend Frank Xin

Aaron here. Entry number 2.

Emma registered on xLingo. It's a language exchange website that helps connect people in different countries who are trying to learn the language and want to talk to native speakers. It uses Skype (free internet phone calls using your computer). It is a brilliant idea and I will definitely be doing more of it.

We met Frank Xin today. He lives in Shanghai China and wants to speak English. He has been studying for a couple of years and he puts me to shame. His English is great. My Chinese is not so great. Emma and I will be having another conversation with Frank tomorrow, so now I have to study harder. It is so much better to have a learning goal that is direct. I want to be able to speak to him and understand in Chinese. I have a long way to go.

In the words of our Chinese teacher, 'Chinese is not easy, but not so hard.' I better get studying.

Evangeline

Oh, wow. I've been experiencing sweet serendipity a bit recently. I was at Central Station today getting a train home from work in the city. It was only 11.30am and I wasn't feeling so well, so decided to head home and keep working from there. I usually take a short-cut through the side of the train station, but unthinkingly found myself walking a less direct route for no particular reason, when I heard someone say my name. I turned around and there was Tracy.

Tracy is 17 year old from China. She came over on a two-week study tour four years ago and we were her homestay family. I hadn't been in contact with her since.

Tracy looked at me and said, "I miss you so much. I'm so happy to see you. I try to email but didn't work."

Wow. It's so great. I gave her my business card and told her to call or email me and we'll get together. She thinks she'll be in Australia for about 7 years now (two years finishing high school and then university). At the moment she's living with a family about ten minutes drive from us. This is AWESOME!

Oh, and her English name isn't Tracy anymore. She chose a new one - Evangeline. Isn't that just beautiful?

Kāi Dāng Kù

Picture originally uploaded to Flickr by Poagao.

I was reading through my old journal from when we were in China and I found a post about an interesting cultural aspect - splitty pants!

Chinese babies do not generally wear nappies (diapers). Instead they wear kāi dāng kù, which translates as 'open crotch pants'. Oooh all those cute little bottoms!

To traditionally toilet train a baby in China you 'ba' him or her. This means holding the baby gently by the hips and whistling softly in his/her ear. This conditions the baby (hello Pavlov) that whenever s/he hears a whistle they go to the toilet. We found this so fascinating! It was not unusal for us to walk down a street and see a baby being held over the footpath being ba-ed.

I'm just not sure about the implication later in life and how whistling might affect them as adults. Heh. Maybe when we go back I'll start whistling a tune while on a bus and just see what happens. Niao niao (wee wee)!

Anyway, I was just reading about splitty pants on a few websites to see if I actually had my facts right when I wrote about this in the first place, and it seems that it's becoming more fashionable to go for disposable nappies. A China Daily article from 2004 (you can read it here) suggests that modern parents, particularly in the cities, seem to think that splitty pants are old-fashioned and inconvenient, and only really used in rural areas. Disposables are on the rise!