Monday, May 21

Second grade homework was a good fit for Julia tonight.  She read 3 pages of a Junior Great Books story to me—that’s an accomplishment for her, to sustain reading over several pages.  While we were working on the homework, we got skyped by friends from home—hurrah!  Julia loved to see her two friends; it was surprisingly meaningful for her.  When they had to check out in order to get to school on time, she said, “It was too short!”  Technology is amazing, for sure.  Julia has also had a running email correspondence with a friend over the past two days; it’s been almost like a conversation, and she is enjoying that a lot.

We came straight home from school, much to Julia’s disgust.  She was hoping for an event; I feel we had quite a few events over the weekend and need some ordinariness.  We came in for the first installment of dinner (what would we do without peanut butter, saltines, and fruit?  The tiny local cherries are fabulous! If full of pits) and then took the scooter out to the central hill, where the shops are.  

Heading down the stairs!

Climbing the hill - what a cutie!

While Julia raced up and down the hill (she wanted me to run a race with her, deluded child), I sat and took photos of the action around us.  

Racing up!

She loves this!

There was a constant stream of children and riding vehicles, watched over by grandparents, primarily, and mothers.  Everyone was busy, happy, shrieking, moving, and cute.  In several group photos, I was struck that you can’t easily pick out Julia; she fits right in. 

Many bikes

Lots of action while Julia zooms by

It's hard to spot Julia here - see how much she blends right in?

I brought my knitting out, and that created conversation, of a sort, with two grandmothers.  By miming scarf, I communicated what I was doing.  One was holding an adorable granddaughter with a classic bob, topped by pink baseball cap. 

A classic Tracey activity

Children’s clothing is pretty ‘fancy’ here.  No one wears just a shirt and pants.  Julia did stand out in this crowd for the plainness of her clothes; in fact, she was dressed more like a boy than almost any girl I’ve seen.  Note the mother/daughter pair in matching hats; this is not atypical!  I’ve also noticed that Chinese women wear a lot of black/white stripes.  Note to self:  It’s a consistently good look.

Such a dress!

See the tights and fancy dress?

Great, matching hats

I loved the groups of grandmothers, strollers and grandchildren.  Everyone chatting away, holding the children—I don’t think really young children get to walk much!  I love the photo of a child on a ride surrounded by 3 adults; again, very typical!  In my class, the children exemplify this devotion by being seriously overdressed!  They all wear underleggings and undershirts, long sleeves and a jacket or sweater, sometimes all at once.  The girls are still wearing ‘winter’ tights.  And their mothers send in messages of concern about their warmth, their temperatures, the amount of water they are drinking, and whether they are being required to eat lunch.  Even the TA assesses this as obsessive parenting! 

Quite the crowd!

You can hardly see the child as there are so many onlooking adults!

There are no fat Chinese in Qingdao.  There are many skinny Chinese, and a surprising number of tall Chinese women; there are some plump Chinese—these are mainly grandmother-aged women.  There are virtually no fat Chinese children (well, the exception might be some children, such as those in my class, who come from well-to-do families, where the intense focus on the children sometimes leads to over eating).  I have seen one obese person, at the International community play, and his nationality was unclear to me. 

Very skinny

This mother, with the great matching hat, is definitely taller and thin!

There are a plethora of McDonald’s and other fast food restaurants, which may not bode well for the future.  I took a photo of some Chinese ‘fast food’ being sold at a 7-11 type shop where we had gone to buy an ice cream novelty for Julia.  School children—identified in this community by their white and powder blue uniforms—were parading up and down the hill with cardboard cups filled with these ‘kebabs’ of fried and sauced foods—what are they??—and/or ice creams, bags of chip-like snacks, candy bars, etc.  The Chinese do seem to eat a lot of snack foods; that is, the shelves are full of these kinds of things, Chinese versions, so I presume that they are buying and eating them.  There are a huge number of quick shops everywhere we go, where what is sold is primarily snack type foods.  And on this hill, in the afternoon, the teens are always buying and eating snacks.  Does some of it count as dinner? (a good moment to remember how much nutella we’ve eaten in the last two weeks!).

An example of these fast food snacks

And, in front of Julia, the familiar blue and white school uniforms

I had an interesting chat with Maggie, on the school van, about the Chinese language.  She said that characters are combined to make words, many different combinations for many different words.  And then the words are combined to build sentences.  She said it is a challenging thing for natives to learn; how to combine the characters first into words and later into sentences.  It takes a tremendous amount of repetition to get it all to stick, as well, of course, a lot of memorization.  Learning to write the characters is also challenging; not only do you have to get the strokes right, but you have to do them in the correct order.  I took a photo on Sunday of a man, missing a leg, who was asking for assistance on the street in central Qingdao by writing something (what?) on the sidewalk—the writing was so stylized and perfect, even in chalk on bumpy sidewalk.  It is a thing of art to someone like me who cannot treat it as meaning.  The man even used color to convey his message. 

Here is the image from Sunday - isn't it beautiful work?

Maggie’s mother is going to bargain for some tea for me.  Maggie admitted she’s not good at bargaining, and she seemed to imply that I couldn’t buy tea without bargaining for it!  She also scoffed at the idea of me trying to bargain—a ‘foreigner’ would be taken to the cleaners!  She has twice told me that I should be drinking green tea; ‘very good for the health.’ 

Our project for after school tomorrow: to buy Julia a bell for her scooter.  She had bell envy today when she realized the girl wearing the hat had a bell on her scooter already.  It was a physical pain for her to do without!

You can just see the small blue offending bell

However, she loves her new fan.