Sunday, June 24

Happy birthdays, cousins Rachel, Hannah, and David!


Some photos of Julia, all dressed up for our dinner last night:

Beautiful dress (made by mama!), fancy shoes, and Alex's birthday tiara!

Very silly, fancy girl

Dinner!

We packed this last Sunday full! It was bright and sunny, warm and breezy today.  We had a date at 9 am to meet Maggie and Alex—Julia wants to get her hair cut! And Maggie uses a haircut shop which caters only to children.  We had quite an adventure there, from playing in the play space to having her hair cut and washed and dried.  Like many things in China, this place wasn’t quite up to par with American beauty salons, in terms of equipment or sanitation.  On the other hand, the young staff was absolutely friendly and kind.

There was a great play space at the salon!

Julia and Alex love to have fun

Settling into the car-shaped chair!

We don’t have to call in the experts to theorize why Julia wanted to have her hair cut!  It could be marking the experience; making the ‘change’ concrete; going home different.  Interestingly, the hair cut doesn’t make her look more like the Chinese around her—girls and even women mostly have long hair, often worn in a pony tail, with many hair fixings in it!  So, she has gone for a different look than that, and a different look than the one she arrived here with.  Cute as a button, and cool for the summer.

Alex watched the hair cut intently

Getting started

Blow drying 

The final look!

And, of course, right back to play

After a good play time with Alex, they went to a family lunch while we headed downtown with our kite.  It was a perfect day for kite flying, as the number of kites in the sky testifies.  Julia got her kite up and flying pretty quickly and immediately entered into a one-sided competition with kites near us—she wanted to be higher than the black shark! And also the 4 kites ‘with eyes’ that were flying right above her.  She ran the string out until there was no more, getting that cheap little kite quite high, above many of the kites in the air.  We flew the kite for nearly an hour; she is so nonchalant about it, she even ate a snack while flying!

Heading to the kite flying park

Julia's kite is the butterfly-like one flying here

Trying to race the black shark, on the right, and getting ever so high!

Carefully tugging the string, over her head, to control the kite

These are the kites with "eyes"

Snacking and flying!

Then we headed down the boardwalk—purchasing bread for lunches is our goal, and a hair fixing to hold back the slightly long front piece of hair.  We mingled with a happy crowd of Sunday strollers, including this little guy wearing mother’s sun hat and waving a bubble wand.  There were some adventurers down by the sea line, where the tide was going out; Julia settled for walking on the sea wall.  We finally bought her a bubble wand, on her list these many weeks, and she made some great bubbles as we walked along; cost an entire 82 cents!  I took her photos in the fountain as we passed it—I love this fountain! It is such a sociable place, as well as visually nicely done.

Little guy with his bubble wand

Julia on the sea wall

Blowing bubbles!

Really enjoying the bubbles!

The wonderful fountain

The tall sprays are a perfect scooter obstacle course

While in the expensive grocery, we met one of my students, Jim, who called out to me cheerfully (whew!).  We chatted with him and his mother for a few minutes, and then she offered to drive us home—wasn’t’ that kind?!  We still had errands to do, though, so declined.  We headed toward a children’s clothing store (never found it) and stopped at a tent sale at another high-end mall.  While I looked at merchandise, Julia found a box and a friend to entertain her; I turned and gasped once as they stuck their heads out which caused the little boy to laugh with joy! 

The mall was right next door to Book City, so we paid one last visit.  Julia perused the children’s section thoroughly in hopes of something to purchase; everything is in Chinese of course!  So we bought Chinese versions of “The Runaway Bunny” and “Peter’s Chair,” family favorites; couldn’t resist!

We got home just in time to meet Alex and Maggie for our second date of the day:  first, some play time at the Lego Club, and then an extended play at the indoor play space.  These are both housed in the building with a grocery and a Walmart type store (Maggie introduced us to this local spot a few weeks ago).  The Lego Club is part of a series of ‘clubs’ on the 5^th floor of this building—children can take guitar, drum, ballet, art, martial arts, and English lessons in these clubs, really privately run businesses.  It has the effect of a community center, centrally located in this area, repeated over and over in other community neighborhoods throughout the city (just like every housing community has a Kindergarten, essentially a day care center for children ages 3 and up—ours is literally outside our apartment window).  The Lego club takes kids starting at age 3, and it is, essentially, instruction in Lego building; serious business!  Maggie has enrolled Alex for a year, and as she said, ‘It’s not all for fun.”  This is all in keeping with the common knowledge that Chinese children are highly scheduled, work very very hard, and concentrate their energies primarily on ‘academic’ activities rather than sports.  It was fascinating—I was torn between thinking that Americans are slackers! Or, the Chinese are driving their children too hard!  Probably the truth is a combination of both perspectives.

After some Lego education, we went to the indoor play space—this is a lot like the play space at the hair dresser’s this morning! Only bigger, with more options.  There is some interesting equipment here—sometimes I wonder why the world doesn’t do a better job of communicating good ideas.  This is a good idea, and not an expensive one; the fountain in Marina City is a good idea.  Why aren’t there play spaces like these in American cities?  I have long thought that about the kind of community centers that one finds everywhere in Germany—why can’t Americans have these too? 

Julia had fun here last Sunday by herself, but today she had nirvana!   Alex was the perfect companion, full of energy, not in the least self-conscious or ‘too old’ for this kind of play.  They ran and jumped and hollered and bounced and chased and swang for nearly 2 hours; their shirts were soaking wet when we all hugged our last goodbyes.  I was brave and didn’t cry, but it was poignant to say good bye to this little boy who has been so warmly and genuinely friendly to Julia.  He said this morning, about her hair cut, “it’s pretty but it is not Julia.” – not the Julia he proposed to!  We have shared all the photos with them; so at least he will have concrete memories of this curious friend, here today and gone tomorrow.

Alex and Julia

Alex, Maggie, and Julia

Alex, Mama, and Julia

Maggie had a conversation with the play space clerk about who Julia and I are; the Chinese phrase for this class of orphans is ‘thrown away’—cuts to the quick, doesn’t it?  She offered it as explanation as to why the Chinese would be so glad to have Julia be part of our family; it is upsetting to them when this happens to children. 

The clerk remarked on Julia’s great command of English; I told them how important it is to me that we actually do something about teaching her Chinese.  I have been far too laid back about her Chinese heritage and especially about this language thing.  I have always pooh-poohed the idea that American families needed to surround their adopted children with the culture of China—it seemed artificial to me.  But I am revising my opinion; it is important that we acknowledge the existence, importance, and significance of China for her—it’s a kind of robbery to not establish an environment that says knowing about China is of course important.  There should be no sense of justifying it.   It simply is going to be part of her knowledge base.  She is an American, but of Chinese heritage, and she deserves respect of that, and the knowledge that makes China ‘hers.’

I have a stunning photo of Earth as my screen saver.  Every time I look at it, I am aware that it is a frozen image presenting North and South America; there is no China to be seen.  I now understand that Julia can’t grow up in a world in which there is no China to be seen; we owe that to her.