Just a Regular Old Day

So today the boys greeted me at the early hour of 4:30am. Now why would you ask would the boys be up at this time? Well, here in China they unfortunately believe in having just one time zone for the entire large country and do not see the need for the concept of daylight savings time like we have in the US. Hence, the sun actually rises at 4:30am. Even with the darkening curtains Danny somehow knows it is daylight outside and feels he should be awake to greet the earliest rays of sunshine. I on the other hand long for the days when he was a baby and slept to the fantastic hour of 7am. Oh what I would give to sleep until 7am.

The 4:30 ams are exceedingly difficult due to two other factors. One being that Dustin usually works late into the night trying to talk with the States, and this week especially since his boss is in town and they have extra meetings in the evenings. I usually either try to stay awake until he is home, or since I am a light sleeper (especially since becoming a mother) I wake up when he comes into the room. The second factor is that my neck is still causing me problems, and I have a lot of trouble sleeping this past week.

Thank goodness for Folgers and a Starbucks which is close. I of course am not looking forward to June as the mornings are only going to get earlier and earlier. Back home, I had a clock in Danny's room and made him stay in his bed until he saw the clock reach 6am. Due to the increasingly earlier mornings, I am going on a search for this type of clock tomorrow. It seems like this would be a simple thing to locate,an alarm clock you can see in the dark, but this is China, and nothing is straightforward or easy to find.

The rest of the day went fairly smoothly. I took the boys to get their haircuts. They had the same stylist as last time, and I was again pleased with the result. We ran into a nice women I had met before. I have only seen her so far, but her son will be in Danny's class this fall. We exchange information and plan to get together sometime soon. It is nice to connect with people, because in many ways it seems hard to meet other moms here. It seems they are either working or just not with their own kids, so most children we run into at the park are with their Ayis. If we do run into moms, it is hit or miss whether they will be friendly or not.

After eating an early lunch I convince Danny to walk to the Starbucks. I felt I would surely not make it to the end of the evening with out some additional boost of caffeine. We arrived and we enjoyed splitting a muffin three ways while we watched people go by on the street in front of the shop.

As Danny was missing Dustin I decided that we would have a fun evening together rather than our normal routine one. I woke Danny up from his nap early and we headed to the sand park. We brought our toys with and this attracted some other boys that had similar toys to us. One little boy came over and wanted to use some of our stuff. He brought with him a nice dump truck. We invited him to play sort of at the same time that he was helping himself to our things. Danny asked politely if he could play with the boys dump truck and he refused. This was quite hard for Danny to understand as we teach Danny that he is to always share his toys with others. The refusal was of course harder to understand since the boy was actively using a number of Danny's toys. I of course was not surprise that his Ayi came shortly after and with broken English was trying to figure out what the little boy was doing. It was quite clear that the little boy showed her little respect and it was hard for her to get him to do as he should. He left shortly after and we kept playing just Danny, Josh and myself. The park was crowded, but with either children with Ayi's or mothers from countries I could not quite place from their language. It seemed like a park filled with children whose behavior left little to be desired.

The interaction with the boy and others that we have met, brings me back to my greatest concern for Danny, which is his upcoming school year. I have heard from many moms, this is where Danny will meet most of his friends. Yet, I am concerned about how these children behave. I guess this would be a concern anywhere he went to school, but it seems a little more prevalent here as I find there are a lot of absent parents. i.e.--they have allowed their ayi to replace them in their children's lives. This sort of amazes me, as I am looking forward to an Ayi as well, but to do all the chores that keep me busy and away from the kids. I hope that I will have more time with the boys, not less.

Another interesting site at the park is that some mother had some sort of portable toilet that used a plastic bag attached to the plastic seat. I was completely shocked that she literally helped her child sit on this contraption and go to the toilet just along side the park. Not off to the side where there might be more privacy, but straight in the middle right where everyone had a first hand viewing. I guess I should have been happy that she didn't let her go on the grass, but I could tell Danny was captivated by what was going on. While I do not want to be a total prude, and I am sure it made the mother's life easier than racing back home with her child, but I at least thought within our community there would be some normalcy of what is appropriate in public. I mean Danny is getting to the age when he should not be watching some little girl go to the bathroom--let alone the rest of us. All I can say is only in China, only in China. Life here can be so bizarre.

This brings me to the funny/sad/frustrating story from our new friends. They moved today, and yesterday she called me to tell me she went to see the new house and check on the cleaning and projects they were suppose to fix. Amber said there were spots in the grout in the entryway that had needed to be fixed. She walked into the entry way to find that instead of using a grout that matched what was on the floor, they used white to fix the spots that needed fixing. So you can only imagine what that floor looks like with two different grouts throughout it. As I said before--bizarre. Who in their right mind would think that this was a good idea, or that this would be acceptable. Yet, what was their response? You guessed it, they were shocked that she had a problem with the two different grouts. Go figure.

We ended the day on a fine note, as I took the boys to the clubhouse for dinner and they were well behaved.

Overall, the day was pleasant and I always enjoy being with the boys, especially on our walks and at the park. However, I can not help but be a little lonely, and feel a little lost. While I occasionally meet a mom at the park or on our walks, we rarely have a long time to talk. Also, there is just not a lot for me to be involved in right now. I try and remind myself this is only temporary. By this fall we will have an Ayi, so I should not have to spend most of my day cleaning, Danny will be in school and I will meet people through that and also through any sports programs he does. I also hope to take some language lessons, which will hopefully allow me to get around a little easier.

So for now, I will cultivate the few people I have met that seem interested in getting to know me better. I will try to ignore the others who either give their snooty looks or completely ignore me. It is so hard to tell if this is because they cannot communicate with me, or if they do not want to communicate with me. The boys and I will continue to enjoy the parks and pools and we will continue to give thanks for a place to call home here and more importantly for our home back in the States. I will also try and focus on the fact that being away from home is always harder when I am exhausted, for this is when I long for the comfort of what is familiar. I pray for a good night sleep, successful hunting for an alarm clock and that the doctor I see on Saturday about my neck does not look at me as if this pain is just between my ears.