Chinese New Year - Year of the Ox

Okay, so Chinese New Year was in January and this post is really late...but hey, at least I'm getting around to it finally!  Roy and I hosted a Chinese New Year (CNY) party for students in our home the week before the actual event because everyone (and I mean everyone) goes home for CNY.  The streets literally empty out.  We had friends who had just moved here and we told them it was the best time to drive because no one was around that week.  Businesses closed anywhere from 2 or 3 days to 2 weeks!  (those that were Chinese owned - not your regular grocery stores).  

So we asked our Chinese colleagues if they would provide all the food.  It was a wonderful afternoon.  We learned so much.  When we were in the US, the CNY parties were all about the dumplings - but there wasn't a dumpling in sight!  The food is very different.  There were pineapple tart/cookie things, chips made from arrow root, and some BBQ meat that was dried a bit like jerky.  All the food is centered around prosperity and money.  If the name of the food in Chinese, or the shape of the characters or food itself look like money, then it is "lucky" to eat it during CNY.  Anything gold (like pineapples) is a good thing.  Red is the color for decorating.  There were red lanterns decorating many of the houses in the neighborhood - they should be done in twos just in case you want to decorate next year!  

The photos above are of something called Yang See.  It is a regional dish that you won't necessarily find in other Chinese communities around the world.  The name again has to do with prosperity.  Everyone gathers around the table and uses chopsticks to toss the different items into the air and mix it all up.  The idea is that the higher you go, the more prosperity you will have in the new year.  You also wish aloud for things that you want.  Apparently this is a good thing to do with your business partners over lunch during CNY.  

Oranges are another thing that are given out during CNY.  (also in pairs).  If you are married, you give all of your single relatives ang pow - which is a monetary gift.  Our cell group made sure that Roy and I knew all about this tradition!  While we didn't give any ang pow to them, we did give it to the children of friends when we went to their house for a CNY lunch.  

We really enjoyed our first CNY and look forward to celebrating it again next year now that we know lots more about what goes on and what to expect.  It is exciting to get to know new traditions and also to see how the Christian community takes the traditions and sorts out what is tied to past religions and what is just cultural.  

Cool photo

When we were in Singapore last month we went to eat down by the river.  They had lights underneath the stairs all lit up.  They would change color and sometimes have multiple colors.  I thought it was really cool and tried to capture it with my camera.  Not sure this does it justice, but I thought it was pretty.

Fireflies and Seafood

Being near the sea, there is an abundance of seafood available here.  Our Chinese friends love seafood.  During the Christmas and New Year holidays we had opportunities to go out to eat with lots of friends.  On New Year's Eve, we went to a local seafood place that was amazing.  There were 17 of us and we sat at 2 tables.  One of the guys ordered food for us and we ended up with about 10 different dishes.  There was black pepper crab, and salted egg crab, two kinds of prawns (shrimp), la la (clams), sotong (squid), plus a beancurd soup, some lamb and some chicken.  It was a crazy amount of food!  

After dinner we went back to a friend's house played games and brought in the New Year.  After the countdown we each shared how God blessed us in 2008 and what we were looking forward to in 2009.  What a great way to start the year! 

A couple of days later, Roy and I took our ministry leaders on an overnight retreat.  We wanted to have time to plan and think about what God can do through us in the next year.  We went to a place that is known for its fireflies.  I remember sitting in my back yard in the summer time and seeing a few fire flies flit around here and there.  Sometimes there might be a lot - like 10, but NOTHING like what we saw!  We took a boat ride after dark on the river and you would see bushes filled with fire flies!  Hundreds of them on one bush - all twinkling like Christmas lights.  I wish I could have captured it on film, but we weren't allowed to use flash photography.  It was so very cool.

Our package deal included a "self serve" BBQ dinner.  So after our boat ride we went to see what this dinner would be and discovered that they provided a charcoal fire and lots of raw seafood and other meats along with a tray of watermelon and some chinese tea!  We had to cook the food ourselves.  By this time it was about 9:00 p.m.!  We had a great time grilling and eating and just sharing out stories with each other.  

Here is a photo of Roy and Kelvin manning the grill!

Here is a photo of our leaders - minus the one taking the photo.  

Here is a photo of the chalets we stayed in.  We had one chalet with two sides - each with two bedrooms.  It was quite nice.  
The next day we met and worked through our goals for the year, came up with a theme and then worked on some other details.  For lunch we drove to a nearby town and went to a seafood restaurant!  Crazy!  When we got home later and Roy asked what was for dinner I said, "not seafood!" 

December and the New Year

Merry Christmas!  Okay, so it is a bit late.  Sorry about that.  I put off blogging through the holidays because it got to be a bit crazy.  Roy was traveling a bit and I was busy baking, baking, baking.  

We decided to host an open house for our neighbors and friends the weekend before Christmas.  So, I made 3 kinds of quick breads, dipped pretzels in chocolate, made cookies, peppermint bark and other sweet treats and set up a dessert table along with hot apple cider (not as odd as it sounds in such a hot climate!).  We were blessed by many people coming to hang out and enjoy themselves.  




Christmas Eve was spent at church and I made 5 fudge wreaths for the dessert at the church (400 people came for dinner, worship service and a dramatic production).  It was quite a crowd!

Then on Christmas Day, I made a big dinner with all the fixings - turkey, stuffing, veggies, rolls, cranberry chutney, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie.  We invited some international students who didn't have family in town and some other friends as well.  We had dinner and then sang some Christmas carols and shared stories about our past Christmases.  It was a sweet time.  Our Botswanan student LOVED the potatoes!  And, he really liked the pumpkin pie and bread.  

It was a really sweet time of celebrating Christ's birth.  We were amazed at how many stores decorated for Christmas.  But we were also blessed that unlike in the US, Christmas was seen as a Christian holiday.  There wasn't any pressure to change the name or to not say "Merry Christmas" even to a Muslim friend.  It is our holiday and just like we would wish them well on their holiday, they would honor us and wish us well on ours.  It was just nice to not have to be "PC."  

After Christmas Roy and I took a bit of a holiday and went ballroom dancing in Singapore!  That was so much fun.  We have really missed being able to do that frequently like we did in the US.  We used to go to a dance at least once or twice a month, plus we took lessons.  We found that we were a bit out of shape and needed to work on our communication as he led around the dance floor.  

rainy cool weather

It rained all day yesterday - a nice gentle rain that was almost like a mist at times. We've been getting crazy storms that have booming thunder and lots of lightening. Really scary stuff! The humidity is really high with those and so it doesn't seem very cool even though the sun isn't shining.  But yesterday it was cool ... really cool.  We didn't have the air con on all day - a first since we've moved here!  It reminded me of Portia's speech from the Merchant of Venice .. "The quality of mercy is not strained, it droppeth as a gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It was a great day to be reflective and consider all that God has done in our lives these last six months and all that he is continuing to do!  

DIY

I grew up in a DIY culture.  Not only as I am an American and we tend to have that "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" culture, but also because my mom was a maintenance mechanic for many years and can fix anything.  Her mother's day and Christmas wish list always had tools listed on it.  When we moved to N. CA and bought a small farm, she read up on raising chickens and sheep and we eventually raised pure bred Romneys.  She roofed the barn and the house and she and my step dad did a lot of the work on the addition to the house themselves.  However, she knows her limitations and taught me some valuable lessons over the years.  One, get an expert for electrical stuff and two, sometimes working on a project together with your spouse isn't the best approach.  

Mom also had my brother and I do our own laundry from the time we could reach the knobs on the machine.  We each had our chores and learned to clean our rooms at an early age.  We weren't allowed to go and play until stuff around the house was done and when we moved to the farm, that included feeding chickens and pigs and collecting eggs.  

My dad managed several air conditioning and refrigeration stores in central California and I remember going to them and helping with inventory and hanging out.  I love the smell of a store like that and going to a Home Depot, Lowes or Ace would often remind me of him.

I was excited when my husband and my mom "bonded" over power tools in Target the first Christmas we were married.  That was great.  I knew they would like each other, but it was nice to know that they had something to talk about.  They got talking about saws (my mom has a wood shop now and can make really cool stuff) and a few months later Roy got a Japanese saw in the mail from my mom.  It is really nifty but we didn't have much chance to use it in the US.

When I lived in England there were lots of DIY stores.  Brits loved to putter in their gardens and fix up projects in their home.  I was actually rather surprised at the lack of DIY shops where we live now.  Ace Hardware actually has branches here and most shopping areas have a DIY place that sells basic stuff (there are 3 or 4 in the area closest to us), but it seems that much of their stock is household items like cleaning supplies, auto supplies, kitchen gadgets and such.  They have other things like paint, tools, and hardware, but it doesn't have the same feel to it as did places in the US.

So one day I asked Roy if he would please trim the top of the tree outside our gate.  It was headed toward the electrical wires.  We got out the ladder and the Japanese saw from my mom (glad to finally be able to put it to use).  Roy climbed up and began sawing away.  This attracted the attention of our next door neighbor who came out to watch.  He commented that "you Americans and Europeans sure do love to do things yourself.  We just hire someone."  He's right, here in Asia labor is cheap.  It is much easier to hire someone to do it for you than to do it yourself most of the time.  We do have a guy who comes and trims our postage stamp size lawn and asking him to trim the tree would have been easy (and something I did the next time he came), but there is something about the satisfaction of a job well done and knowing that you did it on your own.  

It's one of the reasons I have struggled with getting house help.  Everyone in our neighborhood has some kind of house-help.  Most have foreign maids who live in and do cleaning and cooking.  The houses here (including ours) have a room in the back which is called the "maid's room"  We turned ours into Roy's office.  Each day you see the maids all sweeping the drive out in front of the house.  I've been doing my own.  My friend Barb used to do her own as well until her neighbors asked her to stop because it made them look bad in front of their maids.  Some people have part time help.  I was surprised at how many people in our church have ayahs (kind of like a nanny/maid) who accompany them everywhere.  When I go shopping it is not uncommon to see a woman and her children and the ayah shopping together (and sometimes grandma too).  These aren't nannys for full time working moms, but for stay at home moms.  When we had church camp, I would guess that there were about 6 or 7 ayahs that came along.  We went to dinner the other night and there was a family at the next table including the ayah.  They are a part of the family.  

So being a part of the culture, it seems odd to many people that Roy and I don't have a maid.  We don't have children and it's just the two of us and I kept thinking that it was silly to hire someone to do what I can do myself.  But as life gets busier and we take on more responsibility, I thought it might be nice to occasionally have someone do the stuff I hate - like bathrooms and floors.  Our whole house is either tile, marble or parquet flooring.  With open windows and windy days, it doesn't take long for them to get dirty and since we go barefoot in the house, they need to stay clean.  

So my neighbor and I were chatting and she had just fired her maid and sent her back to her country.  She was looking for another solution rather than a live-in.  She hired Merry Maids for a couple of weeks and then found a lady who did free-lance work. I asked if she could just come for a couple of hours and week and we came to an agreement.  

Wow, what a gift from God.  It is amazing how much just those 3 hours matter.  I remember my mom talking about having someone come in and clean once a week when we were kids and how she loved those days when she'd come home and the house would be clean from top to bottom. This lady is wonderful and does a fabulous job.  I still do lots of housework (the floors still get dirty the other days), but it is so great to have some help with stuff that would take me all day to do and frees me up to do other things that I have responsibility for.  Besides she can do in three hours what would take me 8 and it is really inexpensive.  She is a Christian and a single mom from the Philippines whose daughters are in college.  Give thanks to God for her and how she blesses our family through her service to us.

and etc.

I have always found languages fascinating.  I learned some Spanish as a child from my step-father's mother. She mixed Spanish and English and we would laugh when we'd use one of her words and she wouldn't understand us, but she expected us to know what she meant when she used it.  She would call my mother "Cherry baby" (her name is Sherry), but never knew who when meant if we said it.  We called her brand of Spanish/English, Myrick because that was her last name at the time.  

I learned more Spanish in high school, first from a Cuban and then was re-taught much of what I learned the next year by the new teacher who had studied in Spain - there is a huge difference.  Most Spanish speakers consider Cuban spanish as the least refined.  Having lived in Mexico, people from other Spanish speaking regions can tell that I speak Mexican Spanish because of the way I say my "j" and "ll".  It is unique to that region.

In college I took 4 semesters of French rather than one semester of statistics.  I still think it was a good choice.  Then I traveled in Italy, Romania, and Poland picking up words here and there.  All of this helped me to understand the cultures I was visiting much better.  I think everyone should learn at least 10 words for every new country they visit.  

Somewhere in there I moved to the American South and learned a whole new version of English.  Colleagues talked about "mashing" buttons on the phone, spoke with a soft drawl and said y'all a lot.  I picked it up and soon my mother was making fun of me saying "Etlanna" for Atlanta.  But none of my southern friends would have ever mistaken me as someone from the south.  They considered me a Yankee even though I clarified and said I was a California girl.   (yes, my mother had to break me of saying "like" and "you know" all then time as a teenager growing up in the San Fernando Valley).

When I moved to England, I had to learn a whole new vocabulary.  Rubbish for trash, lorry for truck, you "overtake a car" not pass it.  Living in East London I had a hard time understanding the vegetable vendor when he would shout "pound a bowl!"  (meaning 1 british pound for a bowl of veggies).  Most of the teens in the area added "innit" to the end of their sentences.  

So now I live in Asia and have to learn a whole different English.  Roy and I are constantly amazed at how people can make a verb out of any noun.  Instead of the East London "innit" or the Canadian "eh", people here add "lah" onto the end of some sentences.  Not every sentence.  There are specific rules, although we don't know them all.  We do know that you say, "okay, lah" but not "thank you lah".  Our cell group even got Roy a t-shirt with "how to use the lah" on it.  

When you go to a fast food place in the US, they ask you if it is for "here" or "to go".  In the UK, they ask if you are "eating in" or "take away".  Here, they ask if you are "having in."  Our friend asked one evening if he could "follow" us to the restaurant we were all going to after church.  We said sure, thinking he would drive his car behind us, but realized he didn't have a car.  "Follow" here is used when you want to ride in someone's car with them!  You "fetch" people when you agree to pick them up from their home.  Someone might ask you to "off the lights" when they want you to turn them off.  My new favorite was overheard just a couple of nights ago.  Someone was telling a story about driving and said that someone "horned" her.  I thought of "horning in on a conversation" and considered that maybe this guy ran into her, but no, he honked his horn at her!  

Often when you ask someone if they can do something, they will say, "Can, lah" or "Cannot, lah".  Tak boleh, lah is "cannot lah" in the local language and one of my favorite phrases.  

Many people ask us if we will learn the local language and we do want to.  We have learned quite a few vocabulary words - probably about 150 by now. But first I think we need to learn the local English!  

PS:  Regarding the title of this entry, many people here use "and, etc." in their written correspondence not realizing that it is repetitive.