Four Weeks In

We got here four weeks ago last Thursday.
12 Big Things Done:

1. A place to live.  We got an apartment with a view, bought enough furniture to live, outfitted the kitchen, got linens and other necessities, moved in, unpacked, slept in our own beds for 12 nights.
2. School.  LiLi started school, was assessed, met her new teachers (English Montessori and Chinese Nat’l Curriculum), made new friends, changed school buses, made more new friends, got used to school lunch, got used to having one fewer recess periods than public school in SF.
3. Afterschool.  LiLi started afterschool activities two nights a week (gymnastics on Tuesdays and homework club on Thursdays).
4. Ayi.  We got into a routine with Ayi.  Ayi meets the school bus which stops right in front of our apartment building—the first stop on the way home; the last stop in the morning on the way in to school---and brings LiLi upstairs where she’s supposed to have a snack but doesn’t, does homework, then gets to read her English books or do something on the Ipad for a ½ hour while Ayi makes dinner, then I get home from work and the three of us have dinner together, while Ayi cleans up I get LiLi’s bedtime routine going so that Ayi leaves while LiLi is getting her bath or shower (leaning toward the latter at almost 9 years old).  Ayi does the shopping before coming over and is supposed to do cleaning and laundry but that part is suffering from my inability to communicate effectively and I’ve back-burned the suggestions in favor of getting the after-school piece smoothed out first.
5. Food.  Dinner is easy because the Ayi shops and cooks during the week.  Even though we haven’t actually clicked with what she cooks--since apparently kids in China eat very very bland food and LiLi can’t stand most of it--at least it’s being taken care of.  Lunch is at LiLi’s school and at work usually someone orders out for everyone and we have meetings over lunch or eat at our desks.  A few times I’ve gone out.   Breakfast is the tough thing for LiLi.   She’s disinclined to have eggs or cereal or anything very easy.  We don’t have a microwave and I’m not sure if we’ll ever get one.  We don’t have an oven or even a toaster.  I’m into oatmeal lately but LiLi refuses that too.  Today we got pancake mix so maybe I’ll get up a few minutes earlier and try that.   For food shopping we have the chain of import stores close by and I walk by a fresh market, bakery and fruit store every day.   We haven’t yet ventured into a giant supermarket but I think there is one near here.   Walmart  (Wahmah) is close to where we were staying at the service apartment and has loads of food, like a huge supermarket, and live turtles and eels and things you might not find at one in the States.
6. Tutor.  Identified but not yet scheduled a Chinese tutor for me.  She’s the one the Brazilian furniture woman was using so impressively.  Identified and will get an on line program from another attorney at the office soon.  I started trying to teach myself and actually use one phrase a day but have not kept that up which is why I need the on line program.  This phrase is handy:  Nǐ huì shuō yīngwen ma?   你会说英语吗？  Do you speak English?  I can also say that “I don’t understand Chinese” in Chinese but I’m starting to get it, maybe 1%?
7. Work.  I started work and am starting to feel productive there though my lack of language is a huge, huge impediment in addition to being embarrassing. It’s a global staff (China, U.S., France, Canada) and I am the only one who does not speak and read/write Chinese.   We had a dinner meeting last week with a hugely important Chinese partner and despite that they tasked one of the staff to translate for me, I still missed more than 50% of what was going on.
8. Work commute.  After much frustration and many different paths, I’ve finally hit upon a fairly straightforward route to the office, and a somewhat less desirable route home.  I’m walking around 40 minutes, crossing the fewest death-defying roads possible, and even have some as-yet-bare trees enroute.  Yesterday I bought a new face mask to replace the surgery-like one I bought in the subway.  I had wanted one like what we saw last summer: a facemask with bling.  But the only ones we’ve seen were silly:  a monkey; a ladybug; a cartoon; or some phrase about love.  So I settled for a plain black one and will continue looking.   Maybe it’ll help the bad air and maybe it won’t but at least it’ll keep my face warm.
9. Rip-offs.  I should say, avoiding rip offs.  Though it’s likely I was ripped off in ways I didn’t know when at the market or with the rental, the only significant and known one involved being overcharged by a 三轮车  (Sanlunche) or what is sometimes called a tuk-tuk in other parts of the world.  Apparently these illegal taxis are notorious for rip offs.  They are three wheeled motorcycles with little enclosed areas in the back that fit one passenger.  They can ride along the side bicycle lane and bypass the main road’s gridlock.  One stopped and offered me a ride halfway to work one morning when I was late, charged 30 rmb when a taxi is 11, but I paid it and was delighted by the adventure, breathing motorcycle exhaust, opening the little sliding plexiglass windows, cruising along in the former bike lane, going the wrong way down the one way street, making better progress than a taxi or walking.  The people in my office said 30 kuai was too high and I should have negotiated up front for the fare to be around the same as a taxi.  So that night when I was late leaving the office, couldn’t get a taxi for a long time, and another sanlunche stopped and offered, I thought I negotiated 20 kuai.  Seemed right since 30 was too much and a taxi would have been 11.  Right?   Nope.  When I had the guy stop to let me off a couple of blocks from home so I could stop at the bank and so he didn’t have to make a left off  an 8 lane main road, he kept saying the amount was not the 20 I had in my hand.  I tried offering 22.  But no.  He wrote it down:  200.  He seriously thought I should have paid him 200rmb!   I thought we negotiated 20 but then I started to doubt myself.  Did he really say that up front?  Who in their right mind would pay 200 when a real taxi is 11?   But my Chinese just might be that bad.  Was it?  Then the guy started pawing for my purse so I gave him what was in my hand (another 40) and got out as he grabbed my arm.  I know this is a BJ moment and my friends all have similar stories.  But I felt yucky nonetheless, decided against stopping at the bank in case the guy was following me, and in general watched my back the rest of the way home.  There’s little violent crime in BJ for its size, but still.  Also, there’s the yuckiness.  So now, no matter how cute or how convenient, I will avoid the sanluches.
10. Laundry.  We got the washing machine to work at last, figured out the all-Chinese controls and obtained enough drying-rack supplies to have places to hang the wet clothes.  We have a routine for getting the favored school uniform dress washed and dried enough since for some reason the other school uniform choices are now roundly rejected in dark of the morning.
11. Technology.  I got a new unlocked phone sent from home, got a proper micro SIM card for it and got it to actually work.  Got a new Ipad and (mostly) got it to work too.  Got the wireless turned on at the apartment and working on the laptop, the Ipad and the Iphone.  The cost remains to be seen since we’re supposedly taking over the last (extremely slow) connection and starting our own faster one in March.  This one is pay by the minute and I’ve already forgotten and left the wireless on overnight twice so I may be paying the cost of a computer for the connection this month.   My realtor’s eyes bugged out when I told her I left it on overnight accidently.  Kinda a bad sign, I should think.  More in the tech dept:  The landlord provided a TV and though it was fixed last Sunday, neither LiLi nor I could make it function until we had a tutoring session from Ayi on Friday.  All the buttons on the remote are in Chinese and not words LiLi understands in that context.  So now it is working and LiLi is watching Chinese Sunday morning cartoons.
12. Music:  I can hear our upstairs neighbor playing piano and sometimes I can even hear a saxophone.  Though lovely, it’s not the same as having a stereo and wired speakers in most rooms like we have at home.  So, I downloaded some of my music from my laptop (now the mother ship) to the other devices  such that even though we still don’t have decent speakers or docking we can, at least, put on some music.  One of our more hilarious Siri moments (the I-phone’s personal assistant who just weirdly coincidentally appears to have been named after my late dog) was when we were asking her to play the Adele song “Someone Like You” again,  a song LiLi likes to listen to over and over to go to sleep, and she (Siri) couldn’t understand what we were saying:
Me:  Play the last song we had on.
Siri: You are not listening to music right now.
Me: No, Siri, play the one we just had on a few minutes ago.
Siri:  You are not running Itunes right now.
Me: No, Siri, I mean the song we had playing about a five minutes ago.  The most recent one.
Siri: You are not listening to music.  Perhaps you are hearing somebody else’s I-pod.

....

12 Big Things done.  Someone should say Yay.  Siri?