August 15, 2009

August 15, 2009
HEY YA’LL,
Yes, I am feeling Southern this evening and wanted you to know that even living in China and constantly smiling and saying, “ Ni Hao” (that is a phrase I know very well- Hello). What I really want to say is “Hi ya’ll!” Keep smiling it only gets better! There have been lots of questions coming in through the e-mails so this note is going to take a little different format as I am going to ramble a little and try to answer some 20 questions and give you a little trivia along the way about my new life.
First on the list “Ayi” this word literally translates Aunt. They are the nannies for the children in all orphanage settings both in our facilities and the State run ones. They are responsible for primary care of the children, feeding, bathing, dressing, essentially acting in the place of a mother. Each one in our facilities is assigned 3 children that are considered hers. They take turns going to eat meals and must find “baby sitters” among the other Ayis for their children. The Ayis rotate through 2, 12 hour shifts working from 6-6. They are the ones who know the most about each of their children and the little ones do not have too many care providers and thus have difficulty with attachments, they also have someone to cling to when they are dealing with difficult procedures and need to feel safe- they usually do not like to see me come in to look at their various ailments, I am the nurse…you know the bad guy who wants to listen to lungs, look in ears and put medicine on OWIES or down your throat. That being said we do play a lot and they do come to give me hugs or smile and laugh when I am not doing the nurse stuff.
Next- the exchange rate and pricing: The Dollar is worth about 6.80 yuan and we do a lot of bartering- shopping is an ALL day event if you go to the markets and want to get the best deals. Linda bought us some 60 yards of flannel for baby blankets this week and after some calculation we decided that it was the best price we had ever sen for flannel coming out to roughly .22 cents a yard!!! Wow, Mom we could make A LOT of baby blankets at that price!!!
For those of you who have been so anxious about my living quarters let me just say I am truly blessed! Thanks for talking to DAD about it He has answered in so many ways- first I have my very own room, on my very own 5th floor. I have a nursing office just 3 doors down –my “apartment” is room 5020 and my office is 5017- what a long commute but what would you expect when you live in a house the size of Mr. Darcy’s! I have my own bath room with a large glass shower- not just a tile room with a hole in the floor as is common here! I have a mirror in my bathroom and an ELECTRICAL outlet next to the sink, that is very hard to find—what a precious commodity! As for the bed—well though it is not as soft as anything you will find there at home, compared to beds here it is luxuriant. For a taste try throwing a thin comforter on a slab floor and sleeping on it. Normal ones you can just take away the comforter part! But I did know this and brought lots of pillows and am learning to make quite a nest- my physical therapist would be horrified at some of the positions I now sleep in like the one last night… but we will get to the story in a minute. I am ever so grateful to my “Leading Ladies” class as you all have provided the only color in my room—my new room is all white and beige making for very clean lines and when the maid comes she really does know what is dirty (did I forget to mention the maid part?). Yes, I do have a housekeeper! Melissa is very jealous. Anyway back to the color part, my white down comforters are very happy to have the bright colors of my cheerful pillowcases to adorn them and I am reminded of all your precious thoughts each time I read your notes and reminders—Thank you so very much for your love and comfort!
Along with language studies I am also learning how to ride a scooter- in the ER we would call it a DUI bike but here it is one of the main modes of transportation and since now in the new house we are much further from the shopping areas they have bought us a bright yellow scooter to get around. Melissa says I do very well with it but still we both agree I am not ready to brave the roads and all the other drivers yet. I will be getting a helmet before I go anywhere but our long driveway!!! Something to note as well I will not be able to take a passenger with me as I have to sit in the passenger seat in order to get my knees under the handle bars- They all come out to giggle and laugh as I try it out- I keep pointing and telling them they are too short, they point and say, “You too tall, very tall!”
Funny things of interest, plumbing in China is “Dire,” whatever that means, so they post signs behind all of the toilets, your guess. How about the fact that the housekeepers are constantly mopping the tile stairwells which keeps them very clean but also very slippery when you are wearing the prescribed indoor foot wear—never do they post signs saying wet floor so I am sure at some point my ER skills are going to be needed, I keep hoping I am not the one in need of them. The other day there was someone in to work on one of the elevators (Hooray we have those). Anyway the doors were open down into a long empty shaft—no warning signs, falls anyone? Melissa says it might be better than Acrophobia at Six Flags, you know the sudden drop with a sudden stop. We are learning not only about Chinese food but also Filipino as the girls like to cook some their favorites from home. The most recent was fried, dried fish which you dip in vinegar, you sure could smell it coming. Thankfully my kitchen is a shared one but is on the 4th floor of our house.
Over the past several days I have become ever so grateful for the guys who work in Biomed as Dr. Zhia and I have assembled an infant warmer and an incubator, with all the instructions in Chinese. Dr. Zhia gets tired of me looking at the pictures pointing and saying I can’t read this but I think you are supposed to put it on this way, he looks at it makes some comment in Chinese grins and puts it on the way the picture shows. Daddy thank you for teaching me how to use all those tools and what an Allen wrench is for – not an unnecessary decoration in the parts bag. Oh yes, and that bags of screws and washers at the end of a project are not really all supposed to be “extra” parts, the company does not need to donate that many. Or that if it doesn’t look right it probably isn’t, however I think it would have been nice if instead of teaching me to read the English manuals for equipment we had covered some of the Chinese ones. Dr. Zhia says I just have to know which symbol means ON/OFF, I told him I thought he should explain the temperature one to as I would prefer to not cook my babies as I have 3 preemies in incubators right now! The last one weighing in at a whopping 1 KG arrived with another 4 babies yesterday. Our unit is beginning to grow as it should.
“On a warm summer’s evening on a train bound for”….Beijing. Now for a new experience and the story I promised earlier. Yesterday Evening around 8:00pm Melissa and I boarded the hard sleeper with her suitcases for home, our backpacks, some supplies to carry to Hope and an 8 month old. Ashlynn needed transport to Beijing to be seen by a cardiologist for her heart condition. We were the next ones going so it was onto the train with us. A hard sleeper means the racks are 3 high on both sides on the cubicle and there are no doors or curtains just a long train car and a lot of people. We were so very grateful as everyone was very kind and helpful and we even had two young ladies who spoke English in the cubicle with us who asked us lots of questions and then translated answers to most of the other passengers in our car. We were definitely the highlight of the conversation until about 10:00pm when the lights are ALL turned out and you are supposed to go to sleep—tell that to a fussy 8 month old who has a hard time breathing if she is not held in the upright position or when she tries to suck on a bottle, pacifiers are out for her. We arrived at the train station at 6:20 this morning, yes you counted correct that is over 10 hours in the train. I did not lay down and Melissa was never able to make it up to her 3rd tier rack as we had to juggle baby and make bottles in the dark so that the rest of the car could sleep—is it wrong to be thankful that a baby cannot cry loudly, due to shortness of breath? We were glad that Melissa did not plan to use her bunk as an hour or so into our trip when I went to retrieve the extra blankets and pillows I startled the gentleman who was asleep in the bunk he had accidentally climbed into the wrong one. When the young lady in our cubicle explained that he was in the wrong bed that my ticket did say that he was in our bed he was so very apologetic. We told him we would not be using it and he was welcome to stay, but I was in need of the pillows and blanket. Around 3:00am the soldiers who boarded at one of our stops were not as gracious and made him move into his assigned bed- they are so very helpful. Here is another note, I will never again complain about airline lavatories—they have got nothing on trains in China, yes, you guessed it squatty potties with a hole onto the tracks. And they think plumbing is DIRE?
I hope this note brings you as many smiles as it has brought us writing it. I just want you to have a glimpse into some of the lighter experiences in my new home, I am sure there are going to be plenty of notes that are not as light hearted.
Know that you are all close in our thoughts- with love and hugs,
Mariah and Melissa