ChezWhat?

I am in the middle of reading Timothy Keller’s Reason for God.  I don’t really need to be convinced about God.  However, I would agree that if a person believes something to the extent that they would alter their life for it, they should be able to explain why.

Apologetics are something I have overcome interest in, but this book kind of throws open the window with not only a different tone (he isn’t trying to convince you he is right) but some really compelling logic.

I checked out the book 2 times from the libary and had to get it back both times before I could get through it, till finally I just bought it.

A couple years ago a person who I considered a close friend said to me “I wish I could have your faith, I just can’t”.  This generated a question mark in my head.  What in the world does that mean?  She, having gotten her doctorate–a smart young woman, with a liberal upbringing.

Before I committed to the place I call “church” the person who delivers the message there, a really gentle sort of person who communicates just really well, reported that someone had said the same thing to him.  “I wish I could have your faith, I just can’t”  His response ultimately was offense, as though the person who said this had basically said “I wish I could be crazy like you, suspend logic and believe the nonsense to which you cleave fast,”  This response and experience of his resonated with me.

When I was in college at Portland State University, my friend Stewart, during a conversation asked my why I believed in Christ.  I tried my best to throw light, it was an amicable conversation.  But he ultimately said “Why would God create man, knowing he would fail, have to toss him out and then create a son he would ultimately just have to kill in order to be able to reconnect with his creation?  I just don’t get that?”  It was my turn to be flummoxed.  I think I gave him the very very sorry pat Christian answer that I had heard “I guess we will just have to ask God when we get to Heaven,”  Stewart blinked, I blinked back sheepishly and went to my room.

Once I start talking about these conversations with friends, I never was quite sure where to go with them, do I bother to try to defend my beliefs effectively, or do I accept their skepticism as just how they are?

Because I parsed my decision about Christ 20 years ago, recently my apologetics were not much of a priority for me.  Certainly not enough for my sagacious friends well-entrenched in the art of logic and rebuttal.  None of my personal wrestling with certain aspects of faith: prayer, spirituality and lessons learned prepared me to wage a secular battle.  Sadly, most of the help I got from fellows within the faith rested on the acceptance of the authority of the bible, a fact that irritated me to no end before committing my life to following Christ (and would bring only a smirk from non-believing friends).

Reading Timothy Keller’s The Reason for God.  He starts off so strong I am instantly kind of excited about the book.   He takes arguments to their logical end which dead ends them.  He parries some more arguments, again, mostly carrying secular/atheist logic to its logical end.  And in doing that, he seeks to show that our own impulse to moral behavior proves the existence of some influence/existence or our creation by God (although he doesn’t mess with trying to drill down and insist that it is the Judeo Christian God).

Dawkins, Hitchens are giving people a new found hopelessness/pointlessness to life in atheism.  So I am glad there is some sort of logic out there at least slowing them down. Doesn’t anyone that wants to be intellectually honest owe a glimpse to both sides?

When I was looking for answers about Christianity I had Josh McDowell.  He was ok, but  he relies on the reader to believe in the authority of the bible.  If one doesn’t believe the bible has any divine authority, his points are useless.   Even C.S. Lewis’ “Lord, liar lunatic” proposition in Mere Christianity only partially sated the desire to understand the details of the propositions of Christianity.

Here is a nice little breakdown of how his chapters are organized.  Appreciated how well laid out the book was!

My woodworker husband said of his own experience of being raised in the church was like being taught one way to join wood, doing it only that way ones whole life and never looking at alternate methods.  It wasn’t until he made a faith decision of his own did he start to branch out and begin to understand all the ways to approach not only his faith, but his woodworking as well.  He absorbs alot of apologetics, but we have a fair collection of atheist writers, thanks to his Dad.   The “I will only listen to that which I agree with” way of thinking is not only very tiresome it is disingenuous and dogmatic, regardless of which side it comes from.

In these times there is alot of heat between creationists and evolutionary biology.  The sciences relegate any notion of a rationale behind our existence to the realm of just plain ridiculous. I find myself looking forward to a “post-science” era.  One where humans can get over themselves as the center of everything (nothing exists unless we can prove it) and wrap into science the acknowledgment that “We might not get to know everything,” and that “There might be something we can’t account for,”  which to me seems infinitely wiser and less arrogant and ego-centric than the “If we can’t prove it, it doesn’t exist” tenet of science today.  Is it a commonly held belief that God might be so powerful that he might have done some things that we can’t explain?  I can’t be the only one to suspect that.  But I know my perspective now is miles from the young woman getting A’s in Evolutionary Biology and Physical Anthropology.  I still believe in natural selection.  I just don’t believe life can come from non-life (I don’t think I ever did), and Keller discusses that as well.

Back to Keller.  I keep reading and I keep enjoying it chapter by chapter.  If you are a Christ-follower who can’t break down all the reasons why you are, dig in to his book, it is thick and meaty.  It is substantial food for thought, it will slow skepticism, it may slow down the atheist who has their nonbelief wrapped up in a neat package and is hoping no one will throw a rock.  Keller will throw the rock.  He will also put a toe in the door of a mind that is slamming shut.

I wonder if anyone will pick an argument with me?  Why not just read the book?  I would like to hear a strong argument against Keller.

When it was just me at dinner time, a fancy meal meant I turned on the stove.

I enjoyed cooking, it was just that there was no real reason to cook much, since it was just me.  So, dinner could be anything from an egg sandwich (one of the most underappreciated culinary creations that I know of) made with seasoning salt, Poulsbo Bread and sprouts, and never mind the egg had to be done in bacon drippings.  Those sandwiches tasted better than most anything I can think of now, despite their humble reality.

Now, if I don’t some how put some plan of some sort for dinner, I feel like I have rather shirked my duties, since I have 4 mouths and tummies aside from my own.  Dinner and all meals are far beyond the oatmeal, toast, tea, coffee and an apple and or milk that completed my diet in my solo years.

So, at least 15 to 20 percent of my energy goes into the food I buy, the menu, the recipes, the prep, the side dishes, the presentation and all of it that happens at 6 p.m. weeknights.  Never mind the vermicomposting, or the Community Garden which requires us (read:  my woodworker husband) to go and work off the cost of our “all you can eat buffet” of organic vegetables.

The table is a big place in our house, in my head, in life and in our family.

And as I pull out some ground beef, that I eye with shirking disdain after watching Food Inc., I know that some days are meatloaf (or love loaf, as my friend calls) and some days are green curry with basmati and naan.  Some days are sandwiches with cheddar and lunchmeat, and some days are proscuitto and basil and mozzarella.  Some days are samosas, and some days are just chicken.  What can I do?  I am not the president, although that thought sends me into a food daydream that I might just have to lay down to fully appreciate…

It is a rainy Friday after all, what will I do to redeem this day?  Family time would by necessity have to be indoors because we are all full of germs, fighting off colds.

Yesterday, Sylvie redeemed the day by saying “Ow!” for the first time (imitating her sister whose stomach was being stepped on) and then she repeated “Bay-bee!” over and over bringing pure joy.  Because certainly the Mexican we had for the 4th time in a week wasn’t going to make this Thursday memorable.

So as I walk out from the freezer with my footballs of frozen ground beef and canned concentrated orange juice, I try not to think in terms of the fancy meal we are not having, and focus more on the fact that “Hey!  We get to eat food!”

Wrong meatloaf, byt the spitting image of my friend Greg.  I hope he still has a good sense of humor.

And on a side note, we will translate the meatloaf into Italian wedding soup, because deep in my heart I want to believe that the only difference between an ordinary meal and a meal we want to eat was just a little bit of creativity.  Though creativity can be hard to come by when cooking in a haze of fighting off a bug.

In round about the end of 2009,  our tidy little finances came smashing all apart.

It didn’t take much, adjusting to less income, a minor catastrophe, unexpected large expenses, adjustments and other things that are part of life, still husband and I  looked at our decimated pocketbook.

Post car purchase, post minor home mess, we decided to redo the budget.  Things had changed, and we needed to clean up our act a little.  We needed to tighten up.  And we have been in this process since early December, and are still in it, slowly lurching toward what should be a more careful way of placing our dollars.

At the time this all transpired, I was perched on the precipice of putting our 4 year-old into a preschool that would cost about 70 more per month than her existing school.  The teacher was/is amazing.  The class small in a large room with kids she knows.

I knew that it wasn’t plausible to hold on to this.  We had to rebuild savings, and she had been in preschool since 3, the last 6 months before Kinder, we would be together at home.  It was hard to let go, I has already filled out the forms partially, toured the class.  Watched her interact with the other kids.

I decided that it would be fun (and wise) to “homeschool” preschool.  Might I mention here that I never, ever set out to home-school.  I just thought that was something other folks did, not us, for whatever reason.

But then, thinking being, I am a teacher, 6 months of home school preschool before she goes into big kindergarten might actually do my heart some good.

I smiled as I thought of what it would look like.  We are already fairly regular with swimming lessons.   I have watched with amazement as she learns things I can’t do in the pool… jumping in like gadzooks all under the water swimming, what a smile she brings.  She practices her printing on her own volition just for fun, she enjoys her water colors, play doh, computer games…the only thing she might miss is the other kids.

And being line leader, which she is very into.

But with friends over on 3 out of 5 days a week, how much social interaction could she be missing?

When I considered, “Okay so what will this “home school preschool look like?  What will we do to be intentional?”  I decided that first off, it had to be FUN.  So, we would do DANCE PARTY! at least once a week.

I printed off something for some play place that she can go to for free, and we went to a museum that the library offers passes to for free, and I realized, I should start a little notebook of sorts to keep this stuff together. Then some recipes we could cook up…

All this took about 2 seconds and cost me nothing.

And the next thing I did was to do up a little schedule of what her week typically looks like.  Which was something I have held in my head for a plenty long time, but never wrote out.

Then I made a list of all the stuff that we tend to do together.  Library, swim lessons, reading together, cooking together, numbers, letters, computer games, park etc.

And some stuff I would like to do more, like visit the cool pet store in town, memorize some stuff, sing some songs, go to the zoo and museums that we have access to through free passes the library makes available.

When I was done I had about 2 pages of stuff, and I looked at that and thought “this is awesome!”

I love our new schedule.  We do a little Spanish, she plays with her legos some, we have a dance party, we might do some printing practice… and honestly it is almost identical to how things were without preschool, only now I feel like I have a reason to sit down and hold her hand sometimes while she practices her letters (to make sure she gets the letters right).  And did I mention?  It is good for my heart.

Here she is copying dad, arranging corks for a trivet.  Who needs pants when you can just wear a coat and rubber boots?

Today, I had spilled some brown sugar on the counter.  Her eyes were on it in a second.  And she wanted it.  I was doing dishwasher stuff which was blocking her access.  My instant response was “no you can’t have the sugar, off with ye!” (read:  still paying major dental expenses) But then, I stopped that.

I closed the dishwasher, and I put the brown sugar on my finger and held it close to her mouth and said “Azucar!” and gave it to her.  She repeated the word, and while it was a very, very small thing, by all the huge amount of language learning theory I still have stuck in my limbic brain, the learning doesn’t get much better than that.  We did it about 5 times till all (less than 1/2 teaspoon) the sugar was gone and then she said “I love you, mom”

We made a good choice.  I cannot speak to what others look for in a preschool, I know their brains are ready for academic learning, and I would say that we do a good amount of that.  She is getting words by sight now.

But for now, we are enjoying DANCE PARTY! too.

And here is some photography she has done.  Unique perspective of 4 year old.

I deleted many, as I think alot of the process of taking pictures for her was just snapping the shutter and feeling very important.  She tended to take pictures of equally furniture and people, and many closeups, like the quilt.  I thought it was cute how she took a picture of her sticker chart.  So this is Addy’s view of our world, a lot of it up our nose.

Throwing ones hat in the ring for a job can be stressful.  Especially if one really needs the job in order to pay rent.  Which is most of the time.

But sometimes it happens that for whatever reason, there isn’t alot of stress tied to getting a job.  This is a better place to be.  Are you still waiting for me to tell you something you don’t know yet?

I have been employed in one way or another for so many jobs, I can’t even count.  I got my first job when I was 15 at a cookie shop without my parents permission.  Then I informed them that they had to drive me to work.  I laugh so hard I slap my knee when I think of this now.  If my own daughter did this, I think I would just blink at her.

That was my first job, but my last job was a real trick.

I was interviewed by administrators of a school district of a bedroom community of Portland Oregon for a job that required me to speak Spanish.  Most of the interview was in Spanish, which is really only taxing afterward, when I pass out from fear.  They interviewed me at least 3 times, and while all that established that yes, I actually spoke Spanish and yeah, I am an actual teacher, I think that what happened afterward was the thing that got me hired.

In the last interview, there were 2 teachers in the room.  I emailed them and told them how nice it was to interview with them.  One emailed me back and said likewise.

After the interview, while waiting, I guessed that the 2 main interviewers actually had nothing to do with the on the ground position I was applying for, but the teachers did.  I knew it.  When the interviewers asked the teachers, guess what happened?  I was hired.  Because I emailed them back, I had drawn attention to myself, and because I fit the basic qualifications, I got the job. Although after I got it, I wasn’t sure I wanted it.

On the other hand there was the one job at the bank that I didn’t get.  And I would never have gotten no matter what.  Why?  Because the lady fell down 4 or 5 stairs as we walked down to the conference room where the interview was held.  Right. on. her. bum.  babump babump babump.  babump.  I should have just left right there because there was no way she would give me the job after losing face like that in front of me.  I felt bad for her.  And then I felt bad for me.  Because I needed that job.

Edit:  I didn’t just et a job, unless you count the one I got in August that I am still loving immensely.  The above referenced jobs are bygones, I have such stories to tell, but I think I told most of them once already, here.

This whole month, I am learning.

That sentence sounds a little bit like a tense error sentence that I would find in from one of my Russian speakers, but it is accurate.

Now that the big day has passed and I am exhaling a little  I can say that the mess of our days has not overcome us.  In brief, the joy robbers threatened mightily, but in the end they lost.

What is the mess?  Oh you know the mess, imagine it for yourself;  family problems, mean people without boundaries, money (or the lack),  old hurts and of course a few house falling apart problems just to keep it interesting, c’mon… nothing new.  Yawn.  I don’t even get interesting problems, just messy ones.

When I shared my mess in its complexity with an acquantaince (thought she might be a friend?), when the mess was new and I hadn’t learned the degree to which no one wants to hear about it, her only comment was “Glad I don’t have to deal with that,”

ouch.

But then she got her own mess.

And as J put it, after he was done punching things and yelling words we hoped our daughter slumbered soundly through, that we should remember how much good we enjoy.  Our kids, our jobs, our marriage intact, the sun on the holiday, the snuggles and stories, the hysterical giggles, the wagon rides with big blue eyes bundled up with a smile, the back rubs and the meals, the conversations that end with “I love you” and working together to make the Christmas gifts.  We have something worth a lot more.

This year I start to do something new to me.  I am teaching my little miss what this whole Christmas thing is, anyway.  I can’t pretend I know what I am doing.  I told her for all December we were celebrating Advent.  We read books, made cards, watched The Nativity Story and a raft of other specials.  But the best times were listening her read me the stories, and seeing just how much at the tender age of 4, how much she already had taken in.  When she did that, any concern that she might not get it went away.  She just looked at the pictures, and they told her everything down to Bethlehem and Herod.  Not to mention her pointing to the terrorists in the Time magazine and in her child innocence saying “Look mom, Mary and Joseph!”

And so just tonight brings a feeling of relief, and joy.  Again, mess, you did not win.  You may cheat and play dirty, but you did not win.

Though let me say here and now, without our family, I am not sure I would be able to say any of this.  Thank you Doug, Roberta, Tricia and John.  And mom.

I did not pose this shot.  She just is this way.  Every bit.

The amazing squealing wagon.

Cute?  or Crazy?  Does it matter?  We’ll take her however.

I bet you’re wishin’ your babe had an octopus on their head.  What? You don’t?

The smallest part of our mess this season.  What is not visible is that half of the drywall in the ceiling will have to be replaced.  What you are seeing is the insulation from the attic and pieces of the ceiling now on the ground.

I guess I thought for a moment that it wasn’t so bad that it fell all over the car, until I had to drive around with this junk all over my car for several days because all the car washes were frozen and the pipe that burst was the one that one might use to wash a car.  Note the ice on the ground, that was water from the pipe that burst.

My first year of teaching was so full of moments that one should never bring up in a job interview, and my students laughed at me so often, it turned out that they really liked me.  Not so much because I was a great teacher, because they were a great group.

The one that sticks with me starts not stateside but in Mexico.  I was 30ish and had gotten a grant to do intensive grammar and culture and teacher training in Puebla Mexico for a month.  The grammar classes were grueling, 6 hours a day parsing when to use imperfect and preterit, when to use estar and ser, culturalisms (more fun),  subjunctive and past subjunctive and having my Spanish picked apart to a point unprecedented.

The owner of the school interrupted class one day to tell us that she would be our teacher tomorrow, and that we would be having a test.  And then she put her fingers up on either side of her head and she said “Soy la pinga!”, which one could gather from context that she was saying that she was the devil or bull.  Yawn. I guess she was the toughest one.

So fast forward a year or more later, I was in class teaching my ESL kids in Portland Oregon.  They were going to have a big test the next day, and I wanted them to STUDY, which was not natural to many of them.  So I lifted my fingers up to either side of my head and I said “Soy la Pinga!!!”

I knew pretty much immediately by the shocked expressions on the faces of my Spanish speakers that something had gone very wrong.  These kids were from Guatemala and Cuba, not Mexico.  And then, they covered their mouths and tried not to die laughing of my obvious ignorance about this word.

“Okay, I just said ‘I am the devil, that’s all!”

“That’s not what it means…!”

“YES!  It is what it means!”

“No, it means something else, something on a boy…”

“OOOOOOH no it does not!  It means devil!”

Hilarity ensued as these kids ridicule me…. I laughed.

And that’s why it’s important to have a grasp on the meanings of swear words.

And I never declared that I was a pinga again.

I actually wrote a post, I spent time writing a post.  Just last night.  It went into the abyss.

The beautiful thing about a blog is that it doesn’t register a month (or more) of silence.

My last post was merely a bulleted list of some of the lots of things happening in our lives.

Like getting a new-to-me car.  Now I drive a minivan, so I am bona fide.  Because nothing quite says “I am mom” like a minivan, right?  But it will fit all the people we need to transport, and so….this might be more fun

but it will have to wait.

• My little miss of 14 months began to walk.  There truly is nothing like watching a baby exploring how their legs work.  It is hard not to smile as she  goes from crawling as fast a ferret with her head down for aerodynamics, to hands out toddling about.  Frequently dropping onto her well-padded bum.   There are just somethings that make a mother’s heart happy.  This would be one of them.  Though it is short-lived, as the peril factor becomes fully realized.  Inevitably she will want to discover the one place you prefer she didn’t go, and then persistently head in that direction.  That part is less fun.  Can you tell I am not telling you the stories I have?

• I love my job.  I am getting such great feedback from kids and fellow teachers as well as parents, I don’t really feel it is a job, but a place where they let me come do what I know how to do.  And then they pay me, which is makes it all double good.  I would like to mention here that I have escaped the public schools as of this year.  I have found a kinder, more benevolent classroom where I don’t feel like I am churning out students.  I am now in a private school.

• Yesterday my 4 year old lil A looked a picture of what was ostensibly terrorists in a Time magazine and said “Look, there’s Joseph, and there’s Mary!”  I told her to go show her poppa the pictures of Joseph and Mary so he could get a smile too.

• That same girl is having a hard time with socks lately, and sneakers.  We negotiate daily the donning of the red Chuck Taylor’s that make me smile so much.  Sigh.

• This Christmas we are making alot of gifts, but I cannot tell you what they are until we give them.  I fear they will come out looking amateurish, but after seeing the one my husband made, I know that no, they will not be amaterish, they will be amazingly beautiful.  However, they won’t be completed until May.

• My camera broke at Thanksgiving so I cannot even take a pic at this point.

• Fall is the best season of the year, and God knows it.

I appreciate how this illustrates not only her loveliness, but her entirely fabulous sense of style.

I am enjoying my new subject.  I love moments like this.  I have to mention here, there is a code to photographing people.  Never keep or publish a picture of someone when they look crummy.  It is  crummy thing to do.  It is much better to keep only the very best ones of the people you love.

Every step is an adventure.

The pumpkin parade.  Even this pic reminds me of the extent to which I need to appreciate these beautiful days.

The last time I went anywhere far away, it was ChengDu China.  I went there in the summer of 2003 to teach some middle school kids English and P.E.  Yes, P.E.

I could hardly say no.  They paid everything.  Food, hotel, airfare.  And then when I got home there was a buncha money in my account.  See, this is the way to travel.  Thank you, SARS!

I will write about China here because I have become such a lazy traveller, I never really document what ever happened.  Now that my life revolves around children, the memory of China is so refreshing, I want to linger over it a bit.   And for perhaps the first time, I want to write about it.

It was HOT and very HUMID (the kids were wilting).  The food was amazing.  It was beautiful, felt very safe and I wanted to stay.

Most Chinese we met took and “American” name.  Probably to avoid having their names butchered, but nevertheless, I will never forget the kid who chose the nickname “CCTV” and was made fun of by other kids because obviously, it was Closed Circuit Television.  But it was the first English thing he could think of.  So, I called him CC.  He is still fresh in my memory, a gentle, brilliant young man who was kind of larger than all the other kids.  He was also the one who fought in class, because another boy called him a “girl”.  Have you ever tried to calm a fight in a Chinese classroom? Me neither.  The little teacher stood there kind of like a teacup chihuahua and barked as seriously as she could and did not relent until the boys stopped.  It was actually pretty cool to watch this little bitty woman (she could not have even come to my shoulders– maybe 4 foot 9 inches?) command these boys off of each other.

It worked, her authority won.  I barked too, but barking in a foreign language just sounds odd, not really as effective.

I recall the first time I spoke to her, I was looking for something, hoping very much to find it.  Some basic tool, like a stapler.  Showing her this and  that, and asking, describing.  She merely looked at me and said “You have such beautiful English!”  I realized she hadn’t understood anything, the dear woman.

Our translator was named Rocky.  He was a very sharp, good humored young man.  Serious when he needed to be and very adept at working with our group.  He was at once tireless, always even keel, and had everything ready at all times.  He was pretty amazing, actually.  He loved basketball and The Godfather.  There was nothing that we could throw at him that would unnerve him.  Though I think I threw him once when I asked him if he was a spy for the communists (haha!  what can I say, I was reading a book about communist China).

Indeed, the minute we arrived, we had to go shopping for underpants because all of our luggage was lost.  So his first task was to take these old ladies (we were old to him, I think he was maybe 21) underwear shopping.  In China, custom is strong and strict and I am sure somewhere in their byzantine code of appropriate conduct with strangers it forbids underpants shopping with older women.

And it wasn’t at all further complicated by the fact that Chinese women don’t seem to come in sizes larger than 6.  Can you visualize a bunch of white women in a mall in china holding up underpants with an eye as to whether they would fit?

Rocky’s reaction was completely appropriate.  He hid.

Because the interviewers had wanted to make sure we were seasoned in the area of traveling, it was really unusual when the woman who was chosen as our “leader” chewed Rocky out because she couldn’t get a piece of white chicken meat.  She really went at him for a long time.  I think he must have been very wise, because I never saw white chicken meat there, so he knew that his bosses wouldn’t hold this against him.  So he just let her yell and accepted her abuse.  For quite awhile, as I recall.  I remember feeling embarrassed.

As far as the chicken went all I can tell you is there were no birds anywhere, and, I think the definition of meat overall was a very loose one.  That based on a scientific drawing of a hypothesis and rigorous testing 3 times a day being served meat of dubious origin, that is, until I chose to just eat the noodles and the vegetable dishes.  The lack of birds and the unusual qualities the meat had made me wonder how chicken in China could be so different.

And truthfully, I hardly cared, everything was so delicious.

And so to food.  We were in the Sichuan province where Mandarin Chinese is spoken.  The food was other-worldly.  The flavors, colors, combinations they conjured were… even in street food, amazing, every meal.  Hot Pot was the big thing there.

Now, folks, after living overseas and in a couple countries where meat is really anything and everything that is an animal, I have learned that I, myself can digest and enjoy any fruit, vegetable, noodle, bean, rice whatever combination!  But “exotic” meat can make me sicker faster than anything.

There was a little surprise that I would be so bold as to decline this delicacy of Hot Pot.  If one declines, your fellow travelers may decide that you are a weenie (unless you have a bleeding ulcer or some other shocking medication condition).  But at this age, who in the world cares?  I would rather not spend the remainder of the evening being ill, thanks much.

And so the Hot Pot, it was two large bowls of boiling broth or oil or something.  One was very spicy hot and the other not so much.  And then from there it was sort of like fondue, grab your chopsticks and a duck foot and cook that bad boy and then eat it.  That’s right!  Eat that duck foot!  Or goose stomach, or dog heart, or boar blood, or shrimp.  Shrimp, ok, I can do shrimp.  But the stuff that they hot potted was … oh, it was… well it wasn’t for me.

And can I tell you that everyone in my group got sick after hot pot every time EXCEPT FOR ME?

Know thyself!

Even though we worked an awful lot, they also made sure that the weekends were jammed with sightseeing.  I am such a lazy traveller, truth be told, I wanted to be excited, but I really didn’t know much about China.  So when they said things like we were going to see an irrigation project, well, it just didn’t sound all that appealing.  However, when we arrived and started taking things in, it is safe to say that my socks were typically blown off.

Du Fu’s Thatched Cottage, the first place we went when arriving the first weekend.  I had no idea who Du Fu was, or what was the big deal about his cottage, except that it was about 500 years old.

We saw, towards the end of our trip, The Terra Cotta Warriors in Xi’an in Shaanxi province.  I didn’t know anything about them except that they were famous.  It was the end of the trip and honestly, I was just a little exhausted after a month of teaching 6 hours a day and weekends crammed with activity.  Despite the 3 hots a day, I had lost 15 pounds owing to weather and significantly increased activity.

We were on a tour bus, a short bus.  There were only about 8 of us.  We were all wilting, but holding up well in spite of it.  Though most of the pictures are us in front of these magnificent vistas looking like all we wanted was a nap.

The Terra Cotta Warriors were incredible.  There were some incredible number of these individually sculpted clay life size “warriors”, my estimate is about 1, 100.  All of them were unique.  On the pathway there, poor folks were selling smaller versions, but our guide warned us not to buy them because they were made of cow manure.  However, they looked amazing, and I was tempted.  We also knew that our guide wanted us to buy from a guy he would take us to, but we didn’t because they were much more expensive than most of us were ready to pop for.  But one of the ladies did buy a set from the sales people who approached us and showed us on the bus.  One of the ladies looking a them marveled at how well made they were.  But then it was suggested to smell them.  And we found our guide was true.

The blind masseuse.

One of the things that Judy, the coolest lady in our group who happened to be from Australia and had a life full of amazing stories, and I liked the most was going to the massage parlors.  Okay, that might sound dicey, but let me tell you, they had these places all over!  You could get a full body massage for like 5 bucks and we only did it because you get to keep all your clothes on.  I started getting foot massages almost daily.  I thought I had died and gone to heaven.  The interesting thing was that alot of these massage people were blind.  It was very new to me, but come to think of it, it makes quite a bit of sense.  There wouldn’t be a whole lot of lines of work open to a blind person, but massage would.

I sometimes wish now that we had those little places where you could go lay down and practically forget everything for about 20 minutes.

Here are some more just pics.

Close to ChengDu was the Panda Breeding Sanctuary.  Here is the rundown on Pandas.  They lay about and they eat.  That’s it.  They eat bamboo and they lay about.  Apparently they also breed.

Everywhere people played MahJong.  Some people said it was like gambling.  I don’t know, but there would be teahouses packed with people playing.  Beats sitting on the computer?

We went to one of many Giant Buddhas there.  This one is in LeShan in the Three rivers region, where three rivers meet and there can be quite a few boating accidents.  Buddha helps make fewer accidents, I have heard.

I have to admit when they said we were going to an irrigation project, my eybrow lifted and I wondered if maybe, maybe we couldn’t just have a day off instead.  But after going there, my hair sufficiently blown back, it was truly something to behold.  I have read that in China, a superpower in the world until the 1500’s, it has been said that if the leader can control the waters, he can control the people.

Left out here are what seem like countless trips to Taoist and Buddhist temples.  There were always many, many stairs at the Taoist temples, where one could climb for 2 hours solid and still not reach the top of the temple.  Mt. Qingchen, Sanxingdui Museum where a pit was uncovered with countless artifacts from Chinese history, The temple in Xi’an where there was a basketball hoop for the monks… and many various sundry recollections of this trip.

All I can say is that child-rearing has surprised me, it is the only thing that has approached the level of education that traveling affords.

I am not sure there is a word strong enough to express the visceral dislike I have had of grocery shopping.  Perhaps if I shopped more at the ritzy stores, I would like it.  Where I do our major grocery shopping (which I do monthly because I dislike it so) sells us fruits and vegetables that seem to commence rotting the minute they hit my bag.  Sometimes the day after I have purchased them, they are looking quite poor.  This has frustrated to no end, but the other stores in the area haven’t been overwhelmingly better.

A friend mentioned the opportunity to work at Mustard Seed Farms 12 hours per season per adult and then you can get all the fresh organic produce you want for free.

Hm.  Interesting

These are the 3 varieties of cauliflower we witnessed this season.  The green kind wasn’t as available, but there was an abundance of the orange and purple, and of course white cauliflower.

The thought of J’s feelings on this?  A clear tossup.  If his mood was good, I could see him liking the idea of being part of this.  If his mood was not good, I could see him being a little less than willing to be signed up for more work, being that he already works up to 60 hours a week.

We decided to give it a go.  We each had to work 12 hours.  Farmer Brown called J to get him on a job once he saw that J spoke fluent cabinetry.  J was good with it, and even seemed to be not minding the time he went out there, getting away from the house, the kids and working on his own.

For my part, I had to overcome stasis to get going on hoeing. (pardon the rhyme). But once I got going on it, it was ok.  I don’t think I achieved that state of mind where I ever liked it, but it was ok.  Coming home with a bag of veggies made it ok.

Now we are reaping a generous weekly harvest.  Fresh corn, broccoli, zucchini, squash, beans, flowers, raspberries, tomatoes if we wanted them, cauliflower, onions, potatoes, lettuce, cantaloupe and honeydew melons.  I love, love, love my weekly trip to the farm.  Going somewhere and getting a huge bag of this free organic produce, did I mention for free??

As a cook, I am beside myself with glee.  Sometimes I even go 2 times a week, just because I love it so much.  And then the food I get to make… I haven’t even begun to explore the possibilities.  Soups, salads, curries and these amazing colorful pasta dishes… I need more recipes because the veggies are there.  We have easily whacked our grocery needs down a chunk, we just eat what the farm gives us.  We only go to the grocery store for dry goods or milk (or, dare I say, chocolate) Costco takes care of most of our other stuff.

J likes going there to work, because he gets to do what he likes, cabinetry.  It is a sort of respite for him, and they are very appreciative of the work he does.

So how highly can I recommend this?  If one is a lover of food; fresh, organic, lovely fruits and veggies I am not sure that I could recommend it highly enough.  There is the consideration of the time a family will need to put in.  We decided next May that we would get going early and get all those hours out of the way so that we could just enjoy with our legs kicked up for the rest of the season.

So but what I need now are recipes.  Recipes to use up all those succulent vegetables that I have at my disposal.  Any suggestions?

Is perfectly capsulized by this website Awkward Family Photos.   I laugh every time I go there.  It is making me entirely too happy.