Catch up

Ahhh dear blog, I have neglected you once again. Time to play catch up!

October was a blurry balancing act between traveling for work and visiting with Matt's parents while they were in town. The time flew by! The Langford's were able to make it to Beijing, about 3 and a half hour plane ride north of Shenzhen, for several days during their China visit. With Dean in tow, they visited the Great Wall and the Forbidden City, ate Peking duck, and made friends with a lot of strange men and women who wanted to have their photo taken with a blond-hair blue eye foreigner baby.

While they shivered in the cold northern China air, I was sweating it out on the tradeshow floor of the Canton fair tradeshow. This is a biannual show (April and October) where people from all over the world come to find Chinese suppliers to make their goods. The suppliers set up booths of all shapes and sizes. Some looked like a picked-over yard sale or a toybox threw up in them, while others held good-looking things of all shapes and sizes that stirred something deep inside me, making me feel like I'm long overdue for a shopping trip. I saw a lot of stuff I don't need, like skillets with cool designs on them and Christmas decorations galore, but just because I don't need these things doesn't mean I didn't want them! I don't get out much, or rather ever, for shopping these days unless it involves the grocery store. Even that is minimal since we found an online grocery store selling import items like raisins and Del Monte canned vegetables. With a $20 purchase, they deliver free to our door within 3 hours after ordering. It's pretty nice, especially when we're out of toilet paper and diapers. Matt can only fit a small amount of these bulky items in the scooter seat, and my bike basket certainly doesn't make the cut.

The last weekend in October I was able to join Matt, his parents and Dean on a weekend getaway to Guilin. This city is well known throughout the country for its beautiful mountains. It was quick and easy to get to, less than an hour plane ride away. We thought we were heading to the countryside, but after we got there we found out it's a small city of 5 million people. We enjoyed a cruise on a riverboat down the Li river, saw a show with Chinese acrobats and dancers, and took in the views from a huge underground cave kind of like Ruby Falls in TN before heading back to Shenzhen. It was fun to get away from Shenzhen and see more greenery than we normally do.

Halloween was nonexistent for us this year since it's not celebrated in China. I wanted to at least carve a pumpkin for Dean, so I went in search of one at the local grocery store. The biggest whole pumpkin I could buy was only slightly larger than a softball, but we made it work. Dean enjoyed my masterpiece of art for at least 20 minutes before throwing it on the ground, causing the face to shatter into 3 pieces. If there had been a chance to dress Dean up in a costume, I would have made him go as Bam Bam from the Flinstones.

Matt's parents headed back to the U.S. on the 6th of November. The next weekend we bought tickets to see a concert in Hong Kong - the Flaming Lips. We saw them play in Atlanta once at the Tabernacle and it was such an energetic, fun show to attend. I was nervous about going because we've never left Dean alone all night with his Ayi Ms. Yiao. I know she loves him and takes great care of him, but I couldn't help but be wonder if the two of them would still be there when we returned on Sunday. I took Dean's passport with me just for peace of mind that he couldn't be smuggled out of the country easily.

As it turned out, I had nothing to worry about. We had a really fun time at the concert and even got to meet/shake hands with the lead singer, Waynne, before the show. He was staying at the same hotel as us, and we ran into him on the way out the door. He asked where we were from and what we were doing in China. We told him that we'd seen his band play in Atlanta once. His response was "oh, uh, yeah... I remember that show... It was really loud..." I got the feeling this is what he always says when people say they've seen him in concert before in some random city.

We were both giddy with excitement, and even though we'd just finished a playful argument about who would be "stuck" carrying the camera all night, neither one of us thought to ask for a photo with him until we'd walked away. Bummer! Maybe we'll run into him again at another show and we can say "we saw you live in Hong Kong!" I think we have a good chance he'll really remember this show.

When we arrived home on Sunday around 3 in the afternoon, Dean barely looked up from playing with his toy. He basically said, without words "hey guys, I see you're home... Man this toy sure is cool... I wonder if it will fly if I throw it across the room..."

This past weekend we enjoyed beautiful weather in the park right next to where we live, and on Saturday we went to a picnic. I emailed my friend Jess about it, and rather than retype, I'm going to copy and paste what I told her about it right here:

"We've met a few people and had good times here in Shenzhen, but it's still not the same kind of bonding like what we have with friends back home. We went to a picnic on Saturday with a bunch of families with little ones around Dean's age. It was all foreigners there, but we were the only ones from USA. The others were from Belgium, Ireland, Columbia, and a couple other European countries I think.

We took Dean's Radio Flyer wagon to the park and no one had seen something like it before. They were amazed, and had fun taking turns pulling the kids around. We also had a kickball and frisbee with us, and those were considered foreign as well. One guy was so amazed by the frisbee... can you imagine having never thrown a frisbee at our age?!

Anyway, we had a good time at the picnic, but even among the English speaking foreigners I still felt like such an outsider."

It's tough being away from the U.S. now when the holidays are upon us. We're experiencing so many adventures and new experiences, but sometimes I don't want to have any more "new". No more excitement. No more adventure. No more mystery meats. I just want to eat comfort foods like mashed potatoes, green beans and a cheeseburger hot off the grill. Or in the case of this week - mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and turkey. Lots of fresh baked turkey. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm.