Hello long lost friends!! No, I haven't been ignoring you all. :) Our wireless router, for some mysterious reason, wasn't working for a while. Long story short, that means we were without US internet (without it I can't access the blog) and our Vonage phone. We are back in business now though thank goodness! :)

I want to forewarn you all though that this entry is going to be long and very random. I have been taking notes on my iphone and hoping to remember the story that goes along with it. We will see how it goes...

I will start with the biggest news (and one of the most exciting) first...we finally bought some furniture!! We have spent nearly every free moment we have had (on the weekends) at furniture stores/markets/etc. trying to furnish our house and make it feel more like a home. Up to this point we had been pretty much just browsing without any luck. We either found nice furniture and it was way to short for Mitchell or it was too Asian (go figure, I know) or just not what we wanted. After a few days of looking we realized that what we ideally wanted is what we had in our house in the US. Crazy how that works! Anyway, we found a mattress that we wanted (actual pillowtop mattress with a seperate box springs, not too terribly common here), turns out its from California. Oh well, we ordered it anyway. :) We found couches we wanted too and they are from Georgia. To try and curve our "all American" buying spree we decided to take the advice of Kristin and buy from a local lady at Vicky's Classical Furniture. We are having her build our bedroom and office furniture. So very excited!!

School (International School of Beijing - ISB) has started and oh my goodness are we ever impressed!! The kids love it and are eager to go every single day. They have so much to tell us about when they get home and have met lots of new friends. It has been quite a change from our summer routine, or lack there of, and is a lot more demanding than last year. They are gone from 8-4pm every single day. I literally have to keep reminding them to stay awake until Mitchell comes home at 630pm. It is fantastic! :) Adeline's teacher is Miss Cindy, who is from Canada and Henry's is Miss Fiona from Australia. Addi only has 8 kids in her class (4 boys and 4 girls - all of which start with A by the way) and Henry has 15. Henry is also taking a Chinese class and has this 40 minutes each day.

We have met a family from California (Dan and Nikki) who live a couple of neighborhoods away from us, which has been fabulous! They have 3 kids as well and are new to China and ISB. It is so fantastic to have someone to talk to, bounce stories/heartaches off of and to relate to. The kids have taken to each other like glue and with the boys all ecstatic about Legos and the girls having a common bound against the boys, they are in heaven.

We ventured out to Yashow Market last weekend. There are hundreds of stalls that sell everything from tshirts to fake name brand coats to fabric, etc. You are swarmed when you walk buy and they saw sucker written all over our faces. :) We had to go and buy Addi a blanket for school. She has rest time in the afternoon and was a little upset about this. She "was not a baby anymore, she didn't need naps at school". We tried to make this a little more exciting by trying to find a princess or barbie blanket to take. It was an interesting experience at the market...our kids are treated like celebrities. Everyone wants to talk to Truman, touch him, take him from me (literally), take pictures of them or with them...I am not kidding. It is completely bizarre and makes shopping at a place like this unbelievably difficult. After about 40 min we finally found what we were looking for, bargained a little (poorly mind you) bought the blanket and left. Mitchell swears he will never set foot there again...never is a long time. :)

Mr. Ren (our driver) took us to a Fruit/Vegetable and Meat Market that afternoon. It was fantastic for fruits and veggies, meat was another story. You must have a strong stomach to pass by these stalls, which are conveniently placed in the middle of the fruits and veggies. The raw meat is laying on tables (no refrigeration) for you to see, pick up and inspect. No one cares about the cleanliness, the bacteria, etc. they just go for it. It is no big deal for them. I took a picture of a guy sitting directly under a raw rack of ribs. Seriously, gross!!

We bought some shelled peanuts at the fruit market, thinking that would be a good thing to snack on. When we got home Henry started eating them and spit it out. After further investigation, they were raw! I had never seen non-roasted peanuts before. They were gross, but I didn't spit mine on the floor. :) Mitchell tried to roast them himself and ended up throwing them out after two failed attempts. He says he knows how to do it now though, for next time. He has also been experimenting a little more since we have been here. He conquered bread, yogurt, cheese and butter while we were in Colorado so this time he went for a non-dairy creation. He has been making pickles and sauerkraut claiming that we don't eat enough lacto-fermented foods. Gotta love him! :)

A friend of Mitchell's at work eats candied flower petals. He says they taste just like cranberries and are really good.

We have had quite a few big things delivered lately (tvs, washing machine, etc) and had large boxes, which we filled with sacks of garbage, laying around. In our garage we have a small, maybe 10 gallon, garbage can that the compound empties daily. You can't fit a lot of big boxes into that, so they have been stacking up in our house. Anyway, Mr. Ren has decided that he will take care of this for us. He loaded everything up into the van and got rid of it. Mitchell asked him about it on the way to work one day and he said that he throws it into a field, not necessarily a landfill like most of us think of, but a field. Talk about no regulation!!

We have a washing machine in our house now, which is awesome. However, all of the options for cycles are in Chinese and no one has been able to translate them for me. So far nothing I haven't ruined anything, knock on wood. :) We do not have a dryer though and according to our landlord will not be getting one. Our house wasn't built with a vent and he claims we really don't need one because it is so dry here. At first I thought, no problem I can handle this, besides it would save on energy and make the house smell good. After two weeks, I am over that. :) It is humid here and it takes 1-2 days for one load of clothes to dry. I could live with that, but diapers take even longer and I don't have time to wait for those! Although, I could just go the Chinese route and put Truman in clothes with slits so he can pee and poop wherever and whenever he needs to.

I was excited to run across a Yankee Candle Store today. I was trying to figure out which scents I wanted where when I turned over a medium sized jar candle to check on the price. 528 yuan, or $77.65. Oh my goodness!!! I left the store immediately. :)

We are getting our milk delivered now and it is sooo yummy! We found an American owned dairy (Wondermilk) that delivers twice a week. It is rather expensive, but we don't have to worry about bad things being in it.

Mr. Ren told us that people in China, particularly children, eat fish heads (or dishes made with them). Apparently, they make your kids "grow and grow and grow". He said that if you go to the market you can buy the body of the fish for really cheap because all Chinese people just want the head. I don't think I will be partaking i that custom or make my kids either. :)

We got our first piece of mail this week, Gene and Jasmine you guys rock!! They delivered it to our house during supper around 7pm. It was such an incredible feeling to get mail, crazy enough it actually makes you miss getting all that junk mail in Colorado. :) It took about 2 1/2 weeks to get to us (at least according to the date stamp).

We all, I think that is long enough for one day. :)

Things I miss the most - BLC (Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Colorado) and all of our family there.
Things I like about China - ISB, the school is fantastic.