Books before bed

Trying to wind the kids down when the sun doesn't even set until 9pm isn't so easy. Jess did a good job tonight. I bet she read Addi and Truman four big books before bed time. 

Hello, my name is Jorge and I will be your driver today

On Sunday afternoon we went into town to find a doctor. After all the parents took turns looking over him with well-intentioned but completely unknowing eyes, we decided to take Truman in to get looked at by an actual doctor. That morning he had developed very distinct red dots on his upper thighs and face. When we saw the first one we thought perhaps they were mosquito or spider bites, but when they became more and more numerous, we began to get worried. After he woke up from his afternoon nap, he had rashes in addition to the dots.

All sorts of possible illnesses started popping into our minds, beginning with chicken pox. I have terrible memories of itchy, painful pox all over my body when I was small and I was really hoping that Truman would not be patient #0 for chicken pox in a house of nine children under ten years old. Truman, like Henry and Addi, had been vaccinated for chicken pox, but we weren't sure how reliable those things were. Plus, there had been a case of chicken pox at ICS (the kids' school) earlier in the week. And, if I'm being completely honest, having one or more of my children coming down with chicken pox was going to seriously increase the amount of parental work I was going to have to do on my vacation. More responsibility on vacation es no bueno.

Much of the parental diagnosis was taking place on the patio by the pool. Since we aren't medical professionals, there is no stigma with diagnosing children's illnesses while drinking wine. Estamos en España, after all.  Depending on which mobile network provider we each use, we either got no service at the vacation house, or extremely little service with almost no data. I am one of the lucky/unlucky (depending on your point of view) ones without any service at all. We are so used to being able to look up any fact in an instant that when we cannot we feel a little lost. In this particular case, we needed the location and opening hours of all the hospitals and clinics nearby. Try asking Siri that when there is no internet connection; that lady becomes completely worthless. We also wanted to see pictures of chicken pox eruptions and meningitis spots so we could compare them with the marks on Truman.

Meningitis?

Yep, one of the parents mentioned meningitis and that immediately changed the urgency of the exercise from 'theoretical' to 'concerning'. Apparently in the UK they teach parents to check for meningitis by pressing a cold glass on the eruption and if the red color doesn't leave the skin, then it could be meningitis so rush to a hospital as soon as possible.

We weren't in the UK, but instead in an old rental house in a valley in southern Spain. Instead of a cold glass, we found a room temperature plastic cup. Not optimal conditions for a diagnosis but we tried anyway. After taking turns pressing the cup repeatedly against Truman's spots, we realized that the results to our hi-tech operation were inconclusive and we couldn't trust them either way.

Since the glass parlor trick failed us, we went back to our non existent data coverage. After several failed attempts to use the internet to find a doctor, we found a listing in a local tourism book for a hospital in the neighboring town of Iznájar. Since neither Jess nor I are proficient in Spanish, we took our friend Pascal with us to be our pseudo translator. Pascal is the same guy we took with us to write the contract when we bought Jess's Fiat. He's super handy. :)

The road from our valley into Iznájar takes you around the cliffs that surround Iznájar's signature feature, a large beautiful lake that was created by damning up a nearby river. The lake is absolutely gorgeous and there is no boat or people activity on it. The entire scene creates a very pretty vista as you drive into town.

The lake and bridge going into Iznájar.

Once we made it into Iznájar proper, we had to navigate the windy small town streets to find the hospital. Even though it was 4:00pm in the afternoon the streets were mostly deserted. After driving to the center of the city we began looking for a place to park. As is common (in my experience) every bit of on-street parking was occupied, so we drove until we found the familiar "P" sign indicating a parking lot. The parking sign had us drive down a steep one-way alley. I am so glad we switched out our large 7 seater van for a smaller minivan. The larger van would not have fit in the alley. Even with the smaller car I only had a 2-3 inches from my side mirrors to the alley walls. The entire time I was driving I was thinking What happens if this street is a dead-end? Driving down a tight alley is one thing, but reversing a quarter mile with no clearance would likely be impossible!

Trying not to scrape the side mirrors off the rental car.

After we managed to park, we hiked back uphill (Truman refused to walk to Jess had to carry him up the hill) we found the hospital down a small side street. We knew it was the hospital because the entire street was filled with a large ambulance parked awkwardly out front. The door to the hospital was locked so we had to ring the bell. A woman came to the door and showed us to the deserted waiting room.

Where are all the patients? We are the only people in the hospital.

After a few moments, Jorge came out and we followed him into the examination room. He examined Truman and Pascal did all the translating for us. Jorge was cool as a cucumber throughout the entire examination, and gently nodded after each of Pascal's answers. Finally, he concluded that it wasn't life-threatening meningitis but insect bites, most likely fleas. It turns out that during the morning, Truman had been petting the mangy farm cats that live near the rental house.

Jorge wrote us a prescription for a few different medicines (some sort of steroid cream and a Tylenol equivalent, I think) and then came the moment I was dreading. He asked for our national health cards. Umm, yeah. We don't have those. Due to the fact that dealing with the government bureaucracy is a time and energy suck, we had been putting off registering with the local town hall and medical service which means, you guessed it, we did not have the medical cards to receive medical care. I had assumed that our best option was to try haggle and pay outright, and then find some way to get reimbursed for the doctor visit later.

After Pascal explained the situation to Jorge, he seemed completely uninterested in the details. He explained to Pascal that he's actually the ambulance driver and normally there is a lady that does the administration work.

The ambulance driver.

Oh well, estamos en España.

We asked where the pharmacy was located. He gave us approximate directions and sent us on our way. And yes, the woman locked the hospital door behind us.

The pharmacy was locked and the noise from the street party made using the intercom impossible.

We make it to the pharmacy and it's locked up tight. There is a sign that says if it's locked, ring the intercom. So we did. Or rather, Pascal did. Did I mention that there was some sort of afternoon street party going on? See those people sitting in the red Coca-Cola chairs behind Jess? They are sitting in the road drinking and eating tapas. Everyone was so loud that it wasn't really possible for Pascal to make himself understood on the intercom. The entire thing was absurdly comical.

A few minutes later, a young man shows up, unlocks the gate and allows us into the pharmacy. We give him our prescription and asks for our national health cards. Hmmm. Pascal launches into the same explanation that he gave Jorge and, equally unperturbed, the young man simply shrugs and rings up the medicine (it cost 17 euros by the way).

For all we know the young man was the local bartender who lost rock-paper-scissor when the foreigners wanted to go to the pharmacy. We didn't even want to ask.

5 Things I Learned During Our Andalusian Easter Vacation

1. British people do not speak English, and apparently, neither do Americans. Wellies, jumpers, rucksacks, biscuits, crisps, rubbish and bloody hell. I found myself saying "huh?" quite a bit during our vacation.

2. I can drink copious amounts of Spanish wine every day. Even after a "rough night" nothing goes better with Spanish sunshine than a nice glass of Spanish red. Is that a problem? I suppose not as long as I live in Spain ...

3. We miss road tripping. We drove about 2000km around southern Spain over the last week. It's definitely been too long since we've just hopped in the car and drove as a family. Olive has the makings of a good road-tripping dog. She did very well, although not quite as well as Avery use to do.

4. I'm on a country music kick. I've never been a country music super-fan, but it's very simple music and it's very "American" subject matter, which I'm into at the moment. 

5. Given the choice, our kids would eat a bag of flour and bag of white sugar every day. I thought after a few years of indoctrination, they could withstand the peer pressure of other kids eating more "standard" foods, but they can't. Apparently, delayed satisfaction is not a naturally occurring trait in children.

I wish it was June

“I wish it was June so we could be with our family in Iowa.”

— Adeline

Addi said that out of the blue yesterday when we were all standing in the kitchen. Ouch.

Feeling the 6 month funk

There were more tears last night. :(

• missing China
• lack of friends/not fitting in
• can't speak the language

We'll get there eventually, but those first six months are difficult. In China there was a large group of people to commiserate with and support each other. Here in Europe, it seems that you need to work a little harder and create your own luck.

Jess in the desert

Jess in the desert being artsy with her camera.

We love American Imperialism

You're never far away from feeling like home ....

UAE Vacation #1: Travel Day

Hi everyone! I'm going to try to post a few things about our UAE vacation. I never get as many things posted as I want but we'll see how far I get. Text first, then pictures later (since selecting and posting photos takes a lot of time - and Jess is better at that anyway ...). We started our vacation to the UAE with a 1:30am flight out of Beijing to Abu Dhabi. Working backwards, that meant that all five of us had "normal" Tuesdays (complete with after-school activities, etc) and, after eating a tasty, but ad-hoc supper of Xiao Guo specialties we let the kids watch a movie to stay awake while Jess and I finalized our packing.

We were lucky enough to arrange for Mr. Ren to drive us to the airport. He arrived right on time (naturally) at 10:30pm and we took off for the airport. It felt good to get a little distance from Beijing. We haven't done any traveling since the summer. It's been extremely nice to stay in one spot for a while but two months of non-stop Beijing love is plenty.

The airport experience followed our typical routine, except that right around immigration/passport control Truman lost his mind. It was after 11:30pm so it was completely expected, but still, not super fun. With respect to Truman's sleep schedule: you're sort of damned if you do, and damned if you don't. Do you let him sleep before going to the airport and then wake him up? Or try to keep him up so he sleep more on the flight? Either way, I guess if you have a two year-old awake at midnight, you're screwed. Jess is the expert at handling the kids when everyone's tired. When I'm tired, I default to an authoritative parenting style (which doesn't work when kids are exhausted) and Jess masterfully steps in and does her sympathy/redirecting attention thing. It's like watching a snake charmer, or David Copperfield make the Statue of Liberty disappear - I don't know how she does it.

We flew Etihad, which for those keeping airline score at home, is the same airline we flew from Beijing to Nagoya Japan to start our Japanese trip. Etihad is what I would describe as a nice Economy airline. The seats recline at a nice angle but there isn't much leg room. Each seat has nice in-seat on-demand entertainment options but the food is still pretty marginal. Definitely better than United. Henry and Adeline were rock stars. They took naps (it was 2:00am when we took off, by the way) and then later watched TV on their own - basically zero parenting required. Truman was a little more hands-on. He slept on and off, but Jess had to hold him the entire time. Not an easy way to fly but again, somehow she takes it in stride.

We landed in Abu Dhabi at 7:30am. I won't belabor the details, but the airport is nice, clean and efficient, everyone speaks English and no visas required for Americans (but visas are required for Canadians (hah, eat it Stephen!). We were able to pick up our rental car and before you can say "Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan", we were on our way to the hotel.

Driving in Beijing is like driving open track go-karts: it's exhilarating and exhausting all at once, and some of the go-karts are the size of public buses, and no one is looking... oh, and all the go-karts are driven by children that are all following the same rules to a made-up game, a game you don't know but you're trying to learn, and you are in some amount of personal danger the entire time (just kidding Mom! forget that last part. Beijing is super awesome and we still want you to visit us!). In contrast, driving in Abu Dhabi is like standing on a moving walkway at the airport. It takes zero energy but yet you still move along to your destination. Literally, it's a joy.

We stayed at the Sheraton Abu Dhabi Hotel and Resort. We swam in the pools (yes, more than one) and in the Persian Gulf (it's super salty, and crazy hot. over 100 degrees F), and ate at the in-hotel Mexican restaurant (margaritas and guac, oh yeah!), and generally enjoyed our suite. Everyone was zonked and in bed by 8:00pm.

Jess and the kids come back tomorrow - thank goodness

I know you all like to see Jess and the kids. I get it. I totally do. I like to see them too. And luckily, this year's itinerant summer has come to a close and it's finally time to get back to the living in the same continent again. Hell yeah. I couldn't be more excited. But goodbyes suck for everybody; especially the kids. When we leave we envision life standing still and waiting for our return. Funny little thing about life is that it doesn't wait. On the positive side people grow and change in super cool ways, and it's fun to see when you return. On the negative side, bad things can happen to people you love. I know it is a fear that Jess and I constantly have. In talking with our friends here in Beijing, it's a common fear shared among most expats.

So here's the deal everyone: we love you all. So take your vitamins, wear your seat-belts and your bike helmets, look both ways before crossing the street, floss (seriously), smile a lot, and stop eating the damn bread already.

And if anything good (or bad) happens, please tell us; we love hearing that stuff. And don't rely on Facebook. We can't access it and don't check it. You're gonna have to go old-school and send us an old-fashioned email. :)

Good morning

Quick update for those following along. I still have all three kids with me; haven't lost or injured one yet. :) Last night night all the left-behind spouses and all the kids went to a super kid-friendly restaurant nearby called the Filling Station. We may have blogged about it before. It's decent western food and they have a painting of a late 70s VW bus on the wall. Sweet.

The kids disappear into the massive play area, and the Guinness disappears at the adults table. It's a great combination. We decided that our friend Hilary is an honorary Dad for the weekend. Her husband is in the US right now for the NBA all-star game (he works for the NBA ... and no he doesn't play ... and no, he doesn't know Jeremy Lin). I think that's the reason that she's not in Singapore right now with the other ladies.

Today is great. The pollution is low (currently at 65), the weather should make it into the 40s today. I think we'll head to the park after Truman takes his nap. Doug kik'd me a picture from a recent ski day. White snow and crystal-clear  blue skies. It sort of hit me funny and now I'm missing Colorado.

Other random thoughts:

• I got my stitches out on Thursday by a doctor named "Oliver". It's like a stage name. "Who do you want to be today, Doctor?" "Umm, give me the 'Oliver' name-tag, nurse. I'm feeling it today."
• Truman and I fired up the motorcycle last weekend. I never took it in for it's break-in service before it got to cold. So I got off my lazy butt and made an appointment for March. It'll be good to go riding again.
• It looks like our landlord will pay us the outstanding money she owes us (I'm not sure if we've blogged about this 6 month-long saga. We're still going to move though, but probably not for several more months.
• Our renters in Colorado decided to rent our house again for another year. That's a nice relief since they are good tenants and take care of the place.
• I'm on my fifth Chinese lesson with my Lǎo shī (teacher) Clary. She's a rock star.

Home Alone

Jess is in Singapore on a much-deserved vacation. The kids and I are in Beijing holding down the fort for the next few days. Who wants ice cream for breakfast?!?! Muahahahaha! :)

Laura and Nate - The Last Chapter

Quick update: Laura sent us a text message last night from Hawaii. Yup, they never made it to San Francisco (flight 1 of 3, on their return trip to Des Moines). Apparently, one of their four engines stopped working so they needed to fly at a lower altitude which meant they couldn't make it all the way to SF. I guess if you have to be delayed, Hawaii's not a bad place to do it. They said the weather was nice and the got a chance to check out the beach. Unfortunately, they've been suffering through long lines, long waits, and crappy United customer service. As we speak, they should be in the air on their way to San Francisco where they'll get another night layover.

We do appreciate them coming to visit us. All of the kids cried after they left.

Sad day

I dropped Jess and the kids off at the airport yesterday so they could start their marathon flight back to Des Moines via Chicago. I took this photo from my iPhone at the security gate (you can see Henry waving to me; Jess, Truman and Adeline were already walking).

The good news is they made it safely. I'm not sure how Jess does it. I go a bit crazy when I fly between China and the US, and I only have to take care of myself! Luckily, it will only be two weeks before I join them.

I can't wait to be home for the Fourth of July. Last year, I spent the Fourth alone in my Beijing hotel room, trying to figure out what the heck I was doing in China. :)