News you don't expect to read on our blog

This is James writing for Jessica.  Monday was a strange day.  At about 4:30 in the afternoon, Jessica had a seizure.  She was experiencing blurred vision, a strange smell and a strong sense of deja vue.  She went to get some water to drink but she fell and hit the floor hard, and was convulsing for about 20 seconds.  At that time, she was attending language class.  Tannis and Carlos (Jess' sister and her husband), had just arrived on Sunday so thankfully, Tannis was with her.  Carlos was at home with me and the boys, so I was able to go straight to get Jess, who was unable to walk.  We arrived at the hospital, by which time Jessica had recovered a bit of her mental clarity, but was still unable to move much and was very confused.

Over the last two days we have gone through CT scans and an MRI, both of which reveal the presence of a brain tumor about 4-5 cm in diameter.  It is located in the right side, occipital temporal area. 

We are all doing well.  Carlos and Tannis have been a huge blessing, and we are convinced that it was definitely God's timing to bring them to Beijing now.  Jessica is a little bit scared, but is also smiling.  I'm very proud of her.  Our Chinese friends have also been a big help to us, especially since Tannis and Carlos do not speak Chinese and don't know how to get around or buy food for the boys without their help.

After a long day yesterday we received some very good news.  After Jessica's MRI, we were visited by the neurosurgeon.  He said that the tumor does not appear to be malignant.  It is located in a very accessible region of the brain, not close to regions that may cause unwanted side affects.  (However, it may mess with eyesight and speech, so this is something to pray about.)

Additionally, he said that there appears to be some calcification of the tumor, which implies that the tumor is old (as the protein exits the tumor, proportionately more calcium remains).  This is good, because it indicates that the tumor has been slow growing.  If fact, he mentioned that some individuals may even be born with brain cells that gradually grow throughout life, and that the tumor may have been around for years.

The interesting side is that the presence of the tumor explains a number strange things affecting Jessica of late, including vision problems, spells of dizziness and confusion, strange smells, strong deja vue and dull headaches.  All these things can be explained by the increased pressure in her cranial membranes.

The immediate steps to be taken include putting her on a medication that reduces edema (gathering of water in the brain) and also a type of anti-epilepsy medication.  They could operate as soon as a day or two from now, but this point we need to make some decisions about where to have the surgery done.  After the surgery, there is a chance that she may recover within five days!

I don't know what else there is to write!  Praise God for his provision through all this.  We've been really blessed by our friends and family!

James

Smorgasborg

This blog posting unfortunately has no theme.  It is a mix and match.  However, I have been planning for some time now to do a feature (or maybe two) on Chinese fashion.  I was actually scolded last week for taking pictures of the clothing in a department store.  That should appear on hear somewhere in the near future.

 

A few nights ago, Ari drew that picture that you see here.  James and I were quite surprised by it.  Its not as though he has spent hours staring at pictures of ships and water, but somehow, he used a really unique persective to capture this scene.  He did this entirely by himself with no help from us.  There are even tropical-like fish swimming in the water.  He was very pleased to hear that I would put it up on the blog for the whole world to see.

 

James took the other picture of Ari one night when he woke him up to go to the bathroom.  He is totally asleep in this picture, but it seems that before he fell asleep that night, he took the time to tie a pair of socks around his feet.  True child logic for you.

 

Last night we were invited to go out for Karoke with our Chinese teachers and some friends who are leaving Beijing.  This is a truely favorite pastime in China.  Everyone sings karoke (they call it KTV) and they take it very seriously.  Sometimes when there were a few too many selections of extremely slow and sentimental Chinese songs, it was a little boring, but we spruced it up for ourselves with our own selections.  James and I sang a dramatic duet of "A Whole New World" , "Sweet Home Alabama" and some Beatles songs.  Our friends selected "Hey Jude" and felt that I was the most logical person to sing that song.  Jude danced at the front of the room for the whole song.

 

Recently we have had a number of expat friends leave for their home countries, and it is a bit strange to see them leave.  This is especially in light of the fact that we have another 20 months before we will see our Home and Native Land.   I admit that it has made me a little on the homesick side, and it doesn't help that we have had smuggy weather for a week straight.  Tomorrow I fly to Chengdu for the day, but it is usually just as bad there as far as air quality goes.  Last week, James was in South Korea and I wanted to cry when I saw all of his pictures of clean air and open spaces.  Oh to be surrounded by feilds again!

 

On the bright side we are not entirely without reminders of home!  In fact, as I write my sister Tannis and her husband Carlos are driving to Vancouver where they will depart for Beijing this Saturday.  Hurray!  It seems a little hard to believe.

We are truly excited to have them come as this is our first family visit.  It couldn't come at a better time!  We've been fighting a bit of the blues lately and welcome the chance to be with some family again and show them our world.  They have strict instructions to buy several Kgs of Tim Horton's coffee, some fresh Honey Glazed Donuts and fresh Fruit Explosion muffins from the Tim Hortons at the Vancouver airport before they leave.  Granted that 12 hours on the plane will make them a little less fresh, but who cares about that!  Yikes, does that ever sound like it is from a Tim Hortons comercial!  For the record, I did work for them while I was in high school, so maybe I owe them this free advertising.

 

Along with them, we also eagerly await the arrival of James' guitar, maple syrup, vanilla, Canadian Smarties, rhubarb (if it doesn't get confiscated!), Canadian gifts for our friends, books, and much more.  We anticipate many happy evenings of playing Settlers and eating popcorn, a visit to a water park, sightseeing (of course), and just some good and fun conversations.  We have a lot to do and I think that the time will go by very fast.   

 

In closing, I must shamefacedly admit that I completely forgot that today is Canada Day. As trivial as it sounds, I actually do feel a little cheated that I have been deprived of my annual shot of patriotism.  Canada grows quite dear to my heart these days and right now it seems very far away. 

 

Chinese perceptions of Canada are very interesting.  The other day a total stranger said to me, "You Canadians don't lock your doors when you leave the house."  I was quick to correct her. "Actually we do. Of course we do!."  The response was instant, "No you don't, because there are so few people in Canada, and you don't have bad people."  At times like this, I wish I could climb into their heads and see exactly what they imagine when they think about Canada.  I also thought it was interesting during this conversation that the lady felt so free to tell me exactly what state I leave my doors in when I leave the house.

 

Enough for now!  Be expecting a fashion blog sometime in the near future.  What I really wish I could do is post the Chinese fashion shows that are always played on the bus.  Now those are interesting!  The most recent ones have had muscular men dipped in silver paint to look like Greek statues.  Very very dramatic!

Smuggy Dayz

Muggy + Smoggy = Smuggy

How can I describe summer days in Beijing?  Smuggy.  How can I describe the way that smuggy weather makes you feel?  Smuggy.  I pulled the above picture off the web, but it's a pretty good depiction of a bad day in Beijing.

Smog is something that we have become more or less accustomed to.  If I can see the building next to our apartment I often won't even notice that it is smoggy out (they call it "fog" here, there is no word for smog).  I had a friend say to me recently, "I heard that in Canada it doesn't get foggy like this."  I confirmed the rumor.  Then she asked me to look out the window and asked if I would consider that day's weather to be foggy.  The fact that I even had to consider it when the edges of all the buildings were unclear, shows how normal this has become.

However, summer time takes it to a new level.  In winter, it is often very dry and there may be a wind blowing.  Wind is the key to relieving smog.  It simply blows the smog away to another place and voila, you have semi blue skies.  Rain sometimes works, but it is less reliable than wind.  By contrast to winter, summer time is humid and all of the moisture in the air can trap the smog over the city for days on end.  

We are all familiar with muggy days where it is grey outside but very humid and very hot.  However it becomes far worse when you feel like the sky ends just above your head and then closes thickly and motionlessly around your sweaty body in 35C weather.  It has the capacity to make you feel really, really gross and affect your mood.  Last week was one where every day was smuggy and where the whole family was moody and headachy.  It wasn't really an option to go outside because of the air, but the boys had their usual amount of energy.  Today was moderately bad, but then the wind came!  Hurray!  

The sad truth is that if you are going to live in Beijing, this is the price that must be paid.  I comfort myself with the thought that some people have lived with it for their entire lives while I must only withstand a mere three years.  If I want to enjoy my time here then I can't spend hours feeling bothered by this. Nonetheless... there are just some really bad days (daze).  

I think that my reunion with fresh air will be a truly amazing experience!

   

The Tragic Life of Seafood

This fish right here is a very classic example of the tragic life of seafood here in China. Technically, I shouldn't refer to this particular fellow as "food", but regardless of that fact, food or un-food sea creatures alike all seem to meet the same horrible fate here. For your size reference, this fish is a good 15 inches long and quite fat.

As James and I peacefully ate our lunch at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant the other day, we were startled by the sound of a wild thrashing and clattering. We looked over to see this fish in the midst of his death throws on the floor of the restaurant. He had just thrown himself out of his tiny aquarium (a shared home with nine others just like him), and knocked himself in the head on the table next to the aquarium. As he thrashed about on the floor, he traveled further away from the aquarium. James and I watched him twitch for a few seconds before informing the waitress of what had just happened. She calmly walked over to the fish, picked him up with her bare serving hand, plopped him back in the tank and went back to her serving duties.

James and I watched him skeptically as he floated belly up above his unenthusiastic friends who were lining the bottom of the tank. He failed to revive and his body eventually sunk lower and lower in the tank until he rested ontop of the other still-living fish. The other fish and the waitress were equally oblivious to the situation and I had to wonder how it would take before he was discovered.

This actually happens fairly frequently here. I have wittnessed this same thing on a number of occasions. Once I was at the grocery store when a fish that was for sale threw himself so far out of his tank that he landed in the middle of the aisle of people (can you imagine how gross it would have been to be unexpectedly hit by a flapping, wet, dirty fish when you are innocently doing you are doing your grocery shopping?). All of the customers, including myself, stopped and formed a circle around the fish, watching with mild interest as he flailed wildly. Eventually he stopped and we all went on our ways. However, I was curious to see how long it would take for a worker to pick the fish up off the floor, so I hung around the area for a while. It took at least five minutes for someone to come and get him.

You also often see turtles for sale in shallow buckets on the floor at the market. They range in size from silver dollar size to frizbee size. They are stacked two or three high in these low buckets and inevitably there are escapees that emerge at about ten minute intervals. It is very interesting to watch them. You could employ someone full time just making sure that the turtles don't get away (or just buy a bigger bucket). But since they don't have someone doing that, the turtles meet other alternative ends. For example they often die in the sludge troughs that form in the cracks in the concrete, or you might discover you were about to step on a comletely dried and desicated turtle somewhere (this happened to me the other day). I always feel sorry for these poor turtles. They probably think that they are making a daring escape back to the beach where they were born only to end up in Chinese foot traffic!

However, I'm not sure if I feel worse for these sea creatures, or for the ones that get sold into golf ball sized key chains! It is fashionable for girls (especially between 15 and 25) to have a gold fish or a live turtle in a ball that hangs on your keys or off your cellphone. I can't imagine they last very long, especially when you consider what it would be like to be bound to a set of keys. The clanking that would echo in the water as the keys get shoved in the dark purse. The volume, the vibrations and the lights of the cellphone. The swinging and dangling. And that is all not to mention the non-oxygenated environment. Did they invent anaerobic fish? The more I think about it, the more I hope that they die very quickly.

On a new topic, my friend here in Beijing took me glasses shopping. What a new and different experience it was! My experience of glasses shopping has always been extremely frustrating and irritating. Firstly, buying glasses when you can't see yourself in them and don't have contacts is a guarentee for a bad purchase. Secondly, they are very expensive. Third, you need to have the doctor check your eyes which means waiting for an appointment. Well, all three of these problems were non existant here. Beijing has me sold on its eyewear! We went to a massive warehouse that was filled with only glasses outlets. Dozens and dozens of competitors.

The first pair I saw were the ones I bought. To some people this is foolhardy, but when you hate shopping all day as much as I do it's a bonus. They examined my eyes right then and there. As for price, my friend only had to hint at us leaving after the first quote before they gave me it to me for a third of the price they origanlly asked. She also bargarined pretty hard. To summarize, I got a decent pair of prescription sunglasses (savings splurge) for around $35 including the lenses. You would pay at least ten times that amount in Canada. All of my memories of glasses shopping in Canada fizzled away into nothing. That being said, I will not be surprised if they break. However, I do consider myself to be a seasoned glasses wearer (17 years), and so I do have some idea of quality. Going with friends who can bargain is a great idea. The above is a picture of the two of us on the subway. We have a lot of fun together!

This is just a cute picture of the boys in the bath. You can see that Jude's head wound has progressed to red scar (which looks better or worse depending on whether he is crying or not!)

Excuses, Birthdays and Festivals

So I know it has been a while since posting, but I have been battling a number of blogging problems. They may not seem like problems, but here they are!

1) We finally have a proxy which allows me to blog on blogger instead of emailing the website. I was so excited about finally being able to make the blog look nice that I haven't wanted to blog until I have time to add all kinds of pictures and do some nice formatting. Well, my sad discovery as I have kept putting it off is that I have actually just become lazy! Why do fancy formatting when you can blame your bad formatting on having to email? Well, now I have no excuse!

2) I was also waiting until I had some more interesting pictures to put up here. But alas, my easiest form of taking pictures (my cellphone) died in a cup of water in the somewhat recent past. You may suspect (and rightly so) that there is a story behind this cellphone/cup of water combo. But having had to explain the situation to James and live through his endless clever jokes, I will keep the details minimal. Husbands can be quite ruthless when it comes to their wives and electronics. I will only say that at least my story is not as embarassing as my friend's (who dropped her cellphone in a Chinese public squat toilet! Imagine explaining that to a husband!). My new phone is much cheaper (James being reluctant to spend much on a "doomed" phone) and does not have picture capabilites. Suffice it to say that it is much harder to lug around a sizeable camera AND still take discrete photos.

3) Its been a very busy two weeks

4) I sometimes wonder if our news or my strange thoughts are all that interesting!

Now that I have written out my excuses, here is our lineup of newsworthy news.

Ari celebrated his fifth birthday last Tuesday, June 8. We roasted chicken wings, boiled jiaozi, layered a blackforest cake and invited his two newest heros for supper, his Australian and New Zealand English teachers. Unfortunately James only took a video and no pictures. Ari recieved a number of gifts. One of the more notable was our Chinese neighbors who randomly called us and asked what Ari's shoe size was, then showed up half an hour later with a new pair of expensive silver-bullet looking shoes for him. We were appreciative of course, but I knew that if I didn't quickly repay them back someway, we might be looking at offending them. So, the next day I promptly went to buy their daughter a Disney Princess toy camera. Waste no time!

Aiyi bought him a train that drives by itself and has sensors to know when to turn to avoid hitting something. The thing is about 1.5 feet long and maybe six inches tall and four inches wide. Such toys she buys! However, I suspect that it was less costly then Jude's car.

Recently the boys have experieced a bit of success at hiding toys under their pillows when they go to bed so that they can play with them "unbeknownst" to us. I don't always think to check their pillows before putting them to bed. Well, the other night as I put Jude in his bed, I paused to wonder why his pillow was sitting at a 45 degree angle. I moved the pillow and sure enough, there was the massive train and Jude with a very cute and mischeivious smile. I think he knew it was probably a lost cause when he hid it since he didn't even protest when I took it away, but even that small slice of hope must have been enough to inspire it. He must be a "glass half full" kind of guy!

This Wednesday is a national holiday for the Dragon Boat Festival. Last week, I started hearing mutterings about having Monday through Wednesday off at Ari's school. It seemed to me that the school would have officially notified us for such a long holiday. However since they have been known to post small square notices in Chinese characters on the huge gate and not provide a translation for us illiterate folk, I decided to ask his teacher.

So this is how it goes. Because Wedesday is a holiday, the school decided to have regular schooldays on the Saturday and Sunday beforehand so that they can instead take Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday off. So essentially the kids work for seven days straight just so that they can have three days off straight. If we have a Wednesday holiday in Canada, everyone thinks its great because you only have to work two 2-day stints and then it is the weekend again. It seems a little presumptuous to me to assume that everyone in the country wants to have school (or go to work for that matter) on the weekend when this is normally not the case. Oh well, if that is how they do it, then they can go ahead. In our case it just means that Ari gets a 5-day holiday! James and I were not about to give up our weekend relaxation after a busy week just to cart Ari around when his school decides to hold class on the weekend. Have fun guys!

Another piece of news. Ari taught himself to whistle... I wish I were as excited about it as he is. It is our new constant companion! At least he hasn't started whistling BINGO... yet.

That is all for now!