In Which China is Toured, Part the First

In Our Same Boat (with State)

Beyond the Cornfields
Brand-new State Department family in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Love their two little girls (she just recently had a baby while being posted in Dhaka), horticulture, traveling and adventure!
Email From The Embassy
State Department family formerly in Beijing, China, and recently posted to Amman, Jordan. A trailing spouse, she's also a writer, and frequently publishes articles with major news sources. A very experienced State family, this new post is something like overseas post number six or seven for them.
Just US
A beautiful family of seven - they have arrived at their new post: Jerusalem! They just finished off an unaccompanied tour to Iraq and are very much looking forward to sightseeing around the middle east.
Our Life
State Department family on their second post...Tijuana, Mexico. It's their first overseas assignment and they have two little boys. They love Tijuana so far and post pictures frequently! They also get to enjoy the best of both worlds for they can sneak over the border into San Diego when they want to!
The Dinoia Family
State Department family formerly in California, now in DC for a DC tour. Next, the husband will do a one year unaccompanied tour. A very experienced State family (formerly in Iceland and Caracas) with a blog that has been around quite a while and has great archives. Jen has a sweet heart and a lot to give!
The Perlman Update
State Department family formerly in Chennai, India, who then did a year-long unaccompanied tour in Iraq. They are now on a DC tour and after that will do another unaccompanied tour (Afghanistan). She totally tells it like it is and doesn't sugar-coat what life is really like. Witty, snarky, funny and down-to-earth. Look elsewhere if you want fake. Read if you want REAL.
Where in the World Am I?
State Department family formerly in Bujumbura, Burundi and now in Hyderabad, India. They just had their first baby this summer - a beautiful little girl- (there's a separate blog about this) and she also eats gluten-free (with a separate blog, also).

Can't Live Without (non-State)

Crass-Pollination: An ER blog
The best ER nurse blog EVER!
Doctor Grumpy in the House
The best doctor blog EVER!
In Which...
My IRL friend, a stay-at-home, homeschooling Mama of seven. Her darling daughters are, goshdarnit, probably too young to be hoped for as my future daughters-in-law.
The Crib Chick
My IRL friend, a stay-at-home, homeschooling Mama of five. Hopefully two (Any two! I'm not picky!) of which are my future daughters-in-law.
the underwear drawer
An anesthesiologist who is possibly the most talented & entertaining writer ever. I've read her blog ever since she started medical school. No, don't know her in real life. Wish I did.
The Bloggess
This blog is both hysterically funny and hilariously irreverent. I actually let my 17 year old son read it (who loves it as much as I do!), but wouldn't even CONSIDER letting my 12 year old son read it. Which is about all the description it needs!

05/10/2012

In Which China is Toured, Part the First

So a few weeks ago it was time for the once-yearly, week-long field trip for the kiddoes in Zachary's age group at school.

Even from the time we knew that there was going to be a field trip, James and I knew that at least one of us would be going as a chaperone. This ISN'T because we're nosey parents who can't stand to be apart from their children for even two seconds, but IS because we literally can't even fathom sending a child's Diplomatic passport with its only Diplomatic stamped visa** out into the wild with countless other passports and visas (presumably in a huge, communal passport bucket?), whilst simultaneously sending one of our plague/sickness/injury prone children out into the big, wide, no-western-medical-care world without one of us being there.

[**Seriously, can you IMAGINE if that thing got lost? It's not like you can replace it/the visa at a local Consulate or whatever.]

And it's not like James and I had to draw straws to figure out whether he would go or I would go. I mean, please. People with penises (penii?) are WAY, WAY more easily toted around China than people without. Furthermore, *I* have never moaned and whined about how I desperately wanted to tour every last inch of China and how I've been here in Chengdu without having gotten to yet like SOME of us have.

So, yeah. James went on the school field trip with Zachary and Zachary's school classmates while I stayed home with Matthew, because only the jr. high kids were going that week. James took days off of work, paid his hotel/flight/train/meal costs, and left me behind for a week in order to SEE THE WORLD.

Or, at least, the Chinese part of the world.

AND THERE WAS CHINA:

Waiting for them in all its glory!

They flew out of Chengdu and flew to a different part of China (because China is big, yo!), and the first place they went was the Shaolin Temple.

Which basically is a big, huge, GIGANTIC school where boys learn to kill people by using lots of different scary weapons.

Now, James is going to come home from work and read my blog and be all No it's not, it's the birthplace of martial arts! And Kung Fu! and... and then he'll talk all about what it really is and that's all great. But I'm sorry, when he came home from his trip and I downloaded all the pictures he took, it looked to me like the place was basically teaching boys how to use lots of different weapons to kill people.

Because the Shaolin Monk Warrior Guys know how to kill you with long poles:

And they know how to kill you with machetes and chains:

And they can fly around in the air upside down and kill you with disc thingees:

And tridents:

And whips:

And there are so many of them and so many different weapons that there's pretty much no end to the ways that they could kill you:

And there are so many younger students there (because it's also a school) that are also learning how to do all of this:

That when you tour the monastery, the young practicing students stretch out as far as the eye can see:

And it's all so very not like an American junior high or high school, you know?

Because while all those well-disciplined Chinese junior high/high school guys were training and such, my American junior high son was...

... busily trying to make sure that there was at least one excellent photo of him with a water bottle suspended in midair, kind of like a UFO Flying Water Bottle:

So, yeah. If a well-trained Chinese Kung Fu Death Force comes hurling itself at my American son, they had darned well watch out for that water bottle, is all I'm saying.

(Insert here how different American and Chinese kids and schools are, etc.)

To be continued...