ShamWow! (or: Fun with the Chinese Language)

Before I start making fun of our entire family for our obvious lack of Mandarin Chinese skillz, I want to first hit on something that is actually IMPORTANT.


A couple days ago, I talked about State Department employee money issues and decisions.  I got a comment from the lovely Tuk &  Tam folks, asking about the reimbursement of closing costs for pre-employment houses. 


It is our understanding, though we are not at all experts, that State only offers closing-cost assistance to new State employees who were previous federal employees.  Translation:  if you were already a federal employee before State hired you, you may qualify for having your pre-employment house's closing costs reimbursed.  Other than that, there's nada.  I'm sorry.  :(  And that would only be triggered if/once you are assigned to a permanent domestic assignment that is more than 50 miles away from where you resided when you were hired.  Again... sorry.  :(


Now, it's time for me to make fun of myself and my family. 

~  ~  ~

Back when we went to the Washington DC Zoo, we bought Zachary (the 11 year old) a stuffed panda bear.  He has a fascination with panda bears now, as they are not just seriously cute, but are also very much associated with our next post (Chengdu, China, fall of 2011)(Shenyanigans). 

At the time of the zoo visit, we had yet to meet with our Chinese tutor (LOVE HER LOVE HER LOVE HER), and so, when the zoo began to rhapsodize about their panda bears, they used the Chinese name for "panda bear," which sounded exactly, to our ears, like:

ShamWow! 


You know, like this guy:

So, of course, the stuffed panda's name instantly became ShamWow.


ShamWow is totally awesome:







He even dances! 






(True story:  yesterday at Chinese class, our tutor began teaching my boys how to say things like, "The panda is dancing," and, "I love the panda's face," and, "The panda is MINE," in Mandarin...a great way to keep the boys' attention!)


We've now met with our Chinese instructor twice (LOVE HER LOVE HER LOVE HER), and our ears are starting to be able to pick out the different tones in the Chinese word for "panda," which is xiongmao. It's not *exactly* pronounced like ShamWow... it's pretty close, mind you... but it's more like:

She-ohng-mohw-uh

(Or something like that.)



And get this!  In Chinese, which one is the "shoe"?



Is THIS the "shoe?"

Nope!  This is:

Crazy! 

~  ~  ~ 

In other news, our two boys got together with TulipGirl's four boys and jaunted around Washington DC this past week. 


We traveled deep into the heart of downtown Washington DC.  We hit both the Air & Space Museum AND the Botanical Gardens in the same afternoon.


I didn't get a whole lot of pictures at the Air & Space Museum because I was too busy gabbing my fool head off with Mrs. Tulip Girl.  But I did, at least, get a shot of The Spirit of St. Louis:



 



And I got to hear all about the flight from Zachary, my 11 year old, who talked about how Charles Lindbergh had a hard time staying awake the whole flight across the ocean (because it took so long), and how he had no windows to look out of, really, so it was a really hard flight, and how he landed in a country that didn't speak English and so that was hard for him too... etc... (if any of that is wrong, just please don't tell me.  I'm busy being happy that my kid knew what the plane was). 


But once we headed to the Botanical Gardens (my absolutely FAVORITE PLACE in Washington DC), my camera had more work to do.


We passed these lovely flowers on our walk from the Air &  Space Museum to the Botanical Gardens:


 












And then, once inside the Botanical Gardens, it was... NIRVANA.


Flowers everywhere!  Beauty everywhere!  I could just... LIVE in that place.


Okay,  I think I know the name of the following flower.  It's... Bougainvillea, right?






And these next two... I think they're Orchids, right?







 
The Orchid above is an interesting little thing.  It gets bees to pollinate it by looking like a bee, itself.  So bees come over to investigate (okay, it's a little more involved than that.  It looks like a GIRL BEE and the BOY BEES come over to, um, investigate) and the flower basically tricks the boy bees into pollinating it.


Tricksy little flower.


There are breathtaking waterfalls at the Botanical Gardens.  This one is in the main area:






And these next two are in other rooms:

But the flowers are, by far, my favorite.






Such a gorgeous, gorgeous place. 

Comments

[Connie]

Absolutely stunning photos! I love the flowers! And I agree.. Shamwow is the cutest stuffed panda bear I've ever seen :) So glad you like your tutor. She does sound great! My kids are enthused about learning Arabic this year... Brian was out with the dictionary the other day making flash cards. Not homework... school is out in 1.5 days, he was simply being creative. I like it!

[shannon]

The panda is totally cute. Good luck with the language lessons! David would really like to go to Guangzhou some day but just the thought of trying to learn Chinese makes my stomach hurt.

The botanical gardens are totally my favorite. Are you surprised? I didn't think so. I could go there pretty much everyday, but once seems to be enough for the rest of the family. Sigh Oh well.

[Daniela]

Thank you so much for answering my question, Kolbi! My husband didn't think we'd qualify but I thought it may be worth looking into. As it turns out we do not because he was not a fed employee prior to State hiring him. Good to know!

Lovely pictures! I have the Botanical gardens on my list of places to visit before we go overseas too.

Good luck with Chinese!

[Melissa V]

You are going to love the botanical gardens next spring when the azaleas are in peak bloom - it's fantastic.

[David L.]

One of the side effects of being home instead of being in an office during the day is I see more daytime commercials. Somewhat shockingly, one of Billy Mays' other product lines still uses those old commercials back from when he was living. (I think it is the Awesome Auger). I don't like the new ShamWow guy, but at least they moved on.

[Emily]

I am glad that every thing is moving along with Chinese. What a wonderful opportunity to be able to learn together as a family. I am glad you were able to find a tutor.
Of course, as usual, the pictures are beautiful.

[Jill]

Ok... so you do know that the ShamWow really does work, right? I'm TOTALLY serious too. My mom picked a ton of them up at a swap meet, and she loved how well they worked that she picked up another set for me.

Anyway, I have to say that I'm amazed with how many flower people there are out there. I don't have the greenest of thumbs, nor are there many flowers here, to really appreciate them as y'all do. But your photos are gorgeous!

[fsowannabe]

Love the panda and flower pics and am so happy you and your family are enjoying Chinese!

[TG]

Next time the boys all get together, I expect to hear them jibber-jabbering in a mix of Mandarin and Swahili!

Already my boys know more than I do. . . Great. . . Now ANOTHER secret language I can't understand for them to plan their mischief!

[Chelsea]

While Chinese is a ridiculously difficult language to learn (after a whole semester at college, I turned on the news and found, to my ecstatic joy, that I could hear INDIVIDUAL WORDS!!), I offer some hope:
I went and taught English in China for a semester, and most of my co-teachers spoke NO Chinese and had no language training before we got there. By the end of our 4 months, they could all get around town, shop, bargain, order food, and even make friends with random people in the city. A basic mastery of numbers, "this," "too expensive," etc, and you can get around. I'm sure you'll be way ahead of that if you have an actual (love her love her love her) Chinese tutor. :)

[Ryan Locke]

It’s Friday, and that means that the Weekly State Department Blog Roundup is up – and you’re on it!

Here is the link:
http://bit.ly/aic8FC

(If I quoted your text or used your photo(s) and you would rather I had not, please let me know. Please also be sure to check the link(s) that I put up to you, in order to verify that they work properly. If you would rather that I had not referenced you, and/or do not want me to reference you in the future, please also contact me.)

Thanks!

[Thomas]

I'm a sucker for pictures with plenty of color and contrast. Great pictures.
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