Heather's Knee, And Sydney... Being Sydney

My poor wife. It has been 3 or so weeks since her last spill while running. Her knee has looked pretty rough and the pain has not gone down. So this last weekend she visited some Australian doctors that are here. She was informed that she had torn a ligament in the back of her knee. They also told her that the recovery time is supposed to be 6 weeks. It’s been tough for her, because she hasn’t been able to run like she loves too. We’re hoping for a speedy recovery and will keep you informed.

In other news, I’m getting closer and closer to dedicating an entire blog to our precious daughter Sydney… I think I would call it “Filling the world with laughter; true stories from the life of Sydney”. But, until that day comes, I will simply add her little moments to these posts. Here are a few memorable Sydney moments of recent.

One of our American friends here (Noah) stopped over one night this week and after I laid Sydney down, he and I were going to head over to my brothers for some Nintendo Wii time. It had been 20 or so minutes since I laid Sydney down and she hadn’t made a single sound. Heather said goodbye to Noah and I as we were leaving and from Sydney’s bedroom in the back of our apartment we hear Sydney scream “Goodbye Noah!” It was so cute and unexpected.

Well Noah was over another night this week and after Heather and I laid Sydney down to bed, all of us were hanging out in the living room talking. 10-20 minutes had passed since laying Sydney down without her making any sound. At one point we were laughing loudly about something when from Sydney’s room in the back of our apartment we hear “Guys! Stop! Be quite!” It’s nice to know that someone is trying to parent around here, even if that someone is our 2 year old daughter.

Sorry, but I feel like if I left one of these stories out, I would be doing a great injustice. So last week some time, Heather, Sydney and I were hanging out in the living room and it was getting close to Sydney’s nap time. Sydney said something about lying down and Heather told her that if she wanted to go lay down that she could. At that Sydney ran off to her room, but not before I told her to take off her sandals. Heather and I just sat on the couch wondering if we would need to help her with anything…. But nope, she had climbed into bed all by herself and fell asleep. She’s getting so mature these days… oh and next week she is applying for a job at the local McDonald’s.

Lastly, I was reading one of Sydney’s books to her one night while tucking her in. The book is about a bunch of Disney princesses. As I’m reading it too her, we get to the page about The Beauty and the Beast. Until this point I had told Sydney with each princess what their name was. As I looked down I couldn’t remember the name of the girl in The Beauty and the Beast, so I said to Sydney “I can’t remember her name”, but Sydney wouldn’t have it, “It’s Belle”, she informed me. And as I starred at the page I realized she was right…. At this rate I’m gonna be out a job (as a parent) pretty soon.

With Joy,
Matt, Heather, Sydney, and little Aubrey

I'm "that" guy, and our trip to the VISA office

Well I was finally “that” guy. With my time here in China and the time I’ve spent overseas I’m always running into Americans who are awesome at whatever the local language is. And whenever I meet these people, I generally find myself saying to them (full of amazement, might I add) “wow, your (fill in with whatever the local language is) is so good. So naturally living in China I’m telling them “wow, your Chinese is so good (and/or amazing)”. Well today I got to be the guy who got the compliment and it happened like this. I walked into McDonald's and immediately noticed a group of foreigners. I could tell they weren’t living here, but that they were tourists… I can’t explain why I knew this, I just got that feeling, and one of the girls had her backpack on in front of her (so that it is harder to steal from, TYPICAL tourist move). Anyways, I get to chatting with them, “what’s your story”, “why are you here”, “where are you from”, and I’m really enjoying the chance to talk with them. As I get to the front of the line I realized that the tour guide with them was speaking Chinese, she asked me where I was from and I said Minnesota. She then told me that she had friends who were in Minnesota or who were from Minnesota (I can’t remember, maybe she said they hated Minnesota) and in Chinese I asked her, “Are you Chinese?”, she said “yes” and then she told me in Chinese that I spoke well (I think….) and asked how long I had been studying, I told her “3 months”. After our little exchange the American next to me told me that he thought my Chinese was good (he was guessing). Either way, it felt good, if even for only a moment, to be the guy who spoke the local language (only a little) and to have someone else who doesn’t speak the local language acknowledge it. Sorry if this was long and boring (more than likely it was both).

Yesterday, we went to the VISA office here to get our tourist VISA’s changed to resident VISA’s. The experience was long and drawn out. You could tell it had been a long day for the people who were working there. It’s nearing the end of the day for them and Sydney is out in the hall with another kid, and they are loud, I mean they are laughing and screaming, but not too obnoxiously. But there came a point when they got really loud, and one of the officers behind the counter reacted like he was thinking “wow, that is really annoying (and/or whose kid is making all that noise)”. Well I wanted to lighten the mood, so in Chinese I said “My daughter is fierce.” I again was proud of myself when I got a handful of Chinese to laugh at my joke, that I told in Chinese. By the way, fierce is a really fun word to use here and for those of you keeping track at home the word for fierce in Chinese is lihai (pronounced- lee high).

with joy,
the petersons

Stories From The Life Of Sydney

Here’s a quick “what hilarious things Sydney has done lately”. Here are a couple of examples;

There is a guy in our apartment complex that looks creepy or at least I always thought he did, but never told anyone. I don’t know how to describe him, besides saying he looks like he’s trouble. Well this past week Sydney confirmed how I felt. It happened like this; Sydney and I got into an elevator and just after we stepped in, he got in as well. He exited before we did and when he left the elevator Sydney said to me “He’s scary, He scared me” (or something like that). I had to laugh, because I felt the same way. No disrespect to our resident scary guy, I’m sure he’s nice.

Also, lately Sydney will try and do the classic stall methods when we lay her down at night. You know them; I need to go potty, I’m hungry, I’m thirsty, tell me a story has also made an appearance. Which none of these are true, because as soon as you try to meet these needs you realize you’re a joker who fell for the oldest trick in the book. But a few nights this past week she would yell to us this from her room “My mouth is dirty, I need a drink”…. Where does she get this? On that one I gave her a 10 for creativity and brought her the drink out of amazement. I did find out later (about ten minutes after bringing her the water) that this too is just a weapon in her arsenal, because she said it again… Sorry Sydney, I’m not falling for it again.

Lastly, I played this game where Sydney laid down and I looked at her eyes, her nose, her ears and finally I would listen to her heart. Each time I would check something I would say “good”, like I was giving her a checkup. Then I laid down and she listened to my heart, as she did she shot her head up and told me “perfect!”. This was funny to me, because I’ve never heard her say “perfect”, and then at the right time she busts it out. On a side note, I was relieved to know that my heart was doing well.

Well that does it for now.

Peace,
The peterson’s

A PACKAGE ARRIVES!

Last night I had a knock at the door.... Since Heather was gone I assumed it was her, until a Chinese man appeared when I opened the door. After a few minutes I figured out that he had 3 boxes waiting for me downstairs that had been shipped here from my family!!! He told me to bring my stroller to bring all the packages up. When I got back upstairs to our apartment I left the stroller in the entry way so that when Heather got home it would be the first thing she saw. Well the plan worked perfectly, so much so, I thought she might pee her pants, which would have been a terrible example for Sydney since we are potty training her.

We called up my brother and his wife (half of what arrived was for them) and they came to our house and we sat around opening presents. It was such a blast, we just riffled through everything shouting with each discovery. And in typical present opening fashion Heather and I walked around with the clothes we just pulled out of our gift box and sat around eating candy.... Gosh, it was amazing, we felt like we we're ten years old again. For the record I now have an Adrian Peterson jersey.

Also, our happiness didn't end their. The next morning my brother (Jeremy) and his wife (Jenny) came over at 7:30 to take Sydney for the morning. They took her out to breakfast at McDonald's, brought her to their apartment and the park. It was so nice to have a Sydneyless morning. We went and grabbed breakfast and relaxed all morning until the afternoon when Jeremy and Jenny brought her back. THANKS GUYS!!!

With Joy,
Matt, Heather, Sydney and little Aubrey

An Overhaul And Our Visitor This Week

It was time to overhaul this blog. When I started it I wasn’t sure if people would come and check it out, but since it seems to be something people (besides my mom) visit from time-to-time I wanted to make it more visually appealing. I hope you enjoy the changes and if all goes well I would like to make changes every few months or so. You will notice I pulled down the slide shows and have replaced them with pictures and a little info on us. If you have any ideas of stuff you would like to see on here or for me to write about let me know. If you’re a subscriber you can reply to the email that is sent to you and it will come to me or you can write me if you have my email (or if you know someone who has it). Now onto a little update.

We had a visitor this week, our family friends the Xia’s let us babysit there 1 year old daughter. The idea started when they took us to the mountains and Heather asked if we could babysit their daughter so they could go on a date. Well, Tian (the husband/father) was busy with work so instead we watched her (Le Le, pronounced- luh luh) during the afternoon so that her mom could run some errands. It was so fun to have Le Le over at our house, she is so cute. I have pictures at the bottom of this post, make sure and look at them if you can. On a side note it was awesome to see how much we’ve already been able to build trust with this family, we felt that it was a huge complement for them to let us watch her.

Also, it was Le Le’s birthday today and her parents invited us to come celebrate with their family. When I say family I mean we got to met Jing's (wife/mother) parents, brother, and sister, there were 15 of us in total. We went to this really nice restaurant where they had reserved a room for all of us. The room was huge and had its own sitting area with T.V., bathroom and kitchen. They ordered a ton of food. We had Xi’an roast duck for the first time; it's very famous and really good. We also had pig’s lungs, it was also not bad. We really felt like part of this family and that is very special for us.

On a final note, my sweet wife had another running accident. As you remember she hurt her back running about a month ago. This week while running she had a pretty bad spill. Jenny and her were running when Heather noticed a plastic cord on the ground, while trying to avoid it she tripped over it and fell to the ground. When she got home she looked pretty rough, one knee was scrapped up and the other was banged up pretty bad. Each day she’s getting better. But the official score right now is Running 2, Heather 0, but I’m confident Heather will bounce back.



With Joy,

the petersons

"Our Chinese Daughter, Le Le"

"How precious"

"Birthday with the Xia's"

"More from the birthday with the Xia's"

"This is for the Wald's, here they play Badminton everywhere... Even next to a busy street."

Mountain Pictures

Sorry this took so long to get uploaded, but here are some pictures from our trip to the mountains with our Chinese friends.

Much Love,

the peterson's

New Video Added

I just added a new video of Sydney tickling Aubrey. It's short and Sydney says a few Chinese words, check it out.

Also, I will be adding (hopefully) some video and pictures from our time in the mountains last week.

Much love,
the petersons

I'm Pregnant? And More Funny Stories

So something I (Matt) had to do to get my student VISA here is that I had to have a medical exam. It was, like most things here, not without some surprise. At one point they had me lay on a table and they gave me an ultrasound test on my kidney's. After the nurse put the gel on my side and begun examining me, in Chinese I asked, "Boy or Girl?". She thought it was funny and I was proud of myself for being able to tell a joke in Chinese.

I (Matt) also got a gym membership here! It's super cheap and I'm feeling motivated by my wife's awesomeness and wanting to be alive for a while, decided it's time to start getting in shape. I give it a month.... just kidding, but seriously I hope it will last.

Lastly, in class today we started our first Lesson! For the past week and a half we've only been working on tones and pronunciation. It is important to make sure your tones are correct, because you could be saying the wrong word if your tones aren't correct. An example of this is the word Shi (pronounced, sure) it can mean 10 in one tone and in another it can mean yes. This can confuse people if you’re counting, 6-7-8-9-YES! Pronunciation is also important, for example, the word Xia (pronounced, she-awe) means Shrimp, but the word Sha (pronounced, shawe) means to kill. This obviously can spell disaster in a restaurant, I want to kill... I mean, I want shrimp. Our first lesson today was on greetings, it was a lot of fun and now we will get to add some words to our survival Chinglish. Check out the mountain pictures soon, I'm having issues uploading them right now.

Wo yao (I want) Sha, I mean Xia,
the peterson's

My Urban Hike

With all the excitement of this past week I haven’t had the chance to mention my urban hiking adventure. After talking with a friend of mine who lived in India for 25 years and hearing about how he did this, I decided to walk across Xi’an. I really wanted to do this to get to see the city I’m living in and how the people live as well as familiarize myself with the city I hope to live in for a while. This is obviously no easy task, first off it’s impossible in a city of 8 million people (metro area) to define boundaries, and then you actually have to walk across it. Well after chatting with a Chinese friend of mine I decided to take the 600 bus north as far as I could, which was about an hour. I brought with me a map, sunscreen, Toilet Paper (you never know when you might not feel well), and about $15 bucks… to be honest I didn’t bring more money in case I was robbed. I left the house at 6:30 am (this was a week and a half ago) and caught the 600 north, when I got to the last stop I was definitely on the edge of the city, because there was hardly any people. When I asked a person sitting there to show me on the map where I was, he pointed north off the map, perfect I thought, that is exactly what I wanted. After walking most of the early morning I made it to the Old City, I headed through an old street which was packed and after making it through, I sat down at Subway to get some food. I decided to head west for a couple of hours before cutting south to make it home before dinner. Well I got a bit off track (that’s what the prideful say when they are lost) and ended up WAY far west, but after a moment or so of disappointment continued my journey. I remember every hour or so stopping to ask where I was on the map and each time thinking I was going to be way closer to home then where they pointed. I’m actually surprised I made it, ask my wife, I’m absolutely terrible with directions. Most of the walk was pretty uneventful, but I did have to jump one fence, and after I did I was approaching the gate to exit and a guard stepped in my way. I thought “I’m going to jail”, but lucky for me he was moving a cone for a car that was also leaving and just behind me, WHEW that was close. The second half was way tough and had its discouragements, but I made it home at about 3:30 pm and am super glad I got to do it. I feel like this is a city I’m falling in love with and want to know it as best as I can.

Also, Heather’s back is feeling a lot better. She hurt it about 2 weeks ago showing Jenny (our sister in law) how to power walk… At least she hurt it doing something glorious. It was really tough for her to take such a long break from running, because she enjoys it so much. But I’m happy to report that (like I already reported two sentences ago) her back is much better AND after that long break she still ran 10 miles yesterday. WHAT A CHAMP!

Peace,
the petersons

Our Day At The Mountains

We had a great time today at the mountains. We headed out with our friends at 10:00 this morning and after driving for a half hour or so we were at the base of the mountain range that is just outside of our city. We had lunch which was really good, our friends ordered again so it had one surprise... The chicken came with the head... it was different, but hey, the rest of the chicken was super good. I will also say this to put into perspective how our lives look right now. When we got into the restaurant there was a group of 8-12 people sitting around a table and our friend (which was carrying Aubrey) handed her to one of the ladies in the group when we got there, that group (which was sitting next to us) held her the whole time we ate, passing Aubrey from one person to the next, each of them taking there turn getting a picture holding her. They are seriously so nice here. After that we drove for another half hour through the mountains which are beautiful. We stopped along side a river that cut through the mountains. Sydney, Heather, our friends and I all took turns jumping from rock to rock to get out to the middle of this river (don't worry it was shallow). The husband (his name is Xia Tian) would run and jump across these rocks so fast, and then I would sit there trying my best to balance myself and not fall in, I looked like a clown. Watching him made me think I was in Jackie Chan's presence. Sydney had a BLAST playing the whole time in a little area of the river where the water pooled together. Our friends are so nice, they take such good care of us. Hospitality is such a huge part of the culture here, and it's super humbling to have people we just met a month ago being so generous and kind.

'Till Next Time,
the petersons

Week one of language in the books

Well our first week of language school/tutoring is in the books. It was a great week, and I'm super excited to be learning the language outside of the survival words/phrases. In my (Matt's) class we are studying Pinyin, which is the Chinese alphabet. Chinese is different in how it is written, because their words are pictures called characters, but recently (like maybe in the past 50 years) they have also started writing their words out in letters. So instead of having 26 letters that form all the words in the English language, the Chinese have literally 9,000 (or so) drawings that make up their written language. So Pinyin helps us a TON to know, because anyone on the street (who knows Pinyin) can write down words for us and when we know the sounds to make we can say that word, as opposed to Chinese characters which I have NO clue how to read. We have also begun our work on the tones. For those of you who don't know Chinese is spoken in 4 tones. This is weird to English speakers, as tones don't affect our words, but for example, ma can be said 4 different ways and mean 4 different words. Saying it's tough is an understatement. Either way it's going well for both Heather and I as we are learning the language, but it has it's frustrations as well. One classic story from this week for me was when our teacher asked me to read this line of four words to practise my tones and pinyin. When I said the first word I knew it was WAY off, and in pure confusion the teacher said "I'm sorry, can you read from right here" and she gently pointed at this one spot, to which I replied "I was". So yeah, it can be a little tough.

Lastly, we are going to the mountains tomorrow!!! The Chinese family we have become friends with invited us to go. It's like an hour away and we are stoked to get to see a little of the countryside. I will try and write about it tomorrow. Oh, and I will also write about my 8 hour walk across Xi'an.

Peace,

Matt, Heather, Sydney, and little Aubrey

First Day Of School

Our first day of school has come and gone and it went great. I headed off to the University early in the morning and had the extreme joy of finding out my brother (Jeremy) and I would be in the same class. It got even better when the teacher was going through some things and asked Jeremy in Chinese "What food do you like?", at that point Jeremy looked up with a blank stare (because he didn't understand the question) and he answered by going through some of the sounds she was just teaching us.... All of us in the class (5 of us) laughed, this is an incredible feeling as an older brother. What isn't an incredible feeling is when he evened the score, the teacher had us both go to the white board and they (the teacher and students) would say sounds in Chinese and we were to write them down with the tone. We had 12 or so thrown our way separately and not one of them did I get before Jeremy. He's really smart and super good with tones (he's musical) and I'm neither of those things, so I'm expecting to be humbled a lot. On another good note, I didn't get shoved into any lockers or have my lunch money taken... that's a joke (because it was my first day at school).

While all this was going on Heather had her tutor (a Chinese lady) come over for the first time today. The tutor will come 3 days a week for 2 hours each time. We have a Nanny who will watch the girls while Heather and her tutor practise Chinese at our apartment. I'm sure it went good, partly because I could hear Heather throughout the rest of the day going through some sounds she is learning and the fact that she told me it went good.


'Till Next Time,
the petersons