What a week!

This has been one messed up week. At the same time, it’s also been a good week.

To start off, we put the kids to bed last Wednesday night, and EJ started screaming. When I went to check on him, all three boys stayed absolutely quiet. I closed the door, and EJ started crying again, so back I go. Upon closer examination, I discovered he had pushed a Lego-man’s arm up his nose. He didn’t budge as JP removed the arm with tweezers, then very meekly went back to bed.

We were then awakened in the middle of the night by N vomiting. On Friday morning, he still wasn’t feeling well, so I took him to the doctor. The doc said it was probably just something he ate, and it wasn’t contagious. That night, EC came into our room and said, “I just threw up on the floor.” The next night, the daughter of some friends we visited on Friday night threw up, and on Sunday night, it was my turn.

Thanks, doc.

(FYI: barbeque flavored potato chips BURN on the return trip!)

On Saturday morning, JP’s gan-didi’s (someone she grew up with that is like a little brother to her) grandfather passed away. The next day, JP’s grandmother passed away. Then we got word back that a friend in the States grandmother had passed away a few days before. Due to the pregnancy, JP wasn’t able to travel to the funeral. The pic below is JP with her grandmother this past December.

Last week, JP’s mom called to tell her that her dad’s, grandfather’s, and uncle’s graves were all being moved closer to where her mom lives. I said, “What? Is she going to be able to open her back windows in the morning and say, ‘Good morning’?” JP just laughed. The answer is, yes, they are now in the garden just outside JP’s mom’s 6th floor window, which kind of freaks out her superstitious mom.

A couple weeks ago, we went to see if we could have the duration of stay on our visas extended. “Sure. No problem. Just come back next week.”

We did. Only to find out that they weren’t extending our duration of stay. They were requiring us to purchase new visas which are only good for 30 days! At RMB 940 each (US$140)! Then we’d have to buy them again next month! And I had to find a job before then!

That left us with two days to get to Hong Kong before our duration of stay expired on August 1st…and it takes over 30 hours to get there by train. So I decided to hunt up a job and see if we could just get one new visa for a year. I’m glad to say, that (hopefully) beginning in September, I’ll be teaching English.

I was hoping to avoid teaching English, but this setup is pretty nice. Teach only on weekends to classes with no more than 18 students, which means that I also can study language during the week. I’m sending in the paperwork tomorrow, and hopefully everything will work out okay for me to get the job. Then I’ll have to see if the visa office will change our visas so we don’t have to pay for them again next month.

Oh, part of the paperwork includes getting a physical. If I did my calculations right, I’ve lost around 30 lbs since I’ve been in China. It’s that Chinese Diet of “walking a lot.”

Regarding language study, a couple friends and I are going to hire a tutor to teach the language using a different method which is supposed to help with fluency. Let’s hope so! It turns out, that if I get this job, I’ll be more flexible than they are in when and how to study.

So that’s our week in a nutshell. The bad and the good.

How’s your week been?