CHINESE NEIGHBORS 中国邻居: Autumn Mosaic

oh Hi! hi! HI! Did you miss us?

Since last post, Mike and I traveled to the United States and back. (It was awesome.)
Drew and his entire company spent a week in Thailand. (It was decent.)

More about US & Thailand next time. Right now I want to share a handful of happy times from this fall.

So here we go!
Botanical & Butterfly Garden with our neighbor friends, a talkative couple and their kid Rui Rui.

One day at church a lady gave Mike this gum, with specific instructions about not swallowing it but rather spitting it out after chewing for a time. He took this charge very seriously and it was just cute how determined he was to follow the prescribed steps -- chew, spit, discard in waste bin.

Here we are in our concrete neighborhood, with one of my friends who is in California for a few months, and I'm missing her here. We spent a lot evenings roaming around with our kids, in unbeatable fall weather, discussing her secret plans.

Last dinner with the Krieg family & Showman family. So sad! Showmans finding their place in Texas now, and getting treatment for their baby boy. Miss them like crazy.

Titus came home from school with a clear vision for his homework assignment, a poster collage about himself. He threw in some mixed media for good measure and wrote his name on the top.

One sweltering autumn day I pulled these two brothas out of preschool for a date with me, their mother. Grandma Xia runs a neighborhood shop, and she's is always giving them free lollipops and funny things such as a bag of like 12 pairs of shoes retrieved from the trash.

This family is amazing. Amazing. But I don't have time to tell you why right now. I just want to mention that Titus and their boy Niu Niu hit it off playing trucks and dirt, followed by an equally exciting bath together.

Twice this fall I spent Saturday night on the volleyball court, with all men, all older and better athletes than me. Six or seven years have passed since I've really played, and I'm heartsick for competitive sports. Problem is...they're hard to come by. If I was a man and loved mediocre basketball I'd have a million chances to get dribbling. Women's volleyball? Might as well forget it. Even this guys' group only had a couple slots for court-time all season. Well. I had fun those two times.

This woman is a nice granny from whom I like to buy vegetables, produce she grows herself. Oddly enough, she got ahold of some crumpled up faith-literature and saved it for me wrapped up in a plastic bag, "You Western people know about this right? I don't really get it."

Friend's new baby.

These young'uns, all fresh out of undergraduate programs, are my kind classmates. We had Western Sociological Theory and Chinese Society together this semester. They're all sociology majors; I'm the only culutral anthro major. Here we are in my living room eating lunch together.

At home, "Are You My Mother?" has been read in a frequency disproportionate to that of all other stories.

Babysitting a Showman kiddo. In this scene we are digging next to the excavated tomb of an ancient king of Changsha. Unfortunately we did not uncover any priceless artifacts that day, just some bricks.

Guys sent Matt off to Texas with one last outdoor Chinese BBQ, one last round of Tsingtaos. Seriously Matt we miss your grin and all that scintillating conversation.