HKG031: A Proclamation by Livie

this is our brand new, very own water hotter. isn't he cute? i am thrilled to have him...beats boiling water on the stove and trying to pour it into a relatively small coffee cup without incident.

bug asked me to take her picture. good lord, she's cute!

livie took this picture of us together while we were snuggling on the couch.

self portrait in motion

today was a day of discovery. before the discovery, though, was some absolute insanity borne of my having not changed my computer clock to reflect local time...it still shows texas time.

i called two different doc offices to schedule an appt. for livie this morning. the first office hung up on me as soon as i began speaking. the second office was much more helpful and scheduled an appointment. the proposed appointment time was 11:30. my computer clock read 9:30 when i agreed to the appointment time. perfect...plenty of time to get ready and get down there with time to spare. well. no. not when it was actually 10:30 a.m. here and the 9:30 was p.m. in texas. after putzing around for a half hour before realizing my mistake with the clock, we made it by the skin of our teeth...this included dragging both kids out the door as fast as possible, racing to the wellcome to get cash, hurrying up a hill to stand somewhere visible to flag a taxi, flagging at least three taxis before one finally stopped, and then sitting in a bit of traffic. even with all of this, we walked into the office only 7 minutes past our appointment time. we left the apartment at about 12 minutes after 11...you see how fast all this craziness occurred?!

livie's appointment was a breeze...a little too easy, actually. i am not sure if i love socialized medicine or am suspicious of it. after a brief interview, the doc prescribed livie some augmentin...no pee in a cup (poor kid was overflowing with the 15 oz of apple juice i had her chug on the way over in the taxi), but he did take her temp, palpate her tummy, and thump on her back. it just felt too easy. the easiest part was the prescription...we didn't have to go anywhere. it was filled for us right there in the dr.'s office. that ROCKED.

after the appointment, i took us to mcd's for lunch. that was insane. INSANE. the place was super crowded. we had to shove our way through the crowd and ended up sharing a table with an unsuspecting expat. it turned out to be a good thing, because i began talking with this young woman and found out that she also is new in country and is having some of the same struggles we are. it was nice to not feel alone in some of our difficulties, but it was also a little bit sad to see someone else having the same struggles.

we caught the shuttle home, q actually took a real nap in his room and mostly on his bed, and we had a splendid afternoon hangin' out at the house watching playhouse disney in chinese (we saw angelina ballerina in chinese today and we saw the mickey mouse clubhouse in chinese). we also went to the park and played for almost 2 hours.

the proclamation of the day came from my bug. she was working on these parallel bars, trying to climb up them in a bear crawl like she saw a couple other girls do, and she had a couple of tough falls. being the dork that i am, i decided to give her a live demonstration. 30 seconds into said demonstration, livie loudly proclaimed "mom, you are being really weird right now!!!" bwahahahahahaha...little does my daughter know that i gave up on dignity long ago and will now live for embarrassing her :-) okay. not really, but this incident was kinda fun!

later on at the park, livie made a friend around her age, and i got a chance to talk to the girl's mom...an expat from australia. she had a lot of wisdom to share, and i thoroughly enjoyed talking to her. she commiserated with our struggles, told me she had the same struggles at first, and gave me great advice on how to make things easier/better for all of us.

tonight's been pretty low key...simple dinner, some play, bath, and bed. thor and i have been working hard on our relationship, and together we are nearly done with the gigantic backlog of laundry we moved here with. i have nailed down a pretty good system of using the most efficient wash cycle and combining line drying with a shorter machine dry cycle. this has worked great b/c it has not rained for a few days. i will have to develop a new plan for rainy days....i am eyeballing all the places around the apartment that can act as clothes lines :-)

i'm livin' on the edge here...i bet you envy my jet setting life of making and getting to doctor appointments, surviving mcdonald's, giving climbing demonstrations, and laundry planning, dontcha ;-p