Michael's Birthday and our sense of community

Today was Michael's birthday, so we headed out to the vegetarian restaurant near the temple. After we were seated, the waitress gleefully present me with an umbrella -- I recognized it right away -- I left it there about 6 weeks ago...I was so surprised, since I assumed it was just lost, and all this time they were waiting to give it back to me! The owner of the restaurant came out during dinner to chat about the kids (I have this conversation down in perfect Chinese.."are they all yours?"..."yes we have three children" "..is she [Helen] Chinese?" "Yes the girls are adopted" [in Chinese "shou yang" 收养]...at least she sent out a plate of beautifully carved fruit for our trouble :)

After dinner we waled back home through the temple grounds at twilight, and who is walking out of the inside gate, but our favorite monk! the one who gave Sophia the image of the black Buddha way back in the fall. He recognized us and tried to explain some new calligraphy on the temple wall to me. With my improved Chinese I could tell it was something about the mountain...but that's about it! The monks had been hosting some kind of evening gathering and many people, maybe family members? were walking out at that time -- but such a coincidence to run into him. He loves us because Michael is a philosopher, and also Sophia made a big impression on him. Back to the apartment for a "world religion" theme birthday..with a pagoda cake, homemade in our toaster oven...


Prayer beads from Thomas

And from me, a Buddha image in a leather pouch from the antique store in Lijiang, and just to be fair, the three Taoist deities I picked up at the flea market here.

The video is educational for the children who read the blog -- learn to sing Happy Birthday in Chinese! Here are the words in pinyin and characters:
Zhu ni sheng ri kuai le...(repeat 4 times)
祝 你 生日 快乐 !!


Tomorrow morning Michael is going fly out to give some papers in Shanghai at Fudan University, and he decided to take Thomas along, since he has tomorrow off of school anyway, and can get to see Shanghai. They are taking the laptop along to amuse Thomas in the hotel room while Michael is lecturing, so it may be a few days until I can blog again.

In addition to the incidents of happy connection described above..a sense of belonging has settled over us of late. With kids at 3 different schools, 2 on campus, me in school and all Michael's students and colleagues, we have begun to have the sense that we are always seeing someone we know. It's just like Buffalo! Especially Sophia's school, which is in our neighborhood on campus, is a hub of familiarity. Everyone with little kids in tow for blocks around it seems, knows her name. I see my morning Tai Chi folks in the afternoon picking up their grandkids. and of course we have become very friendly with parents at Helen's bus stop. They are forever translating notes from school for me and are willing to chat in English after I humbled myself in Chinese to them!

This week I taught English in Sophia's class for the first time, just for about 10-15 minutes. They were adorable, but a little confused by me! We'll have to take it slow. Although, Sophia is picking up Chinese songs pretty fast, so we'll see.

To top off this feeling of well being, this week I started meeting someone to exchange oral English/Chinese with them. At first I didn't want to do it because I am feeling a little stretched, but the person who asked me to meet this woman is someone I respect, so I agreed. I am SO glad I did! The woman turned out to be one of the most interesting people I have met in China, so interesting that I really am not going to say too much about her in the blog, because I want to respect her confidentiality. But we have many things in common, and had a terrific talk about her life and work, and I am learning the answers to many questions I have about China...