There are good and bad language days

Well there are good and bad language days.  Luke's having, shall we say, a bad language day.  His class wasn't exactly encouraging today and he just feels frustrated.  He's now looking at a different Chinese language book, character sheets and scratching his head (really).  As I finish this entry, he's now on skype and his two teachers are on too.  One of them wrote and said, "I heard you were depressed today after your lesson."  Who needs subtleness?  They're now all discussing his dilemmas and what happened.  I find it all quite hilarious.  I want to speak Chinese and out comes Spanish. Language learning feels quite slow.  This morning after William woke up, I studied and wondered when I'll actually be able to communicate more than I can now.

This was one of those "ohh no, his bare legs are showing!" moments.  I really defend the fact that I don't think he's cold.  And with grandparents overseeing everything, you'll see that he's now safely strapped into his buggy.  Our safety measures definitely improved while they were here/looking.

Today I had a walk around our apartment complex.  I went up and talked to a grandma with her grand baby.  When I say talked, it's all quite minimal!  But we hung out together and some other parents came by and the babies and kids had a poke at each other.  There was a class of about 20 kids around ages 3 and 4 where we were;  as I was watching, they all stood in a line and then surprisingly pulled down their pants and went to the bathroom on the grass.  I hadn't quite seen anything like it before.  They all finished, the teachers got them in order and off they went.  All of a sudden, I was thankful that I didn't sit on the grass and now realize that grass is always more dangerous than it looks.

As I was walking back, a friend greeted me and then came up to my apartment.  She's eight months pregnant and due in about 3 weeks.  We had a talk (with google translation - thanks google) about all that's ahead (birth, feeding, weaning, etc.) and it was really good.  She's looking forward to spending more time together before her baby's due and when I'm not studying.  I'm going to write to La Leche League, I need to get on board over here.

We're finding many things encouraging, but not everything is always smooth and straight-forward.  William's doing great, crawling everywhere and pulling himself up (and crashing sometimes), and finally sleeping through the night (good job Luke for holding down the fort with controlled crying.  It was a rough, very rough, few nights, but it's been worth it).

My cooking isn't doing great.  I have fruit, veggies and so much fresh stuff but I don't know what to make!  I made pasta with chicken and felt like a new woman.  I have a friend who's putting together a cookbook for me and I've heard the More with Less book is great.  There's hope.

In celebration of Easter and friends, we were made an apple crumble.  Yes friends, we made it in our new miracle oven directly from Nepal (thanks Richard and Sylvia!)

 

It worked!  It tasted great:)

And we enjoyed a nice meal with friends.

Walking around at a park.  William was restless so I put him in the sling.  

You can walk around the park or you can drive.  I figure it'd be fun to set up teams and race around here.  There is a big board with rules on it at the entrance, but I don't think car racing is a restricted activity.

Granddad's feeding William 

Ok, time to say good-night!  Zaijian