This is Teac after his first haircut... and I should add after mom's first attempt at cutting the hair of a wiggling little boy. Ayi (our nanny) says I should just do it while he's asleep. He was getting a little shaggy around the ears so I just trimmed up the sides...the top is still his natural crazy hair. I compared his color with the baggie I have from my first hair cut and they are almost the identical color.
James thinks I should have just left well enough alone. :) 

At only $2 each I figure I can afford to attempt to keep some plants alive and enjoy the green. :) 

Rice spread out on a driveway. 

Harvesting rice. They aparently put it in bundles, separate the rice from the stalks, then let the rice dry outside on the mats, and then they have to pound/shake/crush the edible rice from the husks. Some of the farmers had it laid out on the roads and their driveways to let the cars rolling over it help with the work. 

Farm house (wealthy farmer) next to the fields. 

Rice fields- this was about an hour drive outside of Chengdu. 

Just outside the preserve all the land was being used for farming. This is a rice field that has been harvested. You can see the rice drying out on the bamboo mats. 

Here we are walking at the preserve to the bear grave yard since some of them don't survive, even after they are rescued. 

There is a bear there named Zoe. 

They have received permission to rescue up to 500 bears. Compared to their previous conditions, these bears are in paradise. 

You can't tell in this picture, but the bears have a large yellow moon crest accross their chests. 

This is us checking out one of the bear enclosures. Moon Bears or Asiatic Black Bears are currently farmed for their bile in China and other eastern countries. They are kept in horrible conditions and the bile that is prescribed in traditional medicine is easily replaced by other things. Here is the link to learn more. http://www.animalsasia.org/index.php?module=2&lg=en 

On Saturday we were invited to go with a group to a moon bear rescue preserve. This is us giving the kids snacks, waiting for it to open. 

Zoe's first day of school at home with mom! 

Marlo getting into the school van and one of her teachers Ms. Gao on her first day of school. 

Marlo's 1st day of school. 

We all know how much James loves to play Trivial Pursuit. This is a picture of the team (Alice, Me, and Stephanie) that beat him and Matt Saturday night..... We had a blast. James couldn't believe it- it was the first time he has ever lost! :) 

Teac speaks

This morning Teac woke up before us all as usual so I put him out in
the living room to watch TV and play. About 10 mins. later we heard,
"ma ma- ma ma, ba ba" so clearly that James and I both woke up and I
ran in to get him. He said it again while we played with him on the
bed. Ma ma is pretty universal for mommy, and ba ba is Chinese for
daddy. Very fun!! He has said ma ma several times since then, but not
ba ba... maybe James just doesn't have anything he wants right now. :)

Luke is a year younger so we figure it isn't anything serious. 

Zoe modeling bear slippers :) 

Here are some of the kids from the consulate at the pajama party we went to last week. They had a great time together running around past their bed time. 

I got to go to the opening of a National Geographic picture exibit with the consulate. They took my picture with another woman from the consulate and put it in the local english language newspaper. Now I'm really famous! :) 

Look mom! One hand! 

Raaar, must eat Papi! 

I went shopping with a friend today to the wholesale silk market. Silk brocade fabrics for about $1.50-$3.00 US /meter... I got the silver/purple ones to have chinese dresses made for the girls, and the black one for a dress for me. The red was just too great with the beautiful dragons so I bought some. They have all colors, royal blues, olive greens, turquoise, pink, lavender, orange...and solids too. These are very light weight but they also have some that are quite heavy that you could use for upholstry- still others have metalic threads woven in. Oh the things I could decorate :) . . . 

This is after Teac's first experience with rice cereal. This is the face that says, "why mom, why are you giving this to me?" After the novelty of the first couple of bites wore off, he started consciously trying to spit it back out. 

Lunch today

When we first got here, our friend made the comment that it was so
weird for him that he was doing the ordering at restaurants. It seems
to be an unwritten rule that the person at the table that speaks the
best Chinese orders for the group. Well, our friend had lived in
Beijing for 2 years and has been here for a year, so to me, it seemed
about time that he could order.
Anyway, we have only been here 2 1/2 months and when we went out to
eat noodles today, I was the one at the table with the best
Chinese...that was really scary because we really didn't know what we
were getting- other than what type of meat it was and that it came
with noodles :). It seems to be a general problem here in China
because a good portion of the menus include pictures. So even if you
do speak Chinese you still may not get what you thought.

So today could either be counted as a kudos day (I ordered in Chinese
at a Chinese restaurant) or a scary day-- we'll see how my stomach
feels in the morning. :)

Michelle

Teac cut tooth #4- top right front. He is also crawling... sort of. He doesn't really like his knees to be on the ground, especially on the hard wood floors- I can't blame him. So he dives to his belly, pulls forward with both hands at the same time and then pushes up onto his toes. Splat and repeat. Sometimes he will get both of his hands working one at a time in sync. I am trying to convince his Papi that it isn't safe any more to leave a glass plate on the coffee table, or a laptop computer on the couch... He pulled up in his crib for the first time today too. I turned around and he was just standing there, holding on. He is an amazingly good natured kid but it took him a whole 1/2 hour tonight to forgive me for giving him a bath (which he usually loves) when what he really wanted was to eat and fall asleep. After eating however, he decided what his sisters were doing was much more fun, and so he climbed down to play with them for an hour before zonking out. 

Our final shipment arrived last Wednesday. This is what the girls room looked like after we pulled out most of the boxes. You should have seen what it looked like while they "helped" unpack with the boxes in the room. I think after living without most of our things for almost a year, we have come to the conclusion that we have much more than we need and too many things can be quite a pain in the neck.
The girls however, have been having the time of their lives. Today they played dress-up, kitchen, ran through their blues-clues sprinkler (thank you friends), drew pictures, and made sand castles in their swim suits. They took a shower without complaint, ate all their dinner, and went quickly to bed. A very good day. 

"Girls in the Mist" 

After a short picnic lunch Marlo was ready to go again and just had to see what that giant tea pot was all about. Zoe and I followed soon there after and the clouds rolled in creating a mystical mist. 

After descending hundreds of stairs we finally made it to the bottom. James took Teac about 1/2 way and our friend provided a human mule ride for Zoe on the steep parts. And why wouldn't there be a giant tea pot fountain on the mountain of the birth place of tea? 

We wisely chose to ride the gondola up the mountain and then with the help of gravity walked all the way down... 

Interesting Buddah in the background where you can pray and give thanks for good tea. 

When chinese people carv into trees... 

Fun translations are everywhere... 

Cool carved wall. It looked the same on the other side as we walked up the sandstone ramp. That is Rafia our downstairs neighbor. 

This is a really interesting carving. It is of a dragon and when it rains his feet are dry and when it doesn't rain, like the day we were there, his feet are wet. You can see how dark they are. 

These are tea bushes... in case you ever wondered what they look like.