This should be 6 posts...

Okay, duly chastised, I will return to the blog tonight to catch up on the past 12 days of life.

I have a string of things to write about, none of which are vaguely related, so as the title suggests...it should be broken up...but, I'm going to smash it all into one...I'll write until the New Guys compel me to leave the keyboard.

1)  Fall is here.

It came on Tuesday night.

On Tuesday (which was the last day of classes for us before our "Mid-Autumn Festival 3 day...sort of...holiday") it was 93 degrees.  To celebrate our 3 day holiday (giving us Wed-Fri "off" school), we hung out for dinner with the Wu family down at one of our local restaurants.  It was so hot and humid that we nearly didn't stay for dinner as the AC was not on in the restaurant.  The weather forecast had said that the next day, on Mid-Autumn Festival, the weather would cool considerably...no joke.

That night, while we rested in our beds, the wind blew and we awoke to a high Wednesday of 63 degrees.  For those of you keeping score at home, that was a 30 degree temperature drop in one night.  According to the forecast, it will not warm up again...it has stayed in the 65 degree range for the duration of the festival...so it seems that someone switched off the furnace for the winter.  It is supposed to be getting cold, soon.

It is said of our city here that we have Summer and Winter...no Fall or Spring...in our third year...we concur.

2)  At the aforementioned restaurant, one of our many offspring needed to go use the WC mid-dinner.  We are quite used to the bathroom conditions Here...in fact our children never even mention when we enter a particularly fragrant facility...they speedily go about their business and then quickly evacuate.

But, knowing that some folks love to read about "differences" between Here and There...I'll let you in on the WC in our local restaurant.

It was a customary "squatty potty" but this one was apparently the community head for all the employees (who also live upstairs from the restaurant.)  The window was propped open, big bugs on the screen outside were buzzing loud enough to be heard over the over-worked and under-powered fan.  On the window sill, various cups cluttered every available inch and held within them toothpaste tubes, toothbrushes and bars of soap. (Obviously these were for each individual employee when he/she had time in the restaurant's sole bathroom.)  A few towels hung around from rusty nails in the walls...but what really caught my attention in this somewhat "normal" scene was when I went to wash the offspring's hands in the sink.  Just to the right of the faucet...

...a man's razor ...just like we were visiting our neighbor's bathroom in their home and the man of the house forgot to stow his razor in the cabinet before he left the bathroom that morning...but it was the "public" restroom in the restaurant. 

3)  Bulldozing.

It is completely overstated and somewhat cliche to say that this nation is involved in a massive make-over.  It would be a reality show too enormous to shoot and you would not believe it if you watched it...the scope of it completely blows us away.

When we first came to this city in 2006, we saw a good amount of the "old city"...this means dating back to the 50's and 60's.

When we returned to the city in 2007... our good friend here took us around to show us the "improvements" that had been made.  Blocks upon city blocks that had been torn down and rebuilt...in one year.  We thought it was amazing and stated as such to our friend.

Then it was sort of "passerby interesting"...now it's offensive.

In just our third year here we have experienced the radical demolition/remaking in various sites we frequent.  (Keeping in mind that we have no car, must utilize the bus system to get around, this significantly limits the areas of the city we can "frequent.")

Last year our teammate, Mrs. Wu found a wonderful massage clinic staffed by highly trained individuals with visual impairments.  One day she was there...when she returned a few days later...the entire block was gone.  Bulldozed.

Then this year, my beloved headed out for the nearly 2 hour, one-way trip to the "pet market" that we've posted about on this blog before...when he arrived at the site...it was leveled.  A very vibrant 4 city-block long pet market with scores of merchants...had been wiped away...bulldozed.

When he inquired about it he was told by the one remaining goldfish dealer..."they have all gone traveling."  Hmmmm...the equivalent of the "gone fishin'" concept?

Then just this week, two more sites...a plant market near our home...wiped clean...and vegetable market...GONE. 

We have a friend, a local lady, who was a farmer.  She was a farmer until her land was required for some development.  That was the end of it.

It makes one feel unsettled...that the constant drumbeat of modernization and change reminds all our neighbors...and ourselves...that wherever we are...it is only temporary.

4)  Holidays.

I already wrote about our "3 day holiday" for Mid-Autumn Festival.  But, really it is only a 1 day holiday, but you get three days off together by reformatting the work weeks around the Festival...we must work on Saturdays and Sundays to "make up" for the "extra two days off" around the holiday.

Today we went to school.  It is Saturday.  Tomorrow we will go to school...and for the next 6 days...Saturday through Thursday...so that we can "take the holiday" off from October 1-7 for the National Day celebration.

Many of our neighbors will travel home to see family during the festival as so many in this nation spend the better part of each year living away from family....even husbands and wives separated for most of the year...thus the need to give us the seven day "holiday" so people can get to their families and home towns a long, long way away...and back again.

It still feels really odd to us.

5)  Spicy food.

We love spicy food.  Well, actually Daddy LOVES spicy food and some of the rest of us like pretty-spicy food.  The city in which we live is renowned for its hot and spicy entrees.  Of our four kiddos from this province, three (the boys) can all hang with spicy pretty well...one of the New Guys can match Daddy pepper for pepper in an eating contest.

Daddy, when he cooks for us, is always trying to broaden the horizons of the other kids who are not so into spicy.

Tonight was no exception.

He bought some pork and vegetables from the local market and prepared them so nicely...then just before adding them to the wok...he added a couple "lumps" worth of oily/red pepper/and other peppers we don't know the names for but are crazy hot, sauce.

The kids, hungry and eager to eat Dad's vittles got right into it...and within a few moments...the smell and sounds of fire burning flesh began around the table.  The kids, eyes wide-open, smoke pluming from their ears, panting and running for plain rice and water...tongues wagging side to side...began to moan..."Daddy it is so HOT!"

The taste was excellent...the peppers were so intense...the kids turned on the fan and stood in front of it trying to cool their burning lips.  Then the little ice packs we use for "injuries" came out and were applied to tongues and mouths...all the while Daddy and the New Guys are shoveling it in their mouths...

All of it was consumed...but I dare say...we have not "heard the last" of those peppers we ate tonight...We may need ice packs elsewhere tomorrow.

6)  We're sort of uptown now.

When we first moved here...we were WAY out of town.  In fact, two weeks after we moved into our development (we were the first ones in this building) they christened a "NEW BUSLINE" out in our area.  Bus 789 was to connect us to the rest of our little berg of 10 million people.

For at least the first 8 months we called it the "ghost bus" because we never really saw it.  We would wait for long, long intervals for the rumored 789 to pass our way...inevitably we would simply give up and find some other way into town.  Then at the main bus stop where the major shopping mall is, some 25 minutes away from us...we would stand with the throngs of bus riders watching dozens and dozens of buses come through the stop picking up their riders...but never a 789.

When we finally rode it a few times the buses on this route were way past their retirement years.  They had clearly been wrecked, parted-out, rotting on a junk yard somewhere before they had been called back into service for our little back-water route.  One time Magpie and I clamored onto a bus and sat in the back row where the floor was mostly rusted through and we could see major patches of the road through the floor at our feet!  The back doors had been replaced by slabs of wood that clumsily heaved open and slammed together, ill-fitting, before we puttered on to the next stop.  She was definitely NOT sea-worthy.

But progress has come to the ol' 789 line.

There is a massive new apartment development up the road from us that has been steadily filling with residents...and the route extended to pick up two stops worth of giddy groups of college students...so now...the over-capacity conditions have clearly gotten the notice of the big-bus-management guy behind the bus-managing desk...

so on Wednesday, while out shopping...we saw bus after bus...proudly bearing the newly painted (or taped on with a sign) 789...they have added scores of buses to the fleet...

but it gets better...

Bub shouted with glee as we stood waiting for one of our carriages to arrive at the stop...

"A 'DOUGLE' DECKER, MOMMA!" - (Daddy just loves this mis-speak by Bub for obvious reasons)

Yes dear friends...789 has gone big!

We now have THREE double-decker buses on our route.  (This is a major delight for this public-transit dependent family of 9)...

So we celebrated on the final day of our holiday...

We went out bus-riding on the 789...joy-riding if you will...like kids who just got their licenses...

or a family of 9 who knows how to party...

Front row, top deck seats, from the beginning of the line to the end and back home again...

Yeah, we're uptown now.