Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas all!!! By wishing you all a Merry Christmas, I am not as politically correct as Fox, I was watching a NFL game earlier that before every break they would flash a graphic saying Happy Holidays, I mean come on, we know what Holiday everyone is about to celebrate, just say it. I am currently watching the Ravens play Seattle live and well, its not the funnest game to watch if you are a Ravens fan (note it is about halftime as a write this).

I won't let the game bring me down, we are about to go to Sanya to stay at the Hilton for Christmas, I will update you all on our trip after we get back later this week.

Happy What???

Last year we began a new tradition of making a birthday cake in celebration of Jesus' birth on Christmas Day. Renee is doing a talk with the high school and middle school students today at church and wanted to go through some of the traditions that different families have at Christmas, including ours of baking a birthday cake. In her haste, Renee wrote the following on the cake:

I guess we have been in China too long as our spelling is getting pretty bad. But indeed, Happy Birtdady Jesus.

Christmas Party

Last weekend we celebrated a Christmas Party with our small group from our church over here in Shanghai. Here are some pictures that include the nice spread of food for our big meal (unlike Thanksgiving, we got to enjoy turkey at this party).

As a part of the program, we got to sign Christmas Carols and the children decorated the Christmas tree above. Besides the incident of Jacob walking around with the turkey carving knife, and the incident where Jacobs fingers were almost crushed in a door, fun was had by all.

What are you teaching the kids?

So there are many things that get lost in translation and words that are used in posters and other displays that just appear to be wrong. Can you see the word that made me take a double take in this kids poster?

Yes, that's right folks, here in China, M is for Fondle????? Even more apropos to the picture is the fact that it has an adult with a baby in it. Fondle and babies are just two things you don't see put together in the US ... unless the statement is followed by going to jail. I am not sure what this picture is trying to teach my kids, but whatever it is, I think it is a lesson that we will skip over.

Hammer Hands

I am typically the first one up in the mornings and sometimes I am awoken by my alarm right next to my bed. The other night Maddie wasn't feeling great, so she ended up sleeping in the bed with Renee and I. Somehow, over the course of the night, Maddie rolled over and was laying on both my arms. When the alarm went off that next morning at around 5:30am, I moved my arms out from underneath her only to find that I had no feeling in both my hands and I basically couldn't move any of my fingers. So I attempted to turn off the alarm, by at first trying to gently turn off the alarm, then after about 10 seconds of the thing blaring, I started to just pound at it as if I had a hammer in my hands. After about 30 seconds I finally hit the alarm in the right place and it went off, but it was too late, both Renee and Maddie were awoken by 30 seconds of the alarm blaring in the room. Oh well, an early morning for us all.

Apparently, I'm the government

I still have my office telephone number for my phone in the US, thus if anyone calls, they are greeted with my message telling them that I am overseas and if they need anything that they should contact the receptionist. I have yet to get any voice messages through my first year and half here in China, until this past week. I guess even having an away message will not keep the idiots away.

Last week I checked my US email (which, if you are not up to speed with technology, our voice messages in the US get sent to right to our email inbox, if you didn't know that and you live in China, I understand, this is the same place where I don't even have voicemail at my place of work) and found the following message waiting for me.

"Hello….is this the government? I want to thank you for the good work you did in the community and this is Dennis Prince and I want to compliment you. Thank you very much, goodbye."

Not sure who this Dennis Prince guy is, but I guess he thinks there is some general number out there that you can call and give compliments to the government for all that they do. Either somehow my number was confused with that fantastic sounding phone number or my number is actually that number people should call. While I want to believe that it is not the latter, I can believe that in my 5 years of working at my Company that there would only be 1 phone call complimenting the government for their work in the community, so my search for an answer goes on.