All quiet on the blogging front

For the last few weeks, things have been quiet on this blog. Well, I've been busy being on vacation in the Netherlands, catching up with family and friends, and getting over a tragic loss of the Dutch in the finals of the World Cup Soccer. For a while I was too depressed to write a note!

Lots of things have changed though. This week, Paul flew to China, and with his arrival there on July 21 (yesterday), we have now "officially" moved to China. Or at least as far as the World Bank is concerned. The boys and I will be joining Paul in China on August 5.

A snippet of today's conversation between Paul and Simon:

Simon: "Where are you, dad?"
Paul: "In China."
Simon: "Where in China?"
Paul: "In Beijing."
Simon: "But where in Beijing?"

You see, we are zooming in on an actual location. And today Paul signed the lease for our new home in Beijing. Please send your letters and gift packages with stroopwafels, pepernoten, hagelslag and drop to:

203, Beijing Riviera,
No. 1 Xiang Jiang Bei Road,
Chaoyang District,
Beijing, PR China
PC：100103

And if you have an extra moment, you might add:

中国北京市朝阳区香江北路1号香江别墅203
邮编：100103

so the mail delivery person can read it as well. Hhm, I really don't know if you need the Chinese characters for the mail; probably not, but I'll let you know. I'll keep a copy of it in my wallet though, so I can show the taxi driver where to go when I want to go home :-)

The End of the World

Dear reader (all four of you), today I woke up feeling worried for the first time about my upcoming adventure. And my worry was not about Chinese culture, language, food, work, school, or any other logical thing a person might worry about, but it was entirely about our house in the suburbs. Yes, my friends, we will live in a house in the suburbs and I am nervous about that.

Of course it is not by accident that we are moving there: The school is close by, you can live in a house, and your kids can bike around a cute little neighborhood. Making friends should be relatively easy, as all your neighbors speak English and are kind of like you: Expats (short for expatriates: persons living in another country than their own) living in a tiny European-American bubble just outside Beijing.

And that is the problem: We'll be just outside Beijing in a European-American bubble. How will I practice my Chinese? How to get delicious fresh noodles within five steps from my home? How to get my hair cut by a Chinese hair dresser who doesn't know curly hair?

I am afraid to report that we have opted for easiness, a good school, and the joy of living in a house and close to the school. I am sad though it will diminish our cultural experiences. In the U.S., we've always managed more or less to do like the Americans do (get overweight, get into debt... :-) ) and now we are already setting ourselves up to be somewhat separate from Beijing and its inhabitants.

On the positive end, we should blend in nicely in our new neighborhood. (I wonder if one day they'll read this blog :-) )

Home Sweet Home - if only I could say that in Chinese

We're getting closer to picking a house. It's kind of like buying shoes- you always end up buying the first ones you tried on. Well, we might end up renting a place in one of the first places we saw. Remember those neighborhoods for foreigners? Well, we're now closely looking at a house in one of them, in a neighborhood called Lanebridge. It would be very close to Simon and Thomas's school. Far from a busy city life, so I might try knitting or watching Chinese soap operas during the day. (OK friends, don't worry, I'll work as well, and we'll make sure to get out of our sheltered expat neighborhood for some tai chi in the park with the locals. After my Italian cooking class and cocktails with the neighbors that is :-) ).

Meanwhile, I am progressing with my Chinese classes and I am loving it. What's not to like about learning a new language? Here's some of what I like.

1. You definitely know you are learning. Just weeks ago, I couldn't speak a word, not even understand where one word ended and another began. And now I at least have some insights on how this language holds together and I can even ask for the bathroom in Chinese! (That's more important than Ni hao if you ask me.)

2. Writing is like drawing. It's of course not particularly easy to learn all the characters that you need to read or write Chinese --- and I think there are plenty of people speaking excellent Chinese without knowing the characters --- I happen to always like reading and writing, so understanding the characters is important to me. And making those little pictures is just like drawing. So instead of cartoons I draw a little picture and call it "ya" (teeth), or "zao" (early morning), or "xi" (washing). (OK, can you tell my homework (gong ke) was about getting up in the morning?

3. It's fun to think that the language you are learning is really spoken by so many. Of course there are still plenty of Chinese who use their own local languages, but still, this should be a skill that is going to help me order Chinese for a long time to come.

It's not all fun and games though. Just last night I was ready to tear my hair (tou fa) out over a listening exercise. I was supposed to hear if the tone of a word was the first (steady), second (going up), third (going down then up), or fourth (going down) tone. It reminded me of my recorder lessons as a kid, when my teacher played two keys on the piano and asked me which one was higher. How is it possible NOT to hear which one is higher? I am going to have to train my ear to hear these differences more clearly, so that I don't accidently get run over by a horse ("ma", third tone) when I am calling for my mom ("ma" first tone).

Speaking of calling, Thomas is calling from upstairs. He must be on Chinese time...

China, here we come... some day

Regularly now people ask me if I am getting ready for our move. Well, I guess we are, but right now it feels like we are taking baby steps towards our big hop across the ocean. There is plenty to be done though, so to give you an idea, here is a list of our ongoing preparations (or at least the stuff I think about, whether I act on it or not!):

• House: We will rent out our house, so I've been meeting with our real-estate agent and friend to see what the options are and what a management agency would do for us.
  
• Chinese classes: Paul and I are taking lessons in Mandarin. Three to four times a week we sit down with our private teachers (we have different ones on different days) to practice conversations, read and pronounce Pinyin (Chinese written up in roman letters rather than foreigners), and read and write some basic Chinese characters. I love it - I've always loved learning languages and there is nothing like learning a language when you know you actually will be needing it.
  
• Work: I am still working my regular job and will do so for another couple of weeks. More than anything, this is what keeps me from thinking too much about our upcoming move. I think that once I leave my job in mid-May, reality will quickly settle in. Paul has already started working for the Beijing office on March 1 and as we speak (or type) is already in China for an office retreat.
  
• Schools and home: So we found a school, as I reported recently. We also finally decided that we are going to give up on the idea of living in the city, and we will temporarily "retire" to the suburbs (or "LaLaLand", as my friend Lisa calls it). It will be close to Simon and Thomas' school and I am sure we'll all be making lots of friends in that area. Paul has been looking at some more houses this week, and we may find one soon that will become our new residence!
  
• Contacts: Many people have put me in touch with their friends, former neighbors, or family members in Beijing, so occasionally I need to really manage my Gmail to stay on top of all the Beijing correspondence. I have totally run out of questions to ask, though I am sure that means nothing for the amount of surprises we'll run into once there.
  
• Shipping and cleaning-up: One thing I am looking forward to is selecting the few items I would like to take to Beijing, and finding meaningful places to go for all the other stuff in our house. After 10 years in the U.S. and about 8 in DC, we've collected quite a melting pot of items. I plan to give the kids' clothes to some friends, have a big yard sale sometime in the end of May, and then bring all the rest of the unwanted items to the Salvation Army. The rest, we'll have the movers pack up and ship to China.
  
• Buying: Just before we leave, we'll also have to buy some items that are a little harder to get in China. People have recommended bringing items like flashlights and batteries (not readily available), tampons (too expensive), and shampoo (local brands to harsh). I don't know what my China adventure is going to look like, but at least I can wash my hair in the dark. I am leaving the chopsticks at home.
  
• Visas and tickets: The World Bank will pay for our flight to China, so we'll just need to buy our tickets once we know when we go. Our current plan is actually that I would go to the Netherlands first, with the boys, and then go to Beijing a little bit later in the summer, a few weeks before school starts. A nice summer in Holland is not a bad idea. Once in China, we'll have to convert our entry visas into a more permanent visum for living there.
  
• Work in Beijing: I haven't given this too much thought yet, but I do have some ideas for what I want to be doing in Beijing. My ideal job would involve working with technical experts or other professionals in Beijing, in organizations and at Universities, to help them strengthen their English writing. That way, I get to do what I love (work with text and people) and learn a lot about Chinese culture and arts and sciences. Yep, that would be cool. In terms of things to do though, I'll need to update my resume and start reaching out to some contacts in Beijing.

Well, I think this might be enough for a list of things on my mind. I hope your list is a tad shorter!

Apartment Buildings

We did actually see more in our week in Beijing than just shopping malls. Not usually listed in the Beijing travel guides but definitely a recommendation: Visit all the expat living locations. Or at least, that is what we did.

While surrounded by a billion Chinese, the typical expat scenario seems to be to live together with other foreigners in a fancy high rise apartment building, with broad band Internet, HBO or BBC, access to a pool, and the occassional kid's playground. Not that I am complaining, because all those places looked very nice. Sometimes we would point at another apartment building and ask our real estate agent from iHouse about it, and she would just say: "you won't like it, it's not for expats." And I have to say that the one time we did not listen to her advice and insisted we wanted to visit a certain complex -- a set of houses in the city mostly inhabited by Japanese (and not that they aren't expats either!)-- we did indeed not like it very much.

So what did we see? Here's a partial list:

Park Avenue Apartments: Nicely located at the bottom of Chaoyong Park (kind of a Central Park like in New York, but with more amusement park type features). Pros: Seems OK-ish for kids, close to huge park, nice swimming pool and coffee place, and comes with air filters to reduce the pollution indoors. Cons: It's a huge appartment building complex. I am not typically afraid of heights but didn't particularly feel at ease on the 32nd floor. (Though the view was great. Maybe I can get a poster of the view.)

Seasons Park Apartments: Nice neighborhood and cool outdoor pool. It was really close to some restaurants and stores, but from what I learned later was not the easiest place to build up a new community as mostly everyone was out during the day for work. (This may be true everwhere, but it sounded like some apartment buildings had more of a community life than others).

Area around Workers Stadium: We visited a couple different apartments here. I can't for the life of me remember specifics -- the big blur is already setting in--, but it is a nice area, conveniently not too far from Paul's work. Unfortunately though none of the places I remember as particularly kid friendly. I think the boys can be "fine" in many places, but either a balcony or decent area to kick around a ball would be helpful.

CBD Area, the Central Business District. We looked at one or two apartments here, and while nice, the area itself is just too much of a... well, a business area. Lots of shops and offices, but despite some nice landscaping I could count the trees on one hand. (Well, 4 hands perhaps, but you know what I mean).

And then, let's skip over to a whole other opportunity: To live outside the city in an expat compound. Very close to the Western Academy of Beijing (WAB), a school we've been looking at, is the Beijing Riviera, and also a neighborhood called LaneBridge. Expat communities all come with nice, romantic vacation names (one of my favorites is "Euroville" in the Shunyi area, though "Yosemity" is a close second in the names department). So the Beijing Riviera is a nice neighborhood with western-style house in a gated community. Its club house is the most active of all the communities apparently and has a swimming pool, restaurant, store, and lots of activities for the kids and parents. (Can't picture it? Think "Center Parks" in Holland, but then with bigger houses and people living there all year round.)

And LaneBridge.... well the only way to picture that is to visualize a pretty common neighborhood in Holland. Unbelievable, just like home. Including the bikes against the houses and a watery sun in the sky. (Or was that the pollution?). Very nice neighborhood and directly across from the WAB School. If we go for a Dutch lifestyle -- walk to school, brown bread with cheese, and biking in the streets -- we would have to live here. Except for the fact that you have to drive to work.

What else? We saw some apartments around San Li Tun, a fun neighborhood with lots of restaurants and events. Two duplexes (a mini "house" in an apartment building, because you have two floors connected by an internal stairs) were pretty cool. You felt like you were in a house while being in an appartment. (That is, until you tried to walk outside). Then we also saw a house in a "hutong", be it a fancy huton western style, but very pretty. And also a nice Apartment Building in East Lake Villas. (We can't live in the villa's, but we can look out over them! :-) )

After visiting all these places, we really weren't so clear on where we should live. One day with were all excited about LaneBridge (the "Dutch" neighborhood), the other day we were convinced we had to be in the city to be close to work. It's an interesting dilemma - we'll see in a few months where we'll end up!