Christmas in Beijing

It's kind of difficult to get into the "Christmas spirit" when you live in China and are married to a Chinese man. We have a beautiful (fake) tree which he bought after our other fake tree was destroyed (by me). We have wrapped presents, which I of course wrapped, which are hiding under the desk so that Ollie won't try to throw them around the house for fun. I even sometimes play the Amy Grant Christmas and Motown Christmas albums I have always loved but still, it's not exactly feeling a lot like Christmas. Maybe I'm feeling like this because, for only the second time in my life, my parents and my sister and her family are not here anymore to celebrate with us on Christmas day. Maybe I'm just too old and grumpy to start feeling festive without the help of lit up houses and constantly played Christmas music. I look forward to when Ollie gets excited for the season, when I can share the Christmas story with him and he'll understand it and be in awe of it. I look forward to have a few more kids who can help Ollie put on a Christmas performance for us like my siblings and I did every single year no matter how old we were. And someday, perhaps we'll be able to celebrate Christmas in America. I do feel blessed, though, that this year Ollie and I are going to visit my parents in the UAE. I also feel blessed that despite not knowing what will happen with potential jobs, that God has a plan for me and is in total control even when I feel completely lost. Once I know more I'll tell you about these opportunities and whether or not they work out.
Here's an amazing shot of Ollie with the Chinese Santa who didn't want to hold him because he was afraid he would cry and make a scene. I wasn't having it. He got a donation for charity and was going to sit there and take it, damnit. Ollie wasn't that bad and didn't scream or anything and we got our little memory.


This is Ollie with his best friend, Berkley. We went to Joy City Chaoyang to see if there was a Santa since I had seen a pretty amazing display during the day. There was no Santa but people lined up to take a picture of their kid (and themselves) on this heart chair. So of course we did too. This was taken on the stairs while we waited.

December 10, 2011 as documented by our new camera, the Canon S100V

Cookies and More Cookies

When I was growing up, I would see my mom bake different cookies and then hide them until it was time to make up a plate of assorted cookies to give away or to use as refreshments at a party. Wow, refreshments. I sound like I'm a hundred years old. Anyway, I would always find out where they were hiding and sneak cookies all month. I was good about being sneaky, just ask my sister. She can tell you when I ate all of her Easter candy one year. I guess things haven't changed too much over the years as I still struggle with self-control. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that, I loved how there were always so many different kinds of cookies and even though she gave a lot away, there were always plenty to go out on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. My favorites were the peanut butter balls- I have yet to have a pb ball that could rival those ones we grew up with. My dad loved the cream cheese date rolls and I think everyone loved the Russian Teacake cookies. Last year I attempted to also come up with a cookie collection for Christmas and I did pretty well. The cookie swap we had didn't hurt one bit. We're doing it again this Saturday so I'm excited for that but in the meantime I'm getting to work on building my cookie collection.

A few days ago, I followed the recipe on the back of the bag of chocolate mint chips for double chocolate mint drop cookies (or something like that) and they were awesome. Last night I started making some spice cookies and they're pretty good too. The dough is supposed to be in the fridge over night so the spices' flavors come out even more so I'll make the rest of the cookies today. In the spirit of trying to make my Christmas cookies more... Christmassy, I discovered that some food coloring added to sugar could make some great colored sugar to sprinkle on the cookies.I also added cinnamon to the red sugar which will be awesome on top of the spice cookies. Pictures will be coming soon...

Thanksgiving and Christmas Trees

I can't even count how many times I have started an entry saying something like, "It's been way too long. I've been meaning to start writing regular blog entries and I'm starting now!" Well, no promises but I'm going to try. I've been bad about posting pictures of my son online so my family in the US and the UAE can see how he is growing. And boy is he growing! He's more and more independent and can play in his room while I type around the corner on my laptop so that's another reason I can do this. I CAN do this. My sister has an awesome blog where she posts recipes and gorgeous pictures of her daughter and I've enjoyed it so much over the past year and am inspired to try to do the same.

Before I talk about Thanksgiving, let me just update you on Ollie. His favorite breakfast food is eggs. He can easily finish two or three scrambled eggs and since I've begun to wean him 2 weeks ago, he's enjoying a cold glass of milk more as well. He also loves crackers and bread and after talking to others with kids his age, this is the norm. He loves ice cream so every time we go to the grocery store across the street and pass the Coldstone Creamery, he has to go inside and look through the glass at the different colored ice creams and make a little whining sound. Don't worry, Mom, we're not feeding him ice cream all the time but on occasion let him share some with us when it's time for a treat. If we had good ice cream over here, I'd be eating by the gallon for all of my meals which is a good reason that I don't live in the States right now. He loves "The Wheels on the Bus" and "My God is So Big" and he loves it when I pray for him before he goes to bed. We aren't quite sleeping through the night regularly although last week there was one night where he slept through the night. I think I can count on one hand the number of times he has done that and I would only use 2 or 3 of my fingers. I left a pot boiling the bones of a chicken to make some chicken broth and when I got up at 5am this morning to get Ollie some milk, saw that the pot was black and the burner was still on. Amazingly enough, since the fan was on, there was little smoke and the smell of burnt pot stayed confined to the tiny kitchen. Unfortunately the pollution was so bad int he night that that was all I could smell in any of our rooms. Obviously it is time to buy some serious air purifiers. Stat.

So last week was Thanksgiving and our good friends Wes and Kasha invited us over for a vegetarian meal. Wes is a master when it comes to making fake meat and he came through again with a tofurkey. Yes, that's right. He made a "turkey" out of tofu and it was good. Oh so good and healthy! Everything was delicious and I was so full I couldn't even fit any wine although I certainly tried! I ended up just feeling disgusting but I kind of expected that would happen. My contributions to the meal were some sickly sweet sweet potatoes, dry stuffing (I later realized I had used two bottles of sage and no thyme to season it which explains why it was off this year), a pumpkin cream cheesecake with a ginger cookie crust and salted caramel and pumpkin spice cupcakes with cream cheese and maple frosting. Yes, I know. They were good. I will try to find the recipes and post them soon but in the mean time here are some photos. I didn't get a chance to get a photo of the cheesecake once it was cut on plates but it wasn't very pretty anyway as it was too soft, but it tasted good! I swear!

Caramel and Pumpkin Cheesecake

Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting


Anyway, as soon as we had celebrated Thanksgiving, my plan was to put up the Christmas decorations. The decorations are tacky in the Chinese malls and obviously we all live in apartment downtown so there are no houses covered in lights so decorating our apartment is the only way to really feel like it's Christmas sad as that sounds. We had a fake tree from my parents which we used last year but as soon as we had it decorated, I knocked it over and then broke the top of it off. It's a long story, well not really, and it doesn't need to be told here. The main poibnt is that I ruined the tree so we had to throw it out and get a new one. The new one that my husband bought the next day was pricey but it's bigger and nicer although much harder to set up than the last one. Anyway, it's done now. It's beautiful at night and Ollie loves it (probably). So far our cat has been entirely uninterested which is obviously great.

Now for the photos.
Ollie decorating the tree with Baba

This is Ollie and I right after we decorated the first tree. It was perfect...

This is what it looked like without the top part after I had started taking off lights and ornaments.

The final tree all decorated and pretty

Party in Chaoyang Park

Birthday Jess and Cupcakes

I've been meaning to get back to blogging for a while now. My sister has an awesome blog where she posts recipes and photos of food and Lucy. While it's hard to live up to that, I have really wanted to try and do something as well so that my parents can see Ollie grow up over the next year. It's not easy being a family that lives in 3 different countries but luckily we have the internet now and with blogs and video skyping, it doesn't feel quite as far as it would otherwise.

We are on the tail end of an amazing summer in the US and in 11 short days it'll be time to head back to Beijing. I've been in Beijing since 2004 but I'm still struggling to call it home. It sounds cool and exotic to tell people here that I live over there but what I really crave right now is a stable and uneventful life in small town USA, raising Ollie. I'm not looking forward to being back in the real life and having to figure out jobs. It's going to be hard going back to public transportation and people everywhere you look. I'll miss being able to open the front or back door and stepping out onto a patio or grass and looking out over the trees to the lake. I don't care how low the water is- I'd give anything to be able to drive down to the lake and stumble over the rocks and find my way into that water. I wouldn't even care that there were slices of bread floating past me. I want to write about all the fun stuff we've done while in the States but I don't have the energy to do it so I'll post some pictures instead. Enjoy.

Baby is still sick 14 days later and I believe Amcare is to blame.

My 9 month old son had a cough for about 3 days and when it didn't get better, we brought him to Amcare to see a doctor. She listened to his chest and drew some blood and declared it was "fei yan" or pneumonia. She gave us 3 days' worth of cefaclor antibiotics, some Chinese medicine he was to drink and said we could keep giving him small doses of children's cough medicine.

After 3 days we went back to the clinic. The previous doctor was not there but we didn't think it mattered since a second objective opinion would be good to get. This doctor listened to his chest and said that he should come to the hospital for a nebulizer treatment once a day for the next two days. I just assumed since she didn't mention the antibiotics, that she was going to give the meds to him via the nebulizer (which I now understand doesn't work that way). She sent us home with 2 new bottles of Chinese and western medicine for the mucus and cough. She said if he still didn't sound better, to come back in but no one had us make an appointment.

On the second day of nebulizer treatment, I spoke to my aunt on the phone. She's been a head nurse for 30+ years and she was very upset to hear that they had only had him on 3 days of antibiotics. This made me concerned and I went in to the hospital the day after he finished the nebulizer to insist that they continue him back on the meds as she suggested. They said they couldn't fit me in but I insisted and went in and finally got to see a doctor.

The doctor listened to his breathing, took his blood and said that the white blood cells had increased and said he should have IV once a day and nebulizer twice a day for the next 3 days. They used the same antibiotics in the IV that they'd given us for the first three days. On the third day of treatment, after he'd finished his second nebulizer treatment, a doctor listened to his breathing. She said it did not sound good at all and said that he should be admitted because his breathing was rapid and his chest still sounded full of water.

I confirmed with the doctor that in fact there were 2 days that he was not given any antibiotics and I issued a formal complaint to the clinic. I felt that because of those two days and possibly because no one insisted he have a chest xray to see how bad the lungs were, he had gotten to the point of needing to be admitted. And since they do not have a pediatrics inpatient ward, I was on my own, trying to figure out where to take him, still unsure of how sick he actually was. I was promised a phone call later that day which I never received.

I did receive a call from the second doctor who had not given him antibiotics and she basically defended herself but even tried to say that there were some antibiotics in the nebulizer treatment. She said that I could bring him in to be seen by her for free but that she couldn't make any decisions in regards to other charges. I obviously declined because why would I want to waste my time seeing a doctor who obviously is not on top of things. And I knew she'd just want us to spend more money at Amcare, which I didn't want to do. I wanted to get all the hundreds of dollars I'd spent there in the last week back in my bank account!

We had to go to Peiking Union Hospital (Xie He) the next day to see a doctor. She said that he could either be admitted or not as long as we kept coming in daily for the IV antibiotics and nebulizer treatments. She agreed with the antibiotics he'd been on and he got the IV that day. The next day, we tried to go to Hua Xin which was closer to where we live but it was too crowded, chaotic and dirty so we went back to Xie He.

Except, this time we were told by the nurse that they couldn't fit us in plus, because our child is half American, they couldn't officially treat him.

The real story is this- I didn't know that my husband had had a friend of a friend give him the name of a nurse that works there who was able to "hook us up." The "hook up," apparently, was letting us be seen by a doctor and nothing more. I wasn't satisfied with the conditions, thought the service sucked and was in an all out bad mood from a combination a of lack of sleep and feeling like I had no control over the situation. I was frustrated and angry that I didn't trust the doctors in China who misuse antibiotics and I may have sworn about it under my breath a few times. Well, turns out one of the nurses heard me because when we came the next day, she was like, "yesterday you thought our conditions were bad so you better go somewhere else." We were told to go to the foreign department. Zhang Yang was feeling angry at me that I made him "lose face" but I didn't care. At this point, I was pissed! I had been feeling better that morning and then we get to the hospital and find out the nurse can choose to let us be seen or not be seen. For being in China for so many years, I'm still not into playing the game of sucking up to everyone and basically grovelling to whoever you want to help you out, even if it's their job!!

So, with no other options, we walked to the international department building and registered and paid the 20X-more-expensive-than-the-local-peds-clinic fee. The doctor who saw him completely disagreed with the medicine he'd been on. She said since he'd never had a fever, he should've never been on that antibiotic. She didn't want to give him anything but when I insisted that he shouldn't stop after 3 days, she prescribed another one, azithromycin, which is taken orally. She promised us that if he took this new medicine, she was confident he'd be better in three days.

Yesterday was the first day in over a week that we didn't have to take him to the hospital. We decided not to do the nebulizer treatment since he seemed to be breathing OK and let him rest at home. Today is the third day of the new antibiotics. While he seems to get a little better every day, he's still coughing, is raspy, has diarrhea and won't eat solids (just small pieces of food but mostly just breastmilk)...

I'm feeling defeated and wish I had a doctor that I trusted to give me some advice. I'm feeling ready to sue Amcare as I honestly think if they'd treated him properly, he would've been much better earlier. It's been 3 days and we're still waiting on someone to call us about our complaint. I plan to call them daily until someone talks to me. Yes, if I'd just spent the extra money and gone to BJU or SOS in the very beginning for a consultation, I probably would have a healthy baby on my hands by now. Lesson learned.

Back again

Perhaps I will be updating this blog a little more regularly now that I have purchased a reliable vpn (witopia). A lot has happened since my last post. Wei Hao left and soon after I started to believe that perhaps I was pregnant. And I was right. I am due in March 2010. I still find it hard to believe I am carrying a little baby boy in my belly. On my birthday, in 2 days, I go in for my 24 week appointment at Amcare. What an exciting way to start my birthday (except for the fasting part, ugh)!

Two friends have just had babies in the last two months so while it's nice to be able to read through pregnancy books, it's awesome that there are some people in my life who have just been through the 9 months and are now with their new babies!

I'm a little distracted by Hell's Kitchen on youtube so I'm going sign off for now.

Goodbye

Wow, it's been a while since I updated. And to think I used to regularly update my xanga blog for about 4 years!! This is harder than I remembered but I guess it's just me. Wei Hao goes with his new mom and sisters today. They pick him up this afternoon. The last two weeks have been amazing. Spending time with him on my own and with zy has been really good. It's hard to believe that it has already been 1.5 years! Some day I will tell his story in more detail, hopefully to him, but here is the short story.

In October 2007 I got a call from a woman who knew of our foundation asking us if we could help a little boy in Guangdong. She gave me a link to a blog that had his photo and an article about how sad this little boy was and how he was living in a hospital, four months after his parents left him there. I didn't know if we could save him but agreed to run the tests to figure out if he needed a liver transplant. Since we're doing the short version here, we found out he needed one, the top transplant surgeon agreed to do his surgery and in February 2008, he received his new liver! Before and after surgery there were all sorts of complications but the important thing is that he is now doing wonderfully and today, as I said, his parents are picking him up. The adoption paperwork hasn't gone through yet but they will foster him until then as they will be living in Tianjin, China. When Wei Hao was in the hospital for those 8 months, we visited him 2-3 times a week and when he was discharged, he came to stay at my house for 2 months. After that, my mom (also in Tianjin) offered to take him until he was adopted. He was with them for 8 months. 2 weeks ago he came to stay with us as there was a block of time where my parents were in the States and his parents were in the States. They arrive back to Beijing today and will bring him home. It's hard to give him up not knowing if I will be able to continue to have a relationship with him (I don't see why we won't be able to but it will be different) and knowing that his new family will be replacing my familybut I think it is agreed that this is the best thing for him. He will grow up to do amazing things, I am sure of it. After going through as much pain as he has, the rest of his life should be perfect. :) Good-Bye Wei Hao!

Made it to Thailand!

I'm sitting in the internet cafe at our hotel- Silver Gold Garden or some ridiculous name like that. Luckily it's close to the airport, around $20, and it's clean. I'm installing skype on the computer so I can chat with my dad about new job stuff. (More on that after I've signed a contract!)

I almost didn't make it here. I've been stressed with thinking about this potential new job and giving my leave notice at current job and somehow packed my recently expired passport in my bag. Anyway, we get there nice and early and zy pulls out the passports and tickets and gives them to the guy and he's like, this passport isn't going to work... And I felt like throwing up right there on the counter. So zy runs to get in a taxi and go home to get it (we're like 25 minutes away- the guy said we had less than an hour before they'd close check in) and about 15 minutes later he calls and says he forgot the house key!! So he had to come back (15 more minutes) and get the key... By now he technically had like 30 minutes to be back and was talking about just giving up. I was trying not to cry.

So I checked out China Air to see if they had any flights and they did but it was the same price for a one way as we paid for roundtrip. I went back to waiting by the check in counter for zy calling every 10 minutes to see where he was and to tell him to tell the driver to drive faster. The ticket guy came up to me and was really nice and asked how soon zy would be back because he wanted to get us both on the flight if at all possible. Usually they're like, you have exactly x amount of time to check in and if you don't, it's too bad for you. So anyway, zy made it back by 5pm and we ran in and made out 5:50pm flight with no other problems. There were no lines in security whatsoever! It was pretty amazing.

So anyway, we are here now. It's 1:50am Beijing time, 12:50am Bangkok time. We have to be up at 6am to leave at 6:30am for our 7:45am flight to Samui. Still not sure if we'll sleep over a night there first or just go straight to where the ferries run between Samui and the other islands and head to Koh Tao or Koh Phangan... Hopefully we'll find a place for the first night and then scope out the other places and find the nicest place within our budget. What we found last time was that in Railey Beach at least you can bargain a bit with the hotels. I want to stay a few nights right on the beach in a bungalow and I don't need a/c. I'm a little nervous there will be obnoxious people over-running the island because next week is the full moon party but I'm going to try to not worry about it. I'm used to staying where there are like 15 resorts to choose from tops but Phangan I think has like 50!

Anyway I need to go. Will update soon...

Just Another Update... Can't think of a clever title.

Damn, last night I had all of these ideas for blogs seeing as I'm behind on my blogging and now that I'm sitting down ready to write, I can't think of a thing to write about. My brain doesn't work so well anymore and it can be really frustrating.

The most important thing on my mind right now is a possible new job. It is sudden. Just last week I had decided to give up looking for something new and just resign for another year. To get into the nonprofit "world" I had to take a big pay cut and move back to Beijing from Shanghai, which is what I wanted all along. I wanted to be in Beijing with ZY and I wanted to do nonprofit work. At the time the money didn't seem important and it was made to sound like I would have room to grow in this position. It has now been two years with the same salary and as I approach the end of my contract and get ready to resign, I know that my salary will continue to stay the same and it's a little frustrating for me as I begin to think about having kids and how we're going to pay for all of that when I'm the only one with an income.

Ah the pressures of being the bread winner.

I had an interview this past Saturday afternoon in Starbucks and I can't say it went well. I mean, there were no awkward pauses so that's good, right? On the other hand, I have this problem with talking in circles to answer a question when I'm not confident with one short answer. It didn't make things any better that less than a few feet away sat two old foreign men on their lap tops. I could have sworn that one of them was listening to the entire conversation and that made me even more nervous. I started imagining what he was thinking about me! Such as... "Wow, this girl is really screwing up her interview" or "Damn, her face is getting really red. How embarrassing for her! She's never going to get the job."

The man interviewing me was from a headhunter company that is doing some pro bono work for this nonprofit organization. He told me there were a few other people in the running for this job and that we would all be interviewing with this org's executive director when she was in town this week. At the end of the interview he told me that he thought I was too young and didn't have enough life experience for the position but did say that the exec director was more interested in our chemistry. So I have hope yet although I am the underdog! I don't have an interview time yet as he is going to talk to her today and set it up. In the back of my mind I keep thinking he's going to talk me down and she's going to decideto not even meet me which would be a damn shame. For her and for me.

Yesterday met up with Emily and Jess to talk about the interview and they helped prep me. It's really all about me having confidence in my skills and in myself and selling myself. I can be timid sometimes and down on myself and I need to be really confident tomorrow. It was nice hanging out with them over happy hour drinks and nachos. I think we've decided we just have to set a schedule for meeting up or it won't happen. Like, every other Monday night we do dinner or drinks.

Anyway, the interview's tomorrow hopefully and I will soon have an update before I'm off to Thailand! Yes, you heard me right, I'm heading to Thailand this Friday night. I have some annual leave to use before my contract's up and the tickets to Thailand were cheap! Of course once everything is multiplied by 2 it doesn't seem so cheap anymore... but it doesn't matter. We'll start saving when we get back. Like we always do... Right. Ok, that's a complete lie but it's a good intention and we really should try harder.

So we're heading to Koh Phangan. Not sure yet where we'll be staying but I should probably hurry up and at least book the first night! This is my 6th time to Thailand but first time going there so I'm excited and happy we decided to try something new. Thanks for the recommendations Ann and Jess! We love Krabi but we aren't going climbing this time so we might as well go somewhere else. I'm going fake tanning for the next few days to try to work on a base but after 2 times, I'm not seeing much of a difference. The only color I got after yesterday's session are red butt cheeks. Ah well. I'll keep trying. I don't want to get there and be peeling and in pain and shit like usual. It takes me a while to get a nice tan going...

What else? Just went to the dentist and had two cavities drilled and filled and had my crown finally put in. No pain this time surprisingly and no numbing. It's great! And my teeth feel fine and they're not too high so I'm very satisfied with my dentist's work but not by the fact that I'm going to owe them like 2-3000 dollars for the work that wasn't covered by insurance. They only cover USD1000 per year for zy and I and we both racked up some expensive bills at the hospital. That's another reason we shouldn't be taking this trip to Thailand. I've never been good at giving up some things so that I could be responsible and save. I usually borrow until I get the money to pay them back. It's really bad! And to think I think I'm ready to be a mom. I don't know if I'm responsible enough...

Ah, it was zy's birthday this past Saturday and on Friday night we had some of his friends over for dinner. For dessert he had requested I make his favorites: pecan pie tarts and these chocolate covered cake balls. The cake balls are kind of strange but super easy to make. You make a chocolate cake (they say a box mix is fine but the second time I made them I made the cake from scratch) and then mash it up into crumbs in a bowl and add a thing of store bought icing (second time I also made the icing from scratch) and mix it together. Then form balls, put in freezer to harden then dip in melted chocolate (chips). The pecan pie tartlet thingies are super good with cream cheese, butter and flour in the crust and the filling is basically brown sugar, vanilla, and an egg or two. Oh and a few pecans. I didn't have a thing to make tarts so I used a small cupcake pan. Desserts were great and Valentina even made her first cheesecake which happened to be a Bailey's white chocolate cheesecake... Oh my! I was happy everyone was stuffed and couldn't finish the cheesecake and have been enjoying eating it for breakfast the last 2 days!

For dinner he wanted mashed potatoes and I made a huge pot of them. I also slow cooked beef and carrots and onions, made some terriyaki baked chicken, spinach curry, cheesy broccoli and garlic bread. It was a random menu but not one of my most random ones so I was doing OK. The beef and gravy was going to taste wonderful over my awesome mashed potatoes (why are they awesome? because I don't skimp on the butter, cream and salt and pepper). The only problem was that I had made the mashed potatoes the night before and was originally going to cover them and put them out on our balcony to keep them cool. In the end I thought, no big deal, there is no meat or whatever to go bad. I'll just leave them on the counter in the kitchen. Well, as I was heating them up the next night I tasted them and realized they had completely turned sour. I guess all of that milk and cream in them needed to be refrigerated! I tried to add milk and more salt but no, there was no hope for my potatoes and I almost cried. I had been picking at them the night before and they were awesome so it really sucked, especially because zy had been raving about them to his friends and was looking forward to them.

So I learned a lesson the hard way. Cliche, cliche but oh so true.

OK I think I've written enough to make up for last week. I'm going to be adding some new photos on flickr soon so check them out: www.flickr.com/sarahvoss.

Nothing Too Exciting

I used to blog like every day but since my first and last blog post, I've been finding it harder and harder to write again. I think part of the reason is that my life is pretty boring.

Well, going to Shanghai was nice. I went for meetings and to visit a foster home and made it into an overnight trip (per my friend Ann's urging) and I'm glad I did. The first night we went out for awesome Italian food (and cheap draft Stella at Dimarco's) and then to H&M. The next day, after I finished work, I went to another H&M. I love that place. I spent way too much money (that was supposed to be saved up for a vacation) but I got some great work clothes and cute accessories. It was just nice being back in Shanghai. I miss it. There's something about the air that feels/smells different and cleaner and wetter. It's definitely more humid down there which you really notice in the summer when you're always drenched in sweat and in the winter when your clothes don't dry (we don't have driers over here in China for the most part). But I do love the city. There's something about it that just makes you want to go out and spend money so maybe it's a good thing I'm back in Beijing! The dangerous thing is that an H&M is supposedly coming to Beijing (The Village!) in March of this year... meaning everyone's going to be wearing the same things!

What else happened last week... last Friday, after I got back from Shanghai, I met up with my girl friends at Alfa for 80's Night although it ended up not really being much of an 80's night as the dj played hits from the 70's and the 90's. Strange but not necessarily bad... I wore a new, cute H&M dress that was a bit too short and did my best to wear 80's style make up (pink cheeks and aqua/gold eye shadow). I snuck an old bottle of Thai whiskey I found in my cabinet from last year's honeymoon in Thailand and a can of diet coke into the bar and drank that. It wasn't as bad as it sounds actually, though no one wanted to share it with me. Couldn't handle it like hardcore me, I guess. Found out my friend is pregnant so she went home early and the others eventually went home as well. Val, Emily, Bekka and I headed to Tun and on the way Bekka's cell phone was found to be missing. When we went to look for it, Val disappeared and I got a message shortly after saying she had gone home as she had to work the next day. We still went to Tun despite being one phone short and once we got there and did a quick walk-through Emily decided to go home. Bekka and I had a good time with the help of some shots and drinks from a long lost "friend" I knew from Lush gigs. As I remember, I was just talking to some nice guy the whole time, trying to be a good friend and set him up with Emily. Bekka was alternating between dancing and talking to guys who were hitting on her. They swarmed around her but the assholes quickly ran away whenever it came out that she was married. No one could believe their luck that we were BOTH married. Luckily Bekka got down off the table just before two people fell off. It was a bar table and quite high and some people were dancing up there. I don't know what happened but they both fell off and seemed to be in shock afterwards. It didn't look fun but Bekka's right, it's probably better they were drunk when it happened but damn, the next day they had to be hurting! So that was our big night out. I rarely ever get drunk and have a good time and relax so I'd say the night was quite successful.

Saturday I took it easy. We had dinner with some friends and then went to The Bar, Cang Ku, for a few hours but I went home early. Sunday I cooked dinner and we had my brother, Bekka, and Taylor to eat, play Little Big Planet (or Big Little Planet??) and to talk about this new project Taylor wants to start doing. I'm especially excited about this. This could be what I needed as a hobby. I think it'll be great for zy to get to work with him and get to work on some new ideas. He is kind of set in his ways and this will force him to think more creatively about filming band videos, etc. I will write more once things are set up! This week I've been calling some bands to set something up for this Sunday. Hopefully it works!

Monday we went to eat with Hu Song and friends again because it was Yuan Xiao Jie which is the last big day of the Chinese New Year holiday. You're supposed to eat dinner with your family and you're supposed to eat yuan xiao (little boiled gummy rice balls filled with sesame or peanuts in a clear soup) and jiao zi. It's the last day for fireworks too so the streets were covered with the remains of fire crackers. Since zy is not speaking to his sister right now, he didn't want to go home so we ate out with friends, our second famiy, who also weren't with their relatives. Went to Cang Ku (again!) and hung out until we heard the building next to the big CCTV pants building was burning. By the time we got there, the fire was out so zy only got to film the smoking building but I guess it was exciting for him anyway.

Yesterday had to register again at my local, friendly police station. Foreigners have to register whenever they arrive in China within a certain number of days. I have been kind of slack about the whole thing but haven't ever gotten in trouble for it. My passport expired last month, after 10 years, and so I had to renew my visa and in turn my registration form. It was easy and pain-free as we had a copy of the housing contract, the landlord's ID, and the housing certificate all ready to go. I'm just now getting the hang of it. This is kind of a random post but at least it's a post and Ann can stop bugging me about it. :)

Oh and no more about the diet will be on this blog. Ugh. I will try to do it on my own but the last week has not been a good one for the diet. That's all I have to say about that...

Stomach Bug

Ugh, I don't know what I ate but last night I was in the ER getting fluids pumped into me. Yesterday was Sunday and at noon we headed down to the famous Wang Fu Jing Foreign Language Bookstore. I was pleasantly surprised by the selection. In my excitement to find English books for about the same price as what they sell for in the States I bought ten books, including one on Barcelona.

I am planning a trip to visit my dear friend Kim in Barcelona. She's been there for the last year and a half and if I want to see her within the next 5 years, I'm going to need to make the trip. I have put it off for too long. I called today about ticket prices and they are RMB9000 (stopping in France!). That's like $1300! Damnit. If I'm going, I want to bring ZY along as neither one of us has been to Europe before. So I'm kind of bummed about that. Not sure how we'll make it there but we'll keep saving and looking for better prices. Argggg!

Anyway, after the bookstore, we walked around Wang Fu Jing and inside Oriental Plaza where I tried to find the Wagas. It turned out Wagas is in another building so we ended up eating at this Shanghai xiao long bao (a type of dumplings with soup and meat in the middle) place instead. I'm not sure if this is where I got sick or what because zy was fine and he ate the same stuff. Anyway, on the way home I started to feel sick and tired and went straight to bed at 4pm. By 5pm, I had a fever and it got worse and worse. ANYWAY, I felt much better the next day and was at work and the following day I felt like I had never gotten sick in the first place... So I had the 24 hour bug I guess.

Man, my blog entries just get better and better. :)

Day Number 1

It's the first day of my new blog but the second day of my big diet (more on that later). I used to write a xanga blog (www.xanga.com/svossie) that I started when I was in college and continued with when I moved to Beijing 5 years ago. I talked about all of the mundane and sometimes funny things going on in my life. I also talked about the Chinese guys I had snogged or who had tried to go home with me and it didn't seem like a terrible idea until my dad was snooping around and came across my blog. For better or worse, around that time I started not being able to access it due to the Great Proxy. So I gave up on it but I always missed it so I was excited when my friend Sophie told me that blogspot was working over here. I'm going to try this again...

I lived in China from age 7 to 17. I'm now 27 years old and have been married to a wonderful man, ZY, since October 7, 2007. I used to be lots of fun (ask Kim and Jess) but now that I'm married my life doesn't revolve around getting drunk, dancing and hitting on or being hit on by men. Some days I kind of miss going all out like I used to and even though my girl friends and I always say we're going to go out dancing one of these Fridays, it never really turns out how we remember it. That depresses me but I've talked to other people and they say they have the same problem so maybe it's just that we've all grown up and our motives for going to the bar were kind of shallow. But still, those times were FUN (ask Lindy and Robyn).

Not that I need to decide right here and now, but I'm guessing my blog will be about what it's like living in Beijing and being married to a Chinese guy as well as updates on the diet and favorite recipes. I've recently gotten into cooking and baking which is part of the reason I'm in the trouble I am in. The food I like to cook/bake is rich and most of the time it's full of sour cream, cream, sugar, butter... you get the idea.

About that diet... besides a few tries with Atkins, I've never been a dieter. I actually really dislike those that diet (at least those that you know are on a diet and can't ever eat anything or drink anything). I've always prided myself on the fact that I let myself eat whatever I wanted and didn't counting calories but look where it's got me. Yesterday I went in for my annual standard health check up and realized I had hit 92 kgs (202 pounds!!!!). You heard straight from me- my lifestyle habits have got to change! No, seriously.

I don't think I look like I weigh 200 pounds and my friends swear I don't either but I'm definitely not healthy. I've gained a lot of weight, I don't work out anymore, my knees and back often hurt... it's just not a good place to be right now or ever for that matter. Lucky for me the scales do not lie and I can no longer deny that I am overweight. I knew I was getting too fat when I couldn't fit into my size 12 pants anymore and was having to wear dresses and skirts to work all of the time (which is not fun in the winter!). My medical records show that I have gained 22 pounds in the last 8 months but I most likely put it on in the last 4 months. Damn pizzas, creamy soups, con queso, cheesecake! I know it's kind of much to be sharing with cyber world and my girl friends just how much I weigh but it's sort of helping me to let it all sink in and do something about it.

The doctor told me that it is actually normal for newlyweds to gain on average 2-3 pounds per month (just a warning to those of you who are thinking about get married, prepare yourselves!). I am now a statistic.

I've found this neato website (http://www.myfitnesspal.com/) which tells you how many calories you need to burn and eat in order to lose a certain amount of weight by a certain time. You can log all of the food you eat in the day and it helps you figure out how much calories you've consumed and how many left you have for the day. I only started yesterday but so far, it hasn't been too hard. If I don't exercise I can eat 1360 calories but if I were to work out (which I plan to do) and burn more calories, they give you more calories for the day. I guess that means I would get an average of 255 more calories per day if I could commit to burning 1790 calories for the week (or basically burning the same amount added per day). That's not a bad deal.

Ok, so below are my goals (found out with the help of the website).

Net Calories Consumed*/Day: 1,360 calories/day
Carbs/Day: 187 g
Fat/Day: 45 g
Protein/Day: 51 g

Calories Burned/Week: 1,790 calories/week
4 workouts: 60 minutes per workout

Calories Burned From Normal Daily Activity: 2,110 calories/day
Net Calories Consumed*
Your Daily Goal: 1,360 calories/day
Daily Calorie Deficit: 750 calories
Projected Weight Loss: 1.5 lbs/week

Anyhow, I should take some before pictures so I can compare the end results. If I can really lose 6 pounds a month then it'll take me 7 months to get where I want to be. It sounds like a long time but if I can keep this up...yay for me!!

OK enough exclamation marks for now...

Side note: Does Hot Pot count as a low-calorie meal??