Movin' up in the World

A few weekends ago we had to go to the provincial capital, where we lived the first few years we were here.  And we were amazed by the new development going on.  Mainly, the new mall.  This could probably seem silly to some people, but for us, it was quite exciting.

The first big attraction was the new ice skating rink.  My kids had never ice skated, and so it was quite fun for them to get a chance to try it, and they both loved it, wanting to do it again sometime, especially Hudson.

There are some Western clothing stores, like H&M and UniQlo that have also arrived in the mall which make Hannah and I very happy!!

But the best is the arrival of Dairy Queen and Starbucks! It really feels like we have "stepped up" in the world as we enjoy all the conveniences of the new mall!

When in Rome....

I find myself saying "when in Rome....." so many times to explain behavior I find myself doing that I would never do in America.  I would give you some examples, but my mom reads this, and she would call me, and I would get into trouble.

So I will tell you a story about Rob.  His mom reads this too, but she is used to his kind of trouble.

Last week Rob had to go into the provincial town for the day to take care of some things.  While he was there, he decided to take care of the yearly car inspection/registration things that must be done.  The previous week he had paid the insurance for another year on the car and found out in the process that he had some speeding tickets. Who knew?

Where we live there are cameras at random places that will just snap your picture, record your speed and send you a text message telling you of the ticket. Rob changed his phone number after registering a year ago, so he hadn't received any of these notifications.  Not good.

Rob found out he had SEVERAL tickets. So last week when he went to the provincial town to pay them he was told that he had 15 points on his driving record, and to keep driving he could only have 12.  The lady then asked him if he wanted to take his test again or did he have a friend he could give the points to? What? You can give your points away? Just like that? He told her he would be back.

In the parking lot he had noticed several men milling around his car and generally loitering in the parking lot.  He decided to find one of them and ask their advice.  The man he found looked at him and said, "Let's get in your car and talk." Two men jumped in the back seat and the conversation went something like this, "Pay us a fee of the tickets, plus a little bit more and we will get rid of your tickets, your record will be clean. Oh and we can take care of your inspection as well."

In a country where red tape is the norm and if you need to get anything done, you should plan for it to take days of running around for the right paperwork, fees, different offices, the right people not being in the office, etc.....Rob got the whole thing taken care of in 2 hours.  He was happy and pleased for the whole process to be finished. And he got the guy's card if any of my friends ever need any assistance.....

When in Rome.....

Shooting Range

I thought today I would share with you Hudson's favorite pastime of late.

Hudson has always enjoyed shooting his BB Gun, but the last month he has developed a shooting range on our rooftop.  He has purchased many bags of balloons, made targets out of boxes, paper cups, bottles, Styrofoam, paper targets, and anything I will let take out there.

Today he called me out to the balcony to show me what he had rigged up.

 He was laying prone under a wooden table and was going to shoot a balloon on the top of the wall. He made it.  I couldn't get both Hudson and the balloon in the same shot.

You can see if you look closely at the pictures, all the of the balloon pieces that are now littering my lovely rooftop as well as big lines of duck tape measuring distances from the target. Below is a short video we made this week showing his balloon gallery he made and then quickly shot up.

Overflowing

Yesterday at the grocery store as I was paying for my purchases I heard a massive waterfall sound. Hmmm, what could it be? I looked up and saw the A/C unit spewing water like a fountain down onto the ground.  As I approached the scene, it got a little comical.  Underneath the unit was a small bucket. Very small. It was way too small for the job. And as you can see from the pictures, was overflowing and spilling out all over the grocery store, making a lake out of the front of the store.  The best part were all the people/employees standing around doing nothing.  

I stopped, stared, then took a few pictures.  People were staring, wondering why I would take a picture of this. Why not? It's not every day you see a small lake in the grocery store. 

1st Day of School

School has arrived again.  Here are a few shots of the first day of school.  I should mention that instead of school starting right on time, we had the chance to skype with family who happened to all be together, so we had a delayed start.....but it was worth it!!

The students. 8th and 6th grade. 

 And a pic with the teacher. (Rob goes a tiny bit crazy with his picture taking at times)

 I think this is actually the real thing happening above....I repeat, this is not a staged photo.:)

Hannah and I discussing History.

Headless Hudson.  This picture is just funny.  Obviously too much light in the background, but He likes to say this is his "after Bible-reading look" 

Day in the Caves

It's summer. It's hot. Books have been read. Games have been played. Camp has come and gone. The kids are starting to get a little bored, only 2 more weeks until school.

My husband has the brilliant idea to go to a cave he saw last May.  Hannah had a friend staying with us for the weekend so we loaded everyone up in the car and away we went.  We traveled about an hour and a half away from our home, hoping to arrive in plenty of time.

You never really know what an outing will be like here, you just hope for the best.  The gate fee was a little pricier than we had hoped, but we convinced them to let us have half-price tickets for the 3 kids even though they are all as tall or taller than local adults, telling them that they were still kids, why penalize us for having tall children? They laughed, then agreed.

It was a beautiful display of Creation, and we even got a quick science review in as we walked around.  The cave was about 1 km so it took us a while to climb up and down.  We were very pleased with our little outing and had a great time together. Here is the group picture we took.

And my personal favorite.....emperor Hudson. He looks awfully small in that chair

Landlords and Renters

The last month has been a little bit of a roller coaster ride with our landlords.  August brings the end of a 2 yr contract on our apartment, so it was time to sign a new contract.  This is all fine and good, until the landlord calls and says she is raising the rent.....SIGNIFICANTLY.   And immediately tells us that there is someone else wanting to rent it at the new price so if we won't pay, someone's waiting in the wings.

As foreigners in a different culture, it is always so hard to know when you are getting played and when people are being honest with you.  Our culture says, "just shoot straight with me", "tell me you need more money because you can't pay your mortgage or the interest has gone up".  The culture here doesn't speak directly and you really aren't sure they aren't thinking "you have the money, you can pay more, so I am about to take advantage of you".  As Americans that feeling of being taken advantage of really makes us buck up and fight. We have found that most times here this culture will congratulate you for taking advantage of an opportunity to have the upper hand and fighting back and forth to the end.

As Believers, this situation can be a fine line to maneuver and come out still with your witness in tact.

After much thought we felt led to stay in this apartment, so the day of the contract signing arrived.  We prepared a new contract, with 2 requests of our own to counter the higher rent.  The first, we wanted a security gate on our back balcony and second, we wanted to move our office to our home meaning they would have to agree and give us a copy of their real estate contract, proving the house was theirs to rent.  Pretty fair, according to our local friends.

Our landlords have always been nice and good to us and we have had no problems since moving in and getting through the initial negotiation stage.  However, this day was different.  We anticipated about a 20 minute meeting in which we would sign papers and hand over 1 years worth of rent in cash.  Not so.  They had no problem agreeing to put up a security gate. Done. They had no problem allowing us to register this house as our office.  They did have a problem with us living here for another 2 years and giving us a copy of their real estate contract. So for 2 hours they procrastinated and stalled and picked at little things but wouldn't budge.  We were dumbfounded. It was a very tense 2 hours.

It came down to the fact that one of our landlords daughters may or may not move to our town for High School in another year.  If she does our landlord thinks our house is very comfortable and would like to have a place to come spend a weekend every once in a while, if her daughter does come to school here. However, their family owns multiple houses in this town and she could go to any one of those for the weekend.  But she likes ours. Finally her brother signed the 2 yr contract saying she could stay anywhere, which made her very mad at him and us. When he signed it he also agreed to the copy of the real estate contract. This made her mad times 2.

This event happened 3 weeks ago.  The importance of the real estate contract has to do with us renewing our visas, now expiring in 2 weeks.  And it wasn't until yesterday when Rob had to drive an hour away to confront them with threats of legal action (yikes) that they handed the copy of the contract over to us.  It has been a long 3 weeks of phone calls, giving us the wrong paperwork and acting like they didn't know what we or any of our local friends were talking about, and refusing to give us what they promised.  We were down to our last efforts yesterday, when suddenly they produced it without having to threaten, coerce or anything else.  We truly believe that through much prayer, Father changed their hearts and just at the right time!

The whole ordeal ended yesterday with kind words and maintaining a good relationship in the end.  Phew!