Marley's Ghost

"Now it is a fact that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large...Let it also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on Marley, since his last mention of his seven-years-dead partner that afternoon. And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change--not a knocker, but Marley's face." Charles Dickens. A Christmas Carol.

This is a picture of a traditional Tibetan door knocker. They can be seen on many houses in our neighborhood. Since I have been reading the kids "A Christmas Carol," they all seem to me to be Marley's face.

We have settled into a routine: Char is very busy with her work here every day; the kids get to watch Chinese cartoons each morning and then they have their morning chores. We usually have oatmeal for breakfast and then they get down to homework. Around noon, Nyang Mo Taer comes and works with them on their Chinese. I do laundry or dishes while they work with her. A few times a week, I go shopping in the market. It is an open air market with stands of vegetables and fruit, meat and noodles, spices and seeds, clothing and kitchen items, live fish and sheep pelts, and lately, lots and lots of fireworks. This week I bought some potatos, pears, tomatos, carrots, sprouts, cauliflower, some sort of root vegetable (kind of like a very long turnip or radish,) a loaf of bread and some celery (I am making a pot of chicken soup.) Chicken, Pork, Beef, Mutton, Apples, Oranges, Bananas, Mushrooms, and spinach are also available. Unfortunately, the season for Broccoli and green beans seems to be over.

The weather has been colder lately and so we haven't gotten out to exercise as much as I would like. I know that Noah is missing his soccer practice and that all of the kids miss their classmates and friends!

Anyway, that's all for now. The kids will be posting again very soon.

Noah, Anna and Rosa's dad

Rosa's New Year's Post

hi this is rosa.this is my toys , and my sistir's too. there naem's are sanchi and pijkachu. me and my sistir love them vrey much.do you think that thay are cute,do you? pijkachu has lightir hair then sanchi does.do you see the marking's on sanchi's ears,do you? do you know what flipper (my dolphin) ses? flip flip flip,that means i miss you,and gess what, im already reeding the frst junie b.jones chapdr book.

now, this is anuthr pikshr of me playing socr. see the man. his name's chris.he's an english teacher. does the soccer field look like an American soccer field? No, it doesn't. It has brown ground instead of green grass with white lines of chalk. I am running very fast. Chris can't catch me! When my throat was dry, my mother gave me my water bottle. Sometimes she gave me crackers. I had fun! I mostly got goals. My brother gave me a high five!

I miss you!
Love, Rosa

Noah's post #6

Evan, I really wanted to play volleyball. I was looking forward to it too! AAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!! But of course I'm in China. Evan, I have a series I think you will enjoy- please give it a try- Percy Jackson and the Olympians:

• book one The Lightning Thief
  
• book two The Sea of Monsters
• book three (just out only in hard cover) The Titans Curse
  

I highly recommend this series, it is very exciting and fast paced. We really enjoyed it (me and dad.) Evan please tell me the scores of the volleyball tournament and did your horse really nearly buck you off?

Mia, it has snowed once but it wasn't enough to play in. So you guys are lucky! Merry Xmas to you too!

Sarah, your grandma just died? I'm so sorry.

A couple of days ago was Xmas. We didn't get much, but dad says the big presents will come on Chinese new year. I can't wait for them to come! What did you get for Xmas? Please tell me.


This is my teacher Nyang Mo Tar she helps me with Chinese. I usually bring her my homework
and she asks me what they mean. I really enjoy working with her. She comes every day (almost)
usually comes at eleven or six.


bye, now!

Anna's New Year's Eve Post

hi this is anna. i miis you. this is the stove. do you thingck that it is prity. do you?,, see the markings?,, i hop you are doing fine. if you are not doing wel dot tel me. rumber this is not a post to throe in the trash. and gucss what it is nooyees eve and gucss what tumroe is chiesnooyee. i ,am rily haphhy. ilix the post
you set to use was vahry funny.did you,er mother do it or did you do it?,, do you wish us a mary crissmiss? did you now that sharleen has glasis ? and guise what! junie b.jones hats jim!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.junie b.jones what hav you dun!!you,v yulld in the classroom!! and guise what!!jonieb.jones lave,s
lucille!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.

Love, Anna

Hi, This is Anna's dad. We finally have our new camera up and running and so new pictures are coming! This is the stove which we use to heat water (which must be boiled before you can drink it,) and heats the room in which the kids sleep. We are lucky enough to be able to afford coal as a fuel. The last time we were in China, Anna's mom and I had to use Yak dung as a fuel source--as do so many people in this part of China. In the picture, you can see lumps of coal and the tools we need to use to work with the stove without burning our hands. The red bottle thingy is a Kai Shui Ping. It is a giant thermos into which you can pour the boiled water to maintain it's heat all day. We use four of them. This stove also has a small oven (the door on the right). We have tried to make brownies once. It is hard for us to regulate the temperature but fun to do.
That's all for this post. Hope all are enjoying a winter break back in Portland. (I am being a mean daddy and making the kids continue with their homework all through the break!)

Anna's Dad.

Noah's 5

Yesterday, we went to a school in a small village near RebGong. It was sad. The playground was a gravel covered, run down, basketball court or you could play around the buildings. Unfortunately there is no play structure, so the only games you can play are games like tag etc. etc. The kids there got bread for lunch, my dad said that's a special treat for them. I tried to get a soda for them from the Principal's 's office but dad said it wasn't mine to give. Since the kids were Tibetan I had to put up with them talking Tibetan all the time. At least it was fun to play with them. ( They were first/second grade).


After a little while we went up to a monastery on top of a hill. That monastery was made with one of my mom's friend's donation. Then we went to yet another house and had more food! Then to yet another house with more and more food! By the time we got home we were loaded with bottles of soda, a bag of cookies, a bucket of sour yogurt, some bread and tsampa flour*.


* tsampa flour: a flour made of roasted barley. Add sugar, butter, hot water or tea and barley flour to a bowl make cookie-dough like tsampa. Once hot water is added you stir it up with clean hands and then you reach in and SCRUNCH it up and scrape it off the sides of the bowl. Once that is done it is ready to eat. You eat tsampa by rolling it up in a ball and you hold it in one hand then bite it!



bye, all!

Settling In (Cain's post)

Here are two pictures from our new home in Tongren, (also known by its Tibetan name Rebgong.) A traditional Tibetan village home is formed of pounded dirt walls which make up the exterior of a courtyard space. The home is built inside of, and connected to, these walls, with a center courtyard for work and play.
Here you can see Noah and Anna in what we call the sunshine room while they do their homework. You can see some of the beautiful Tibetan woodwork and carvings all around. The glass walls run around the inside of the courtyard, giving us some protection from the cold winter air. Because we are at a high elevation, the sun's rays are very strong and the room warms from it's unheated nighttime lows (in the single digits) to 65 or 70 degrees in about an hour and a half. [The kids and I wish we could show you more pictures of how we live here, but our camera is broken!] We live in a small town that is in a high mountain valley. Tongren is approximately 7500 feet above sea level. (Timberline Lodge is 6600 feet above sea level.) The valley is perhaps 3/4 of a mile across with high mountain ridges rising at least another 1000 feet to the East and West. This means the Sun doesn't get to us until about 9:30 in the morning and is behind the next ridge by 4:15 in the afternoon. We do our best to get everything done during the warm sunny hours.
The kids are definitely missing their friends and teachers back home. So far, we have had only a few opportunities for them to get together with children their own ages. Noah does get to play soccer with high school kids several times a week. Now that we are better adapted to the elevation here, we hope to get out for a trek up the mountain soon!
That's about it for this post. Noah has started a post which should be up soon. We also will have more pictures once we get our new camera.
Best wishes to everyone back home!
Noah, Anna and Rosa's dad

Noah's post 4

Well, we're done traveling and flying an' every thing else. Rebgong: a small village where mutton* is the meat, Tibetan is the language and friends are scarce. So my DS is my friend as my mom says. Which is true, of course. Tip for Leo: look for HM's in Pokemon teach it to a pokemon and it can do special things (such as cut down small trees.)

It's a hard time in RebGong. For heat we have a black stove which needs to be constantly stoked with coal. Mom and dad have a small heater (that we bought in Beijing) in their room but our room is still warmer and is referred to as the Stove room. There are also rooms such as: the sunny room--it is usually very warm because of all the wall size windows; secret room (is the place were the girls wanted to sleep. It's a small room with mats to sleep on and it's very own tv,) and the " kitchen" which is as cold as your garage at the best of times but at least it is usually well stocked. For a sink there is a big bowl called a basin* to which you must constantly add hot and cold water . Pit toilets and everything else* make it VERY VERY hard to get used to living here. But adapting is all part of the business for us, a few good things:
1. I get to play my DS

2. When we get home, we'll have super stamina! Because living in the mountains let you store more oxygen in your blood since there is very thin air in the mountains.

Near our house is a college where I go regularly to play soccer with the students. The field, as you can see in the picture opposite, is nothing like our school's. It is mostly dust and gravel, no slide tackling here! The field is the normal large field. On one side is concrete stairs/grandstands and on the other is a ditch.

In Rebgong children go to the bathroom on the streets, gross right? You can never tell what the wet stuff on the ground is or if mud is really what it looks like. Yesterday I went on a walk with my mom and got bitten by a dog, dogs are watch dogs in China.






All around the monastery are wheels like the ones in the picture to the right. You can only spin them when you walk clockwise around the monastery and then you can only spin them clockwise . People believe that a special prayer is said when you spin the wheels.
In case you don't know, Buddhism is very bloody in monastic dances. It's all about fighting demons and driving them back. Some people will hold fake skulls and you can see the brains of the skull, while dancing. How gross is that?!!?




* mutton: sheep meat * basin: a big plastic or glass bowl used for washing hair or hands

* cold nights, no indoor plumbing, no dish washing machine, no dryer, water has to be boiled before it can be drunk.


Bye, everybody!