Shrugging My Shoulders

2013/09/14

First Round of Hong Kong pictures

Most of the roads on the island where we're staying look like this. Narrow, windy and steep. No motorized vehicles on the island.

One of the main roads near the town square

There's nothing like 200+ meters of straight upward (or downward) incline with either a child strapped to your body or pushing a stroller in 80+ degree weather to make you really sweat. :)

How Ann enjoyed her first day at the beach

And parents are advised to pack as light as possible

in the Beijing airport on our way here

one weary dad

Great job, Beijing Airport, on being kid/family friendly!

Catherine loved driving her car

And Ann was a happy traveler too!

How we ended up in Hong Kong

here is the brief story of how we came to find ourselves in Hong Kong:

We clearly knew what day our visas/resident cards were set to expire and that date was September 5th. However, from the late spring/early summer we had planned on working for the hotel where I previously worked. We had been on a student visa and would need to switch to a work visa. Switching visa types requires a trip out of country to reprocess. When the hotel confirmed this, our deal with them fell through. We knew we (James) could continue his study at the university and renew our visa that way (which would not require a trip out of country), but we were hoping for another option and hadn't felt right about starting that process.

Then, we (James) got a job offer from a local university to teach English. We felt like it was a great solution, especially since the school would pay for all our travel costs and visa renewal fees. During James first meeting with the school representative she offered him a job teaching some oral English classes. We moved forward with submitting all our documents, and they were approved. When James went back to finalize the details of the contract, the school now wanted him to teach a more-than-maximum number of hours of Academic Writing. Aside from the fact that it wasn't what we had agreed on AT ALL, that number of hours of class time, plus prep, plus grading hundreds of poorly written English papers a week wasn't a very feasible option for our family. At this point we have about a week left on our current visa. We still don't feel like it's the right thing to renew our student visa and we may not even have time for that to come through in time now, anyway.

And the situation is further complicated by the fact that China's visa policies and types changed on September 1st and ours are due for renewal on September 5th. So even when one calls the police department or visa processing center their answers are different and uncertain and the truth is that no one is quite sure how to apply all the new changes yet.

We thought and prayed and reasoned and argued about where we go when we needed to leave the country. North to Mongolia or south to Hong Kong? We decided on Hong Kong for many reasons including the fact that the place we choose to stay included 2 meals a day (less to worry about for us) and the reliability of the postal/FedEx service for sending our documents to America if necessary. (and it was indeed necessary).

So, Hong Kong is where we find ourselves for these two-ish weeks while we wait for our new business visa to process. We last heard from the service company it should be ready to mail back our direction on the 18th.

2013/08/23

birthday projects

I bought these shirts for the girls in a clearance bin for 10 RMB. They were the same size so I altered Ann's just a bit. I made the skirts by cutting off the bottoms of some infant sleepers with elastic bottoms, turned them upside down, put a hem, and voila...new skirts for both girls. And somewhat matching outfits to take their pictures.

I saw this bedding set at a local supermarket/department store. It's a sleeping pad where the dog is uncovered, then a blanket for nighttime were the dog is covered. I know Catherine would love it, but it was like $120 USD for the set. No, thanks. I'll make my own.

I started by cutting out the pieces to make the dog.

The dog ready to be sewn on the blanket.

Finished dog, day time side. It looks lopsided because of the stuff underneath. I should just go take a picture, but I don't want to disrupt nap time.

The daytime side has a sun.

The night time side has a moon and the dog is partially covered up.

The dog was the inspiration for the cake, too. I was satisfied with how the blanket turned out, but not so much with the cake. It tasted great, but no professional bakeries will be making me offers of employment anytime soon.

Catherine Sue is Two!

We started Catherine's birthday morning by taking both girls to get some pictures at 6 months and two years.

Ann was a much more willing participant in this project than Catherine.

By the way, Ann's eyes have darkened just a bit, but they are still blue-ish and definitely not brown. I'm hoping they'll stay but the pediatrician in BJ said he didn't think with two dark brown-eyes parents there was much of a chance. We'll see!

This is the only decent picture we got of both of them. Mostly because Catherine just wanted to play with all the toys/props. Or she wanted to stand right next to the lady taking the picture. Or she wanted to escape the room to go play on the stairs.

They wanted her shoes off to stand on the backdrop, so then she's barefoot riding a bicycle which looks weird. But not as weird as what follows.

My favorite!

This is Catherine with just about every prop and toy (minus the flower basket) she could get her hands on. She wanted them all. And they added the glasses.

We wanted to take Catherine to this park/sports complex to play, but Ann still takes a nap in the mornings so we wanted to have the stroller so she could sleep. But, we also didn't want to have to walk. One good idea by James and a few straps later, problem solved. We can take the trike and the stroller. We already get stared it why not make it a bit more fun for everyone?

Catherine riding the elephants.

Completely indicative of her personality.

I'll make another post about this outfits the girls are wearing.

This little girl was so nice to Catherine. We went home for lunch and naps.

We had a party in the evening to celebrate the departure of two couples, the arrival of a new woman, and Catherine's birthday. The first gift she opened was snack crackers from America :)

And another friend made her a coloring book with different animals labeled in three languages. The pen is attached to the book and the pages stapled together. It cam with a disclaimer on back that it was guaranteed not to clutter my house.

The festivities underway.

She also received a book

Opening her present from mom and dad

a dog blanket. I'll post more about this in the next post.

A friend who came to the party said she had never seen a child enjoy having the birthday song sung to her as much as Catherine seemed to. She was all smiles...our little attention-loving daughter.

blowing out the candle

with daddy and sister (and bear)

with mommy and sister

Look at me! I'm two years old!

2013/08/20

licensed to drive in the PRC

Here is the process we have been through in our attempt to get our Chinese driver's license.

4/30/2013 Let our friends on wechat know we wanted to get one. We knew the process was different if we already had a foreign license as opposed to getting one from the first steps the average Chinese person would take...which is signing up for a driving school. We ask if anyone has guanxi (relationships) or knowledge that will help us know what the process is for us. One of my friends responds that she has an uncle who works at one of the DMVs and she'll ask. She responds that we need to get our US driver's license translated. They tell her we can use any translation company and that we'll also need all our registration papers that show we're here legally.

first trip to translation company one: We take our documents to a translation to have them translated. It was a pretty smooth drop off and pick up with just a day or two turn-around time. We're feeling pretty good.

first trip to DMV: we present our documents at the DMV and they won't accept them because the translation company didn't translate our name. (Didn't assign Chinese characters with similar sounding syllables as our name). They left our name in English, assuming, as we did that the name would have to match the rest of our paperwork(passport, etc) and documents where our name is printed only in English.
We also try to ask if anyone can clearly tell us the process for foreigners who hold a license in another county to change their license to a Chinese license. Each person we ask gives a little different answer. First get your health check. First take your test. First register with a driving school. We already know without the right documents we won't make progress anyway so we call it day and move on.
I should say at this point that the DMV is on the western edge of our city and takes about 45 minutes to get there. That's an hour and a half round trip, plus whatever time we spend there.

back to translation company one: We we-submit our documents and they agree to add the name without additional payment. We pick up the documents, with the inclusion of our Chinese name the next day.

back to DMV: This time we are again turned away at the first window. Why? Because we apparently used the wrong translation company for our documents. Never mind that we had already presented documents from that company and weren't told that it wasn't right, we were just told we had to add the name. We are told we have to use the translation company "that everyone knows about." We try to ask where it is but no one there can tell us where it is. Finally, one of the workers tells us it's in the building across the street from the main hospital. Also, we did find a lady who showed us a completed packet for a foreigner changing her license so we could see clearly what all the documents needed where. We knew earlier we needed our foreign registration papers, but we didn't know we needed originals, which were turned in to the police station when we registered our visa.

I don't remember exactly where this fits in the chronology, but we had to go the university for a blank registration form. Take it to our local station to get a stamp and a letter that says we've lived here for more than 3 months and we aren't criminals. Then we have to take it to the main police station for a stamp there. This time, it only took one trip to each of the stations because the person who signs and the person with the stamp were actually there on the same day.

try to find translation company two: We go to the building across the street from the hospital and try to find someone who can tell us if the translation company is there. We finally find a security guard who tells us that it moved a few YEARS ago but he doesn't know where. We keep asking and find a housekeeper who tells us where she thinks they have moved.

attempt two to find translation company two: As it turns out, the translation company we needed all along is a block from our house. We find it easily and leave the documents to pick up the next day. When I go t pick them up, there are all kinds of mistakes...wrong zip codes, wrong birth places, etc. We leave them to be fixed and go back the next day to pick them up.

back to DMV: This time we are quite certain we have what we need. But, we also have Ann with us which means we will be going from office to office and desk to desk carrying a baby and all her necessary paraphernalia. Having Ann actually worked to our advantage as she helped us ingratiate our way into the hearts of the DMV workers. We were feeling truly triumphant when we were able to pay our fee and given permission to go to the second floor to get our health check.
This means going to a series of desks and being asked to perform a series of tasks. Look at a colored picture to see if you're color blind. Stamp. Off to next desk. Check height and weight. stamp. Off to the next desk. Hearing, vision, etc, etc.
Now we need to take pictures. It's in a connecting lobby but of course the doors between the two are locked, so we go outside, around the building, and into the other side of the building. Wait for pictures, wait for stamps, back outside, back to original lobby and wait to complete the process so that we can register for our test.
So far, so good. Initial registration complete. health check complete. photos complete. Was it luck? Was is Ann's cuteness? Was it just that we had finally jumped through all the right hoops? Who knows, but we're thankful!

Getting our last and most official stamp that says our health check is complete!

Carrying Ann up and down and all around the DMV.

We are still feeling so triumphant until we encounter Mr. Dong. He is our last step to turn everything in. He won't accept our paperwork because the translation company (the only acceptable one, mind you) did not include the issuing agency on our driver's license translation. Here's the problem: our Oklahoma driver's license doesn't directly state the issuing agency on it. We know that it's the Department of Public Safety but it isn't written on the license. Mr. Dong calls the translation company who doesn't want to translate something that's not there but Mr. Dong won't let us register until the translation company puts it on our paper. He does at least say that only one of us can come bring the documents back that we won't both have to come.

back to translation company two so they can add "issued by the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety" to the bottom of our translated documents. This time we can wait while they add it.

Back to DMW: James took documents to DMV. We can now register for our test online (that is, register online to come back to the DMV to take the test on a computer there) after 24 hours. The good news is, we only have to take one test, not three like you do if you don't already have a license.

Online registration: attempt 1-3: not working properly. Our friend who is helping us can't get it to pull up our information to select it. The next time another friend comes over who has his license we ask him to help us take a look at the site. It is now working, but it's near the end of the month and you can only see available testing dates through the end of the current month. We decided to wait until August 1st to register.

August 1 or 2nd: James registers for his test on the 7th and we schedule mine for a week later. (divide and conquer was the plan!) (We cancelled my test after James passed so that I could have more time to study at a later point when things aren't so busy with birthday parties, visitors, and the like)

August 7, 2013: James arrives at DMV about 8:45 to take his test at 9:00 am as his registration stated. Building is closed with long line (herd) or people waiting outside. Doors open at 9 and crowd pours James takes his test. Line forms outside testing center. You have to wait for an available computer and there is a 45 minute limit on the test for 100 questions. You have to make a 90% to pass. THANKFULLY, there is an English version and the translation wasn't as bad as we had heard rumors of.
JAMES TAKES HIS TEST AND PASSES ON THE FIRST TRY! After James passes his test, he is taken to a series of offices for more stamps and more turning in papers. At the last stop they give him his official Chinese Driver's License!!!! Process finally over.