Waffles and Plants

I would have to say that the highlight of this week, as far as blog fodder goes, was Wednesday.  In the morning Ryan and I went to a new coffee/waffle shop to meet up with a group of friends.  A lot of people have been pretty excited about this place because of it's non-Chinesey-ness.  How's that for a new word?  Perhaps I should say that it's a little more European than what we are used to here.  I've been quite slow in visiting for a few reasons.  First, I don't drink coffee.  I know, I know, it makes me socially inept but I can live with that.  Second, I don't eat waffles.  Or anything else made with flour or whip cream.  Boring, right?  It's okay.  I've accepted it.  Third, it's quite expensive by Shenyang standards.  But, for the sake of socializing I finally relented and joined in on the fun.  There ended up being eleven of us ladies there along with four boys.  I had a lemon tea that actually had real lemon and honey in it.  It was very tasty.  Ryan had a mini-waffle with ice cream on top and although he didn't eat it all, he said he really liked it.  The atmosphere was warm and I had a lovely time chatting with the girls.  Their food looked really tasty, perhaps because of the six inches of whip cream piled onto pretty much everything.  I plan to go back some weekend and take Tim and the boys.  I'm sure they'd love it.

Following our gathering, Ryan and I made a quick trip to YooHoo then went to check out the flower/plant/fish/bird market.  After almost two years in Shenyang I hadn't had occasion to visit this particular market until now as I'm not that keen on having plants to look after (sort of like the dog thing) especially when we leave for months at a time.  However, in the last month or so a few things have led me to change my mind.  As I have mentioned the air quality here is not the greatest and lately has been downright nasty on a few occasions.  We don't go outside much when it's like this but I still worry about the impact of the air in our apartment on our health.  I considered buying an air filter, but then I figured that using more electricity is just contributing to the problem so why not bring some of natures air filters?  Next, when we took down the Christmas tree and decorations our living room looked incredibly barren and lonely.  I had never noticed it before and all of a sudden felt the need to have a more permanent bit of greenery around me.  These two things made me want to populate our home with plants, but there was still the problem of what to do about it when we are away.  Then I remembered (duh!) that we have an ayi that we continue to pay while we are on vacation and surely she could drop by once a week to water and chat with our plants.  Perfect!

I had my Chinese teacher write the name of the market and my temporary driver, Ma, knew exactly where it was located.  Ryan and I walked in the door and were hit with the sweet, sweet smell of fresh cut flowers.  Quite different from some of the smells you encounter the first time you go into a Chinese market.  We walked around looking for plants and I was stunned by some of the flower arrangements I saw.  They were massive!  I thought the one I got for my birthday was big but it was just a baby compared to some of these things.  There were roses spray painted with sparkles in every color of the rainbow and then some.  I really should have gotten some pictures but I was on a time constraint and had to keep Ryan from being accosted. I'm guessing they don't normally see blond headed little boys in this building.

After a quick look around the main floor we made our way up to the second hoping to find plants.  Boy, did we find plants!  I had only walked about ten feet to the first seller who was interested in helping me and I ended up buying six plants from her: a big one that has taken the place of our Christmas tree, another medium sized that has lots of nice leaves, one with very pretty pink flowers that Ryan picked out and three smaller ones for our bedrooms.  I would have bought more but I ran out of cash and wasn't too sure about getting them all, especially the tall one, in the van along with the kids and groceries.  Although my driver thought I was a little crazy for buying so many and the big one, we managed to get everything in and he even carried it into the building for me.

The funniest thing about all this is that when Ayi arrived this morning and noticed the plant/tree, she started to get a bit excited.  She went around and looked at each purchased, telling me the name of the plant (in Chinese, of course) and asking how much I had paid.  Then she grabbed her cell phone and started showing me pictures of her plants like they were her children.  Her proudest moment was when she came to the pic of her Christmas Cactus.  I recognized it right away (it was the only one I could identify) and told her that we have those in Canada and that I would like to have one.  She then told me that when she bought the thing it was really small but she has been nursing it for seven years to get it to the size it is now.  It still didn't look that big but was very beautiful.  She also said she would tell my driver about another market on the other side of the river that is even cheaper than the place I went to, although I don't think $50 for the six plants I got was very much.  Did I get ripped off?

So that was my excitement for this week.  The other days I hung out at home with Ryan and we had good times together.  He was very happy to have Nicholas go back to school so he could have me all to himself again except yesterday when he was angry at me because I wouldn't let him play the Wii.  The day before he had told me about thirty times "I love you, Mommy" but yesterday I got "I hate you".  Later on, when I was cutting up an apple for him, I asked him if he still hated me.  His response was, "I still love you, but I just hate you".  Fair enough.  I told him that if he loved me all the time, I wasn't doing my job.  Nick wasn't too keen to get up early this week but has enjoyed seeing his friends in class.  He got his report card yesterday and did very well.  We are so proud of him!

That's about it for now.  We are in for a quiet weekend of soccer and spending time together at home.  Enjoy!