Luki was viewed by English speakers walking on Monday and Tuesday this week. The early reports of him walking from late last week were in Chinese and too excited to be understood or believed.
He also enjoys bath time and all the things that get done to him therein.
Living in a compound has advantages and disadvantages. The fact that a girl in my class lives across the road from me probably falls into both categories. She (furthest left in the photo) had a sleep over on the weekend and invited three of her friends. One (furthest on the right is also in my class) and another (purple shirt) is in my math class. The fourth is in the class across the hall. *
These girls know M quite well and love playing with her. M loves attention so it works out well for everyone.
*I am avoiding names because I didn’t receive permission to use this photo. That is also why I used a picture where their faces aren’t clear.
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M has acquired some play doh; it was a present that she was promised for giving up the shu shu (pacifier) altogether. We had one rough night, which was the first one without the aid of the trusty rubber dummy, but after that she was pretty good about it.
Luki has been going through a long period of waking up between 5:00 and 5:30 and refusing to go back down. Over the last couple of weeks he has managed to stay asleep until 6:15, 6:30 and even 6:45 from time to time, so we are hopinng that soon this later sleeping will be the norm. Fingers crossed. I haven’t slept normally since September 2007 and it would be nice to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
This week, just down the road from us is the world’s largest auto show, so of course things will be complete chaos. I am going to go down to the main road and film it so that people can get a feel for the kind of mayhem that can only happen in China. They have put up lots of barriers made of traffic cones and plastic chains so that visitors won’t park where they aren’t supposed to, but I wonder who they think they’re kidding when they put that forward as a deterrent to parking in this country.
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Someone once told me that studying history was a waste of time and while I was totally shocked and horrified by the thought, it seems to be in practice over here. Our friend’s Ayi had her rent doubled recently, which meant she was going to have to leave Beijing for her old home in the country. Why was her rent doubled? Because there are more than 10000 people looking for a place to live in this area and the landlord realised he could charge whatever he wanted and someone would pay it. This kind of thing is happening to our security guards and drivers at school as well, but it is also happening to the regular people in the local village. Read a history book Landlords. What happened to yout kind 60 years ago?
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I’m currently reading a lot for my uni course on what it means to be ‘Australian’ and how to embrace diverse Australian identities in the classroom.
So I thought I’d put it out to an informal survey – what does it mean to be ‘Australian’?
Secondly, in relation to an anecdote which I will tell first. Some friends received some clothes for their baby which said ‘Little Aussie’ on the t-shirt and they said ‘he’s never going to wear that!’. At the time I didn’t think too much about it, but now I’m thinking ‘why not?’. My kids might not wear it because it’s kind of daggy or tacky but I don’t have a political reason. Also, here in Beijing, it’s quite normal for us to go to Australia Day parties and other events where people are expected to wear their national colours. Maybe it’s just an expat thing, or because we’re around so many Americans and they are so unashamedly patriotic, but here it seems normal to be at least somewhat patriotic.
So what is patriotism? What’s the difference between patriotism and nationalism? Why are we happy to support our sports teams but not the nation as a whole? What’s wrong with a t-shirt that says ‘Little Aussie’ on it, but a Wallabies top is OK?
I genuinely don’t know the answers to these questions and would really like to hear all your opinions. This includes those of you from countries other than Australia who might have a different perspective on things.
Cheers,
Alex
