As you can tell, I'm in favour of taking regular blogging hiatuses. But now, the weather is miserable, the heat is brutal and the humidity unbearable -- thus begins the regular summer hibernating. Actually, it wouldn't be so bad if the jolly sun came out once in a while. But since China likes to dabble in a little weather gambling (Shanghai, let me guess -- your forecast is perfect weather till the day the World Expo ends, isn't it. That was rhetorical question.), my washing continues to pile in a corner and I continue on in a funk. I need some sun. And perhaps, a little less humidity (really 90% is kind of over doing it, don't you think?).

But its not like we're sitting around doing nothing. Oh no siree. We're either really busy or really not. Here's the check in/check out of the last 2 weeks:

Dragon Boat Festival: I've been looking forward to this for weeks. Three days off school to see the Internationals compete in our own town! Well...at least they did last year...and for the eight years before. But not this year. What the heck? How can you have one of the nations most popular Dragon Boat Races eight years in a row and suddenly not have it anymore? And no one in the entire city knows if it was relocated or just canceled. Plus it rained most of the three days. Not happy, Jan.

Party like we're leaving soon: So we've had two "parties" now (including Jason's) and will have one tomorrow night. I'm not taking pictures now because our living room looks the same from every angle and even though I can tell the difference between everyone, I know you can't. And for security reasons, I don't like to have too many photos of our friends up here. The last party we had, I only made it till 10pm before I had to sleep so tomorrow's gathering is much smaller.

Baby: can be summed up in one word -- MOVES. And instant coffee isn't a good idea, if I want to sleep. I could sleep just fine, but 2/3 a cup of that stuff was enough to keep the baby awake all.night.long. Just like its father. It's very responsive and if Jason's been gone for a long period of time, like to school for example, the baby will wake up as soon as he's home. Its not a regular time of the day thing either, because sometimes Jason comes home for lunch, sometimes not till 3 or later and when he's gone in the evening and doesn't come home till late, the baby will wake up as soon as he starts talking. Its very interactive and responds to being poked. Even Jason is over the initial "I don't think you should poke it in case you hurt it" because its so much fun!

The orphanage: is using me a case study for the younger kids because I'm the first 'Auntie' that they've ever seen pregnant and, including the older kids, the first foreigner for all of them. The four year olds are enamoured with my growing belly and last week, one of the teachers told them that maybe the baby moves by now and they might be able to feel it. This is making having English with one focus a little difficult because every 5 minutes someone is asking if the baby is moving yet and can they feel it? Of course, the baby picked Saturday morning to sleep the whole time so they were all a little disappointed. I'm really happy though because the older kids can't stand not knowing what the baby's sex is -- they want to know if they 'will have a new younger sister or brother or twins?' Our baby has siblings already!

Countdown: Tomorrow, it's three weeks till we get on a plane! Australia, here we come! So this will be a travel blog once again.

I realise there seems to be a narrowing of the focus of this blog but its just a new season. Summer was like this last year too, only early this time because the weather is so screwed up with the rain. Everyone, Chinese and foreigners alike, in our city, hibernates during the Summer because its much to hot to do anything outside especially between the hours of noon and 7pm. We've been trying to get to the pool on days where I don't have school in the afternoon (and its not raining), trying to tidy up loose ends and eat with people before we leave. We were going to attempt an English Corner for our not-so-close friends before we leave but most of our 'group' has gone out of town (either for the Summer or for a few weeks) and I don't think I can do 12 Chinese to one foreigner right now. Not after last weeks party where I zonked out in the middle of it. But I think a change of scenery will be good for the both of us. In the meantime, I might write a bit less often, I might try and paint you a picture of our 'virtual house' on here to satisfy my nesting urges, I might talk about some of our future plans...we'll see.

I should have had a father's day one I suppose but this is the best I can do right now.

19 weeks -- at 6", baby is the size of a large mango

84 cms and counting...

The day before Jason's birthday -- which I might add, I honestly thought was American Father's Day -- I had a screaming headache. You know the kind where it hurts so bad it make you want to throw up? The kind where when you're pregnant you're not supposed to take anything for it? Well after scouring the internet, we decided I could take one Tylenol as it seemed agreed upon by all pregnancy sites and online medical whatevers that it was the lesser of all evils. It also said I could eat dark chocolate of high cacao content -- 75% or more (is there any other kind?).

So naturally, I did both. I don't usually have Tylenol in the house as I'm not a big fan of the company or the drug but a while back, someone gave me the leftover contents of their medicine stock and there just happened to be a bottle of Tylenol in there. So I took one. I'm so drug free apparently (or sleep deprived maybe), that one was enough to knock me out for a couple of hours. As for the chocolate, I have a really bad headache, I'm pregnant, I need to eat dark chocolate...who needs more of an excuse than that?

I needed to document all this hair I have! And lets talk about finger nails.

I'm going to lap it up while I can because I know it all falls out after birth. Thanks Baby!

Now, I do not in the slightest way condone the use of drugs while pregnant. I'm already kind of beating myself up about it because I wanted to make it through drug free. But Saturday, I was a mess...and now I have a ridiculous cold and bothersome cough. I had to be ok for Sunday (the birthday party) so I had to sleep.

The way I see it...doesn't look so big from my angle.

Now whether it was the Tylenol or the chocolate, I don't know, but later that night:

"Can you feel that?"

"Feel what...WHAT??? WHAT WAS THAT? WAS THAT THE...???" at which point he started laughing hysterically. Jason has this 'OH.MY.GOSH. I can't believe that just happened but it's really exciting' look that I wish I could capture on camera for moments like this but simply can't.

My response is as follows:

* It feels like I swallowed a live gold fish.

* It's weird.

* It's a lot stronger than I thought it would be. We can already see it from 'the outside'.

* It also moves a lot more than I thought it would. Especially when I want to be sleeping.

* There really is something there. I'm not just getting fat. These thunder thighs will be worth it after all!

* We can see it move (did I already mention that?!).

* We have never 'wasted' so much time staring at my stomach before.

These are Jason's birthday present from Jason's fashion designer friend. So now our baby has one off, designer clothes!

I tell you, only for your first kid can you be given baby clothes for your birthday and be excited about it!

Jason doesn't like me to poke it back. But it's too much fun getting it to move! Seems like since it started on Saturday, Bubs has only stopped for short intervals ever since. So between this dreadful cold and the gold fish in my stomach, I'm not getting much sleep. I'm exhausted already and its not even born yet!

I might be biased but I think Bubs is the cutest fruit salad in the world, don't you think?

Upon entering the park, we were confronted with this sign:

I don't know about you, but I want to go to the 'hippty hop'!

This is the story of the never ending packets of Cole's Mud Cake mixes.

When you live on the 'other side of the world' with few conveniences from home and a very, very little paycheck, and someone from Shanghai offers you a bag of 'food stuff' to take home with you, it brings new meaning to the phrase 'never look a gift horse in the mouth'. Even if you don't eat it, which to be honest, most of the imported dry goods we can get here aren't things we usually eat due to the copious amounts of chemicals and preservatives needed to keep them good enough to last being imported (think the scene in the movie Wal-E where the whole earth is destroyed...but there are still Hostess Twinkies), somebody will. Or they'll come in useful for something. Or even if you don't particularly like cake for your birthday, you'll be getting it...for this birthday and any subsequent birthdays until you run out of packet cake mixes.

I thought Jason's would be the last one, but somehow, there is still one more box. I think they're breeding.

Don't get me wrong -- I am really grateful. That same bag o' goodies included things like sun-dried tomatoes, couscous, museli bars and some seriously good pasta sauce from Marks and Spencer. I just can't seem to use up these dang packet cake mixes! On first thought, they seem like a good, inexpensive way of baking a birthday cake. Except that one packet cake mix uses over 250g (that's more than a stick) of butter turning it into a not very inexpensive birthday cake after all. Times that by four or so packet cake mixes and you see that some improvisations must be done.

I've learnt a lot about cooking since being here. There's so many different ways to, excuse the expression, skin a cat (or a dog if you live in Guangxi), that there's not really any excuse to say "I can't make that because we can't get (insert ingredient here ie: canned pumpkin...dear Lord, do you know how many times I heard that one at Thanksgiving?!)" Not that I'm your regular Jamie Oliver by any stretch of the imagination, but for example, yoghurt can replace sour cream in almost anything, butter (thanks to the lovely vegans out there) can be replaced by applesauce and bananas, and legumes can bulk out just about anything. My personal favourite is that you can make sour cream from UHT whipping cream and a dash of vinegar. The chemical reaction gives you a thick, sour cream-like subustance. Amazing. Maybe it really is. However, the UHT whipping cream in and of itself is pretty gross and outrageously expensive so I have never done this one personally. The internet is my best friend.

So it was a Banana Mud Cake. I think, after practically sitting in front of the most temperamental oven for 40 minutes, it came out pretty well. I only substituted half of the butter for bananas (one day, I should be brave enough to do the whole thing). Now we have a Mud Cake, a birthday boy...ah yes, we need some guests.

Neither of us are really party people. Hilarious considering our chosen profession is so people oriented. And Chinese people LOVE parties. Especially birthday parties. They take great pride in being invited, showing up with a 'cute' gift (wrapped in paper with strange, strange Chinglish sayings on it), and playing games. You know the kind where you have to follow the instructions and if you mess it up you get to stand in the middle and belt out karaoke songs. Its not much of a punishment because this seems to be the favourite part of the game. So after much consideration of the fact we are living in a borrowed house and that since we're leaving soon, a small party would be a good way to spend some time with our closer Chinese friends, but we had to make it so there was no karaoke. I hate karaoke. I really do. But we needed people to eat this cake. So we decided to see how the board games would go.

In a word, marvelously. In fact, long after most of our foreign friends had left, our Chinese friends were still on the floor playing 'Ticket to Ride' with Jason banning all other languages bar English and Mandarin (you gotta keep your eye on those Cantonese speakers...) and me just trying to keep my eyes open when they decided 11.30pm was a good time to take photos (I was done taking photos at that point so I have none of those unfortunately). However, the party was a roaring success with everyone saying they loved the Banana Mud Cake.

Well, there's at least one more where that came from...