Chinese in northern NH, etc.

Catching up on chores today since it looks beautiful outside, but is maybe 10 degrees. The girls all helped me clean and then got their nails painted as a reward. The boys are, of course, at the mountain. Princess Eee had her first real ski lesson yesterday with her pre-school, and she's in the fast group! Here are some random shots of Cupcake and Spark...

Zippy took this picture with his new digital camera that Santa brought him:
My friend Jessie took this one since Cupcake won't smile nicely for me behind a camera:

Here's the Black Forest Torte I made for X-mas Eve dinner and The Spark in Cousin E's hand-me-down X-mas dress:

Another fun thing that started this week is a new Chinese Mentor group for The Spark and Cupcake. We used to drive 40 minutes to a boarding school just north of us that has a large Asian student population, but now the boarding school right in our area has a big group of Chinese students this year. And many people adopting internationally claim you just can't raise these kids in a rural area, Hah! We have a decent sized group of fellow adoptees from China and a great group of high school kids who are excited to hang out with our little ones and tell them all about growing up in China.

The students have organized a sort of playgroup for the adopted Chinese kids around here every Friday afternoon for the winter. They'll teach the younger kids some basic Mandarin- like yesterday they had the little kids trace their bodies on giant paper, and then they labeled the body parts in Chinese while trying to get us to remember some of the words. Without much luck. The Spark loved it and before we had even driven off of the campus, she asked if we can go back every Friday. There is one female student from Hunan Province where The Spark was born and another whose mother was raised in Jiangsu Province where Cupcake was born. Cupcake had fun too; there were markers and snacks so what's not to love?! But I don't think she had any understanding whatsoever that all the people around us were Chinese like her.

We have started talking with Cupcake more about her early days like we have always talked a lot about with The Spark. We have talked about how Cupcake got her belly button in China and now whenever she lifts her shirt and shows her belly, she points to her belly button and says, "I-nah" which is Cupcake for "China." She also likes to point to her bottom and say, "I-nah bum." Hopefully she will be as excited about China and learning Mandarin and returning for visits as The Spark is b/c she will be coming along for the ride when we go back for a homeland tour.

Speaking of my daughters growing up here in the middle of nowhere with very minimal diversity, when we were on vacation last week, there were more Asian visitors to the mountain where we were staying/skiing/riding, etc than I have ever seen in NH at any given time. All the kids were speaking unaccented english and the parents and grandparents were not, so we guessed they were up for the X-mas weekend from nearby urban hubs like Boston & New York. That Sunday poured down rain so we, like most everyone else with kids on vacation that weekend, went to the indoor skating rink. Most of the people on vacation there that weekend were Asian, so we were among maybe four or five other families at the very crowded ice rink who were not Asian. The funny thing about the experience was that I asked The Spark if she had noticed how many Chinese looking people were skating with us (because really 90 percent of the folks in the rink were Asian), and she said, "No. What do you mean?"