A couple of weeks ago I made a flying visit to Beijing to sort out some stuff and it was my first night away from baby Z, which was difficult. But the best part about it was the 2 hours waiting in the airport on the plane ON MY OWN. Completely on my own, no baby, […]
‘Hello’ in Chinese is pretty easy, right? Nee how! (你好 ni2hao3). Most children know it, and you can hear it shouted at you in the street, just as we might hear ha lou shouted at us in the street. But anyone who is part of a Chinese family probably knows it’s not that easy. Because […]
It’s been over 2 months since our big fat Chinese wedding, and it’s taken until now for the photos to come back to us. In this post I thought I could share a few photos, and in between reflect on how the wedding went. In the weeks following the wedding, my husband and his parents talked […]
This is the first autumn I’ve been in Dalian, after our time in Guilin, so it’s all new for me. The autumn passed by in a flash because, while my family were reporting use of electric blankets and turning the heating on from early September, we still had 20 plus temperatures into October. Yet come the […]
Ever since I returned to China a couple of months ago, baby Z has drawn a lot of attention. Every time we go out we get all sorts of people engaging with us, which is doing wonders for my Chinese. The consensus is that he’s cute, good looking, white, big, chubby, and will be clever. All […]
A few months ago I blogged that we’d be having a Chinese wedding banquet in the autumn and that it would mainly be organised by my Chinese mother-in-law. At that point, I’d semi-begrudgingly agreed to the whole thing, a date had been chosen, and a venue booked. When I arrived back in China last month […]
After almost two weeks as a mother in China, I’ve received a lot of advice. Some of it good, some of it bad, but most of it just none of the business of the people on the street. (I guess our type of ergonomic baby carrier isn’t used much in China as a lot of it centres around […]
“You don’t want your mum” “Bye bye mum, we’re going” “Don’t look at your mum” Of all the things I’ve heard people say to or about my baby in the last week in China, I think this is the weirdest. I totally get that it’s a joke, and that people say all kinds of funny […]
Whilst having a baby certainly restricts your me-time, one benefit of breastfeeding is that once you get the hang of it, it gives you a free hand in which to hold your Kindle. And since feeding a newborn baby takes a LOT of time, I have been lucky enough to get some reading in! China […]
It’s been around 4 months since I returned from China to my hometown in the Midlands, UK. Which is funny because that’s about the time I spent counting down until I returned. I barely have the words to describe how good it felt coming home (the first cup of tea!), and how wonderful this time has been. […]
