the Cur family blog

2009-05-31T20:40:00.005+08:00

A couple movies of Rhiannon playing piano with her Piano teacher, Rita. Also, a painting of Rhiannon done by her art teacher. It brings out her Elvish quality... She really enjoys both classes.

May 28th, 2009

2009-05-28T20:09:00.006+08:00

Well, these are just some more from our Thursday at the beach.

I have a four day weekend due to the Dragon Boat Festival, so we headed to the beach early. We got there as it began to drizzle, and it was overcast all day. Not that we really minded. The lunch was cooked in the fire (soup noodles and green veggies + hard boiled eggs & tins of various things), and aside from a little ash -- which is good for digestion, anyway -- it turned out really nice.

So, I got to work clearing the shore of bamboo -- cutting down pieces into manageable lengths and the like... burning what isn't usable... At about 2pm, some senior citizens came down to the beach in search of bamboo. They were local residents and were apparently gathering some free bamboo to make some oyster frames in the nearby river. At first I thought the woman was yelling at me for using the bamboo, but she was just a tough as nails Taiwanese grandmother trying to explain to me what she was doing. I spent a while helping her and her husband carry bamboo poles up the road to their blue truck... it was really nice getting to know them --- they spoke Taiwanese and a little Chinese, I spoke English and a little Chinese, and we both spoke with our hands. As they took a break, they came and inspected my hut. I got their thumbs up which was really a seal of approval considering who it came from...

I worked on the hut and placed the frame for the kid's hut ( fifteen feet down from ours), the old woman and her husband scavenged bamboo for their own project, the kids played in the ocean with Gosia and the fishermen fished along the shore.

A very nice day at the beach.

April 25th, 2009

2009-05-24T20:16:00.011+08:00

Today, like most weekends, was a beach day for us. We packed everything on the scooters, went to an early Mass, and then drove out to the beach.

If any of you have Google Earth, you can see our beach:

Just cut & paste this into the "fly to" tab:
23° 0'44.37"N, 120° 7'8.79"E

So, I got some work done on the hut, the kids played in the sand and water, Gosia read and swam a bit... We made a fire and cooked some food.

Typical day at the beach...

Calvin

2009-02-08T20:48:00.008+08:00

This is the website where I've posted the pictures and written a brief summary of Calvin's death and cremation.

Calvin Peter Cleary

Feast of the Epiphany

2009-01-04T13:13:00.004+08:00

5:45 am --- A nurse called us at about 2:30 to come quickly to the hospital. We'd laid everything out before going to sleep, so we were dressed and on scooters and to the hospital in fifteen minutes. At about 2:30 Calvin suffered, maybe, a stroke-- his heart and lungs stopped working. They resuscitated him. This is what we know:

-- his heart is very, very badly damaged. I signed the DNR papers, and if it happens again, he goes to those who have gone before us. We don't want to hold him against his will. His heartbeat has been high for days -- 80 - 100 is normal for him, he was at 170.
-- he had blood pumped out of his stomach from the resuscitation.
-- he's on a breathing machine, the same as when he was born.
-- he's getting fluids, but they were unable to get the shunt into his heart so I don't know what kind of nutrition he's capable of getting.
--he's suffering from Sepsis, which is essentially blood poisoning and organ failure.
-- and he's in a coma. No pupil dilation or movement.

So, Gosia's with him now, while I handle these things and get some rest. I'll go over later to be with him while Gosia gets some sleep.

I'll update later. Please give him your support in the many varieties, designs and colours that you all may give it.

With love.

Sean

9:50 pm--We just got home from the hospital and Calvin has worsened considerably.

He did get water on his brain during the seizure and it may have become infected, giving him a brain infection. They're doing a rather serious test via the spine to find that out. He's up to stage three antibiotics. They're putting a shunt into his heart to feed him... he's essentially where he was after he was born... A bit worse, actually. We'll see where he is in the morning, they seem to think we'll know more then, after the antibiotics are in.

He's really in a life or death situation, and we're as prepared as we can be for a phone call in the middle of the night.

I will, of course, write more when I know more.

Much Love,

Sean

1-4-09 So, as I expect everyone knows, yesterday in the mid afternoon, Calvin began to have a seizure that lasted between 70 and 90 minutes. Longer than five minutes is serious, thirty is enough to be fatal or cause brain injury due to swelling. One of the risks of this, what is called Status Epilepticus (wiki article) , is the brain and body not getting enough oxygen -- leading to death.

We initially got him under a heat lamp and kept his mouth clear, went to the computer and looked it up. We know that kids like Calvin are worse in cold weather and during fatigue, both of which were affecting Calvin -- however, he wasn't cold that day. We initially thought it was some muscle spasaming condition, since it wasn't stopping, but at the hospital they told us that it was a seizure. We read that longer than five minutes in abnormal, and Gosia decided that we have to get to the hospital. We got him to the hospital within fifteen minutes of it beginning thanks in part to our kind neighbour and his car. They realized at once what needed to be done, gave him oxygen and two anti-convulsants via an IV. After half an hour of it not stopping, they admitted him to the ICU where he went right after his birth.

There they give him more anti-convulsant medication and three valiums. He's currently on three anti-convulsants. When we saw him at 7pm, about 4 hours after it began, he could look at us with his eyes only without moving his head.

Gosia and I believe that the root cause of this is his sustained fatigue. He has not slept properly in about two months. He has not had real sleep in about a week, and I seriously doubt that he's been able to enter a stable REM state for quite some time. Last night, the nurses told us, even on all of those medications, he did not sleep through the night. There's nothing "wrong" with him, though. He's actually quite healthy. His white blood cell count was up, but they said today that it may have been due to stress. There wasn't any lung damage, due mainly to Gosia knowing what to do with him, and her good instincts.

He was quite alert today and very hungry. I fed him a yogurt and he ate the whole thing. Gosia tried giving him some rice soup, but he didn't want it. It was probably just too hard for him to chew and swallow it down. I went back to the hospital store and got him a can or Pediasure, and he drank the whole thing and wanted more... He hasn't lost his ability to swallow, which means no feediung tube.

He is much more rigid, though. That's treatable with therapy, though... hopefully, that's the only long term damage done by this episode, but we'll see. They're keeping him in the ICU for observation another day, them moving him to general care where Gosia will stay with him.

After visiting Calvin, we all went down to the cafeteria and had lunch. The hospital always has excellent veggie food -- unlike the hospitals I've been to in Amarica, the cafeterias here have excellent food at low prices. It'd nice to be able to eat well without feeling bilked.

The kids had their favorite -- rice soup (which they made themselves out of a bowl of rice and the clear soup they always offer here). They're doing well, and are of course worried about Calvin. But they're doing well. We've always told them the truth about Calvin, never "protected the little ones from the harsh truths" and such crap. So, when this stuff happens, they know how to cope. It's not a huge blow. Actually, hospital time tends to be fun time for them -- more visits to the 7-11 and eating out!! Through it all, they had a good time today. Right now they're napping... or pretending to. Eli's always amazed that I know the "shut my eyes and pretend I'm sleeping when Daddy comes in" trick... They're good kids, and I really believe that Calvin has been good for them, as he has for me. But it's a hard road, and we let them know that. They'll came to work with me this week, so again, it's a hard time, but it's a hard time spent with one of us.

I do ask you all to pray for Calvin, in all the many varieties of prayer that you all may offer. I know that prayer is a good part of the reason Calvin is here now for two and a half years, and I know prayer is a good part of the reason he's here 23 hours after this started. I'm not soapboxing here, but I know that prayer will be vital to him recovering from this, and I ask you all to please pray for him.

I'll keep this post updayed as I know more. All my love and thank you for everything.

Sean

December 28th, 2008

2008-12-28T20:37:00.003+08:00

Well, I had a few minutes so I thought I'd post to the blog.

Calvin's doing OK the past couple days... he woke up early, so he and I walked over to the outdoor market which is up and running before dawn, I think. It's on a tiny street that wraps around a supermarket, much to small to hold all the vegetable and meat sellers... I bought some millet and fruit, and four bottles of fresh squeezed orange juice from a man who was selling orange juice, grapefruit juice, and pigs hooves at his stall. It's an interesting life...

So, I spent some of the afternoon with Rhiannon making stewed tomatoes in vinegar.

It's become a staple for us, especially in tomato season. In winter, it can be made with cans of tomatoes (I work near a restaurant supply store, and we can get them there), but fresh is better. I buy up as many discounted packs of cherry tomatoes as I can find over a week, this time I had about five or six dozen of the things... Rhiannon and I sliced them in half (to make peeling easier after cooking), put them in a pot with about half a cup of oil, a cup of vinegar, salt, pepper, Italian spices, and paprika. Cook that all together for a couple hours in a 190 degree Celcius oven. Meanwhile, mince one or two onions, and cook that for a few minutes in a little oil and a little vinegar on a stove.

When the tomatoes are delicious, take them out of the oven and peel them. It's quite messy... From there you can do two things with them. Add the onions plus a little minced garlic and put them over pasta. Or take the tomatoes plus the onions plus a can of tomatoes (to cut down that acidity) and blend them in a blender. The kids really like it, and the vinegar takes on a wonderful flavor after being baked in the oven. This sauce has been evolving over a year to this current version. I also use the larger tomatoes, quartered, but they're harder to find on sale here...

So, we have that over pasta plus some capers. Calvin, we found out tonight, loves eating capers. Eli spent the afternoon building one of his Christmas presents, a Lego car, while Rhiannon copied numbers from the calendar and practiced writing them. She also made some popcorn chains for the Christmas tree while watching some Christmas stuff on the computer.

We're letting the candles on the Advent Wreath burn slowly down, and added 12 tea lights to the center, and light a new one each day of Christmas. We're planning to celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany, and it's been nice marking the days of the season, not letting it be just one day of presents madness.

Anyway, just posting for the sake of posting.

Much Love.

December 25th, 2008

2008-12-25T12:34:00.004+08:00

Well, we were hoping we'd be able to spring for a camera and I could get the blog up and running again, but it looks like that'll be after Chinese New Year. Hopefully for Easter.

But even without the camera, I thought I'd write a little about what's going on over here this Christmas Day.

The new job's going pretty well, I've been there a while now and I've pretty well settled in. No place is perfect, but I'm happy there and feel like I can contribute.

Gosia goes to therapy in the city and at the hospital three times a week (once at the hospital, twice at the alternative center).

The winter months are tough for Calvin. They were last year, and they year before, but he's much better than last year. So far, he's kept up his eating and has not been vomiting. His spastic muscle problem has gotten worse, though -- one side is stronger and the other weaker. This affects his swallowing and facial control, but I hope it'll pass after the Winter is over. I almost wish we could move to somewhere with a more stable climate for him. Even the moderate change here (the winter is like a cold Autumn) still has a considerable affect on him, and he loses weeks of learning, and even backslides. He can't use a straw right now, but like I said, I hope it'll pass.

He went back and forth between screaming and whining and temper tantruming for about two weeks straight... He barely slept at night, was miserable all day, didn't nap... after almost two weeks we took him to the hospital (a 5 am ER run, which I've gotten very good at) and got him X-rayed. He was extremely constapated, with the stools pressing against his spine... we've been giving him an enema a night (the brand we use here is "Atomic Enema", and it's true to it's name) and that's helped.

But I don't think that was the root cause of his misery. Supposedly, changes in seasons can really affect these kids. So, we keep chugging along, trying to keep him happy in his head. Gosia does an amazing job at home with him, cooks him four complete meals a day, gives him therapy and does so much with Eli and Rhiannon, too. She's really amazing, even when exhausted.

Eli and Rhiannonare doing well. Life with a screaming, brain-injured kid isn't easy, but we work really hard to balance their lives inside and outside of the house so that it doesn't overwhelm them. I'm able to take them to my job whenever I need to, and besides that, they take classes there twice a week in the evening -- so they're out of the house all evening till 10 pm on those nights. Plus, Eli goes to afternoon home-work school four days a week, and there's a chance Rhiannon may start that after she turns six.

Eli chugs along with his education, and Rhiannon's slowly atarting to pick up some reading. Eli's up to book eight of A Series of Unfortunate Events... he reads about a chapter or more a day, which is nice to see. A while ago we got into the home-schooling theory that you buy these books and things for the kids, and some day, not when you expect it of course, they'll get interested in them. We keep track of where he should be, more or less, and keep him on track with math and stuff like that, but he's way ahead of where he should be in science and grammar, and he gets a lot of spelling done in his classes with me. And beyond all that, he's interested in learning, which we consider the most important thing.

Anyway, these are the things that move and shake the secular side of out lives. These days anyway... Every day is different, each day brings new challenges and moods... so, on we go.

I enjoyed this chance to write a little, to spend Christmas with you. I'm not going to start this thing up again until the camera arrives, but I hope to put out another for New Year's and then again at Chinese New Year.

Much love, and Happy New Year!

Sunday, September 21st

2008-09-21T23:01:00.002+08:00

So, things have been going at a decent pace this week... I've been sick (again) due to the typhoons... the weather has been hot and cold, which is awful, plus the kid germs I'm constantly around... But it's part of the hazards of the job.

Eli started AnchingBan this week. It's sort of an after-school school that most kids go to here. They get homework help, snacks, a nap, etcetera... He has some friends in this one, too, so that's nice for him. He needed to get out of the house a little, and he's really enjoying it. He goes every afternoon from about 1 - 5pm, and a little later on Thursdays and Fridays because of Math Class.

Rhiannon wants to start going too, but we'll see in a month or so. She actually takes a nap, though, when Eli's not there for stimulus.

So, I work in the mornings and evenings, so I'm not home as much, but it's a lot less stressful than the other place, so I don't mind... A couple of kids from my old school gravitated over to my new school to follow me, so it's nice to have them around too. And I've been focusing on corriculum and writing tests and things of that nature... getting to know my students... I have, all in all, about 160 students, now. But teaching here is a lifestyle. Or it should be. I don't exactly have any real days off anymore, but it keeps me busy. I teach Monday to Friday, later on Fridays for some older kids... I only have one class of older kids on Wednesdays, the rest of the time, like on Saturdays, is for office work and marking homework. Sundays are my earliest days, for Mass and the class afterwards. It's an interesting life...

Gosia took Eli, Rhiannon and Calvin to an air show on Saturday. She and the other brain injured kid families went over to the Tainan Air Force Base to view Taiwan's newest purchases from Amarica's military industrial complex. There were plane fly-overs and schoolchildren drumming. Plus ice cream. Eli got a model airplane, one of those with the rubberband so you can wind up the propeller. Nice morning...

Well, the webcast morning Mass from Fordham University is wrapping up, so I'll be getting off the computer soon.

Much love!

Monday, September 15th

2008-09-15T12:43:00.002+08:00

Well, we're back. Sort of. Last night I got the inclination to start writing here again, so here I am, writing here again.

The posts will still be sparse until we get a new camera (ehem, Christmas present?) but I'd like to at least start it going again.

Things are going pretty well here, all things considered. Calvin has new abilities and tricks, and he's hopefully in the last leg of his teething.

Eli and Rhiannon are both doing well... We has a barbecue on the balcony over the weekend (for Moon Festival), even though there was a Typhoon on. So, they made grilled cheese sandwiches and corn and got to smoke out the neighborhood. We ran low on charcoal, so we used whatever various wooden objects we had laying around. Driftwood and bamboo and the like. So, we had a nice roaring fire going up on the balcony for a while while the neighbors lit fireworks and firecrackers down below while a Typhoon swept through. God bless Taiwan.

It didn't really rain until Sunday, though. Gosia and the kids went to church in the car, but I made the trip on my scooter. Every Sunday after Mass I teach an English Bible study/reading class, so I have to stay an hour and a half later. Driving back was thrilling. The rain feels like needles going even 30 kph... But I get to drive along the freeway's side road which skirts the rice fields and countryside, so it's really beautiful during a Typhoon.

Teaching has been going well. I teach 9:30 - 11:30 in the mornings, and then 4pm till after 9:30 in the evenings. Plus Saturday mornings for three hours. I'm a full time teacher now, so not all of those are teaching hours. I help around the school, grade papers and homework, things of that nature. Over the last year, I'd forgotten what it was like to look forward to going to work. It's a very different school, more human and less sterile. Lots of plants and paintings. I'm getting to know my kids and I have a lot of control over my classes. I'm on "go" from when I get there till when I leave, but I don't mind. I know what they want from me, they know me... Even as no school is perfect, it's going pretty well. We'll see where things are in a year, but for now, it's going well.

Well, that's all for now. As the posts will be sporadic, I'll put up alerts on Facebook whenever there's something new up.

Ad astra per aspera,

Sean

the beginning of September

2008-09-02T23:31:00.002+08:00

clearing the cobwebs...

first week of August

2008-08-04T21:23:00.002+08:00

Well, things are going pretty good here... looking forward to the end-of-August post.... getting settled into my new school, things of that nature...

We're being hit by a series of typhoons and tropical storms, so the humidity is terrible....

Just so people know, I'm up on Facebook... I do most of my communicating there these camera-less days... I'm aiming for camera by the beginning of Fall...

here for me: Sean V Cleary
if your on Facebook, you can search "pages" for Swamp Rabbit Press, where I put up my updates and pieces of artwork...

Rhiannon, Calvin and myself all got hair-cuts. Calvin looks really cute. He's doing better and better at sitting, too...

Well, just wanted to leave a mark on the blog.

I'll put something up from time to time so it doesn't gather cobwebs, but the next real post is August 31st.

Wednesday, July 23rd

2008-07-23T12:41:00.005+08:00

This is quite a week... there's a huge typhoon moving across our area. Internet service isn't reliable, so I'm not even going to try and do anything here today...

This means I have to postpone my trip to the Immigration Office... the banks are closed, all government buildings are closed, but the 7-11s are all open...

Defunct

2008-07-22T23:31:00.003+08:00

Well, it finally happened...

the Cur family camera has died...

For the past month the lens wouldn't open and close properly, and now the on/off button won't work. So, I think I have enough material for the coming Wednesday blog, but I always envisioned this as a visual blog...

I'll have to see where this leaves the blog... probably in silent running for a few months until we can muster up a new camera. The Cur family car also died last week, after a few weeks of trouble, so we need to see if that's salvageable before we move onto photographics... It's been a good camera, but we've given it a lot of use.

Check in tomorrow for the Wednesday post...

All the best...

Monday, July 21st

2008-07-20T19:22:00.004+08:00

Just a quick movie this post-weekend post... more of Calvin doing his exercises -- he's on my lap as I type this. He and the other two are doing pretty well... there was a tropical storm through here last week, so that always drains us.

So, not much really... enjoy the movies!

Thursday, July 16th

2008-07-17T10:10:00.008+08:00

So, Gosia went to the nephrologist yesterday, and Calvin's kidneys have gotten worse. His creatinine level went up from 1.1 - 1.2 in the past three months.

He's "safe" until it gets to 3 or 4, and then the doctor says the level just shoots up.

At 7, dialysis becomes urgently necessary.

So, there are all these factors to take into account, blah, blah, blah, but it seems like that will be in four years from now.

Plus he's started growing!! He's outgrowing his clothes! This is really great, considering his battle with nutrition, but his growth ironically places a greater strain on his kidneys.. I suggested a diet of coffee and cigarettes once, but it didn't fly with the nutritionist. They're always opposed to homeopathic remedies...

So, four years is a long way away, etc, etc, etc, but it doesn't seem that way. I've been feeling for a while that this whole thing is entering a new phase. I can't explain why I feel that way, maybe it's just emotional, maybe it's because he has grown a good bit recently and really isn't a baby anymore -- he's going through what must be near his last round of teething right now, too.

But I'm very optimistic about this new place, which is where this week's pictures are from. They say he's already made some improvement towards sitting, so we'll see where this goes too. Getting him sitting-creeping-crawling is very important for his respiratory system. He still doesn't breathe correctly -- he breaths from the chest, not the stomach. Lack of respritory strength leaves him succeptable to a variety of illnesses that he wouldn't have the breathing strength to recover from, so that's another reason it's so important to get him on this path.

I think that's all for this mid-week post. Movie down below, first in a series!
See you Sunday.

Sunday, July 13th

2008-07-10T10:24:00.010+08:00

Well, On Saturday we had a group meeting of families of brain injured kids in Tainan.

Very informal... there was a small kitchen fire right before we arrived, and the place didn't even have a kitchen! It was one of the parent's massage-acupuncture business... it was after hours, so they set up a folding table, set up a portable camping stove, and cooked a hot pot. We brought pesto. Taiwan is awesome for these things...

They had a matted area for the kids, so we hung out, talked, played and ate. Very nice. Calvin had a wonderful time... he really liked being around the kids and had a great time playing with some of their toys. Eli and Rhiannon had a really good time, too.

Eli's made friends with the siblings of the brain injured kids, and he knows so much about the brain and brain injuries now. He was able to figure out what symptoms the kids had and why they have them really easily. Every once in a while, it's a shock to me just how much he understands about the human brain because of Calvin.

Anyway, I'm going to spend this post on Calvin and his list of ailments and treatments! It's like Sunday at the nursing home, but way cuter.

As I said, we've gotten closer to some of the other parents, and one of them suggested to Gosia a new therapy place. The place has about 40 families right now, and they're very clear and up front about what problems the child has, what he or she would need, and how serious it is.

I'm not going to start railing on the hospital, but it's not as intense as Calvin needs and it doesn't promote independence on his part. Plus, they want to work on his walking. Gosia and I believe he needs to 1. creep, 2. crawl, then 3. walk. This is in line with what we learned at the Institutes when we went there before coming back to Taiwan, and it's in line with this new place.

So, Gosia's going to start going there two days a week...

Second is acupuncture. Calvin gets that at the hospital once a week, and many parents have said that this has an affect on their children. One of the parents in our little group said that he thinks it helped his child, so that's good enough for me. It's a long term thing, though.

Third is the Saint Theresa Center. It's about an hour's bus ride in the morning out into the countryside. These are the pictures I have up in this post. Gosia took them when she went out there this week.

The place is a center for the brain injured, and has some good resources like the stimulus room. Lots of lights and things. They're going to help us with some home therapy for Calvin, so that'll start up soon. Very good people, very generous. They're trying to get the home therapy for Calvin covered by one of their doners, and they told Gosia she can come and use their facilities without charge. Plus, they have a wheelchair accessable treehouse...

Plus, Gosia will be going to the hospital's rehab center as usual, minus one day (for the new place) ... and then there's the normal array of tests, and doctors visits that pop up around the month.

The other day Gosia went to the nephrologist, to see about Calvin's kidneys. They have gotten a bit worse, but they've also grown a bit. There are more bumpy calcium deposits and dead material around them, so we need to talk to the doctor (this week, I think) to see what that means. Eventually, I assume, it means dialasis will rear it's head, but that's hopefully still a while away. The kidney situation, even with best outcomes, has already halved his life... so we'll see where that goes.

But for now, it's nutrition and getting him mobile. Gosia has a very full week, plus all the therapy she does with him at home... and with me changing jobs, it's been a bit stressful.
But that's life..

On Wednesday I'll have pictures up from the new place... I'm sure the place has a name.... The woman who heads it is called Mrs. Chung... for now it's "New Place"...!

See you then!

Sunday, July 6th

2008-07-07T09:39:00.004+08:00

Just some pictures of the kids at the park this weekend.

The weather has been humid, so my head is all stuffed up. Quick post this weekend

You can see how much Eli loves the camera...

He stiffens up for every picture, and then gets mad at me because he looks funny in the pictures...

Wednesday, July 2nd

2008-07-02T22:28:00.014+08:00

So, after Sunday's long and wordy post, it's mostly pictures this Wednesday.

Rhiannon came across a step by step drawing book... one of those books that shows you how to draw a picture step by step... I used to LOVE those books as a kid.

They had one in the school library about how to draw monsters that I think never got returned...

I was eventually barred from the school library for un-returned books, but that's an unrelated story...

Rhiannon's been really into this book. She draws the picture bit by bit, then gets out her paints and paints it.

What's really cool is that she signs her name--

R~ 2008

Then she began writing "10" on each one and I asked her why, and she told me that each one is 10 dollars.

Here, 10 dollars is just about the price of a slurpie, about 30 cents, but still... so she got me to buy a few...

And Eli's over there too, doing his Grammar...

He does his grammar the way I used to clean my room. He starts out with the best of intentions, but there's always a comic book nearby... and the comic book wins every time... The problem is, all my speeches about the value of good homework habits leave me being a hypocrite, so...

But his writing keeps improving, his math is really good, and his reading is excellent, so who can complain? Rhiannon's starting to eat up math, too... Eli's been doing a lot of sculpture out of clay and found objects. Mainly robots, dinosaurs and animals.

So, as I think most everyone knows by now, my school and I have decided to part ways come the end of my contract (end of July). I've already begun working for a woman I used to work for years ago, Sophia. She runs a kindergarten here, and while teaching at a kindergarten isn't exactly legal to do here, she's a very reputable person to be working for.

She was actually the first person to visit Gosia in the hospital after Calvin was born. I had no idea about where to buy some things Gosia needed, and Sophia bought them all for us. So, for her, I make an exception.

Kindergarten teaching is 9:30 - 11:30 am, and it's intense. Most kindergartens need a foreign English teacher (the parents pretty much demand it), but often the teacher is the foreigner mascot.
You get 20 - 30 minutes with each class of kids, four classes per day. But at Sophia's school I only teach 2 classes, 2 hours each a week. It's much more sane.

One of the other benefits to teaching kindergartens in learning Chinese! Someone I met when I first got here told me he's learned more Chinese from his kindergarten students than he ever did from classes he took. The teacher is, of course, expected to speak totally in English, and the kids will rote off the answers, but the love talking to you -- and they do that in Chinese.

I've been in "English Only" environments since I've gotten here almost a year ago, so my Chinese has improved very little... Kindergartens are a little more relaxed in that area...
The main thing in kindergartens are to keep the kids happy, keep control of a class, and get them learning a little English. If your in a decent school with good administration, it can be really fun. I've done bad schools, too, and it can be scary...

Plus, I'm tutoring a family of four every Wednesday night. The father wants his children to be comfortable around foreigners when they're older, so we pretty much play cards together for an hour, talk some English... it's a nice gig.

While leaving my current school has been a bit stressful (getting all the ARC paperwork done right so noone has to go on a visa run...), I'm looking forward to working in a more Taiwanese setting. The last two schools we've taught at have been Canadian owned... I kind of miss the adventure teaching side of working here.

We'll see how it works out, but things have been moving decently in the right direction...

OK, this turned into another wordy post! Have a good Wednesday!

Movie under the pictures!

Sunday, June 28th

2008-06-28T16:24:00.027+08:00

Hello out there...

Well this weekend's post is mostly Calvin.

So, Calvin's about 27 months now. Over the weekend, we've been looking at him as he is now, where he needs to be, and what we can do new for him.

The first movie down below is of him eating.

This is one of his strongest areas, developmentally.

For those who don't remember or weren't here for it, eating was his first major accomplishment. It was achieved mainly because Gosia didn't listen to the nurses and insisted of trying to nurse him. This was one of the reasons he doesn't have a feeding tube, which has greatly decreased the risk of infection for him.

For his whole like, the feeding tube has been an option, but we've always stayed clear of it, viewing it as a last resort. While still in the ICU, Calvin nearly died twice from infections, so Gosia has always worked extremely hard to create the proper diet for him and his needs so that proper nutrition would be taken care of.

Months ago, he had a series of what we view as allergic reactions to his powdered formula. The formula reacted with some of his other problems, and even though it's hypoallergenic, he was vomiting constantly, couldn't hold anything down, and lost a bunch of weight before we just stopped giving him the formula and switched to people food... Lots of rice, beans, lentils, chick peas, and fruits and vegetables.

So, he made the transition from nursing to bottle to semi-solid foods quite well. He had some pretty severe gagging issues a while back that he's more or less overcome. He's teething again now, which makes it hard for him to eat, but it's no where near the problem it was a year ago... He's come a long way with his oral sensitivity problems.

Now we're working on just feeding him. All his routine foods are mashed or blended... A typical meal would be rice, beans, and a vegetable or two blended together; or his fish soup which is rice, fish, and vegetables cooked and then blended together.

He can eat yogurt as is, and pudding too. Sometimes Gosia will mix grated fruit or the juice from an orange to his yogurt... things like that. The more diversity in his diet, the better for his development.

But back to the movie... He can eat a number of solid foods... he can bite off chunks of banana and chew that well... the movie is of him eating away at a slice of orange. He can eat chunky peanut butter and, as I discovered yesterday, corn flakes.

We're also working on drinking through a straw. He can do that pretty well, now. That's really difficult for a lot of brain injured kids. He can suck well, and usually swallow what he gets. There's a bit of leakage, but he gets the concept...

One of the things we're facing right now is the wall we're up against with his mobility. He can interact very well with his environment, and he should be able to crawl, but isn't doing it. His therapists at the hospital are good and he has gotten stronger, but he doesn't see the point of getting from point A to point B. We tried all kind of motivational techniques, food, love, etc... Maybe it has something to do with his Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum...

We think it's partly because he's already come farther than he ever was supposed to come developmentally... and now he needs to make another leap forward.

Right now, at this stage in his life and development he's especially prone to developing psychotic issues-- mainly because of frustration and stress, brough on by an inability to deal with his surroundings, interact with his surroundings, etc. So, we're working on pushing himwith his mobility issues without stressing him out. Personally, I'm not too concerned about his walking. I see it as secondary to his happiness.

He could advance to be an expert runner, but if he gets psychotic issues on the way and has to be doped up to deal with that, what's the point?

Right now, the anti-roll device stresses him out a lot. We've been exploring other options to get him moving over the weekend. But it's really all experimental. What do we think we can use that's out there and not out there that can help him.

One of the problems is that so much of the equipment is very expensive, so we're looking at building our own. When we first got here, we built him the incline floor (seen in the second movie) and Gosia's made him the checkerboard wall to stimulate his vision. She also made the many, many images that now dot the checkerboard wall. As his vision gets better, we can increase the complexity of the images.

So, now that his nutrition has improved, we can really get back to his mobility issues. Nutrition really has been at the front for us this past year. Like I said, a year ago he could barely take water and oatmeal without gagging and throwing it up. If he made it through the day without losing a meal or two, it was a big thing. And now he can even suppress the gag reflex if, say, there's a bit too much food in his mouth. He can make it through the gag and still swallow down the food.

Yeah, so next is getting him crawling and understanding "space." Movement from one point to another...

But, again, like I said, for me happiness in the most important thing. Without that, there's almost no point. And he is a pretty happy kid.... and very expressive... so, we just need to build on that!

Anyway, enjoy the movies, see you Wednesday.

Wednesdy, June 25th

2008-06-25T22:21:00.007+08:00

Today's post is just some pictures of Rhiannon with a bag of snails.

One wet night, Rhiannon went out snail collecting in the courtyard and came home with a shopping bag of a dozen or so snails.

Then she put them along Eli's arm while he was watching CNN...

...after which she set them free. She's a great lover of snails.

Not eating them, though, I think. They have them at the night markets here... They're simmered in some sort of black soup. You get a heap of them in a cup and suck out the meat. But I think those are sea snails... that's what my students tell me....

Anyway, snail laden movies down below!

They're a bit dark because it's night and all...

Sunday, June 22nd

2008-06-22T17:56:00.004+08:00

Well, it's been a while... a week since the last blog... seems like longer. It's been a long week. But it's Sunday, and it's been a nice weekend here.

So, to combat the Summer mosquitoes, people sleep under net canopies that are hung over the bed. So for the kids, instead of that, we got them a tent.

Tents are ridiculously inexpensive here, and it gives them a lot more room than the net would... Plus, they get to have a tent in their bedroom.

It was also initially a plan to give Eli a little "space" from his sister, who can be a little over stimulating... So, it was going to be Eli's Tent, but as soon as it was up, Rhiannon began domesticating it. Blankets, pillows, stuffed animals...

Technically, it's still Eli's Tent, and Rhiannon has to ask to come in for sleepovers... They have a floor fan pointed in to keep then cool, and it's been working pretty well.

Not much of interest... I'll be changing schools at the middle of the Summer. I'll be going back to work for a Taiwanese woman, Ainjalie, who owns a well run buxiban (English Cram School). I worked for her during our first time here... Her husband puts on the May Jam, which I put up a couple pictures of us at a month or so ago... the beach thing.

So, some changes in our life...

Calvin's doing well. Teething again, but it hasn't been too bad. He's in pain, etc, but he's eating and sleeping well. Gosia's got him going down the Incline Floor a bunch of times a day... His sounds are improving, too... He's making Ma's and Bu's... He's really expressive with his sounds, which is really nice to hear.

Sunday, June 15th

2008-06-15T12:56:00.006+08:00

Well, here we are nearing Summer... It's rained the whole weekend, starting Friday evening. It's extremely humid.

So, some pictures from a rainy day. I think these are actually from last week... our walk to get a loaf of bread from the bakery down the alley. I had an umbrella, but Eli chose to go without...

It's been raining a lot lately. On days like this I usually have to bring a change of clothes to work with me -- I get soaked on the five minute scooter drive over there. Even a rain coat really doesn't help.

But it's a shared experience -- everyone gets soaked, so it can be fun.

Also, there's the waterbug stamping. The waterbugs flee the sewers and swarm the sidewalks. They occasionally come into the house too, which has been great fun for the kittens.

Our fluffy cats can't be bothered to catch a waterbug, but the alley cat kittens love it. We've been finding dead, chewed up waterbugs around the house, signs of their love and devotion to us. Adorable but gross.

But it's all part of the weather.

Snails and waterbugs...

Thursday, June 12th

2008-06-12T12:02:00.013+08:00

So, here are a few pictures from the past week or so...

Rhiannon has learned to make her own peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (on the floor, of course). Eli's there, hanging out... It's been rainy again this week so I didn't get any pictures of them on the roof... next time, maybe...

Last Wednesday we made potato noodle/dumplings... we can't decide if they're noodles in the European sense, or dumplings in the American South sense.

The kids love them and they're versatile once made, so I'm getting into the habit of making them in my free time. Stewed tomatoes and potato noodle/dumplings. That's our weekends!

Also that Wednesday, I'd gotten some fish at the traditional market... It was actually like buying a stolen watch. I asked some guy how much some fish were and before I knew it the fish were in the bag and I was paying a suspiciously reasonable price.

Of course, the fish were neither gutted nor scaled, so it became quite the morning. Both Eli and Rhiannon are very interested in anatomy and animals, so they had a great time. They had a little tupperware of hearts, gills and digestive tracts to analyze.

Also this week they made bagels, but, no, I have to put up pictures of us gutting fish.

It has been raining a lot here lately, which means it's snail season... No, they're not gutting those... but they do go out on rescue missions before bedtime, collecting snails off the path and putting them back in the grass so they won't get stepped on.

Yeah, so that's Eli and Rhiannon... a wide variety of interests.

Wednesday, June 4th - Sunday, June 8th

2008-06-04T21:22:00.005+08:00

Sorry that the post didn't happen over the week, but I had an unusually stressful week.

Just a few pictures of Calvin getting his therapy this Sunday...

Each week Calvin gets electric stimulation under his tongue and on his throat to help him move his food where it needs to go and with his swallowing. It is called Vital Stim therapy.

He gets it over at Chi Mei Hospital. His speech therapist is May Lu. You can see her in the photos. We believe his chewing has improved much and the swallowing has been pretty good lately. His seizures have been a bit erratic, but we blame that on the weather (hot, rainy, humid) and sometimes he just doesn't want to swallow, but I blame that on being two.

His chewing action has been excellent, though. We can feed him all kinds of stuff. Fruit, cheese, bread, (skittles, starburst) he's really good with banana... We still have to put the food near his chompers, but he chews without biting his tongue, he knows exactly what to do when the food's there. So, on we go.

Also, about the last few pictures of him, he does look boney but his nutrition is actually very good and there are whole areas that, while they are lacking in baby chub, now have muscle.

He used to be all ribs and bones, bow there's quite a bit of muscle in a lot of areas that had none.

Anyway, I'm off to bed. One again on Wednesday.

Much love

So, yeah, his ribs show a bit, but it's a big improvement from just a few months ago.

Sunday, June 1st

2008-06-01T15:56:00.005+08:00

Well, I have a long, long week ahead of me, and a long week behind me so I'm just gonna put up a few pictures of the kids this weekend.

The first bunch are of Calvin and our cat, Spring. Spring loves Calvin and always sniffs at him and wanders around him while he's sleeping. We have to keep the door closed at night or he comes in and wakes him up.

All the cats love our room for some weird, cat reason. Jumping around and what not, which gets annoying after midnight. But they're careful not to get too close to Calvin, or else he'll hug them.

Delightful, little bone crushing hugs.

Just like his sister...

The rest are of Eli and Rhiannon at bed time. This is why we don't have early mornings... Eli stays up past 11 reading to himself or his sister. When they really need a good night sleep we have to separate them.

So, here's Eli hanging out with his fan, reading Calvin and Hobbes.

Rhiannon's upstairs, asleep in my floor chair. Notice the collection of blankets, stuffed animals, dolls, water bottle and books she's amassed around her. She carries her supplies with her from floor to floor and sets it all up.

This was before we came up to sleep, so there's one of the cats pouncing around her as I took the pictures.

We went over to the local elementary school this afternoon-- they open up the grounds to the public on weekends, and there's a track and swings and climbing bars... it's quite nice for the neighborhood.

Both Eli and Rhiannon are getting really athletic--we have a swing set up for Rhiannon on the roof, and a trapeze swing up for Eli.

We set the swings up to just hang from the wooden trellis, like Calvin's swing, but it's working out really well. They've been spending a lot of time up there now that the weather's nicer. Hopefully I'll have some time to take some pictures of them up there this week to put in on Wednesday.

Wednesday,

2008-05-25T13:42:00.003+08:00

Today's a short movie of Eli reading to us...

About a month or so Eli started reading Calvin and Hobbes. I'd brought my collections with me when we came. He'd never shown much interest in comics before that, but I guess something finally clicked and now he's reading and re-reading them. He actually fell asleep reading the other night... He reads to his sister at night, too...

So that's reading... his writing is doing well. So's his math. We're wading into division, lately.

If anyone has any old comic books, graphic novels, or an abacus that goes to to 10 X 10, we're taking donations...

Not much else is new this week...

Well, off to have some dinner.

Sunday, May 24th

2008-05-25T13:00:00.007+08:00

The weather's been rainy and grey here over the past week. It's blown out to sea now, but here are pictures from the week.

Eli and Rhiannon spent time either riding bicycles in the basement driveway or hanging out in the courtyard between rainfalls.

The movies are of Rhiannon this week;

The first is of her putting plants into plastic bags...
Why? because plants go in plastic bags...

The second is of her telling Eli a story...
She's narrating a story in which she battles a lava monster...

Eli and Rhiannon spend a lot of time with each other, and they balance each other out pretty well. They build castles of Calvin and Hobbes books and stuffed animals at bedtime and have a whole bunch of their own games. Rhiannon's hooked on the Magic School Bus TV series from the 90's. Her new role model is Mrs. Frizzle, and I think it's starting to show.

Thursday, May 21st

2008-05-22T11:14:00.004+08:00

Well, there's a low pressure system moving through Taiwan bringing rain and humidity. I feel like my limbs are lead, which leads to poor typing, so I'm just gonna post a movie of Rhiannon with Calvin today and leave it at that!

Typhoon season's coming!!!

Sunday, May 18th

2008-05-18T19:02:00.005+08:00

This afternoon we got some teas and went to the park where Calvin played on the swings. His balance is improving and it helps him with his holding on.

A few pictures of him out at the garden playing with a fern. He's in Rhiannon's play stroller... I have a movie of her pushing him in it that I'll put up Wednesday.

He's been semi-diagnosed (he won't get an official diagnosis until after 3) with Moderate to Severe Quadriplegic Cerebral Palsy...

The movie at the bottom is of him chewing, which is a new step for him. Gosia's feeding him rice crackers and peanut butter.

His seizures continue, but it may be because of the teething. When he went on the anti-convulsants, it was because he was teething and wasn't eating due to seizures. Hopefully, after the teething is over, we can begin to wean him off the meds, which can become addictive and leave permanent side effects. He's on a new one now, but we think it may be spacing him out and effecting his personality. We can't be sure until the teething stops, so we have to wait and see.

Even with all his steps, he's still terribly far behind. His vision has definitely improved. His strength is increasing and he has good muscle tone. His sounds are improving, too. More complex... He has quite good therapy here, now three times a week over at the hospital, and they're happy that he keeps improving.

Hopefully by the time he's three he'll no longer be Quadriplegic, but we have to be patient.

Eli and Rhiannon are doing well... At the park, Eli made some friends and engaged them in finding dry cicada skins... he'd found almost a dozen by the time it was time to go, so he was pretty happy about that.

That's about it. Enjoy the movie!

Wednesday, May 14th

2008-05-14T23:22:00.005+08:00

Here are the pictures from May Jam, the local music show held in a picnic area out in An Ping.

One of the draws is that it's just a few feet from the beach -- unfortunately, this year they're in the middle of a beach reclamation project!

But that didn't stop Eli and Rhiannon... sand is sand. They just had to climb down to the water... They just melt into the surroundings in a second like it's their second nature.

Or really, first nature. They're more at home on the beach than back in pavement and concrete...

So, these are just some pictures from the beach, and a couple of the surrounding area and the Jam at the bottom. We only ended up staying for a few minutes of music because it was too loud for Calvin, but the beach was good for him.

He loves water, so a good day out for him, too.

Pentecost Sunday

2008-05-12T09:39:00.025+08:00

So, here are the pictures from Eli's first Communion, which we celebrated this Saturday.

There were a lot of people there, so he was a little nervous, but he got through the whole thing really well.

I actually got him into a button down shirt with little effort, but he got to spend Sunday up on the roof in traditional jungle-wear as trade off...

It was a long but very nice Mass. The bishop was there to celebrate the mass for the feast of the Blessed Virgin, since our church is named for Our Lady of Fatima.

The two girls sitting next to Eli were also receiving First Communion, and there were a number of Baptisms and Confirmations.

After the Mass, they shifted into KTV mode outside. Two big tents were set up for a catered party. These are the sorts of parties and tents that will be commonly set up in a street, sometimes taking up half of a rather busy street, for weddings and funerals. Especially in the summer, it's not unusual to be driving along and suddenly the road turns into an outdoor kitchen.

They're pretty cool parties, but we didn't stay because it was just too loud for Calvin.

So, we ventured across the street to the junior high school where the car was parked. The junior high school let the church use it's parking lot for the day, so we hung out there for half an hour, eating the pesto we'd brought with us in a makeshift picnic.

In the junior high school's grounds, there was a resin replica of the Statue of Liberty, so I had to take a few pictures of that...

Here's Eli telling his sister to be quiet during the Confirmations, because he's such a model of serenity....

Here are the kids at the junior high school, befriending one of the local wandering dogs... a lot of these dogs are surprisingly friendly, and I think that this one was being cared for by one of the school's caretakers. The kids gave it a bit of their food...

And here are the kids imploring us to let the dog come home with us. This is actually just the kind of animal the kids need-- something with strong bones...

Mother's Day in the bunker...

2008-05-11T12:28:00.009+08:00

Well, usually I'm opposed to state holidays, that menagerie which includes such marketing scams as Valentine's Day, St. Paddy's Day and X-Mas, plus Father's Day and, yes, Mother's Day...

But lately I've come to appreciate Mother's Day not for what it is but what it was intended to be...

So, Happy Mother's Day!!

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The United States celebrates Mother's Day on the second Sunday in May. In the United States, Mother's Day was loosely inspired by the British day and was imported by social activist Julia Ward Howe after the American Civil War.

However, it was intended as a call to unite women against war. In 1870, she wrote the Mother's Day Proclamation as a call for peace and disarmament. Howe failed in her attempt to get formal recognition of a Mother's Day for Peace.

Her idea was influenced by Ann Jarvis , a young Appalachian homemaker who, starting in 1858, had attempted to improve sanitation through what she called Mothers' Work Days. She organized women throughout the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides, and in 1868 she began work to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors.

When Jarvis died in 1907, her daughter, named Anna Jarvis, started the crusade to found a memorial day for women. The first such Mother's Day was celebrated in Grafton, West Virginia, on 10 May 1908, in the church where the elder Ann Jarvis had taught Sunday School.

By the 1920s, Anna Jarvis had become soured on the commercialization of the holiday. She incorporated herself as the Mother's Day International Association, claimed copyright on the second Sunday of May, and was once arrested for disturbing the peace. She and her sister Ellsinore spent their family inheritance campaigning against the holiday. Both died in poverty. Jarvis, says her New York Times obituary, became embittered because too many people sent their mothers a printed greeting card.

As she said, "A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world. And candy! You take a box to Mother—and then eat most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment!"

(from Wikipedia's entries on Mother's Day and Anna Jarvis...)

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(...and from the AP)

Mother's Day celebration reaches 100th anniversary

By APRIL VITELLO, Associated Press Writer

GRAFTON, W.Va. - On this 100th anniversary of Mother's Day, the woman credited with creating one of the world's most celebrated holidays probably wouldn't be pleased with all the flowers, candy or gifts.

Anna Jarvis would want us to give mothers a white carnation — she felt it signified the purity of a mother's love.

Jarvis, who never married and never had children, got the Mother's Day idea after her mother said it would be nice if someone created a memorial to mothers.

Three years after her mother died in 1905, she organized the first official mother's day service at a church where her mother had spent more than 20 years teaching Sunday school.

Today, the former Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church is the official shrine to mothers around the world. On Sunday, the shrine will celebrate the 100th anniversary, giving each mother attending a special service a white carnation.

The shrine also serves as a "reminder to the accomplishments of these women and to the issues mothers still deal with today, trying to do the balancing act of being everything to everyone," said Cindi Mason, the shrine's director.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are 83 million mothers in the United States. More mothers now work out of the home and the number of single-mother households has tripled to more than 10 million since 1970.

What has allowed Mother's Day to become celebrated on the second Sunday in May in 52 countries is "everyone has a mother," said Sally Thayer, a trustee of the International Mother's Day Shrine in Grafton. "It's a wonderful thing to celebrate."

Jarvis' devotion to and her fierce defense of Mother's Day could be tied to the feeling that "a certain era was passing and mothers like her mother were becoming fewer," said Laura Prieto, an associate professor of history and women's studies at Simmons College in Boston.

By all accounts, Jarvis' mother Ann was a community activist who worked to heal the divisions in north-central West Virginia following the Civil War, and to promote improved sanitation by creating Mothers Friendship Clubs.

"I would love to be like Mrs. Jarvis," said Olive Dadisman, who operates the Anna Jarvis Birthplace Museum in nearby Webster. "She was a soft-spoken, gentle woman, but she could convince the devil to give up his pitch fork."

West Virginia became the first state to recognize Mother's Day in 1910. President Woodrow Wilson approved a resolution in 1914 marking the second Sunday in May a nationwide observance.

"Mother's Day was meant to be — and still is — a celebration of a nineteenth-century ideal of motherhood, when mothers were supposed to dedicate themselves completely to nurturing their children and making a cozy, safe home," Prieto said.

Yet, Jarvis became increasingly disturbed as the celebration turned into an excuse to sell greeting cards, candy, flowers and other items.

Jarvis became known for scathing letters in which she would berate people who purchased greeting cards, saying they were too lazy to write personal letters "to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world."

Before she died in 1948, she protested at a Mother's Day celebration in New York, and was arrested for disturbing the peace.

The National Retail Federation estimates that Americans will spend $15 billion this year honoring their mothers. Dining out is expected to be the No. 1 expense.

In the end, Mason said Jarvis was bitter about what the observance had become and "wished she would have never started the day because it became so out of control ..."

"But when you look at Mother's Day as being her baby of sorts, you can understand her protectiveness of it."

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Well, Calvin was up at 4:30 AM this Mother's Day Morning teething, so we're both pretty beat. I'm gonna leave this all up till tomorrow, Monday, when I'll put up the rest.

See you then!

Wednesday, May 7th

2008-05-07T19:57:00.002+08:00

I'll put up the pictures from May Jam on Sunday, but today I wanted to put up a short movie from Monday...

At about 5 in the morning, as I slept on the couch in my work room (some nights I just work till I pass out in there), i was awoken by the kittens charging into the room, leaping about, following a sparrow that had come in through the balcony door. The sparrow flew around my room a few times before it flew into the room's wall mirror-- it then fell on the floor and was pounced upon by a kitten and carried out of the room.

It got away somehow, and continued flying around the house.

It flew up to Eli and Rhiannon's room and perched on a cabinet door above Eli's head. So I did what any responsible father would do and woke Eli up.

the sparrow flew down to the floor where Eli was able to look at it for a minute while I grabbed a pasta strainer (and the camera) ... We captured the bird and brought it out to the smaller balcony where Eli released it. Quite a morning...

Tuesday Eli made his first Confession ahead of his first Communion, which he'll make this Saturday afternoon, which is our Church's name day, and the Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

I'd made him a cheat sheet of what to say and when to say it, and he did really well. He was really confident about it. Our priest, Father Joseph, who baptized Calvin, is a really kind man, and so that helped to make it easy for Eli.

So, that's all for now...

I'm off to play another game of Uno... Rhiannon has just won three rounds...

First she beat Eli, then Eli and me, then Gosia and Eli...

At least she's a graceful winner.

Sunday, May 4th

2008-05-05T09:44:00.007+08:00

Here are some pictures from this week of Eli and Rhiannon hanging out with Calvin...

Rhiannon's giving Calvin some tactile stimulation with some blocks that have different textures on them.

Eli and Calvin get along well... Calvin likes to roll over to where Eli's reading or playing. Calvin's teething, so he bites on anything he can get a hold of, including his brother.

He chews through pacifiers, so Gosia's always checking them to see if he's bitten through yet. We're slowly trying to teach him about not biting people, but when he's teething theres not much we can do.

This coming Saturday Eli will make his first Communion, so Tuesday he's going to make his first Confession ahead of that. He's pretty excited about the whole thing...

So that's all for today! See you back Wednesday...
Over the weekend we went over to May Jam, the local music festival here, so I'll put up some pictures of that...

Ascension Thursday

2008-05-01T21:49:00.018+08:00

Calvin's been doing really well lately on a couple of things:

He's been biting (us) really well, and has been working on his chewing action. The movie below is of him -- I was giving him sour skittles, which he really liked. Intense stimulating sensation! Gosia gives peanut butter and chocolate spread mixed. He had some grilled cheese the other day, and some banana today. I have a movie of that for Sunday.

His vision is improving -- I was filling up his sippy cup yesterday while holding him on my lap, and he saw it (it's bright red) and started reaching for it. He's a water addict... He'll do that now with his cup...

He knows colors... while on his swing, Gosia can ask him, Where are the colors? and he'll look over at our rainbow banner which hang out there.

He's holding himself up on all fours longer and longer now... He enjoys his stimuli... he'll roll over to Eli while he's reading and grab onto him and the like...

Well, just wanted to post something before it gets too late...

Wednesday, April 30th

2008-04-30T23:40:00.002+08:00

Well, we've had a long few weeks, so I haven't had the time I'd like to spend on the blog...

I'll have some more time tomorrow afternoon, so expect something then.

Sorry, folks! See you then!!

Sunday, April 27th

2008-04-27T12:09:00.005+08:00

The fun that can be had with a large bag of cat food...

Rhiannon and Eli got to feed the cats last night, and then Rhiannon cleaned up in her own style.

She's going to be a plumber or construction worker that enjoys frilly dresses...

Wednesday, April 23rd

2008-04-23T21:18:00.003+08:00

Well, here we are...

We've been able to get out a bit more and the courtyard's a nice place for Eli and Rhiannon to hang out and for Calvin to sniff some flowers and take a walk.

Down at the bottom is Calvin eating some hummus (Gosia made it from some really soft chick peas)... it's quite chunky and he's eating it off of a stick of celery.

He's slowly developing a chewing pattern for some foods. I gave him some bits of an antacid tablet to practice on this morning... he didn't quite care for it, but he chewed it...

We've had a long couple weeks... this is Gosia's last week of working at Yen out in Anping. It's gotten to be a bit too much for her and us.

We're goat herders at heart...

Eli and Rhiannon are doing well. Calvin's doing OK on his new medicine... Not much else to say tonight. We're all worn out...

Just to add, Thanks to everyone who adds their words to the blog. I wish I had time to respond, but I really do put any spare time I have into the blog... Your thoughts, prayers and words and thoroughly appreciated and taken to heart.

See you Sunday!

Sunday, April 20th

2008-04-20T18:20:00.006+08:00

So, the weather hes been nice, so Calvin went for a walk with Gosia...

Calvin's kidneys' creatinine level went up, but it's an expected minor increase which will continue.

He had a neurologist appointment on Friday which Gosia missed due to work, and the doctor had already gone home. The nurse called her and she came back to the hospital just for Calvin. He has really good doctors here...

She gave him some new anti-seizure medicine since he's still having about 30 a day...

We'll let you know how he takes the new meds and if they help.

That's all for now. Short post, we've had a long week...

Wednesday, April 16th

2008-04-16T23:22:00.009+08:00

Just some pictures of Calvin eating, plus a movie.

We got pancakes from McStyrofoams for Gosia's birthday breakfast, and Calvin was chewing away at them...

I love his expressiveness... He's just pissed off in the last picture, even though he likes the pancakes... lashing out at those who love him...

What would John Calvin say about this?
Or Thomas Hobbes, for that matter... :)

I'm pretty beat... he was up at 5:30 this morning due to teething issues, so we're pretty tired. I'm going to put this up and get some sleep.

Sunday, April 13th

2008-04-13T17:23:00.006+08:00

Today's post is just movies...

They're mainly about Calvin, whose birthday it's been this week, and while they're old, I think they're worth putting up. In the first one, we've noticed just how many seizures he was constantly having after he came home from the hospital.

They were never identified as seizures, though, for whatever reasons. They really scared him... We had no idea at the time why he'd start crying out of nowhere, and you can see it at the end of the movie.

The second down is just of him on the bed, with Eli and Rhiannon offering him encouragement.

So, continuing with young Calvin...
more crying...

Next is a movie of all of us at dinnertime, a few months after Calvin came home...

I love Rhiannon's conquest over the hot pot...

One of Calvin's MAJOR early accomplishments was breastfeeding.
He surprised the whole ICU staff when he started doing that
(especially with some of the drugs he was on)...

Well, that's all for now... He has come quite a way...

Calvin's birthday - April 7th - 8th

2008-04-09T13:19:00.017+08:00

This is the post I've been working on the past few days. Unfortunately, this stomach virus has made it hard, but it's more or less done.

This is a long list of pictures showing Calvin, for his birthday, April 7 - 8th --

yes, his birth date spans two days, thanks to the International Dateline. It was still the 7th when I called back to the States about him being born, but it was already the 8th here.

Some very minor comments, I'm not going to write much...

They're all in more or less the correct order, but the first picture, is, of course, of Calvin inside the tummy.

Most of the kids here, when you ask them how old they are, you subtract a year from the answer they give you because when they come out, they're considered to be already one year old, so they start counting from one instead of zero.

So, Calvin's about nine months old in that picture...

The rest are pretty straight forward... there is a gap of about 6 months...

That's before and during the NYC period,-- I think I was too emotionally drained, still, from the birth and months after it to take any pictures during that whole time -- we only picked up taking pictures a bit before we left again for Taiwan... Those are down at the bottom, of him in the park...

Besides, I mostly wanted to post some older pictures of him, some or most of which you may not have seen.

Also, you can see that he actually looks pretty "good" while in the hospital. It was when he came home that you can see the effects of those two battles with infection that he went through, the second of which we thought for sure was going to kill him for a few days.

he lost all of his baby fat and has never really gotten it back... he's got muscles now, but he's still quite, quite skinny. he didn't gain weight for I can't remember how long. They were going to re-admit him for a while, but Gosia fought to get food into him, and he did eventually start gaining little by little.

And he screamed constantly, too. We were talking about it earlier today, and Gosia says, he was letting it all out. He was in severe emotional pain back then, plus the seizures and all else...

It's pretty amazing what humans can go through and deal with.

The pictures of Eli and Rhiannon with the I'm the big sister and I'm the big brother T-shirts are from the first time they got to really see him, about three weeks after he came out.

Anyway, that about sums it up. This Sunday, to continue the (belated) birthday celebrations, I'll be posting a series of movies we took back then that I'm assuming most of you haven't seen or may like to see again...

See you then, and thank you all for the notes and e-mails about Calvin, then and now.
They always mean a LOT,
Thank you so much.

Sunday, April 6th

2008-04-06T21:08:00.002+08:00

This afternoon we all went over to the beach out in AnPing.

Last night, Calvin and I went over to the hospital. He's been teething, and for whatever reason he'd been vomiting up most of what he ate and drank, plus lethargic and sleeping + crying, so I figured may as well. We didn't get home till around midnight, but they gave him an IV for fluids and ran his blood work (which came out OK).

And he was better today, more himself.

So, pictures are from the beach.

Pictures from the drive out there, too...

Calvin loves the water at the beach. When he lay down on the blanket, he could hear the waves, and reached out his hands looking for the water so he could get it into his mouth! Kid loves water...

And down at the bottom is fried food night at the Cur house. Some Uno (Rhiannon won two hands), some LOST, some varieties of fried tofu with garlic and basil for munching. There's a fried food stand near us that we go to most Wednesdays and Sundays.

Anyway, I'm pretty beat. Enjoy the pictures.

See you Wednesday.

Wednesday, April 2nd

2008-04-02T19:57:00.006+08:00

Today's post is a movie about Calvin-- you can see he's improved so much

He's improved his strength and balance, his vision is getting much better...

He's back to 7 kilos again...

When Gosia arrived for therapy on Monday she saw the mother of a brain injured girl who'd also been receiving HBOT, and found out that the girl had caught a cold and died from it just three weeks ago. It reminded us just how blessed we really are, how fragile life can be, and how amazing it is that Calvin's able to do the things he is, and keep moving himself forward, as you can see in the movie.

Hopefully when he finishes teething his seizures will decrease and he won't be as tired and disoriented as he sometimes gets now. His eating has improved; even if he's having seizures vomiting is rare.

We know it is very slow, and it's a lot of work (especially for him) but he's a happy boy.

His birthday is next Tuesday -- he'll be two.
If you have any extra prayers, please dedicate them to Calvin.

Sunday, March 30th

2008-03-30T11:48:00.013+08:00

Calvin's been teething, Gosia has allergies, my sinuses have cleared up, but we're all a little sick. Change of seasons in the sub tropics... The weather's beautiful, though.

Calvin's been having plenty of seizures, probably because of his teething, but his eating is decent -- no where near to the problems we had last time.

Typhoon season will be here soon...

Videos of Rhiannon below!

She's all muscle now...and she eats bananas with a knife. She's adorable, but deadly.

Wednesday, March 26th

2008-03-26T19:05:00.013+08:00

Well, my son is a devout Catholic --- and he's taken after Saint Augustine...

"O, Lord. Make me chaste, but not yet."

At Yen, someone threw Eli's class folder out onto the balcony and all the boys are angry at Eli. Gosia was trying to figure out why. She and the bosses looked at the camera tape and it was a sweet girl named Yvette. She walked into the empty classroom, launched Eli's folder out the door, and went about her day.

They figured it out--

Supposedly, Eli's been blowing kisses with Melissa and Vivian. Melissa and Vivian also stole Eli's light up duck toy, supposedly because they're trying to get attention from Eli. Yvette felt left out. Plus all the boys are mad and acting out in class because Eli's getting all the attention from the girls...

Eli's oblivious to the whole thing...

Anyway, here are pictures of Eli and I on scooter and from our night ride home from Yen.

Also, a movie of the kids playing Uno.

Easter Sunday

2008-03-23T16:46:00.006+08:00

So, after Stations of the Cross Good Friday afternoon, Father Joseph gave Eli his first Catechism -- the text is half English, half Chinese, side by side. Eli wants to make his first communion, and he's been pondering the deeper theological questions for a while now, so he's really happy to get it.

Gosia loved hers as a child. I don't remember them doing that at our Church, though I wish they had. I'm glad it's moved away from a lone, stark memorization aspect of the Catechism, but Eli's looking for a place to start, something grounding. He likes reading it. He already knows most of the stuff, but in bits and pieces.

Father Joseph had been looking for an English copy for a while, and he finally ended up writing to a nun he knows in Hong Kong for one.

Eli's been reading it (he cracked it open that night) and the bishop's coming in mid-May for the first Communion, on around May 13th, the feast of Our Lady of Fatima, for whom our Church is named.

Last night was a rainy night... we drove out along the rice fields and steel shops to church for the Easter Vigil Mass.

There are some pictures of Eli during the Service of Light outside the Church, plus filling up a bottle of holy water for all our household needs.

It was a nice night for us, especially driving back on nearly empty streets, anticipating Easter.

Today, for Easter, he and I woke up for the 8:30 Mass, after which Gosia, Rhiannon and Calvin came for the Church BBQ. It was too long of a time for Calvin to be out and about, so she just came for the cook out. Every family got their own small barbecue.

Taiwan has a bunch of pretty good vegetarian soy meat stuff, and even though the concept of fake meat sometimes strikes me as silly, it was handy to put on a grill. And it makes good sandwiches.

Unfortunately, I'd thought to myself, I have enough pictures, I won't need the camera for just a barbecue -- which is why I don't have pictures of Eli and Rhiannon splashing around in Our Lady's grotto outside the church...

The apostles warned Our Lord....

Let the little children come, He says...

Holy Saturday, 2008

2008-03-22T13:09:00.009+08:00

Here're a bunch of pictures of Eli at buxiban....

He's outside on the balcony next to his plants -- we're doing a science project of growing plants from beans, peas, corn or whatever other seeds anyone could find. That's his friend Jack.

And a bunch of pictures of Eli in my class. I teach four classes there, and Eli's in all four -- reading, writing, science, and social studies. Plus he gets math and goat herding 101 at home.

PLUS,

in local news...
down under the pictures.

Taiwanese face tough decision in vote

By PETER ENAV, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 49 minutes ago

Taiwanese voters were deciding Saturday whether to stick with a party whose pro-independence bent has strained ties with China or switch to one pushing for a reduction of tensions and more economic engagement with the communist country.

Just two weeks ago, opposition candidate Ma Ying-jeou seemed ready to cruise to victory in the island's fourth direct presidential election, promising to work toward friendlier relations and even a common market with China.

But ruling party candidate Frank Hsieh appears to have been closing the gap. His party used the last day of campaigning to fan outrage over China's crackdown in Tibet.

Hsieh warns that China's crackdown in Tibet could be replicated in Taiwan, which split from the mainland amid civil war in 1949. Beijing still considers the island to be part of its territory and has threatened to attack if Taiwan rejects unification and seeks a permanent break.

"If Ma is elected, Taiwan's future will be in danger," Hsieh told a cheering crowd at a rally Friday in the southern city of Chiayi. "It will be the same for China to attack Tibet or Taiwan because it will be China's domestic issue."

But Ma has accused Hsieh of exploiting Tibet for political gain, although he himself has threatened to boycott the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing if the Tibetan situation worsens.

He also has accused Hsieh's Democratic Progressive Party of recklessly provoking Beijing during its eight years in power, and promised to reverse the pro-independence direction of outgoing President Chen Shui-bian.

"We won't rock the boat in regional waters," he said. "We will make ourselves a peacemaker not a troublemaker."

Ma has proposed a formal peace treaty with Beijing that would demilitarize the Taiwan Strait, the 100-mile-wide waterway that separates the two heavily armed sides. But he too has drawn the line at unification, promising that it would not be discussed during his presidency.

Hsieh, a former premier and dissident lawyer, has criticized Ma's common market plan as a half-baked idea that would flood the island with migrant Chinese workers who would steal jobs from working-class Taiwanese.

Ma claims that Hsieh has been distorting his proposal. The common market framework would be negotiated over time, Ma says, and Chinese workers wouldn't be allowed to come to the island.

"There are so many unemployed people in Taiwan," Ma told thousands of supporters at a rally on Friday in the southern city of Kaohsiung. "If I allow Chinese laborers to come, then that means I am becoming stupid. I won't allow Chinese laborers to come, but I'll allow Chinese tourists to come to spend money here."

Speaking to reporters Friday, Hsieh acknowledged that the ruling party has fallen short in its China policy. He also promised to ease tensions with China — but not at the expense of Taiwan's de facto independence.

"I will open up to China and maintain Taiwan's sovereignty at the same time," he said. "Ma is opening up but not maintaining sovereignty. I am taking a balanced approach."

While Taiwanese law forbids the publication of opinion polls in the last 10 days of campaigning, both parties agree that Hsieh has been closing in on his rival over the last two weeks.

Good Friday, 2008

2008-03-21T10:43:00.008+08:00

Well, here we are on Good Friday, and here's the bunch of pictures from our visit to the doctor's this week.

There are many independent GPs around town, so we all got over there to try and deal with our various colds and nasal infections.

Eli always looks forlorn at the doctors. he's actually not afraid of needles anymore-- he got so many shots at Public School that he's over that, but he's a bit of a hypochondriac. I guess I was too, at that age. Every ache means bone cancer... he's always been very interested in medicine, but he tends to get a little over worried.

But when it was over, he was fine, and the two of them started exploring while Calvin got checked out

-- he watched the assistants preparing his medicine...

Calvin got checked out then we went home, baggies of medicine in hand. The kids are drinking kid tea in the car. It's a non caffeine tea you can get at most of the many, many tea shops around here.

One of the signs of being here too long is that a half a block walk to the nearest tea shop seems to be too far. There should be one closer!

Well, see you tomorrow.

Holy Thursday, 2008

2008-03-20T13:08:00.005+08:00

Well, as promised:

Pictures of Rhiannon getting milk out of the refrigerator and a cat playing a drum!

Such are how things go here...

We're all just trying to keep ourselves together. This nasal cold sickness thing is not abnormal here. There is the pollution, but it's not that bad here... I think it's mainly the change in pressures that goes on here.

We're now heading into typhoon season, and that's just a lot of atmospheric pressure that plays havoc with your body. It's not just us, either. Plenty of Taiwanese kids are sick for months... just eternal runny noses... It's just part of life here, just one of those things.

See you tomorrow!

Spy Wednesday, 2008

2008-03-19T12:56:00.004+08:00

Well here we are, recovering from nasal infections, starting to swelter during the noon hours... life is life.

Today's blog is a movie!

A few days ago Gosia made grilled cheese for breakfast and tried feeding some to Calvin and he started actually chewing on it. This is a very big deal, since he needs to learn to make the leap from sucking (which is amazing that he has anyway) to chewing.

For some reason that escapes me, speech therapy is still in it's infancy here, so Gosia does pretty much everything on her own based on what she's read and learned from our speech therapist back in NYC. He gets electric stimulation therapy at the hospital each week along his throat to stimulate his muscles, which he's been taking well.

But he's teething again, molars this time, so every thing's on hold... But last time he teethed, he was to the hospital by this time for mild dehydration due to vomiting, so this time around he's taking it much better. And the sweet potato truck is right across the street... he loves sweet potatoes which is good because they're pretty much the healthiest food on the planet... so, so far not too terrible.

He's getting himself more and more up into the prone position. He'll willingly get on his tummy and hold his torso up, supported with his arms. You know, like babies do... How do you describe such things? I'm no good at the technical names. Gosia's the walking repository of brain and muscle knowledge. She's pretty amazing with all this stuff.

But, if he gets up against a wall, he can push himself off and away now. He doesn't just get frustrated.

And he's trying more and more to converse with us. When you talk to him, he'll answer back in Calvinese. His sounds are becoming more and more complex, and he plays with sounds he can make. So, we just keep talking to him... He's getting more emotionally complex, too. he knows when he's in trouble for shoulder biting when being held, and doesn't like it at all. He gets excited when I get home from work and hears my voice... he misses people when he hasn't heard them from a while.

When he gets left home with me and his crazy siblings, he's overjoyed to hear the sound of Gosia's voice when she gets back...

Anyway, that about wraps it up for today...

I'm doing a Holy Week Post-a-thon this week, so there'll be posts every day between now and Easter Sunday. Exciting stuff such as:

The Trip to the Doctors!
Rhiannon Getting Milk out of the Refrigerator!
and Out and About in the Spring!

Some people only take pictures of special events and pristine moments, no, not me...
Have rechargeable batteries, will travel.

Palm Sunday, March 16th

2008-03-16T17:14:00.006+08:00

A quick one this Palm Sunday... Gosia and I are still battling off a nasal infection, so I don't have much wherewithal to type. Plus, the medicine knocks me out, which is especially fun while teaching!

OK, kids, take out your pink giraffes and turn to page twenty.... What? you didn't bring your pink giraffe to school! Open your book bag! Let me see!

Along those lines, anyway... At least I'm an English teacher, not a Science or Math teacher... English doesn't make any sense anyway.

OK, here's the rule. Always follow the rule. Now here are thirty exceptions. Just memorize them because they're totally illogical...

And they ask me why, because they don't have anything corresponding to that in Chinese, and I tell them flat out: because English is crazy. Which they take as an answer that makes sense to them, I suppose, because they have me as their teacher.

Well anyway, here are a bunch of pictures of the kids.

They actually volunteered to pose for a picture, which is rare to say the least...

All the best,

See you Spy Wednesday!

Wednesday, March 12th

2008-03-12T11:39:00.008+08:00

Well, we've all been sick, still. It's week two... That's just part of teaching teaching...

But Barley & Chick Pea Soup was made, much tea has been drunk, and trips to the pharmacy have been made.

But it's spring! I'll make no mucus related "everything is green" jokes, but it's spring here...

Here are pictures of us back up on the balcony after the gray winter.

It's probably the best feature of this house.

All normalcy has been put on hold because of being sick, but we've been hanging out up there in the mornings (since we both work afternoons and evenings), doing laundry, reading, doing home school, Calvin's exercises, building things, drawing, etcetera.

The washer is outdoors, which is pretty common.

Calvin has his swing up there, and there's a ladder to the roof that's good for climbing.

Sunday, March 9th

2008-03-09T13:51:00.010+08:00

Here are a bunch of pictures that I took a couple days ago... We went out food shopping after work.

Nothing big, but it's us and it's always an adventure.

It was fun for the kids... a night car ride, romping around before bed time, all that kind of stuff.

Yes, we do have a car here... pretty exciting... It gets us where we need to go, and it's got a lot of character. Dents, bruises, scratches, scrapes... I pity those shiny, new cars. Cars were made for dents-- Scars bestow character.

Gosia drives it, though. I wouldn't dare. Scares the willies out of me.

Eli and Rhiannon are doing well in buxiban. They're learning English and Chinese, and it's considerably less stressful for everyone than public school had been. Rhiannon's made friends, so has Eli. They're learning that "socialization" I hear so much about these days...

Calvin's sense if vision is improving. Three weeks ago he started looking at Gosia's face while she's feeding him, and now he notices the spoon coming towards his mouth.

his balance has gotten a little better, too. He's better at lifting his torso up while on his tummy.

But we're still all sick, which is pretty annoying. So, I'll stop here... nothing much else comes into my mind. See you Wednesday!

Plus, video of Rhiannon playing Jenga with Eli and Gosia. The tower falls during her turn, much to Eli's delight.

Wednesday, March 5th

2008-03-05T12:27:00.012+08:00

We're all sick, so short one this Wednesday...

Calvin's sick, Eli's sick, Rhiannon's sleeping in her closet... that has nothing to do with sickness, it's just Rhiannon... She set up her bed in her closet last night...Here are a couple of pictures of the kid's sleeping habits. We moved them from bunk beds to just beds -- that lasted a week or so -- down to the mats just floor. no space for anything to get trapped under, and they're happier that way anyway.

They have the lovely habit of coming alive at bedtime and sharing a few hours of conversation with each other. I think I did the same with my brother... kill each other all day but at night we're suddenly great friends. The cats all group up in their bedroom for the night. The kittens sleep next to Rhiannon...

The picture is of her first sleeping habitat (before moving to the closet). She'd abandoned her own mat for the space underneath the mirror-with-drawers thing in the bedroom, which is closer to Eli, too.

All the furniture is attached to the walls in this house, (sort of common here) built-in you might say. So she sleeps in the space under it. She's cozy there...

Anyway, we have all been sick. The weather had been beautiful, Spring has certainly sprung. But with the change of seasons comes colds... and of course, teaching on a cold is such a delight.

"Stop speaking Chinese... stop speaking English!!! just stop speaking!!!"

Classrooms here are by their very nature a form of controlled chaos. There has to be energy, there has to be constant motion for it to really work. There's no "teacher's desk" (I don't even have a chair) in most of these schools. It tends to anchor the teacher and the rooms can also be quite small in relation to what gets done in them. It usually doesn't bother me a bit, but when I'm sick...

Anyway, I have to drive out to AnPing tonight, so I'm gonna go get some rest. I didn't sleep very well, as the Universe conspired to keep me awake. I'd just polished off a night-time cold pill and 15 pages of Dostoevsky's the Idiot and had just, finally fallen asleep when we had an earthquake.

It only lasted about 15 seconds or so, but the damned thing woke me right back up to the swaying of our house...

I, of course, have an "it's the big one" moment, run out onto the balcony to see if any buildings in the immediate vicinity are collapsing, see that they aren't, am thereby annoyed that I've been roused from sleep and they aren't, and head back to bed.

See you Sunday!

Sunday, March 2nd

2008-02-29T10:45:00.005+08:00

Well, I wanted to use this post to show you a few pictures I took of my classroom (and my classroom cat, Gorey) and a few of my students.

As I assume you know but I'll tel you anyway, I work in a buxiban, which translates to "not a class". While buxibans are schools, they are all private and exist independently from a student's normal curriculum in public school. There are English, Piano, Dance and a number of other types of buxibans, but almost everyone goes to an English buxiban.

My first buxiban was a JOY School, one of the larger chains... the McDonalds of English, if you will. Looks good and smells good, but it sits in your gut... a huge focus on memorization of vocabulary, usually.

There are a number of chains across the island.. JOY, Giraffe, Sesame Street, but they're outnumbered (for better or worse) by the small independents.

My old bosses Ainjali and Axel (a Taiwanese woman and her German husband) started a buxiban well over a decade ago and have about 300 students. My current school was started about 4 years ago and has about 80 students. I teach four classes there, 2 hours each, twice a week, so 4 hours a day + prep time.

We also teach out in AnPing. That school's only 6 months old... I teach a number of classes there, Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings. Saturdays, I teach a broad Science class which has been fun. This is where Gosia teaches --- she teaches two classes four times a week.

These schools are in converted houses, which is very common for a buxiban.

Wednesday (Thursday), February 27th (28th)

2008-02-27T20:01:00.008+08:00

Well, it is Year of the Rat... so I suppose today was good luck? We've had an on and off visitor of the ratty variety -- there are numerous ways for one to get in... the drains, the door in the kitchen to the small outside trash/water heater area... it's not as creepy as it sounds. Taiwan is a rabies free zone. But still.

So, we were cleaning and Gosia opened that kitchen door and in it scurried, freaked out, and ran into the small kitchen bathroom, where it knows of a drain escape route. However, apparently, it has been dining well lately because it's fat butt could no longer fit through the drain!

It dove down, wiggled about, then came back out looking befuddled.

So we sent in Ethyl Merman to catch the rat... she sniffed it out, but then we became worried for the great dame's safety so we got her out. Then Gosia went in with the rat trap we'd gotten months ago and trapped it with the aid of a plunger.

Eli and Rhiannon watched the whole thing, Eli armed with a stick.

Then began the discussion as what to do with it....

Rhiannon was thrilled and suggested now it could live in their room, they could feed it and care for it and the like.

Eli just didn't want to kill it, since it was just doing it's thing and just made a mistake by coming inside. The rat squeeked it's own appeals for decency.

So, Eli and I got on the scooter with the rat and drove it over to the local recycling center/basketball court/mini dump and released it there.

Eli wished it a good life, and that's that.

Sunday, February 24th

2008-02-24T20:36:00.012+08:00

So, Saturday was a rainy day...

Calvin and I went out to get some sweet potatoes off the blue truck across the street... All of the livery trucks here are required to be painted blue -- some say because the drivers tend to take 'liberties" with road safety, don't sleep enough, and are hyped up on betel nuts, the law was passed so people could see them coming... but that may be a myth.

Often, an independent seller of various goods will open up shop out of the back of his truck on the side of a road. Often for culinary purposes. On our stretch of road alone we have a roasted chestnut seller (the roasting is done on the flatbed truck), an orange and fresh orange juice seller (squeezed on the truck) and the roasted sweet potato guy (also done all on the truck)...

One thing for Taiwan is that small businesses seem to be a heck of a lot easier to own than in some other countries I could name. I don't know what the class issues are exactly like-- many of the livery drivers and truck shop owners smoke endlessly and have the traditional red teeth, but it's a life, and the guy across the street has awesome roasting methods...

Today started cold and rainy (it was a cold, white knuckle drive to Mass!) but soon turned quite warm and sunny. I got to spend some time with out next door neighbor, who grown bonsai. He knows a lot about it, all the ins and outs of crafting a beautiful tree -- he learned it all off the internet, from somebody's blog! He's got 40 plants now, and he gave one he grew himself from a clipping to Rhiannon.

Some of the older ones he owns, he's found among the abandoned houses of old soldiers -- throughout the oldest areas of town, and this is the oldest city here, are mini towns of soldiers houses: tiny, I suppose two or three rooms houses, built maybe 100 together in a grid. All of the retired soldiers were given these houses, and now as they're dying off or are given newer apartments, these communities are being torn down to put up apartment building complexes.

To me, it's a bit sad. The houses aren't the best living environment, I'm sure, but anytime a whole way of life, however small or chilly, is flattened to make way for progress, however warm and well lit, the artist in me gets a bit depressed.

No amount of apartment buildings and townhouses can compare to the well used alleyways, the old water hand pumps, the trees grown through whole brick walls, and layers and layers of wires, posters, masonry and human life.

Well, anyway, a couple pictures of Rhiannon watching my neighbor and Angel working on the bonsais.

And today was Tomato Day!

I chopped the onions first, 5 of them, put them in a bottle's worth of vinegar boiled with mustard seeds, red pepper flakes and various spices + some olive oil.

Then Rhiannon and I chopped up 15 tomatoes and a cup of garlic. I sliced them and she diced them. She's dicing while watching the Simpsons.... Tomatoes are sold green and red here. I'm not sure what the green ones are used for exactly, but it's pretty common and they work fine. They're actually a little tougher than the red ones so they have a nice texture to absorb all the delicious vinegar.

Ah, vinegar!

Favored drink of Roman soldiers everywhere!

And a picture of the end product at the bottom... it should hopefully last us two weeks...

....and a movie at the very bottom!!

2008-02-20T12:23:00.005+08:00

Well, it's Lent in the Cur Family household...

We've given up coffee and the like, Eli and Rhiannon have given up crappy cartoons, and Calvin's given up cigarettes and whiskey.

So, Lent puts me in a sentimental mood. Aside from the more traditional reasons, it's the lead-up to Calvin being born. I thank God it was Lent when Calvin was born, and then Holy Week right after. It made it somehow more do-able, being surrounded by those days. For a while I resented Easter for leaving me behind. I felt like it should just stay Good Friday for the rest of the year.

When I took Gosia to the hospital, the only two things I grabbed for myself on the way out were my cell phone and my rosary beads. I don't know how many decades I must have said milling around, waiting for the fifteen minute surgery that turned into a three hour surgery to be over.

the whole pregnancy I'd just had this feeling that something was coming, something was going to happen. They took Calvin out of the Surgery room first, in a life support incubator, surrounded by doctors and nurses who were using a hand pump over his mouth to manually breathe for him until they could get him upstairs to the ICU... he was so pink, he seemed alive... at least they were honest with me, though. They did tell me how bad it was.

And then waiting, and waiting. I think I just prayed the Joyful Mysteries over and over again, the Birth of Christ, over and over again.

And when i finally got to see him I was surprised there was a baby under all the wires an tubes, and his life signs were all over the place. He was constantly having seizures, nothing was stable. I remember staring at the monitor, trying to will it to be stable. Just three breaths that look like one another... and he was so pale, by then, too...

And then Gosia was out of surgery, and after running around the hospital filling out forms and paperwork, I could finally see her, and I didn't know what to tell he so I told her everything, and then we could just try and deal with it somehow. But there was this gigantic hole.

We had him baptized in the ICU as soon as we could. Our priest, Father Joseph, came to do it. One of the nurses and myself helped, and I cried through the whole thing. He received Baptism first then Anointing of the Sick second. Gosia couldn't even be there, she hadn't been able to see him yet.

Days later, the first time Gosia saw Calvin, the first time he heard her voice, he jumped. He started breathing so deeply that it set off an alarm on his machines...

But that's what Lent is for me, and I was stuck in Lent for weeks after Easter... I'd say the rosary every day when driving to the hospital, back from the hospital, and it was always the Sorrowful Mysteries. For weeks, I prayed them over and over, not out of self pity-- it just held me in there. I was able to function because of that... because of those Mysteries. It kept me balanced, in perspective. It kept me from getting swept away into fear and wailing or the like.

Then finally, after a few weeks, I was able to let go. I was forced, or moved, or forced myself to let go and say the Glorious Mysteries... and nothing changed, but there was a cycle again. Birth, Death, and Resurrection.

And Calvin did come home, and now he's going to be two soon... But Lent is this big river of memories for me. Very vivid memories. Memories I still feel like I can walk through.

So, now I guess I got something out of my system... Electronic catharsis...

Sunday, February 17th

2008-02-17T09:21:00.013+08:00

It's been quite nice during the day here, kind of like Spring... but at night and early mornings, it's pretty cold. These houses were NOT made for this kind of weather -- there are water pipes through windows in the bathroom and the like, so it's impossible to close a bunch of the windows... the floors are ALL tile (tile is a very popular building material here, it's all over houses, interior and exterior... and marble on the stairs) which I suppose is cooler for the Summer, but they've been rather chilly now.

This has been the coldest Winter in anyone's memory here. You can even see your breath on some nights... But the days are nice.

Also at the bottom are pictures of Calvin, post hair cut. We attacked his mop with scissors a few days ago.

Also, of Eli and Rhiannon conversing over how if they combine their New year's money, they can get an even bigger Transformer... They like playing Transformers together...

well, Sunday calls, so I'm off!

Wednesday, February 13th

2008-02-12T14:06:00.000+08:00

Well, it's back to teaching... New Year is behind us, I have a new class, Gosia has a new class, Eli and Rhiannon will be starting their classes... I still think Eli would be happier tending the goats, but for now it's grammar and writing.

At least goats give you cheese, all grammar ever gives me is a curdled headache -- at least now I get to share it with my students.

It's been cold (don't put your Winter blankets away until after Dragon Boat Festival!) so that's no good for Calvin.

He seizes up which makes swallowing tough, plus gagging/vomiting is more common. But he's doing well. He doesn't like it, but he's doing well.

Anyway, a picture of Eli and me watching Simpsons, and a couple of Ethyl Merman who likes to eat fried crunchy peas.

Our other two cats had to get surgeries, too. The brown one had a hemotoma (blood buildup between the skin and the cartilage) in her ear, and the white one is a male... he was starting to court Ethyl Merman and I'll have none of that, so we neutered him.

Plus a movie of Calvin at the bottom: he's in his chair, and you can see whenever he sort of drifts away, that's him having seizures. And after that... well, Calvin fell asleep on the floor in his anti-roll device...

February 9th

2008-02-10T10:56:00.000+08:00

Last night we had hot pot for dinner --
(a soup-like assortment of noodles, vegetables such as mushrooms and baby corn, greens, and various other hot pot add ons)

--it's supposed to be cooked at the table, but we don't have the necessary apparatus, so we cooked it in a big pot on the stove.

Rhiannon was very happy with dinner because she got the pink noodles.

Her prayer before meals are becoming highly reminiscent of those of her great grandmother, Nonna. She has quite a silent litany going...

Eli stuck to the basics last night,

Dear God, thank you for out tofu, Amen.

And Eli and Calvin got haircuts over the vacation, courtesy of me and my shaky scissors...
I have to sneak up on Eli to take any near-decent picture of him... Calvin was not in the mood for photo taking since he'd just had some spicy soup.