the landlord

I'm trying to figure out the best way to describe my landlord. She's Josh's age, tiny (what asian girl isn't?), trendy, wealthy...and, I think, really happy to have foreigners renting her apartment. The problem is that she has a bad habit of randomly stopping by, just to see what's going on. I thought once the initial excitement of the "new foreigners" wore off, she would quit coming by, but so far that has not been the case. The problem of her daily stop-by routine is rooted in the fact that she herself lives in the building next to us, and her office is not just in our building, but right next door to us on our floor. That's where this word "shun bian" comes into play. For those of you not studying this language, it gives the connotation of "well, since I'm on my way..." or "oh, I'll just stop by since I'm in the area..." Obviously this is a very loose translation, but you get the idea.

Since it may sound to you like I am unwelcoming of new friends, let me explain why our landlord qualifies as an exception. If she were just coming over to say hi, or to let our kids play together (she has an abnormally shy 3 year old boy) that would be fine with me. The real issue is that she never comes empty handed. She has brought us bags of dried shrimp, dried seafood flakes, more fruit than is possible or desirable to eat, huge bouquets of roses from her travels to famous cities, puzzles and other random toys for emma. Unfortunately, these gifts are usually things that we either don't want/need or are not our taste (ie, dried seafood flakes). But today's gift was the kicker.

Last week, she invited us to go with her on her visit to a seaside city in our area. since we coudln't go, she promised she would bring us back something - my translation of the conversation led me to believe she was going to bring back some polished rocks from the seashore (something, in fact, I had use for...strangely enough). Apparently, my language skills were worse than I thought. This afternoon when she called, she told josh she had to come over today because her gift wouldn't be "good" tomorrow. Yikes.

When she arrives, I open the door to find her proudly holding toward me a bucket of a live seafood assortment. Hmmmm. There were five large clams in there, all opening and closing thier little clam-thing. there were four of these black spiky things, and a bag of fish that they had personally caught when they went fishing. I tried to contain my enthusiasm.

So she walks into the house and is jabbering a mile a minute, telling me how special and good these certain foods are, how to cook them, and wondering wouldn't I like to try them now? She fumbles around through my cabinets, looking for a pot and then starts cleaning off the sea porcupine things and the clams (who are, by the way, very unhappy about the whole process. As she sticks them under the faucet to rinse them, they angrily clam up and slam thier clam-things shut. It was wild!)

She starts boiling them and excitedly tells me that they'll be done in five minutes. With a flip in my stomach, I realize she's not leaving until they are done, which also means she's staying to see if I agree with her that they are "hao chi" (good and tasty). Five minutes later, josh and I bravely stick the clam in our mouth and try our best to show our appreciation for her very expensive gift. It was that moment that I wish I knew how to translate - do not cast your pears before swine!

In other news:
Saturday morning when I went to go get emma up, I discovered that she had thrown up in her bed at some undisclosed time during the night. She seemed completely oblivious to the fact that there was throw up all over her precious blanket and matted in her hair. She didn't seem fussy, sick, or anything else. Wouldn't you know...the day emma throws up and needs a complete washing from head to toe is the day all the water in our building mysteriously goes out. We didn't get water in our apartment until 5:00 that night. So josh bought large bottles of water and we washed her hair with filtered water. What a spoiled little girl! :)