Sunday was our scheduled family day. The twins were to arrive around 11ish. I think they might’ve spoken English? Both twins had daughter’s with English names. Bella and Sophia. The twins could’ve been identical if they had their hair in the same hair style. They were only interested in talking with my twins. That’s fine. Amazingly Wensen took the lead this time in talking. The twins were in their 30’s , their kids younger than mine 5 & 7.
We went to lunch at a dumpling restaurant across the street. I remember going there once 5 years ago. It was good. Then they walked us back to our housing complex entrance before departing for their ride. After they left we got ice cream.
I tried to clarify how they were related to Ma. They kept telling me they were my sister, the kids sister. I am a huge no on calling relatives I don’t know and am not close to my sister. They were saying you are grama to the twins kids. NO. I am only a grama when my three boys have kids. I thought it was my mother-in-laws mother’s sister’s child. But it could be further removed as a cousin to my mother-in-law’s mother’s sister.
Ba was telling me know one of the twins is close to him because he introduced her to her professor when she went to university........chest puffed.....That’s why my husband has never met them before in his life. Never mentioned twins before to us? I’ll never understand how they think of family.
As evening rolls around my father-in-law went out and it was almost 5 when the cousin who went to Japan would be picking us up. He called my mother-in-law to let us know he has arrived, he did drop them off at out house before. She is trying to tell him where to pick us up. And starts freaking out about WeChat. I open my WeChat and she watches me asking about location. I’m thinking I know where we live to get us home. No she wanted me to send my location to him. He knows where we are. No get the kids to ask me to open WeChat, which she watched me open again. Ours look different so I must not be opening the right thing.
She tells us to go out the front entrance and walk left we should see him. We go out the front and walk left cross the block and I think this is too far. Luckily the cousin sent me his location so we could find him. We should’ve went out the back entrance and left or front entrance and double left. But we finally found him.
Because it was rush hour we went a round about way through parking lots and a different part of the city than I haven’t seen before. Considering the ride home was on normally travelled high ways I recognized. The dinner was a Mongolian themed restaurant. Outside they had yurts, goats, geese, trampoline, swings and other stuff for kids to play on. We had a room inside with A/C, which was working hard against the huge soup pot with a full fish and broth. There was a buffet of snacks from edemame, kettle corn, and other rice crackery things. All the cousins where there to see us again. The oldest with out his wife and kids, but he brought one of his pals with his son. The son wants to study what 2 of the cousins have studied so he came to talk with them. Our chauffeur’s wife did not come. The motorcycle cousin brought his wife. And the girl cousin and her husband came. Their smiley happy daughter was staying her summer vacation at her grandparents. We got to FaceTime her to see her.
The boys got to play outside every time someone went out to smoke. The dinner was really good, besides the main meal of fish and tofu in broth, they put corn muffins on the side of the pan to steam(they needed salt to me, but I’m sure were authentic this way). We got the best fried mushrooms. A dish of candied sweet potato slices that you had to force off and into a bowl of water to stop the sticky. And a plate of fried sweet potatoes coated in a sugar salty mix. The decore was traditional pictures made out of fish skins! Some were a flat design, other’s puffed and stitched like pillows.
There was much laughing. Much eating. The cousins are very nice, even if I can’t understand them. They would love it if we stayed, they wanted me to learn Chinese and get a job teaching English. I wonder how often they actually get together. They seem like a good group to be friends with. Japan cousin stood up for me that I can speak Japanese too. And Spanish(very rusty) I said. Luckily they didn’t know a lick of that. I said I can’t hear the tones of Chinese. And then they went through the tones, all sounding the same to me. Then into a discussion of the Beijing ”murr”. I still need to figure out what this “murr” is, a Beijing thing from what I understand. I did learn why people make a certain hand gesture when taking pictures. It represents the bottom of a heart!
We didn’t get home till 11 and the kids needed a shower from all the running around. So you can imagine how sleepy they were the next morning!
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