Archie Pics: A Random Conglomeration

Here's a random conglomeration of some of my favorite candid Archie pics from August:

I took Archie swimming at a pool downtown. After about 15 minutes of screaming every time his foot touched the water, he decided he liked it! While I didn't get any pics of his swimming time, I did get a cute shot of him in the kids ball pit afterward. He had a blast! He picked up every ball, turned it around in his hands, examined it, then had a conversation with it...(Is that normal?)

Archie also likes hanging out under tables!

and on Daddy's shoulders!

Archie is a busy boy! After bath he can't even wait until I get him dressed before resuming play!

Archie's First Trip to the North Pole!

Ok, not really the North Pole. But we did take him to the Polarland Aquarium for his first up close encounters with fish and ocean life. (Unfortunately, our pics of the polar bears did not turn out.)

These are the fish Archie was so enthralled with!

Maybe he'll be a captain when he grows up!

The weather was great so Archie had fun outside, too．Watch him dance in this 4 second youtube video I uploaded! I'm still learning how to do this video thing. Any tips would be welcome in the comments!

Hush! Don't wake the babies!

Hush! Please don't wake up Archie! I bet the other mother doesn't want you to wake up her baby, either. Isn't it funny how Archie and the other baby assumed the same sleeping pose while out on the town in their strollers?

Cheaters Never Win!

Teach your kids never to cheat on their homework. You can't rely on computer translators. My friend Joe sent me the link to this picture. You can check out the original post.

I snapped this next one myself while at a restaurant recently. If the English corresponded with the characters, it would say something like "Please don't bring your own alcohol." Looks like they might have used a computer translator on it, too, with the crazy English. (Don't worry: we neither brought our own beer nor drank theirs :))

The last 5.5 hours of my life: A beauty shop experience

1 p.m. - I put the baby down for a nap and tell Hunt I'll be back when he wakes up around 3
1:10 - arrive at hair salon (if you can call it that), begin experiencing the summer heat with no A/C yet hair dryers, etc, and wonder how much time the chain smoker in the chair next to me is shortening my lifespan through second hand smoke
2:45 - They FINALLY finish cutting my hair (Now, as I'm growing my hair out, this was just a little fix-it. Not a restyle or anything complicated.) They ask me if I want to read and hand me some magazines full of characters. I begin texting my friends on my cellphone instead.
3:45 or so - finish putting these little tiny braids near the top of my hair. This seems a little strange since the purpose of my visit is to have my hair straightened to reverse my perm of two months ago.
I really lose track of time after this despite the fact I looked at my cell clock ever 2 minutes beginning now. They put the first round of chemicals on the braided up pieces and have me sit under the revolving heat lamp that looks like it came out of a Time Travel movie. A little dog scampers by my foot and I yell at him (in the local language so he would understand) to get away!
Round Two of chemicals start and I think this might actually do the trick for straightening (as I don't have a lot of confidence in the mini braids)
5 p.m. We begin the wash and style. As I start to get up to pay, they have me sit back down for some more styling. (I confess I didn't really understand the word they were saying
and blindly agreed because it was easier than gaining understanding.) When they started putting new chemicals on my freshly styled hair, I pressed for an answer and I was told it was to make my hair turn under naturally. THIS HAS BEEN MY DREAM FOR MY WHOLE LIFE: TO HAVE MY HAIR TURN UNDER NATURALLY WITH NO STYLING EFFORT. However, as I thought it over, I realized if there was such a chemical, America would surely have it and I would have bought it!
At this point, Archie comes for a visit. (I've been texting with Hunt now for several hours.) This is perhaps the only time in Archie's life sitting in my lap didn't comfort him because that only put him closer to the hair dryer, which he's TERRIFIED of! Thankfully, Hunt says he calmed down when he left.
6:20 We start the final wash, dry and style. At this point, I'm SO ready to leave (and feeling convinced the salon is more like a prison that blares profane Western rap music the ENTIRE time), I grab the towel and start ringing and drying one side while the guy drys the other with the blow dryer.

Life Lessons:
1. Think twice about EVER perming your hair again since the reversal process is so heinous.
2. Bring water to a local beauty salon. I was feeling pretty dehydrated before I left.
3. Think carefully over getting ANY hairstyling/cutting done before my next trip to Thailand in January! Can one haircut last me a year?
4. Little tiny braids have a neutral effect on hair straightening. They do make for some interesting text conversations, though. Me: "Will you still love me if I come home with spiked hair?" Hunt: "Maybe...can the spikes be multicolored?"
5. There is no wonder chemical for making your hair turn under. Alas, I must blow dry or use a curling iron...

Point to Remember...
Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain...

Summer Photo Shoot

Archie is 10 months old in these pictures. People are always asking me if he understands English or their language. I always tell them he's too small to understand much of anything, but that's not entirely true. He's had so many pictures taken (by me and everyone who passes by on the street) he now understands the word "Smile" followed by a little tongue clicking. (Sometimes he even imitates the tongue clicking himself.) He actually understands "Smile" in both languages! 黄海涛，笑一个！Here are a few favorites from our latest photo shoot in front of our apartment.




Now for some funny ones! He knows he's getting his picture taken and wants to make sure he doesn't have any grass (or spit up) on his shirt. What a smart boy!

Oh, forget the shirt entirely. It's summertime, which means it's entirely too hot for a baby to be wearing a shirt.


I think the gardener's favorite part of his job description is helping me get Archie to smile while I snap pictures. (OK, I'm not sure his boss would agree that's actually part of the description.) Anyway, Archie really loves him and all the grounds keeping and housekeeping staff.

Olympic Fun!

Everyone here has Olympic Fever! I mean, they're naming their babies Olympics (Ao Yun) and tons of couples chose the day of the opening ceremonies, 08/08/08, for their wedding parties! We enjoyed watching the opening ceremonies at one of our friends houses!

Let's Go on a Field Trip!

On Saturday, we packed up our diaper bag and headed out on the road with a group of teachers for a little field trip to a mountain park. (In the winter, it's a ski area.) First, I want to introduce you to our driver! He just happens to be one of Archie's best friends :)

Don't be fooled by this picture of Archie sleeping. Although he did nod off towards the VERY end of our two hour trip, I think he was about the only baby on the bus who didn't sleep most of the way. I must admit I was struggling with jealousy as I watched all the other kiddos (and mommies) taking a nap while I was holding a bouncing baby!

Here we all are!

It took FOREVER to get all (or at least most) of the kids looking in the same direction for a picture!

We enjoyed a yummy Korean style picnic lunch together!

Tony the Taekwondo teacher has fun hanging from a tree!

Kids and adults alike loved the "blow the tissue" game. The adults went to great lengths to see who could keep it afloat the longest!

The park had this crazy bungee ride! The ride manager guy would grab you and bounce you up so high you would flip over. (Unfortunately, all the best pictures showing the height are too blurry so just enjoy the ones of the kids in their harnesses getting ready to take off!)

This is my first attempt at posting a video! If you have pointers on this subject, leave them in the comments! Then, I can post more fun videos in the future!

Take me to English Camp!

Welcome to Wan Bang School where our Louisville friends spent countless hours conducting an English camp! Classes started at 7:30 in the morning and didn't finish until 8:00 every night! What busy students (and teachers)!

We taught the kids a lot of American dances like the Macarena, the Electric Slide and the ChaCha slide:

Benjamin is a HUGE coffee fan so he, of course, taught a lesson on COFFEE. (Maybe this was just an excuse for him to have a cup while on the job!) You can also check out camp pics from his blog.

We played a TON of games!

There wasn't much downtime, but this guy took advantage of what little there was!

Did you know window washing was a part of camp?

No camp would be complete without camp food, but where are the s'mores?

Joe was a good teacher

so why were his students falling asleep?

The final program on the closing day!