Practice makes perfect

Day our items arrived from the U.S. - William giddy to see his long, lost John Deere Gator

I used to believe in the saying, "Practice makes perfect." You know, the more you do something, the easier it gets. It's not that the task self gets easier, it's your ability to perform the task. Well, I am not sure I am drinking out of that water cooler any more. No, my absolute incompetence at moving has proved that this truth is not true for me.

Bill and I have moved way too many times. You already know this because you get my "We've moved! Here is our new address," email year after year. I am sure you are thinking, "Moved again! Those Davidsons are crazy!" Yes, we are nomads, but I am no more proficient having moved seven times in eight years than when we made our first trek from Utah to Chicago.

Throughout those many moves, I often needed rescuing as I drowned in the details, "Help!" Mom flying out, sister flying out, mom flying out, whew… This move to China was no exception; the Bettendorf, Iowa, schooner sent out an SOS signal. My niece Becca babysat our kids while we looked for a place to live in China. Bill's sister, Heather, flew out and helped us go through our Mt. Everest of stuff to determine what was Goodwill, Go to China, and Go to Storage. Tracy, also Bill's sister, helped us wrap up all our loose ends, watched kids on packing and moving days, and bought last minute items to help us survive the China Wilderness. (Thank you again for all your help!)

Bill tries to give me some perspective saying, "Well, not everyone relocates their family to China from beginning to end in a total of six weeks." Getting Chinese visas, medical visits, house hunting trip to China, selling a house in Bettendorf, sorting through every item we've ever owned, etc.

Our decision to move to China was a quick one and we still feel like we are just getting off the roller coaster. However, I have lied to myself about this before, always having a reason why this move or that move was crazy. No, I have serious moving disease; we have been in our new house about six weeks and I still have boxes, loads of junk that needs to be organized and put away and I have a full time maid that does my cleaning and laundry. What is my excuse? After careful consideration and much contemplation, I have determined that I have an allergy to unpacking moving boxes, organizing piles, and putting away the same things time after time. This allergy forces me to throw myself into other projects and activities, like playing with my kids and being the PTA president. My unpacking and organizing avoidance is one that I have yet to manage. Maybe I just need a little more practice…

Moving in day - you can see why many of our items were broken when we unpacked. We are missing many, many boxes that no one seems to know were they are. Maybe pirates seized them at sea. More paperwork for us to fill out to try and recover the value of all our lost goods. (Gracie is devastated because she is missing her stuffed penguin.)

Trip to IKEA in Shanghai with my friend Sarah. I replaced many of the lost items and I picked up just a few thousand extra little things. Can anyone leave IKEA without jepordaizing your children's college fund? IKEA and I have a love/hate relationship.


William as "box head." He loved his box head and wore it around for long periods at a time. We made a large fort out of our moving boxes.

"Box Head"

Bill and William asleep suffering from jet lag the day after we got to Shanghai.

William in Shanghai airport after the long journey. He obviously didn't mind the 14 hour flight. Twelve hours into the flight he starting crawling up and down the isles and barking like a dog.

Family with all our luggage.


William on the airplane.

Ruth and Grace on the airplane eating dinner.


Moving day at Bettendorf house. I miss my flowers.

Ruth had surgery two days before we left. She reacted negatively to the anestesia. I took care of her, throwing up, trying to direct the movers what to do with our stuff.

William taking an ice cream break. He found this gas funnel in the garage and wore it around.

Chaos in Bettendorf

Chaos in Bettendorf II

United Nations Day

Ruth and Grace attend Access International Academy Ningbo. It is a small international school with about one-hundred thirty students from twenty-six different countries. Americans are the minority. Ruth is the only American in her class (eleven students) and Grace has one other American (ten students). Most of the students are from Korea and Japan (about 60%), next Europeans and Indians and then South Americans and last, but not least, Americans. Interesting, most of the teachers are from America and Canada.

The kids here are amazing. Most of them speak at least three languages. For example, one boy in Ruth's class has a German father and Chinese mother. One day after school we were playing on the playground. He was talking with me in perfect English, his dad walks up and he speaks to him in fluent German, then my driver spoke with him in Chinese. This is not unusual and is quite the norm. We are the backwards ones only speaking English. One of Ruth's good friends is half Italian and half Japanese. She speaks Japanese with her mom, Italian with her dad and English at school. However, most of the Asian families hire tutors and also have their children go to school on Saturday. Ruth's friend goes to another private school on Saturday so she can keep up on her Japanese. The Koreans are hard core education and are consistently asking the teachers for more homework, hire tutors, and have their children skipping grades. It is an interesting educational environment.

One of the neat events that the school holds is UN Day. It is a day celebrating the nationalities of all of its students. They have a parade of nations with each country dressing up in their native dress. (Yes, I cried when the students sang and I saw them all dressed up.) We had a very lively discussion on what should American/Canadians wear. Our girls were quite passionate about the fact they are from three countries – America, Canada, and Germany. I told them we would only do America and Canada since that is where their parents are from. So, they opted to wear 4^th of July t-shirts we got at Wal-Mart this past summer. In order to marital harmony they had U.S.A. painted on one cheek and a Canadian maple leaf on the other. Ruth represented America and Grace walked with Canada. They have already figured out that next year they will switch. (We couldn't find our Canada Roots shirt for Grace since everything was still in boxes!) The people from the other countries wanted our costume to be cowboys and Indians - maybe next year.

After the parade the students go on a world tour. Each class chose a country to study in depth and then the other students go around and see their projects and what they learned. They give them passports to get stamped as they travel around. For lunch the PTA organized food from all our different countries. There was so much food, a lot of which I had never seen before so I can't even describe what it was. We did have imported cheese and salami from France, Gummi Bears and warm potato salad from Germany, salmon sushi from Japan, delicious Korean noodles, Brazilian meat, Taiwanese tea, and chili and hot dogs from the good ol' U.S.A.

It was so funny because I brought Twizlers licorice in our shipment and I thought I would share them for UN Day at school. Well, I had them sitting out and no one would take them. I kept asking the kids if they wanted some Twizlers. They all politiely declined except my girls. It took me awhile to clue in that most of the students had no idea what in the world I was offering them. So, I starting asking if they wanted some American candy. A few started taking it. Well, word on the playground spread quickly; the kids told their friends and they kept coming back for some more of the American candy.

After I was out, an Asian boy about eight years old asked me while showing me with his hands the length of a Twizlers,

"Excuse me, do you have any more of those long, skinny, red things?"

"You want some more licorice?" I asked.

"No," he replied. "I want some more of the long, skinny, red things."

I felt so bad I didn't have any more to give him. Most of the kids had never had licorice before and it is not something you can find in this part of the world. Add it to the list of things to buy when I go back to America.

Mr. Lopart and the violin lessons

Ruth waiting before the performance

Stage before performance -I wish you could see the thousands of fresh Roses and Gebera Daises they had in front of the stage

Ruth playing during performance.



William trying to melt bottle on light

Video during practice

It all started when the phone rang and the concierge informed me that they scheduled violin lessons for the following day at 6:00 p.m. Would I be able to make it? How did the people at Howard Johnson even know our girls played the violin? Well, the staff noticed when they unpacked our 1,000 bags out of the van the night we arrived. It just happened that the best violin school in Ningbo, our city of six million, was right across the street from the Howard Johnson. They pulled a few strings and the director agreed to listen to Ruth and Grace play their violins and see if they would take them on.

We met our two Chinese escorts in the lobby and crossed the street to a Soviet communist style building that was literally crumbling. We walked around what seemed in circles, out one door, into a courtyard, through another door, into a parking lot, and finally up a large set of stairs and into the small, hot and humid room. Sitting there, behind a large dusty desk was an older Chinese man with the most far reaching "comb over" I have ever seen. He looked and walked like Mr. Lopart from the cartoon Handy Many.

After a few pleasantries, he soon started barking orders in Chinese, translated by our hotel translators, and told my girls to play something. They were both nervous and very rusty (not playing for over three months) and fumbled through a few songs. He put up a book on a wobbly music stand and ordered the girls to play. I obviously didn't do a very good job explaining the "Suzuki" method of violin and how Ruth was just learning to read music and Gracie couldn't read a single note. Well, he figured it out pretty quickly and questioned all American music education. His Chinese students could read music at four and five. The earliest beginner was farther along than these two. He asked me how long and how often the girls played. I told them their lesson schedule; in China the students all have hour long lessons, no matter the age, and practice hours every day. Well, I told him that is not how it is in America. (He was very interested in where I bought Ruth's high quality violin strings. They came with the violin and I didn't realize they were anything but average.)

While the violin playing may not have impressed the Chinese teacher, William was thrilled with the music. While the girls played, he pulled up a small stool, got some paper and put it on an extra music stand rusting in the corner and proceeded to direct the music as if he were the guest conductor at the New York Philharmonic. With pencil in hand, he led the music with gusto. Our two translators had a hard time listening to Mr. Lopart, as I affectionately call him, because William's conducting was so enthralling.

At one point I literally started laughing out loud because the scene was one that even a Pulitzer Prize Novelist couldn't create – buckling laminate flooring, rusting metal, piles of dust, mosquito swarms feeding on our warm bodies, two year old leading his own orchestra, sweat dripping down my face, Mr. Lopart's comb over being misplaced by the blowing fan, two young Chinese translators trying to figure out how to nicely tell me that the expert violin teacher thinks my girls are not exactly on track to become the next Hilary Hahn, me winking and giving the girls thumbs up encouraging them on, all the while curious Chinese students and parents smashed their faces against the window in the door like we were animals in a zoo that they paid and entrance fee to observe.

After all of this excitement, Mr. Lopart told us to pack up our violins and go. He was going to show us how it was done. We walked back through the maze of corridors, staircases, courtyards and walked into an auditorium with an orchestra practicing some music. We sat down and he showed us how it was supposed to be done, Chinese style.

Oh, if you think the violin adventure ends there, you are mistaken. We made arrangements that one of Mr. Lopart's English speaking protégé's would teach Ruth and Grace violin. All was rolling along, until one week our teacher, Mr. Yu, informed us that Mr. Lopart wanted Ruth to play the violin in front of thousands of people at the premiere concert hall in Ningbo. They were holding an International Fashion show and they were asked to perform there. Oh, and by the way, she only had five days to learn the piece that the Chinese students had been working on for months. She was to dress like a "princess," while all the other students wore black pants and sequin vests. The teacher wanted to meet with her every day so she could memorize a simplified version of the piece being played. Ruth was hesitant at first and then agreed. He also told me more than once, I am not sure if he was trying to give me advice, that his other students' mothers hit their children if they miss a note and it helps them play the piece perfectly. Not exactly my style. The Chinese take playing the violin so seriously because it is one way for the children to get a head in life. For some, it is their only hope in life. Without it, there will be no career, no college, no money, no marriage. It is literally their ticket to survive. Luckily, we are fortunate enough to have options and don't have to live with that type of pressure. Anyway, Ruth worked very hard learning the difficult music, getting up at six in the morning, practicing after school, etc., however, hopefully for the learning experience, not because this is how she will survive in life.

The day of the performance was a culture shock for all of us. We walked in and we were surrounded my Chinese children ages 6-16. I mean literally surrounded. Mr. Lopart and Mr. Yu continually shooed the kids away, but like flies around a summer BBQ, they always came circling back. The whole afternoon and evening we were the only Caucasians in sight. Ruth was constantly bombarded with curious kids, looking at her stuff, watching her, and trying out their few English words, "Hello! How are you?" The few parents that were allowed through security into the event were, I shall say INTENSE, and the rest of the mothers waited outside screaming to be let in. (Even in China, boys will be boys; I saw a small group of boys trying to melt empty plastic water bottles under hot performance lights. Unfortunately, William saw this and also tried this experiment. ) The fashion show was Broadway like – with a Chinese twist. Ruth was the focus of the violin performance, specifically positioned so she could stay on track by watching the bowing of two other players.

While the whole thing was a good growth experience for Ruth, I have a little pit in my stomach knowing she was not there because of the way she played the violin, but because of the way she looked. Over two hundred students were selected to play for the show, but only one hundred could play in the end because they didn't have enough sequin vests. Apparently, the mother's of the other players almost rioted. Ruth was asked just a few days before, when the other Chinese students worked long and hard. It just doesn't seem fair.