The Canfields in China

HEllO All! I know it has been forever since we have tried to post on here.  For a long time it wasn’t working from China so we gave up and forgot about it.   Recently I was looking at Tony’s pg for some reason I decided to give it a second try, and to my surprise it is working again. PH!  I hope to but better posts up soon!  Thanks again for keeping it up for us Tony even though we haven’t been posting.

Well hello again everyone (and HAPPY THANKSGIVING), as you may have noticed Caleb has had a few fun things happen recently and he has had the wherewithal to actually write about them! Things have been going on here of course other than commercials and the Special Olympics however. In fact during this holiday season Caleb will turn 9 years old! That’s correct on Saturday he will be 9 and it’s pretty great, but before I get too far ahead of myself I should continue on with our Thanksgiving; since our school isn’t technically an international school we do not have off Thursday or Friday so it was basically classes as usual and of course that means no Turkey on Turkey Day…(I met up with Amy, Caleb and Emma after school at the nearby SiChuan restaurant for some “comfort” food! Nothing like some Jia Chong Dou Fu (fried up tofu) and Dou Miao (some kind of green spinach I guess) on a cool evening. Amy really considers local cuisine as comfort now so I suppose it works for holidays too!

Not to worry though we plan on meeting with @ 20 other Americans this Saturday to have more traditional fair…the Turkey, some pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes, stuffing and the whole bit (well, no football but we take what we can get I guess!)

About a week or two back we spent some time in GuangZhou to take care of some of Emma’s immigration VISA paperwork and we were able to spend the entire trip visiting with our dear friend Linna. She is always an encouraging person to be around and while we were there she was trying her best to “encourage” us to move to GuangZhou so we could see her more regularly! It was a little temptng to be honest, the weather was great in November and while being around a great person like Linna sounds good we have a lot of good friends here and plenty of work to keep doing. While we were gone a large group of our friends went to a local orphanage…our group will be on a regular rotation now! Every 4 to 5 weeks our group has committed to going and spending a Saturday with the kids there and I think it will be a wonderful opportunity for all of us to be focused on service to others.

It’s Thanksgiving and we have a lot to be thankful for that’s for sure; a great son, a beautiful new daughter and family here and back home that we love and a relationship with a certain carpenter’s son that surpasses all understanding…thanksgiving indeed!

hi again friends,

Saturday 12:46 P.M.

It began when a call came in that Heather/Ms.Couch (a friend of my parents) told someone that she knew a kid who’d be able to tryout for a part in a commercial, and that’s how it all began.

Wednesday 4:55 A.M.

Mom wakes me up, while I get some hot CoCo mom puts my cloths in order for when I am done with breakfast.

Wed. 5:31 A.M.

We hopped in a taxi at 5:30 a.m. It was so early everyone else was sleeping! NO lights were on in any windows. The taxi there was of course paid for, after we got there we relaxed at the CiCi club.Wed. 6:37 A.M.
The other kids got there and we rehearsed our parts, after that we all (including the “girls”) had to have some goo put into our hair to make it stick up. Then we got to learn each others names. : LARRY, SANDY, AND GABRIELLA. Part of the scene we ran through water from a fire hydrant, and the next thing is disgusting: a LOREAL model and a fire hydrant spraying water to run past.

Wed. 9:01 A.m,
They finally started actually filming the Commercial and then after we had done our parts the director told us to do something just to ad some sizzle to the C-mercial: it was to play in the water while he got some close close ups of us kids, well it wasn’t that bad just playing in the water, actually really and literally I was soaked from head to toe.

Wed. 9:33 A.M

After an embarrasing change of cloths and a thirty or so minute break we got back out their and ended up having to do the exact same thing again and went through another change of cloths and finally it was over and I got paid 700 kuai (chinese money) me and mom went to the outside C-mercaillists eating place with Gabreilla and her mom.

Wed. 11:00 A.M

We leave the seen and go home (oops we left our bag, now we leave)

Wed. 12:13 A.m

We get home and relax after along eight hours. Since I don’t like to rest, soon I went outside to play, shortly after that I went out to eat dinner with my dad, mom and church friends.

Wed. 7:41 P.M.

Mom and I organize my 700 kuai then I went to bed to get some much needed sleep.

Sorry, no photos!  They were sent to us via email and for some reason they will not permit us to post them. We will try to work this out. Stay tuned…

Your Bloggers Son,

Caleb

A Day at the Special Olympics

Hi friends,

One Wednesday morning mom (Amy) wakes me up early and says “Were going on a trip” and that was the beginning of our adventure.

As we made our way out we were able to get onto the court which the athletes had played on a few minutes before. Someone was interviewing Italian players for Italian TV. There was someone waiting to be interviewed with a lot of medals so we asked if we could take his picture:MEDAL MAN l MEDAL MAN ll ( I counted 2 GOLD 4 SILVER 1 BRONZE ) , . As we left we looked at the pictures just then I had the idea to share my story and thats why I’m typing on dad’s blog this Sunday.

Caleb,

Ok I know this may sound silly, however one of the local restaurants we frequent has not had fried rice the last two times we went in  for a meal…I did mention I live in China right? And this is a local place , not some western style food provider.

It’s like Burger King being out of burgers, McDonald’s not having fries or even Microsoft software/hardware that is actually user-friendly for Pete’s sake.

It gets better, they have no fried rice but they do offer to bring us some steamed rice…so you don’t have fried but you do have steamed?? And no matter what they weren’t going to mix the two.  I remember in Changsha getting this interesting mix of green beans and eggplant ~ pretty good dish that the whole family liked. I can’t get it in Shanghai, I can order some eggplant and I can order some green beans but I can’t get anyone to mix them together the way we had it in central China?

A little weird to me but hey that’s how it goes sometimes.

It’s the end of the first school week now and to be utterly honest (and when have you known bloggers/blogs to ever NOT be 100% truthful?) We are wiped out!

It’s been a week of long hours, little sleep and various frustrations, thankfully there have been glimmers/glimpses/and rays of hope/joy/encouragement. I’ve probably overreacted to a volleyball game referee mix-up at another school (I’m still learning quite a lot about the timing and proper procedures for all of the different aspects of the job).

I’ve not been home before 6pm once this week and that means Amy is literally holding down the homefront for super long periods of time…so we are both just wiped out.

Thankfully I had a great men’s group get together on Wednesday night that was encouraging and after a week of PE classes I was reminded of the caliber of the students we teach at the school. They are wonderful people with generally great attitudes and I have an outstanding co-worker, who really is thoughtful in making PE about more important life issues than just kicking a ball, or shooting hoops. We’ve already talked with the kids (while doing PE activities) about real character building topics, and about how lessons learned in PE can be helpful throughout life.

Another good point was winning 2 of the 4 volleyball games we played this week, and having Caleb with me at those games…while being the AD is time consuming it does afford me the opportunity to spend some of that time with my boy who loves sports too.

Emma is growing so much and watching Caleb be a great big brother is something else.

            Ok, well today was the first day of classes for our students and obviously any first day of school can/is/will be fraught with various things that need corrected etc. Add in the prevailing culture/uniqueness and multiplicity of our school and the chance of calamitous precipitation rises to global warming hysterics levels…

HOWEVER I’m not going to talk about that

Emma has grown in various ways; she has developed a paint melting, glass shattering, brain dripping out of your ear canal scream that we have been witness to on 2 separate occasions now. Also in the past week she has started motoring around enough to remind us of the fear/excitement that accompanies the first drunken sailor-ish stumblings of your little one as you frantically decide just how balanced between ‘over-protective’ and ‘laissez-faire’ you can be in your parenting “style”!

HOWEVER I’m not going to talk about that

We (Amy & I) have developed quite a little library of books, and will soon be adding more, which are all in Chinese from such esteemed authors as; C.S.Lewis, Hudson Taylor, Lee Strobel,  Max Lucado, Phillip Yancy and Josh McDowell. These will be on loan to folks seeking to read some nice books.

HOWEVER I’m not going to talk about that

Our regular group has seen the start of a new school year and with it a renewed dedication to what we’re here for…and that renewal has come from several different people who seem to have a serious commitment to utilizing the vast resources put at our disposal. I’m ecstatic to have so many folks come back from the summer with ideas, materials and most importantly desire to serve others. Many of us got together to talk/discuss/progress/be in thought and in general move forward with the great opportunity we have in this place, and the encouragement from getting together like that was so refreshing. I think this year could see some amazing things and that is certainly something worth talking about.

Hey there, I know most of you regular readers are looking for pictures of Emma’s birthday and I’ll put them on the very next post but at the moment I wanted to post a few pictures of the city from the 33rd floor of an apartment building (thanks to Randy & Pam for hosting the baby shower/party on Saturday by the way!)

Tomorrow Emma will be one year old and to celebrate yesterday we took her to her first Doctor’s visit! (Well the first one with us anyway). We took her to a very nice facility that we wouldn’t even take ourselves too ~ it’s not on our primary insurance provider list ~ but we are acquainted with a pediatrician who works there. He is very friendly and from all accounts a great doctor so we thought we should take Emma there for at least awhile to make sure everything is ok.

She did great at the office and even had some fun during the visit! We learned she gained about 1 full kilo in the time we’ve had her (about 2.2 pounds in about a month!) and overall based on the American/western baby scale she is in the 25th % for height, weight and head circumference, very symmetrical the Doc says and likely to keep growing well as we keep feeding her well…

Afterwards we had dinner with some good friends (and it was because they let us borrow their camera that we have any of these pictures to share, so thanks!!)

Later today we’ll be meeting with some more folks we know from our weekend group for a baby shower/birthday party, and tomorrow on Emma’s birthday we’ll be inviting everyone who wants to come over to our place after the regular meeting for some cake and ice cream! I’m sure there will be more pictures to come soon!

the Doc

the Clinic

Breathe normally!