The Circus Next Door

March 6, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 31 Comments

One thing which is great about living here again in the same building where I grew up is the huge square next to it. As I wrote before that there are several times a year some events such as fairs or even traveling circuses. Last time I visited a circus here was over 15 years ago and just last September we missed Europes biggest travelling circus as my wife and Nathan were in China and I had to deal with other things. This week once again a circus visited my hometown and we finally had the opportunity to go there together as my wife never had been to one and of course neither did Nathan.

circ2 — The white camel looked rather dumb…

This circus was not the biggest which had visited this town thus far but also not the smallest. So far I have seen really small ones here where the tent could hold perhaps less than a hundred people and really big ones with a capacity of 4500 people! As you can see there are huge differences when it comes to these kind of events. Some circuses have a lot of animals in their performances and do not have any at all. Now I don’t want to go into any discussion about how the animals have to suffer in order to learn the tricks for the performances but especially as a young child a circus is something magical. I still have fond memories when a circus did a march through the city center with various animals such as elephants and giraffes. Of course this is forbidden these days but it left an impression in my memories which I will never forget.

When we planned to go to the circus performance we were not sure in the beginning whether Nathan would like it or could sit still for roughly two hours. But all our worries were for naught as he was so amazed by everything that he didn’t want to leave at all in the end. As the circus is one of the smaller ones they had only few people performing and all of them had several acts. For example the “announcer” was also playing his part as a clown and as a fire breather. Besides performances by the artists there were also some with animals such as Camels and various horses. In between they also had a short break in which children could ride those animals. The overall theme of this circus was “Frozen” (the Walt Disney movie). Right after entering the tent the kids were greeted by Kristoff the Snowman and during several performances the artists were dressed up as characters from that movie. The clown also did a great job by involving some people from the audience to do some things in the circus ring. Even though the program is rather slim compared to the bigger circuses it is still entertaining and a change from the everyday life.

All in all I must say that I enjoyed it a lot and also Nathans enthusiasm was really great. I hope there will be some big circus coming here again in the next years as we just missed last September the biggest traveling circus in Europe (Circus Krone). Anyways I am glad that we went there and now I am just hoping that Nathan didn’t learn anything stupid from the fire breather and starts eating up some lit candles….

The line is getting shorter after half hour…

P.S. The quality of the pictures is rather low as they were all taken with a mobile phone

Have you visited a traveling circus before?

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Crazy Family, Mom in Law

Living in a world of your own

February 28, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 49 Comments

Everyone was already in a situation where you thought you did something such as paying some bill but in the end you basically forgot to do it. This can be rather annoying at time because you were at first 100% sure you did pay the bill which makes it even more frustrating to see that you were wrong in the end. Let me tell you there is nothing bad about it as it happens more often than not to me, especially when it comes to bringing the trash out (could be also my mind is doing it on purpose because who really likes to bring out the trash…). However this can be also very aggravating when it does happen to a person all the time and thus not only causes delay in doing certain things but also waste your time.

Who could I possibly talk about? My dear mother-in-law of course! I mentioned in various posts before that she is a rather odd person who is always right. No matter how clear it is that she did something wrong she is always able to blame others for it or it never ever happened. The thing is it wasn’t bothering me/ us so much as we didn’t have to depend too much on her most of the times but this changed a bit over time as she also started to visit us each year for three months and so on. Of course it wouldn’t matter at all in case these things were about trivial stuff but it usually always happens when it is about important or urgent matters.

Last time my wife was with Nathan in China she wanted to take some cash with her to Germany. Okay no problem there as she just had to go to bank with her mother (as the money is on her account) and withdraw some Euros. Now the problem wasn’t with getting the money but to find it again before flying to Germany. Few days before my wife and Nathan were about to fly back she started to pack and noticed that the cash vanished. She went to her mother and asked her where it could be. So MIL told that she gave it to her. Okay no trouble there but my wife couldn’t remember this at all so she asked her again. MIL then explained step by step how she gave the money to her when they arrived in the apartment. She even explained how she was giving it and with which hand. But as my wife couldn’t remember this at all MIL was just like “I gave it to you so it is your problem now!”. OKAY…according to my wife this went on for several hours until MIL finally decided to check her closet for something and voilà: THE FREAKING MONEY WAS WITH HER STUFF!!! Basically dear mother-in-law just created her own world once again and made up this story while she actually put the money to her closet and never gave it to my wife.

Tierpark6 — Just for fun, a big fish (according to MIL)

Another example just to show you MIL’s insanity happened few weeks ago. As you might know both my wife and I have a little business (okay mostly my wife as I was just too ill to get anything done so far but things are slowly improving for me). All of our customers are from China so my wife has to send packages there every week. In case people buy some smaller amount my wife waits for a bit and then sends a big package to her parents containing stuff of several customers who had smaller orders. These things then are being put into smaller packages by MIL and then send to the customer. This actually sounds more complicated than it is because my wife strictly separates each of the items which belong to one customer and attached the name and address of this person. So all MIL has to do is to take it out, put it into some smaller packages (in case my wife didn’t put it already into some smaller boxes), attach the address of the buyer and give to some logistic company. Well well there is not really ever anything easy when it comes to MIL.

Few weeks ago my wife sent such a package containing the items of several buyers but there was one item without an adress as the buyer was just moving to a new place. The customer then sent few days later the new address to my wife and there was so far no problem. But the trouble of course started when my wife called her mother and gave the address for this last package. MIL was like “What package? I sent everything already away! There is nothing here!” WHAT??? How is this possible as there was this one package without any address! MIL was 100% sure that she sent this package but she didn’t remember any longer to whom. My wife then spent the whole day trying to figure out where on earth her mother could have sent this box. Late in the evening MIL then contacted my wife “Oh, by the way I found the missing box, it was with my stuff”. Guess how furious my wife was after wasting a whole day trying to track down where the box could be.

In the end father-in-law’s words ring too true “She is just crazy, she lives in a world of her own” and “She is able to bend reality and thus the truth to her own liking, she is never wrong about anything. Just crazy, you know”. This poor man living with her for so many decades, no wonder he developed several OCD’s over the years.

Do you know someone who creates her/ his own reality when it comes to such things?

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Crazy Family, Our cute son

Nathan’s 2nd Birthday

February 21, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 53 Comments

Time flies by so fast that it feels for me that Nathan just celebrated his first birthday few weeks ago. But no, it is already one year now! Today he turned two and we had a very small celebration. Last year my wife planned his first birthday for several weeks and invited a lot of people. This first birthday was mainly for herself rather than for Nathan but that is okay, he won’t remember the chaos anyways and my wife could let her creativity go wild with the decorations.

birthday5 — The table is ready for some coffee and cake business

This year it was just us, my parents and my brother with his girlfriend. Also we did not celebrate in our apartment but at my parents. Not because we are too lazy to decorate our apartment (okay, perhaps a bit lazy) but these days Nathan spends anyways a lot of time with his grandparents. Besides that my mother was cooking lunch for everyone so it would be not so convenient to bring everything to our apartment. This “party” was so different from last year but I also liked it as it was much more peaceful with a lot less cleaning to be done in the end. He got some nice little gifts and thus far he just loves the Brio Train Set he got from his grandparents, at least he doesn’t even wants to leave it alone and eat or drink something.

After this summer Nathan will go to kindergarten and I bet that next year a handful of hyperactive little kids will make the birthday party a lot more interesting/ exhausting than I would like to have. But in the end it is all for the kid so we will play along and try to survive! Now my last strength is leaving me and I am just too exhausted to write any more about this birthday…really wonder about the upcoming birthday celebrations in the next years and how I will survive them.