Tag Archives: Chinese-German mixed child

Nathan’s Totoro Themed Room

June 12, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 59 Comments

Long long time ago we finished renovating our apartment. To be precise most of it was done in November 2014. Back then I wrote in that blog post that I wouldn’t show Nathan’s room yet as it wasnt ready yet. Seems like we took our sweet time getting his room ready as we just finished a bit over a week ago!

nr1 — His little bed when he is not around throwing the pillowes away

So what is so special about his room? Indeed it is a Totoro themed room as the title already suggests. In fact Nathan’s “babyname” was Totoro. By that name most people called him until he was a year old. After that his name slowly changed to RouRou 肉肉 thanks to his wobbly cheeks. We always wanted to create this kind of themed room but the main problem was to get all the stuff here in Germany. In the end we ordered everything in China and then brought it with us back to Germany last year. That is over 9 months ago and all the things were just stuffed in boxes until mother-in-law’s return was just days away. What she has to do with it? Well she wanted to stay in Nathan’s room, sleeping on a futon rather than having a real bed in another room. So we really were in a hurry suddenly to finish his room. Just a day before her arrival I put on the last pictures on the walls and drilled some holes for the shelves.

nr5 — Many many Totoros and one Turtle 🙂

We are pretty happy with the result. Okay it is not a 100% Totoro themed room but who cares. I must say that the hardest part was to get that giant Totoro wall thingy attached as the wallpaper is not really the best underground. It took my wife and I over 3 hours to get that job done and still now I am all the time worried that it might fall off or Nathan wants to suddenly play with it. We bought so many different Totoro things that I don’t even know anymore how many there are. So far Nathan loves the room and always point at the Totoro on the wall and plays with the giant Totoro plush toy.

I never want to attach something like that again on a wall

View with the coloured wallpaper and his tent

Have you ever thought of creating some special themed room?

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Looking Forward to the Future

April 10, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 53 Comments

Perhaps some still remember my blog post about how unforseen events can change your life and that my health hasn’t been the best for a long time. I wrote that about half-year ago and now it seems things are finally looking brighter. With the trip last week to Cologne some of you might have noticed that I am actually able to go on a trip. Ever since the beginning of this year my health has been improving and I could also reduce the med intake. This helped a lot to feel better mentally because you won’t really feel in good shape when you see how much medication you have to take just to get the day started.

This year is still young and already much has changed. I left my job as I wouldn’t be able to really find my way back in after being away for so long time. Now that would make me unemployed again in some sense but I have still the business with my wife in which I started to help out more and more again with my improving health. As things are looking much better again for me we decided to “redo” the trip to China which I had to abort last year. So in one week we are flying once again to Xi’an and stay there for nearly three weeks. To make things a bit more interesting my father is coming with us again. What about my dear mother? When we invited her she just said “One time in China is more than enough for me!”, okay…

In China we will spend most of the time in Xi’an but according to my wife we will actually go on some trip again with a tourist group. You know my feelings about those tourist groups but well, at least we will be going somewhere this time. What makes this trip a bit more complicated is that my father is not the youngest anymore with his 75 years and then the issue when it comes to food. We have to schedule everything well so he does not get too exhausted and we have to find a healthy mix for him between Chinese food and some Western restaurants (looking at you Pizza Hut). I hope he will enjoy this trip as it won’t be this time as hot as it was back when he visited the first time in 2011 during the hot July weeks.

Xi'an Dream — Finally going to Xi’an again

It still feel weird for me to actually plan such things again. There I was half-year ago and things were kind of bleak and now I am going to a three-week holiday in China. Besides that I slowly started with some sports again to get back in shape as far as it is possible right now. Will I ever be back to 100%? No, I won’t be but that is alright. The possible 90% are already more than I have ever imagined several months ago. Now I am looking forward to this summer and I really want to have a proper visit at the beach this year!

How has been your year thus far?

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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….