Tag Archives: chinese in germany

Our little Christmas celebration

December 27, 2015 CrazyChineseFamily 48 Comments

The Christmas festivities are survived and now the preparation for New Year celebrations are starting. For this Christmas we had for the first time a Christmas tree. All the previous years we had either no space in our tiny apartment in Finland or like last year just no time and decoration as we just had moved in the new place. However once Christmas was over last year we went straight to the next decoration store and bought tons of stuff for our future Christmas tree with a 50% discount (yay for intelligent shopping).

So what did we do this Christmas? First of all we got the last decorations done for our tree and placed all of the Christmas presents under it. Both of us had never done it before so it was a rather nice feeling once it was all done and Nathan saw the whole thing for the first time. For lunch we had nothing special, as we visited in the late afternoon an old lady to eat some food there together with my parents. The whole day was very uneventful, just a nice peaceful day with much sunshine. As the entire week was just rainy and dark we decided to start the day with some nice breakfast at my parents place and go after that together with Nathan to the nearby playground so he could burn some energy for the day. After that we visited this old lady I mentioned before. She is a friend of my mother from back in time when my mother first arrived in Germany to work here in the 1960s. My mother also lived at her place for several years and ever since I can remember Christmas we went to her place to have a simple dish “Potato Salad with Wiener Sausages”. Doesn’t sound like a fancy Christmas dinner does it? Well it is simple and pretty much tradition in my family to eat this every single Christmas. Usually we have some more German traditional food the following days such as turkey with red cabbage, potatoes and savory dark sauce but on Christmas itself we always keep it very simple.

WH2 — At the playground with a very happy Nathan

After we arrived back home the exciting part came when it was time to exchange the Christmas presents. I won’t go too much into detail but Nathan got some Lego Duplo with which he is playing non-stop currently and I got from my wife a quadcopter which I successfully crash-landed already. I think my wife got a pretty awesome gift for me as she can just cart me to the nearby park with the quadcopter and I can just sit there and let this monstrosity fly around/ crash around plus scare other people. As you can see our Christmas has been very uneventful but something like this is nice as it allows you to relax a bit and enjoy the whole day more. For my wife the most exciting part besides receiving her gift was to decorate the Christmas tree. At this point I have to thank the old man to help getting this tree into our apartment as I wouldn’t have been able to do so on my own. For next year I need to remember to buy only what I also can carry!

Yep, we still got green plants this year due to having no frost at all thus far

How was your Christmas?

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Survival Guide: Chinese mother-in-law

December 13, 2015 CrazyChineseFamily 46 Comments

During the past years of blogging I read often comments like “You must be a very patient man”, “I could never live that long with my mother-in-law” or “You are a role model of being able to cope with MIL”. I don’t really think that I am a role model or even that patient. It is a mix of all kind of things which help me to endure every year my crazy Chinese mother-in-law for three months at our home. Of course there is also no real “guide” on how to deal with Chinese mother-in-laws as every person is unique and my MIL, even though very crazy, she is not the worst kind of person you can imagine. To get some view on other bloggers Chinese mother-in-laws you should try for example the blogs of Betty, Lina and Jennifer. They all got hilarious stories about their dealings with their MILs.

surroundings18 — Nathans instincts are telling him to run!

One thing you might notice after seeing those three blog recommendations is that they are all women. Yes, I actually don’t know any male blogger writing about his dealings with Chinese in-laws (in case you know some, please do tell me). Seems that I am touching a subject that is not too common for men to write about! It is also not a bad thing as you will notice that there are certain differences between how I as a guy am able to endure my Chinese mother-in-law and how women from other blogs manage it. I’ve been told that there are some women who could never ever manage to live for more than a few days with their in-laws. Of course I am no expert when it comes to women but my wife explained it in a way that even I get some tiny idea on what might go on. Mind you this is just how things were explained to me and will most certainly not mean that it can be applied on everyone. It goes somewhat along these lines: The mother-in-law always looks out what is best for their son, nothing and I mean really nothing what the daughter-in-law is doing will be ever good enough in the eyes of a MIL. Did I get it more or less right? Feel free to give feedback. This seems to be the key factor which could lead to certain problems between MIL and their daughter-in-law.

WP_20150513_11_46_12_Pro — Rest in peace poor kitchen rag

How is it for a guy? I don’t want to generalize again as it is just from my view as I have zero ideas how other men are doing it. I am somehow able to endure three months without too many problems because of one big thing: I don’t care too much! Really, I know MIL’s insanities for several years now and even though it leaves me speechless I don’t really make any drama. Sure I try to set up certain standards which all of us should follow (especially MIL). Sometimes this works, sometimes not. For example it has not worked thus far when it comes to kitchen rags or leaving oily handprints everywhere. I respect that my mother-in-law has her own view on how things should be done but there are some limits. This is where my dear wife comes into play. She has actually much less patience when it comes to her own mother. Most of the times she goes tell her mother how things are being done in this household before I can even open my mouth to comment on something weird MIL has done again.

As you can see it is not only my attitude of not caring too much about all the crazy stuff MIL is doing but also how my wife reacts to her own mother and makes certain that it our home doesn’t turn entirely into a monkey-house. Besides that I also kind of switch off most of my brain activities during every three-month visit (not that there is much brain activity anyways but I reduce it to a bare minimum). So things which would drive me at normal times insane such as the need to clean the apartment at least ten times a day due to the mess MIL leaves behind just don’t receive any reaction anymore in my head. I see the mess but my brain does not react accordingly and thus much stress is avoided. The constant background noise which is my wife and her mother talking/ arguing doesn’t even bother me anymore, in fact I don’t hear it. There are many occasion where I sit in the living room watching my favorite TV show indifferent to the fact that I am placed right between those two women “talking” a bit loud…

LostTreasures1 — My wife in the arms of crazy MIL, in the background you might notice an elephant with a long neck

Is it just me who switches of the brain when dear mother-in-law is staying for three months? I think not. I actually know some other guys who are married with Chinese women and do the very same thing as me when their MIL decided to stop by for three months. Whenever my wife would ask them how it is with their mother-in-law staying for such long time they just shrug their shoulders. However I must say that these other guys are all Finnish just as me. I have heard stories about other men from around the world having big time troubles with their MIL. I guess it is this Finnish mentality of not giving a damn which helps me to survive all the insanities around me.

P.S. The featured image on top is one from back in the days when I was in the army, who can find me? (Also Nathan’s godfather is in that picture!)

How do you deal with your mother-in-law?

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Duck Race Neumünster

September 27, 2015 CrazyChineseFamily 21 Comments

Today was the annual duck race in my hometown. As you might have read in many other blog posts is the fact that here in my hometown is barely anything to do with the exception of a few events a year. One might say that they roll up the sidewalks here in the afternoon. This means that having such event is pretty much one of the main activities for the people here. Besides this sunday was also a “Sunday Shopping Day” as normally shops are closed on Sundays. This year marked also the 12th anniversary of this event here and was celebrated with tons of activities for children.

ente11 — Shortly after the start of the event

So what is this duck race? Basically it is a “race” of rubberducks down the pond and stream here in this town. Duck Races can be found all over the world but thus far I have only visited this one here. Any person can purchase a duck for a few Euros and gets a number for the duck. By buying one of this ducks you can participate in this race and have the chance to win some nice things such as a 2000€ travel voucher, a new TV etc. The avail of this event is later on donated to some charity programs.

The race starts by pouring all the ducks from a container which is lifted by a crane into the pond. The pond and the little river have a little race track/ plastic barriers so that the ducks follow a specific route till they arrive at a bridge few hundred meters away. Depending on the weather the whole competition might take 20 minutes or even several hours! This year we missed the start of the race as little Nathan took his sweet time waking up from his nap so we arrived few minutes too late. But we were still early enough to see the beginning of the race when all the ducks were massed up before slowly spreading all over the race track.

ente3 — Ducks racing towards the finish line

The pond and the river are at a little park located in the center of Neumünster and everywhere some attractions were offered for kids. Especially the radio controlled helicopters and ships interested many fathers as well (me included)! Somehow I feel like purchasing an own radio controlled helicopter now myself to harass some of the annoying neighbours but I guess that would be a bad idea…

It is too bad that Nathan is still too young to fully understand everything around him and enjoy some of the attraction for the children such as the jumping castle, some little animals from the zoo or the before mentioned radio controlled vehicles. Anyways this event seems to be going strong and I have no doubt it will still be held once Nathan is old enough.