Tag Archives: Chinese mother in law

Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Family, Mom in Law, Uncategorized

She has done it again

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My dear mother-in-law seems to attract chaos. Whatever she is doing something always goes terribly wrong or she has some totally different (ridiculous) expectation on how it should be done. As I have mentioned already too often MIL is coming to stay with us for three months starting in the middle of April. But until today it wasn’t even sure that it would work out.

The problem was all the paperwork for the Visa and of course MIL herself. First of all we needed to get few papers in order to even apply for the Visa. The first was the declaration of obligation from the city hall here in my home town. This declaration basically states that I am inviting my mother-in-law, the reason, the starting date, that we will come up with anything she might do wrong here, that she will return and of course papers from my work place showing that I have the needed financial means to support her stay for those three months. The needed income varies from state to state here in Germany and I also heard it might depend on the person you are speaking to at the town hall, hooray for the great German bureaucracy. This paper was rather easy to get with only a few visits at the town hall but we also needed to get a travel insurance for MIL. This insurance we just ordered online from one of the many Insurance companies in Germany and got it done right away.

Mother-in-law and the goats
Mother-in-law and the goats

Then MIL needed to get certain other certificates from China in order to have all papers ready for the visa. Those papers were the confirmation of relationship between her and my wife, papers proving her monthly retirement money and some other paper I have forgotten. Especially of the paper stating the relationship between her and my wife she needed a verified version and an authorized version (wonder why). But of course here it goes wrong just as expected from my crazy Chinese mother-in-law…she removed the verified paper from the other and sent only one! Yes, she went through all the trouble to take those two papers apart which were even stitched together because she…well even she couldn’t explain, the master of twisting the truth was not able to come up with an excuse. Furthermore she did this whole visa application process already twice before so it was really weird for her to suddenly decide to do things differently. Perhaps there should be a new word in the dictionary for such behavior “Crazy MIL”.

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Guess we will “forget” MIL at the Outlet Center…

 

She only did realize her mistake after the embassy called her saying that this paper is missing. However it was already too late to resend it. Throughout the past days my wife tried to call several offices in China in order to fix this mess but they all were not able to help. So it was more surprising today to get the message that MIL got her passport back with the valid Visa. Right now I am not so sure whether to be happy or to be sad about my upcoming three-month madness. It seems that Lina from My Hong Kong husband tried her best to aid me in this endeavour as she offered several times to make MIL’s visit impossible but in the end even she failed. The only bad thing in case the Visa application hadn’t worked out is the money wasted…

So as you can see it is not that easy to get a Visa to Europe or to be more specific to Germany but it is actually mostly only annoying paperwork. Usually it is not even that difficult but this depends of course on the background of both the inviter and the person who wants to come to Germany. Now I am really happy that this whole mess is done for now and the next weeks I will prepare myself mentally for the 16th of April, the MIL arrival day. Perhaps I should start Yoga again or something else to find my inner peace.

 

What are your experiences with Visa procedures?

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Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Family

Why I love to travel to China

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It is just in the middle of March but I look already forward to our next trip to China in the end of August. 2013 was the last time we were in China and we also celebrated our Chinese wedding in a small circle of relatives and friends (watch out, sarcasm). Last year we could not travel to visit my in-laws as we had too much on our hands with little Nathan and moving to Germany.

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Got to love the food

 

So why I am looking forward to travel to China or to be more specific to Xi’an? Most people would not really look forward to meet their in-laws again after having their mother-in-law at their place for three months but right now this is just a small minus point in my opinion. In Xi’an alone are so many places I want to revisit, take more video material and pictures. Furthermore I was promised (as so many times before though) to visit the relatives in the country side in Shaanxi. We are also planning a trip to Jeju Island and I really hope all those travel plans will actually work out as none had in the previous years!

But what am I really looking forward to? First of all Xi’an is a great city in my opinion. There are just so many interesting historical buildings within the city center where my in-laws are living which give great opportunities for taking pictures and perhaps also few time lapse shots with my new Flow-Mow. Then there is the food, just thinking about it makes me drool! There are so many restaurants I want to go to such as my favorite BBQ restaurant few minutes walking distance away. Besides when being too lazy to walk few minutes to the next restaurant there are still dozens of street kitchens just downstairs. As you can see, there will be never a problem to get any good food unlike here where we have barely any restaurants around.

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Xi’an City Center

 

But then again there are few things which really do stop my enthusiasm about those weeks in China. First of all is the pollution with all the smog in the city and surrounding area. Back in 2013 we had zero days in nearly three weeks of our stay with blue sky or sunshine. Everyday it was just smog and some more smog. Then there is the general attitude of not using trash bins. Everywhere people just throw their trash on the ground and even litter animals enclosures in zoo’s or nature reserves.  What else is getting sometimes on my nerves is the complete lack of manners of some people. I think I do not need to go too deep into details as the this behaviour has been described more than enough already in other blogs. I know that you will find rude people all over the world but especially in China I have sometimes the feeling that there is an exceptional amount of people with an attitude like “First me and then the rest of you low cretins”.

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Barely can see the mountains which are just few hundred meters away…

 

But all in all I am still looking forward to this trip even though there is still nearly half-year waiting time ahead. For now I will have to make due with the videos and pictures I have from the previous years. Also all those blogs about their travel adventures keep my mind away from the daily boredom at work and the current cold weather. Perhaps also the fact that I just got once again a year older makes me want to escape the routine which we have in everyday life and get out to relax for a few weeks.

 

Are you also looking forward to your next holiday abroad? Do you also think about the negative points during your holidays?

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Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Family, Mom in Law

The End of the World has come! …again

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I just wrote few weeks ago about the awesome year of 2014. It was really an unbelievable good year even with my mother-in-law staying with us for three months during spring time. Now I hoped that 2015 might be an even better year but no, it won’t be better because for one simple reason: My crazy Chinese mother-in-law is coming AGAIN for three months to stay with us starting April.

 

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What happens with me?

How did it come to this? Currently I am working from early morning till late afternoon and my wife is in the morning in her German language class. Little Nathan is staying in the morning with my parents. Everything seems good and well however this will change in the beginning of May. My parents will go then to Finland to enjoy their cottage by the lake for 4 whole months. So what will happen with Nathancuty?

 

I tried to sign him up for two kindergartens already but he is on the waiting list there, place 270 or something like that. Germany has too few kindergartens resulting that there are huge waiting lists and often also requirements the child has to fulfil in order to get into one. As we were not really fond of leaving Nathan alone for 5 hours a day  (he is already a destructive demon with us there so who knows what he will do without us, unleashed…). The only solution we could come up with was to invite MIL once again to check on Nathan for three months till my wife’s language course is over.

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My fear is that the kitchen will look like the lower one after MIL is done…

 

Right now I am really terrified about the prospect of having her over once again for a quarter year. But it is not about me and how I might handle those three months, it is about all the crazy Chinese things she might do to Nathan, it is about destroying our new apartment and the fear she might cook my new pets. The question I am asking myself and also my wife now is how to prevent any damages to Nathan, apartment and my pets. The only thing we came up so far is to give her some food, a sleeping bag and drop her off at the outlet center but that is not a solution for everyday as she still has to take care of Nathan during the week.

As you can see, hard times are awaiting me and I only have three months to prepare myself mentally for this. I am just hoping that we will figure something out until then. But one thing eased my mind already a lot: Granny won’t be joining MIL for three months. Now that would have been utterly devastating for me. Three months of the combined craziness of MIL and Granny!!

 

Do you have any tips or solutions for my upcoming three month nightmare?

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