Do you know the feeling when you think you are going to take a great picture just to have someone pop into it? Or see someone “unwanted” in them when you go through them later? For me this phenomenon appears each time my Chinese mother-in-law is around.
Ha I managed it again!
Oh there is #Nathancuty I need to be in the same picture
And this is how I ruin the stilt walker #success only picture of the
Someone tries to take a picture of my grandson? I need to be in it!
No matter where we are she jumps at each opportunity to be in the photo as soon as she sees me using one of the cameras. It got sometimes so bad that I secretly tried to use my camera or only used it when she was occupied harassing other people. Of course this does not always work especially when I try to take pictures of Nathan as she is never far away from him. She got even that good in getting somehow into the photo that I only realize her “being in the shot” when going through the material weeks later.
Last but not least: Do you spot her? Check above Nathan’s head!!!
Do you have somebody who wants to be in each picture as well?
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Last week I announced that I would be getting more active with blogging again and I kind of regret it already. No not that I hate blogging but I discovered that I have too much material to work with. Yes, you can actually have too much. For one my dear beloved Chinese mother-in-law is giving nearly daily new material to write about. However she is just the tip of the iceberg as I have “postponed” so many other things over the past two years. Only the small trips and craziness in China is already overwhelming me! So this post is about one of our little tours from last summer when MIL was still with us in Germany.
So much sand
What image do you have when you think about a beach? I’d say it is with clear blue water and white sand. All over the world the beaches are different as I especially noticed when we had our holiday in Rhodes where the beach was a stony hell with each step without shoes was pure torment. Last summer we went to a beach nearby my hometown, to Sankt Peter-Ording. It is a very popular seaside spa (they have their own sulphur spring!) and is a municipality of the district Nordfriesland in my home state Schleswig-Holstein. That beach is a bit different from any I have ever visited before as you can see in the pictures. This is because it is a Intertidal Zone, the entire North Sea coast of Germany is called Wadden Sea (including part of the Netherlands and Danmark). Twice a day the ocean decides that it fun to retreat and you can do some great mudflat hiking.
Yep, you can swim there
Anyhow the beach at Sankt Peter-Ording is also easy to reach by car as it has Germany’s only beach parking lot. So you just drive there and park you car at the beach. When we were at the beach there was currently the low tide which meant that we had to walk still for 20 min till we reached the ocean. MIL and my wife were amazed as they had never seen something like that nor imagined. Nathan was another story though as he was so afraid of getting his feet dirty in the mud (yes he is one picky little fellow). He also didn’t really trust the shallow waters which were filled with shrimps and crabs. The entire time he wanted to be carried except of course when we wanted to leave. Suddenly he wanted to play around and not leave anymore, what should I say – kids.
A pile of…I don’t know
Though we were only there for one hour we had a great time. There is just so much fun you can have, especially with kids, as there are small animals everywhere. I still remember how I “hunted” down a crab the size of a golf ball and proudly presented it to my wife. It took a lot of effort and pain and in that moment a small boy passed by showing off his crabzilla. That beast was nearly as big as a dining plate! I wonder if he still has all his fingers…
That all is usually covered by water
Besides hunting down crabs I also tried to catch some shrimps but that was a bit harder even though there were thousands of them in the shallow waters. In the end I decided against catching any more crabs or shrimps and set them all free because I was fearing that MIL was making some sudden dinner plans involving those poor little creatures. As you might remember from this blog post I was not too happy once we got home as MIL somehow had managed to drag in half the beach in the car. That was some serious vacuum cleaning the next day I tell you that.
Some of the stilt houses
In case you ever have a trip to Germany and are for some weird reason in the North I recommend to check out the Wadden Sea. It is just incredible what Nature is doing and to see with you own eyes how the water retreats beyond eyesight. Where to witness that spectacle is all up to you as it is magical at any spot at the Wadden Sea.
What interesting beaches have you visited?
Be sure to follow me also on Facebook and on Twitter as I will post there occasionally pictures which do not find their way into my blog posts. Furthermore I also have a YouTube Channel in which some videos might pop up from time to time
Somehow we managed it yet again, MIL is back in China and thus the three months of terror are over. Over the past years I had a couple of these posts regarding her leaving again and what we/ she learned. This will be pretty much such a blog post again as I am just lazy right now and don’t want to think too much.
Indeed she is leaving but the question is now, has she learned or improved since last year? No, not at all. She is still the same chaotic, messy and crazy person as all the years before. Sure she does promise to change this and that each time but that will never happen. Remember when I wrote all those years back that she was shocked how well people treated their dogs by taking several walks each day with them etc.? Back then she said already “I will do this with my dogs as well!”, as you might guess they are still every single day in their cage to this day. Okay, sometimes she does take a walk with them but I believe it is more to annoy other people as those dogs just poop in front of every entrance they feel like.
I am not a dog but feel insecure with that lady
Now to the things which actually do happen here in our home. I noticed over the years that she in fact loves to use oil when cooking. That is nothing new in Chinese kitchen but she kind of increased the dosage each year. When she was with us in 2014 for three months she needed about every 3-4 weeks a litre of oil for cooking. Last year it increased already to every 2 weeks. Back then my wife already complained that this is just too much oil but she defended herself “your useless father is using much more oil, he needs a litre every weeks when cooking. See I am not as bad as him!” or something along these lines. Yep this year she managed to actually use up every single week one litre of oil! As you can guess the kitchen looks accordingly. We have oil splatter even on the opposite side of the stove and on the roof! It is just insane as every few weeks I had to basically drain the kitchen hood of oil.
Okay okay she was once again a huge help with Nathan and providing us with food (abide it might not have been always eatable). We were especially concerned that Nathancuty might have trouble readjusting to a life without his Chinese grandmother but we worried for nothing. He did not even care when she left him at the airport and did not even say “Nai nai 奶奶” at all since Wednesday. Seems like he is perfectly fine without her. Only trouble now is to get him back on earth after being spoiled non-stop for the past three months.
Yay all packed up and ready to be shipped to China!
I left out one thing now and that is cleaning. The first weeks I really tried hard to keep the apartment and car clean but it was just so futile. It is like trying to stop and oncoming storm by blowing against it. She must have some magical dirt creation tricks as otherwise I can’t explain it. I mob the floor room by room and once I am done to get some rest I realize that the first few rooms are already full of “dark footsteps” like she would be putting ink on her feet or something. Few days before she left we went to a beach and when we went back to the new car my wife told her to carefully clean the shoes. Once we were back home and I wanted to get Nathan from his seat it looked like she had dragged half the beach with her. There was barely any black from the car carpet left, just sand, no kidding. Upon asking she told us that she tried real hard but the sand wouldn’t come off, yeah right she just had those slippers while as my profile boots did not give me any issue. Just thinking about cleaning after her could be an own blog post again so I just stop right now before I remember too much and bring nightmares to myself.
You have anyone you need to clean “after”?
Be sure to follow me also on Facebook and on Twitter as I will post there occasionally pictures which do not find their way into my blog posts. Furthermore I also have a YouTube Channel in which some videos might pop up from time to time
Crazy Chinese Family 