Visiting Friends and Household staff troubles

We've recently had a couple of friends who visited us. Kitty and Sam, our old neighbors in Beijing came to visit from Hong Kong. The kids had a great time, but I think the adults may have had a better time. Kitty's family will be going Bali with us in early May and we can't wait! Here is a photo of Sophia's first pizza party with Eli, (Sophia), Ines and Sam. Eli and Ines are our Swedish neighbors upstairs with whom Sophia plays everyday.

Last week, my childhood friend from the Bay Area, Alice came to visit from the US with her husband Mark and son Zach who is 3. Sophia and Zach fell in love immediately. They are the third generation of Wus and Lees to know each other. It's really wonderful. Alice was our mule and brought an entire LL Bean duffle bag filled with stuff for us. In fact, we had so many shipments arriving at their house before they came, their neighbors asked if it was some kind of Chinese gift giving holiday and Zach started saving cookies for the "box dude" (aka UPS delivery man!) There were here for a week and we all had a great time.

Here is our little artist in residence. Sophia has created a sculpture in our bathroom. Here she is posing next to her work. Sophia is becoming quite opinionated of late. I sometimes have to sing one line of almost every song I know before she stops waving and saying "bu yao" (I don't want that). Thank goodness Alice burned about 50 new children's CDs for us! Sophia is quite particular about what books she wants to read and what songs she wants to dance to. Not sure if this is a good thing or not! ;)

On the staffing front, we've had an interesting week. Our driver started driving off when the nanny was still standing outside the car buckling Sophia in, so I asked him to make sure that everyone was seated in their seats before he started the car. This was one day after he left without shutting the driver's side door. I happened to look out our window and saw the car door wide open. The driver's response to my request was, "I'm not sure what's wrong with my head lately. I'm too old so I will stop working at the end of the month." He's in his early 40s and works 4 days a week. Hmmmmmm...The driver is a wonderfully kind man that is trustworthy, however, he is not a great driver. But Josh and I value his character even more than his driving skills. He has offered to quit two other times when he scratched our car, but we've asked him to stay. This time however, we asked him to reconsider since the economy is terrible and his wife just last her job and we asked him to discuss with his wife before he made a final decision. He has decided to leave, so for the first time since arriving in China, we have to interview a driver. We've heard horror stories about drivers so we are hopeful we can find someone good. In Shanghai and in Beijing, we were assigned drivers and it worked out for the duration of our stay, so this is new territory for us. There are things to think about when hiring a driver that you don't think about if you've never had to do it. Like security. The driver knows exactly when you will and won't be home so if they wanted to rob your house, it wouldn' t be that difficult. Then you hear about horror stories of drivers kidnapping children and stealing your car. There was even a driver who was recently fired and went back to their employer's house and threatened to kill them if they didn't pay big bucks. So, wish us luck!

Then, our cleaning ayi, who has worked for us for 2 years and is wonderful, told us that she doesn't think she will be able to do a good job for us once #2 arrives, so asked me to find someone else. She currently works 3-4 jobs a day so I think is feeling pressure to finish each job quickly, so it looks like we need to think about our staffing issues.

I know this probably sounds like a horrible rant, especially for all my hard-working stay-at-home and moms who work outside the home in the US. So apologies for anyone offended, but managing a household staff can also have its challenges! And I am extremely grateful that we have had these nice people in our lives who have been so helpful in making our lives easier and I hope we can find others who are as kind. Stay tuned.