Our Journey to Aeryn Elisabeth

Discovering iChat & the Chinese Opera

Tuesday October 30, 2007

Our Journey to Aeryn Elisabeth

Day 7

Day 5

Aeryn is also loving iChat

We haven't had the chance to connect with the kids since we have had her, as something is screwy with the connection on the home computer, but she has been on ichat with the Miner's and just loves blowing kisses into the screen.

I Love Chatting on the Silver Touch Screen

Of course if you are 2 1/2 you just have to touch the screen to get fingerprints on everything and so that you are absolutely sure you see all the people in the little ichat box.

Meeting Up With Charlie in the AM

This is Denise and Aeryn with Charlie our Chongqing guide from IAAP.  He is very sweet and thankfully he has a 5 year old of his own so he has been through the terrible two's. 

Our Next Stop...the Local Chinese Opera House

This little opera house in China is now a museum and tea house all in one.  The Locals still use it now and then for Opera but its pretty much a well preserved example of opera in "the old days"

Lions Everywhere

Here is a lovely example of a lion on the staircase. 

Carved Relief

The entire structure is composed of wood and ceramic.  Here is an example of the detail on one of the wood panels.

On the Way to The Altar

There were little snippets of chinese life put together  with mannequins inside the house.  Back in the day if you wanted to climb the social ladder you would have to marry up in class.  But first, you have to obtain a profession in life that would allow you to get the blessing of the bride's father. 

So "Work Hard" + "Impress Big Daddy" = "Girl behind screen" ..kind of a ancient form of Let's Make a Deal since the girl was pretty much not seen before the deal was finalized....

...and here again...you guessed it more lions

The chinese have a thing for these lions since you seem to see them everywhere along the entrance ways to important buildings.  I'll find out what the big hub bub is around that and report on it later for you

I told you it was an Opera House

The stage was pretty much built into the rest of the house.  Here they did a very good job of restoring the place

Baby Dragon Without Anus for Good Fortune

It was customary to adorn your establishment with a baby dragon without an anus.  The idea being is that lots of money/fortune goes into the baby dragon's mouth (if you point it at the ...audience) and then there is no anus in the baby dragon.  Therefore the opera house makes lots of money.  Obviously the Good Fortune all belongs to the owner of the opera house since I think it would be pretty crappy going through life with terminal constipation...

Let's Bug Daddy

Aeryn Loves the computer.  Especially the mouse.  Nothing tickles her fancy more than driving daddy crazy while he is on the computer.  She is pretty funny and has already picked up on how to push his buttons...

Look Ma, Daddy's Turning Red

Aeryn has this funky habit of grabbing my mouse and trying to

get my computer to do something that will tickle her fancy....like reformat.  Boo Baby ....Boo (Boo means No)

Our day started out as always, chatting with the loved ones back home with our Apples.  We have an Apple MacbookPro and an iMac setup at our house; we have our friends the Miner's who also have  a iMac and we pretty much do video chats to make sure the kids don't miss us too much and so they can feel involved.  I've seen plenty of very expensive multimedia centers that don't operate as slick or as cheap as iChat.  It's a very good little program.

After the iChat session, we thought we'd do 1 more activity so our guide, Charlie took us this morning to the ancient Chinese Opera house in Chongqing.  It is no longer used as an opera house but as a museum to document the history of Chongqing and it's inhabitants.  The guide that we had gave us a complete history of Chongqing and was actually one of the best tours we have had thus far.  Her english was wonderful.

Later we came back to the hotel and put Aeryn down for a nap but when she woke up she was totally disoriented and  the tears began to roll down her face.  She just started sobbing and repeating the same thing in Chinese over and over again.  D was able to hold her on the bed and console her.  At least she didn't push her away.  The sobbing went on for about 20 minutes and once D gave her a sippy cup the ocean of tears dried up and she was fine.  So much has changed for this little girl in 48 hours it is really amazing she is doing so well.