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椒盐田鸡, or how (not) to survive a Chinese restaurant visit

1/30/2015

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Ha! Chinese level one completed! The best part of it - I met a great group of people who manage to inspire me every time, and the most enthusiastic teacher ever. Crazy enthusiastic, actually.

So she takes us to the Big Bowl, a restaurant in the not-so-big China town of Vienna. And we are prepared, we have studied our nice phrases on how to order food and drinks, gone through the thanks and goodbyes and the napkin requests, and the bill and all that. Equipped with little post-it notes, lesson scans and all all the dictionaries and apps our phones can hold. We are READY.

Until we see the menu.

Menu is in Chinese. To be expected, we are in a Chinese restaurant, right. Menu is ONLY in Chinese. To be expected, our teacher instructed them to give us that. But, to get to the point.

Menu is illegible. Truly. Totally. Illegible.

The waitress comes, and she is genuinely entertained by our struggles to order drinks. Yet, we score a small victory and we get what we want. It doesn't really matter that pretty much all of us are drinking the same thing, right? Just similar tastes. :) The hard part is still to come. The menu is still in Chinese. There is a thought slowly getting into my head: I will have to skip dinner tonight.

But then, ha! There is Pleco! There is a way, let's just write down all those characters from the menu and at least see how they are pronounced. So we can order them, of course. Hunger is stronger than Chinese, we can do that! Did anyone say we need to also understand what we are ordering? Details, important thing is, we ordered! Our teacher is recording our attempts to pronounce the dishes we (randomly) selected. I am assuming for blackmailing purposes. But we are happy, food will come.

And it did.

I got a "field chicken" (田鸡). You know, one of the characters I recognise - 鸡。Only it's not a chicken. It's frog legs.
One of those moments, when you are glad you grew up where you grew up.

I actually love frog legs.


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Social Life

1/26/2015

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If kids are supposed to kill your social life, how come I (no, wait, WE) have so many appointments I have to keep an agenda? Several agendas. And maybe put them on the fridge. Or pin them on my forehead. Which would be my foreskin, according to my Chinese teacher. I'm sure my Chinese is funnier than her English, or maybe she has a point - even my son is convinced I have a penis. But that's another story, involving red dresses and pink tutus. So, where was I? Oh yes, this month we have some Fasching parties, which basically means we need carnival costumes and plenty of Krapfen (also known as crappy donuts). Of course, none of us has any idea what to wear. And while I'm waiting for inspiration (or something harder) to hit me, here a costume project we did last November for my little knights. For some creative power :)
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To Totally Made It!

1/21/2015

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Good thing about birthdays is that they only happen once a year... wait... what?? Well yes, if you have to organise a party, and you are me, you might get stressed around such occasions. But this year I had a lot of fun, and so did little Ms. K. Happy Birthday to us! And a behind-the-scenes of how it all happened:
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Абрата бара шаша браша ра кака

1/15/2015

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Не, не съм си включила кирилицата случайно, това горе е от химна на глупците, който си пея от малка. Не съм сигурна още колко хора го знаят, сигурна съм, че действа терапевтично. Почти толкова терапевтично, колкото писането на БДС на ненадписана клавиатура.

On that note, HELLO! I am quite quite {crazy} busy these days, preparing for little Ms. K's birthday, but I have some time to share with you a very improvised fast project that we did during the holidays. In the meantime, can anyone tell me how to install Cyrillic on a Mac?

Anyway, today's project is about birds. I'm not sure how we ended up doing this, but probably as the kids saw the flamingos in the zoo, and the parrots, and some other loud feathery guys. Of course, I took a picture.
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I know, I love flamingos too :). Now back to the project. It's a tutorial on how to create pretty birds decoration for your woodland party, Christmas or just for general enjoyment. Here it is:
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As usual, happy crafting from me and till next week!
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How I (actually) do my projects

1/5/2015

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9 PM. Looks like kids are asleep, and there seems to be a shortage of wine drinking company. I am ready for the next challenge in my life - create small baskets for K's birthday party. And very excited, as weaving appears so easy on YouTube. I fish out of the recycling the only newspaper we have received this year, and I'm all set for action. See, I cut it in small pieces and rolled them into long tubes:
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After a stop to return insomniac baby to bed, I consult YouTube again. Yup, looks close enough, just my stick is way too thick. Oh well, I guess my weaving will just go faster. Awesome, humming the song of victory already.

3 seconds later. My humming is turning into whimpering, as I seem to be weaving my fingers instead of the tubes. 
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"Extend the tubes by putting a new one into the old one"... F*&^ that, I will just tie it in a knot. Oh, knots don't work with newspaper bits? Add glue. That should do it. More glue. Now my fingers are not just black from the ink, but also sticky. Suicidal thoughts start lingering in my mind. I take a photo of the "extension" in case I decide to create a tutorial on how (not) to weave a basket. I check Amazon for little baskets. They only have overpriced posh thingies for carrying wedding rings. Ok, I'll keep trying. Only I just ran out of tubes. And newspaper pieces.
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I put the knife away, just in case. And the little insomniac back in her bed. A minute of meditation, and I stare at the instructions again. It doesn't help that they are in Polish. Or at least that's my excuse. And then: Bam! Success! It seems to be working:
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Ok, I lied about the knife. Now it's really gone. But so is my success. The tubes are way too thick, the basket is waaay too ugly. No kid would ever use it. Not even if I manage to figure out how to put a handle on it. 
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On the plus side, K is finally asleep. I want to sleep too. Or whimper. Or both. I'll call it a day.

I dream of the car antenna of the little Opel parked down the street. Would that do instead of my thick stick? Or, I can cut that metal hanger? Will the wire that I used for fairy wings be too soft to use?  I open my eyes. It's a new day. I need a new solution to that basket issue. I rummage through my craft supplies. Ha! I found something!
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This time I should nail it! I really really need those baskets, many of them. Let's make a trial one. With my favourite: HOT GLUE.
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Trying to remember that hot glue is... ehm... hot. Ouch. But I'm excited. This might as well work.
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Nope. It won't. Hot glue everywhere, ugly, ugly. I need chocolate. I need to hide and eat chocolate, cause if the kids see me, I will have to share, and I am not in the mood to share. Oops, too late, they saw me. Now I will have two hyper-active kids on a sugar rush. Awesome.
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Back to square one. You'll know what happened in about two weeks, as this birthday will not wait for me to finish :D Off to Amazon again. Hope they have baskets on Prime delivery...

In the meantime, you can try weaving yourself:
Paper basket
Or, in case you crash and burn like me, try this, seems to be helping:
No-Bake cookie balls
Goodnight and happy dreamcrafting!
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