Millers in Shanghai: March 2007

In no particular order, here are some things that have happened in the past couple of weeks.

Flapper

Last weekend Nash was in the middle school production of the musical “Flapper.” They put on 5 performances for the public, and at least one person in the family went to every performance. In fact, Heidi and I both have a lot of the lines and songs memorized. It was a huge cast and they did a really good job. Nash was on stage from the time the theatre doors opened until after the curtain call because his role was Lenny Knickerbocker, a flag-pole sitter. He sat about 10 feet up on a little ledge/perch, pretending to sit on a flagpole. He had lines in a couple of scenes, but when he didn’t have lines, he either watched whatever was going on in the scene or pretended to sleep. In the big chorus song & dance numbers, Nash sang and “danced” with the whole cast, too. Occasionally cast members would pass up food to him in a bucket on a rope. It was pretty entertaining to watch him up there throughout the show.

Dragonfly & Rats

One night Nash had a friend spend the night, and the boys were all playing upstairs in the evening. They must have been playing some sort of tag or hide & seek, because we heard them opening the guest bedroom window, jumping out onto the balcony, and then going in the family room door. Well, later that night when they were getting ready for bed, I went upstairs to try to figure out why it was so humid up there. Sure enough, they had left a window open. On the wall I noticed a large dragonfly, so Nash went and got our electronic tennis-racquet bug zapper (they are quite effective for getting the ever-annoying mosquitoes that find their way into our house, but we have never tried it on a bug as big as a dragonfly). Well, Nash zapped the dragonfly with the racquet and it stuck to the racquet, so I told him to take it outside onto the balcony to throw it outside. It was raining outside, and when we went out onto the balcony we noticed two (smallish) rats swimming in our pool. We have seen a rat swimming in our pool on a couple of other occasions – always when it rains or has recently rained -- but never two at a time. Nash and his friend rescued the rats from the pool and sent them on their way (no, we didn’t try the bug racquet on the rats).

Heidi’s Birthday

We celebrated Heidi’s thirty-somethingth birthday on March 6th. For her birthday she wanted tickets for the family to go see Phantom of the Opera, which we’ll go see in Singapore in the beginning of April.

Camping

On Friday night I left work a few hours early to get a few things thrown in the car to take Nash and Grant camping at a campground about 30 minutes from our house. We would have taken Luke, also, but he was busy on Saturday with a basketball game and then 2 birthday parties. We went camping with three other boys our kids’ ages and their fathers. We arrived at the campground just as it was getting dark, but we got our tents set up, made a fire and cooked tinfoil dinners, then had time for a few smores before it started raining. One of the other fathers had brought a big tarp which we quickly set up using some bamboo poles. Surprisingly, our fire stayed lit during the rain, so when it ended we put some more logs on the fire and made some more smores. Luckily, the rain helped cool things off quite a bit. The next morning the boys had a good time climbing in a tree house right by our campground, whittling sticks with their pocketknives, etc. Nash worked on some scout requirements for ropes & knots. We used three bamboo poles and made a large tripod to practice some knots. One of the interesting things we saw there were rubber trees, with large sections of bark scraped off and the rubber running down into a bottle attached to the tree.

Parent – Teacher Conferences

Grant and Luke both had parent-teacher conferences this week. Reports from both boys’ teachers are that they are doing just fine. We are happy with both of their teachers this year and feel they are getting a pretty good education here.

The River

Because of the flooding in our neighborhood in February, the neighborhood association has taken it upon itself to try to dredge out and widen the section of river in between our house and the school gate. Unfortunately they have taken down a lot of the trees on the pathway that runs along the river in between our house and the school. We are disappointed they are doing it because we’re not entirely convinced that they know what they are doing or that what they are doing will actually prevent floods in the future. On Saturday afternoon we watched as a big excavator worked right outside our front gate, knocking bamboo, huge trees, etc. trying to clear out the river banks. In one spot as the excavator dug out logs and tree limbs, it set tons of garbage loose down the river – garbage that had been trapped because of fallen logs or large tree limbs in the river. It is disgusting to see all of the trash that is in the river. It is sad to see that people here either don’t understand what harm they are causing the environment, or they just don’t care.