The British Invasion Part 2; Trouble in Threes

Dave’s mom arrived in China late on Wednesday night. After a delayed flight out of Vancouver, BC made her miss her connection in Hohhot we feared she was either lost in the Beijing airport or stranded in some other city, since she had no way of contacting us. She, however, did not experience the total chaos that greeted us on our way over. Rather, two very sweet Air China stewardesses escorted her through the entire customs process, helped her find where she would eventually catch her repeatedly delayed connection, and she even found time to have a cappuccino.

And so Grandma arrived in Hohhot bearing gifts, one of which was an iPod shuffle for Samuel. Not that the shuffle has completely transformed my sweet little eight-year old, definitely not, but it coincides with him suddenly deciding that he is quite happy to call Hohhot his home for now, and not only that, he has actually told Dave “thanks for bringing me to China”. I have been trying to find where my “I hate China” boy is, and who in the world this kid is, the one who thinks China isn’t so bad after all. And here is where the shuffle comes in. He has one album on it: The Beatles 1, which has all of their number one hits.

He listens to this whenever he can, plays air guitar, and sings along with all the songs. He says (and my apologies to Marie, his fiddle teacher, if she is reading this, because I don’t think this is a permanent decision on his part) that he no longer wants to take fiddle because he wants to take drum lessons. Because you can’t play rock with a fiddle. Um…. I don’t even know what to say to that. It’s kind of funny. So we don’t say anything, just nod and go “uh huh”. Last week the kids and Dave watched some of the Beatles Anthology on DVD and now Dave and I are thinking that he has fallen in love with the whole rock star thing. It’s those screaming girls and the Ed Sullivan show and the limos. Oh, and the two youngest of the English teachers here, Jed and Kenneth, have told Samuel they’ll teach him how to play football (Dave says, “I want to teach him football!” Yes, Dave, but you aren’t his new “playmates”.) so now Samuel wants to check out NFL stuff on-line. Yup, come to China to become an American teenager… Not so much, really. As you can see from the picture, he’s just as happy to play air guitar in a Buddhist temple as at home.

Grace received an American Girl doll from Grandma, this one is Elizabeth, the best friend of her doll Felicity. She loves the doll, so why does she look so miserable in the picture?


This is a long story, bear with me, because it makes for an interesting contrast to the crazy transformation of my son. About a year ago (I told you it’d be long…) Grace had an infection in her eye, maybe from a sty or something. I took her to our doctor and he prescribed eye drops and a cream, both of which eventually made the infection go away. Last week, I noticed the beginning stages of a similar infection. I showed it to Athena, whose uncle is a doctor, and asked her if she thought I should take Grace to a doctor, or just find something at the pharmacy. After a telephone consultation with her uncle, we went to a pharmacy where the pharmacist handed over eye drops and cream. Oh, I thought, just like at home, how convenient and wonderful! Of course, I forgot to have the pharmacist take a look at the weird dry round itchy spot behind her ear, but I figured that wasn’t as important as the eye infection.

After four doses of eye drops—which seemed to work really well—over the course of a 24-hour period Grace started breaking out in a huge rash. Big red splotches all over her body. Itchy and welty and not very comfortable. Finally it occurred to me that I should have looked up the medicine. I had looked at the boxes, noted that the cream was Erythromycin which is familiar to me, but didn’t give the drops much notice. So I googled the drops only to find that they are a steroid antibiotic and a common side effect is, you guessed it, a great big rash that can last up to 5 days. Gah! I will spare you the long drawn-out details but say that this has been an amazing rash, starting on her torso, spreading to arms, legs, neck, face, in alternating patterns and following no apparent logic other than the need to travel around from one part of her body to another. Poor thing—and despite all of it she’s been so good about not scratching, doesn’t complain, keeps up a positive attitude. I’ve been plying her with benadryl and coating her body with calamine lotion (the latter one purchase from the pharmacy that hasn’t back-fired on me) and although it had only been 36 hours, by last night Dave and I were starting to freak out a bit.

Wouldn't you freak out?

It hit her at bedtime with a vengeance and we both started to feel very far away from home and our trusted doctor. Grace finally fell asleep and we stayed up till 11:00 p.m. to catch the doctor’s office at home just at opening time. I will tell you this, I have never been patched through to a nurse so quickly as last night, when I said in a terribly pathetic and woebegone voice, “I’m calling from Inner Mongolia, China, and I want to ask about my daughter.” Yes, this is a long story, sorry. To make it a little shorter--the nurse I spoke to was wonderful and I found out the following: the rash is no big deal (other than extreme discomfort) and it will pass, just keep up with the benadryl; keep up with the eye cream for the infection; the spot behind her ear is ringworm, which I suspected, and she told me the name of the medicine used at home for that. Flush with confidence one can only get from having a reassuring conversation with a nurse thousands of miles away, but still, a nurse from home, I called the pharmacy at the Western hospital in Beijing, where a very kind pharmacist gave me the name in Chinese of the ringworm medicine. And so here we are, the day after, Grace woke up feeling much better (and the rash was just on her hands and feet, perhaps the last step before finally ending its travels in Graceland—ha ha), we have medicine for her ear, medicine for her eye, and throughout all of it she has been true to form, a super trooper that all of us Arnolds could stand to emulate.