First off, I want to thank each and every one of you who  has sent an encouraging note, story, or thought on our behalf.  We have felt a tremendous sense of peace throughout all of this and we accredit that to all of the people who have lifted us up and our Father’s love for us.

That’s always a good thing- to find out your kid does indeed have a brain! Katie’s EEG went smoothly today- poor thing was completely wiped by the time we got to the hospital, but she slept very nicely for the test. Tomorrow morning we will finish out with an MRI and then see the doctor to discuss the results.

The EEG experience was unusual. It was at a local hospital, but escorted and overseen by a nurse from the international hospital. It was clean and safe, but definitely different than I expected. I’d never seen an EEG done in the US though. The staff were all extremely nice and it was very quick and efficient. We are treated so kindly there- and I’m sure everything was fine, it is just a different experience being in a medical system that is not the same as what you are used to.

Tomorrow we will head over and get her MRI- she will get her IV at the international hospital (that info is for all the grandparents- clean needles only, no worries!) and then we will head out to the local hospital for the actual test.

In order to stay awake today, we stayed as busy as possible and we have the photos to show for it! Can you find Katie in this photo?

Beijing is a city of serious dichotomy (I think that is the proper word, but whatever, it sounds cool even if it doesn’t fit!). You have these gorgeous high-rise modern buildings and then in front you have a wall being torn down- by hand. Workers were using little pick axes to break off each brick one by one.

Then you see a Rolls Royce or a BMW followed closely by a guy pedaling his produce to sell at a produce stand (this one with the classic cigarette hanging out of his mouth as he pedals)

We went to the most fabulous children’s bookstore I’ve ever seen…. they have all these little circle windows where kids can climb up and read books… the whole place is decorated with rainbow carpets and it is just lovely! It had tons of English books and English/Chinese bilingual books.

Sorry for allllll the pics of that place, but I fell in love with it and seriously she could have spent a whole day in there! We had to kind of drag her out to get to her appointment!

We also stopped by a Starbucks and took some photos to pass the time (before the bookstore opened)

And I love all of the cool architecture in Beijing- there are some seriously funky buildings going on! This one is under construction and looks really cool!

Tonight’s agenda- meeting up with a friend who has 3 lovely children she has adopted from China.  She is here with her family to adopt another child and we are meeting up with her to chat!

In the middle of the night, I go walkin’ in my sleep…

All Billy Joel aside, we did indeed enjoy the middle of the Beijing night!  Our dim sum joint was just the spot for some 3:30 a.m. snackin’!  Hot tea, fresh shrimp dumplings, crispy spring rolls, and steamy bbq pork buns.  Delicious!

We were surprised at how hoppin’ the place was considering it was indeed 3:30 a.m… but the 2-floor restaurant was hopping on both floors with maybe 50 people eating there?  All of the waitresses wore Santa hats and there is a big Christmas tree and they played only Christmas music, which made for a festive little meal!

This is one part of the cooking area- there were probably a dozen chefs chopping, rolling, stuffing, and prepping all of the yummy food.  It is just mind boggling to me how  much work goes into all of those dishes and that they can have a full staff 24 hours a day whipping stuff up.

And check out this bowl of soup on the menu that we *did not* order. I’m pretty sure that should be chicken “bowl” but then… this is China, so you never know!

]

Last night for dinner, we also enjoyed a delicious Tex-Mex buffet.  Beijing visits are like a gastronomical delight for us.  I’m kind of thankful we don’t live here though, because there is no way we could stick to a budget with all of that temptation around us!  And our pants would be really really tight.

Perhaps not the truest Tex-Mex, but it was good- fried stuffed jalapenos, potato skins, quesadilla, chile relleno, enchilada.

Oh, and my embarrassing issue… I show up at the hotel and unpack our stuff and realize I didn’t pack any pants for myself.  It is only 2 nights and seriously not the end of the world to wear pants 3 days in a row, but still, ew!  I was debating which jeans to pack and apparently decided on none?  And poor Keith - well, I packed undershirts but not shirts- so he’ll be wearing the same sweatshirt for all 3 days!  My brain was not functioning when I was packing apparently!

Ok, we gotta get this kiddo outside in the cold to wake her up again.  She’s giving us the sad puppydog look of “why can’t I just sleeeeep?”

A note for the family, who I know will be concerned if we don’t check in.  We took the train up to Beijing today & we are all squared away with the hospital and ready to go for tonight.

Today on the train, we ended up riding first class because I didn’t know how to say second class- but now that I’ve ridden first class, well… I don’t know that I will ever learn the words for second class ;).  For a buck more, it is nice!  They even had toilet paper in the bathroom!  That’s a *big* deal in this part of the world!

We ended up getting a pretty suite upgrade (pun intended) at the hotel.  I had a few free hotel nights to use up, and we’d planned to use them at Christmas time.  But it just made sense to use them now.  So we were able to choose either a room with one double bed or a king suite.  So we have a lovely living room, bedroom, 2 bathrooms, dressing room, etc… Very nice and a lovely view!  We look out onto Sanlitun, which is a street chock full of bars and restaurants and embassies (Ghana, Spain, Venezuela, etc..).  International is the name of the game here- Thai food, Persian food, Pakistani food, Italian food, French food, Greek food, etc… all in one big row.

Our view- Beijing- more cosmopolitan, more diverse, more foreigners… yet still the same hazy sky.  It is weird for us to see so many foreigners when we are up here!

One of our favorite things to do when we are in Beijing is get new reading material.  We have *one* English language magazine in Tianjin and while it is decent, it is a bit limited.  So, we pick up all of the expat magazines up here and devour them.  In one of them, we found about a 24-hour dim sum restaurant.  Dim sum is a Hong Kong specialty of little tiny dumplings and dishes and it is our favorite food ever, probably even higher than Tex-Mex.  Sooo, I think if we have to be awake at 3 a.m. tomorrow morning, we might as well be eating dim sum!  And it is customary to eat dim sum for hours on end, so I think we will show up at 3 a.m. and stay there, nibbling our way through the night, until morning comes.   Hopefully we can pretend we’re just jetlagged tourists if we get any dirty looks for having our 3 year old out at 3 in the morning ;).

And now I will go take advantage of afternoon nap time to catch up on the Z’s I will be losing tonight.

For the grandpas, grandmas, and aunties back in America, here are the girls singing in Chinese.

This is Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, by the way!

We will be heading to Beijing in the morning and will return on Friday evening. Would appreciate all thoughts on that area! Wednesday night will be the super-fun-joy night- her EEG on Thursday requires sleep deprivation. I pity our next-door-neighbors at the hotel! Although, I think we are fairly close to a district that is known for some hopping night clubs. Do you think it would be inappropriate to take a 3 year old to the disco club at 2 a.m. to keep her awake? Nah, just kidding, I’m not much of a disco girl. But there is a bling-bling hip hop club… hmm… I’ve heard Chinese rap is the next hot thing… and I’ve got this big dangly gold blingy “K” necklace I’ve been itching to wear…

Lest you think I’m joking about the Chinese hip hop, well, go to youtube and put in “Chinese hip hop” and see for yourself!

This post is directly from a friend’s blog.  But she said it so well, and I get so many emails with articles about things that I shouldn’t buy or eat, well, I think it is important that I address it!  The following is from my friend Sara.  If you like it, please let her know at her blog (here).

Made in China (by Sara Kennedy)

Much has been reported this year about the Made in China label. Unsafe food, tainted pharmaceuticals, dangerous toys, infected pony tail holders, slave labor … the list goes on and on. Every day seems to bring a fresh charge against goods manufactured in China. As consumers of products Made in China for the Chinese (which meet a different/lower quality standard than those made for export to the US or Europe), its hard to know how to digest all this bad news. We do not have the option to choose items not made in China, there is no FDA to mandate food labeling (and we couldn’t read it anyway), copy-cat products are quite literally everywhere and include everything, from clothes to electronics to DVDs to medicine. It is impossible for anyone to know what is real and what is fake.
Having said all that, we’ve lived in a major, polluted industrial area in Northern China for 1.5 years without incident. Of course we take precautions - boiling water, washing fruits and veggies in food safe bleach, avoiding medicines, but for the most part, we have thoroughly enjoyed the variety and low cost of the products available. When you consider the sheer quantity of goods manufactured and exported from China, it really is a minuscule percent that has been found to be unsafe (this is not to minimize in any way the damage done when products do go awry).

The manufacturing industries that seem to spring up like weeds in our host city are directly feeding the desire of global (especially western) economies for cheap, attractive goods. If the same goods were produced in the US, under US regulations, they would undoubtedly be safer and more durable. They would also cost 10 times the amount. Until consumers decide they are ready to exchange significantly lower price tags for the protection of regulatory policies and a protected workforce (via unions, insurance, product liability, etc), this issue is not going to go away.

China may be a Communist country in name and politics, but it is a shining example of Capitalism in practice. If there is a market for dollar store toys, $3 t-shirts at Walmart, must-have $9.99 home decor at Target, $50 snow tires and even low-cost pharmaceuticals to meet the requirements of budget-crunched HMOs, Chinese manufacturers will find a way to meet the demand. It is a perfect storm of Capitalist ambition when buyers demand products for $1 that simply cannot be made well for $1. The manufacturer, not willing to lose the buyer’s business must “find a way” to still make a profit despite production and personnel costs - and so we end up with lead paint on Thomas, the date rape drug on plastic beads and pesticide in dog food.
I’ll step down from my soap box with this last thought … millions and millions of extremely hard working Chinese people work long hours in tough conditions to produce all that stuff on store shelves. They are not sitting at home trying to figure out how to slip poison into cough syrup. Granted, a few phenomenally crazy things have happened in the production and supply chains lately, but overall, lower and middle class consumers around the world have been enfranchised in ways they could never dream possible because of China’s massive and largely safe manufacturing industry.

So, please go ahead and buy those wonderful Made in China toys for your kids this Christmas. Just be sure they don’t eat the parts.

A note to my politically and economically minded friends … this is not a call for abandoning hope in terms of the US/EU/China trade relationship. Just a local perspective on the doomsday reports so lately in the news.

I’ve invented something new. Well, okay, I haven’t really “invented” in reality, perhaps “dreamed” is a better word choice?

A language remote control.

It will feature many buttons with special features, like:

The “Just Words I Know, Please” button- with the click of a button, when you ask a question, people will only respond using words in your current vocabulary. After you learn a new word, people are allowed to use it. Before that, nope, sorry, not allowed.

It will also have a “Sorry, not today” button. On days when language isn’t the game of choice, you can just click the “Sorry, not today” button and all people around you will speak perfect, fluent English. When you’re ready for adventure again, you can click “Try again” and life will revert back to the normal craziness that is life here.

It will also have a de-mumble button for use on people who mumble or garble their words.

And perhaps the most important button of all: a mute button. This will cancel out all words and leave you in blissful silence.

Let me know when someone gets around to actually making one of these that works, ok? I’ll be first in line to buy it!

I could have used this remote control today. I went to Metro which is kind of like Costco. I have a love-hate relationship with all bulk-buying places, but needed a few things that are only available there.

I wanted a Sharpie permanent marker, but it was locked in this plastic box thing and the guy kept saying something and of course nothing was clicking. The way Chinese works is that you ask something like “Do you have or not have this?” “Can I buy or not buy this?” “Did you go or not go there?” So I ask “Am I able or not able to buy this?” He rattles off this 50mph explanation. Nope, sorry, not interested. Let’s try again, I ask the question, you respond with one of two answers- able or not able. No other words allowed, ok? I just can’t go there today, alrighty? If you’re interested in the answer, by the way, yes, I could buy it but I had to get the box taken off one place and then buy it another place. And meanwhile I’m just going “Dude! It’s just a sharpie for pete’s sake! Can a girl just buy a marker and be done with it in this place or does everything have to be so stinking complicated??????”

Then I get to the cash register to purchase all my stuff and the cashier asks for my Metro card. I give it to her and then she scans it. And then she breaks out a whole slew of stuff. I think I understood “you” and “not able” and “buy” and that might be it. Apparently if you don’t get your card scanned when you walk in the first door you can’t buy things. So in order for me to buy things (keep in mind I already had all my stuff out of the cart and on the conveyer belt, ok?) I would need to put everything back in my cart, push it to the side of the store, go outside, walk around to the entrance, get my card scanned, and come back over and get back in line, etc… I didn’t even know this was a rule or I would have been obedient and had my card scanned when I came in. Thankfully, some gracious stranger allowed me to use her card (she apparently is a rule-follower and scans her card at the entrance).

Buying things here is a special challenge, and I can’t wait for my family to visit so they can share in that joy. It is just something that has to be experienced to be understood. I have to physically restrain my eyes from rolling each time I am stopped in a store and forced to check out part of my items in one department before walking to another department. Can you imagine shopping at Walmart or Target and having to check out in EACH section of the store? Like, oh, I need a picture frame… neener-neener, gotta buy that in the picture department. Five more feet down the row you find a toaster you like… neener-neener, gotta stop and pay for that here. Etc…

Okay, was that the whiniest drivel ever?

~

Katie update: Went to the international clinic this morning and they said we do need to do the testing up in Beijing and shouldn’t do it here, so we are arranging all of that. It looks like, for now, we will plan to head up on Wednesdayish and return on Fridayish. Libby will be staying with a friend and her family so she won’t have to miss school and be bored out of her mind at a hospital. She is crazy excited and says it is “finally! a real sleepover!”

First off, thank you to each person who left a note yesterday- I really appreciated all of the feedback and discussion!

Today, I have tons of pics to share- some from Libby’s Thanksgiving day party at school (on actual Thanksgiving Day, since they had a half-day of school) and some from last night’s party with friends.

First, our Christmas tree!  We found one in this eclectic little shop that sells Christmas trees, ornaments, Santa suits (really!), cookie jars, clocks, and Mardi Gras masks.    It is prelit with the lights that are sort of fiberoptic or whatever and it changes colors and has little light up stars.  Perhaps not what I would have picked given a huge a selection in the US, but I really do like it and the girls loooooove having a tree!   (Oh, and those dining room chairs don’t really go there, I was just setting up for the party)    Libby made the yellow star she is holding (it says Happy Thanksgiving on it) and she hid them as surprises for some students.   Grandma Patty, please note that we are still using the Christmas tree skirt you made for us!

Speed-Word-Search-ing  The winner got a Snickers bar.

Pin the Snood on  the Turkey… very well-received game and quite hilarious.  It became full-contact after awhile and was a little crazy!  They would steer each other to the wrong wall, down the hall, etc…

Dinner, delivered to our door, hot and fresh!   From back in a circle- Mapo Dofu (Tofu in spicy sauce), Potato/Pepper strips, Eggplant in a brown sauce (my fave!), Insanely Spicy Pork and Red Peppers (all those red bits are peppers), Gong Bao Chicken (”Kung Pao” Chicken- kind of),  and spicy green beans.  The bowl with the brown thing floating it is a soup one of the girls brought for Katie so she would feel better (very sweet gesture).    We also had tons of fruit, muffins, brownies, toffee, and other goodies.

A successful party with lots of friends and fun!  And peace-sign-making!

And I just have to show these because I love them so much!  One of the “in-season” fruits right now is like the Clementine tangerines we get in the US.  They are the super-easy-to-peel, sweet, little tangerines that are soooo tasty.   They are sold on the backs of trucks all over the place right now, truckbeds just full of them.  I pick them up several times a week- and the going rate right now is about 3 lb for 75 cents US.

*~*

Okay, now onto the Thanksgiving day party.   It was adorable, and the little Pilgrims made me giggle!  So cute!

Libby’s class was the Pilgrim class and the other class was the Indian class.   It kind of humored me to have these little Korean kids dressing up as Pilgrims and Indians and acting out American history.  They definitely get an international experience at the school- being from Korea, living in China, attending a school with an American curriculum!

Libby and friend enjoy gingerbread cookies.

So that was our first Thanksgiving in China!

As I typed this, I’ve had Christmas music on my laptop.  Libby is “napping” in the same room with me and she perked up with Feliz Navidad came on.  “Mommy, I know that song!  It’s from E-Mart!” (E-mart is the Korean grocery store we shop at often).  Is it odd that my daughter knows a Spanish/English song as being “from” the Korean store in China?

I got a note today from someone who has been reading our blog for a long time. She has 2 China-born adopted daughters and will be spending a few years living in China in the near future.

She was concerned about the language jokes I shared a few days ago. I want to share part of this here because I’m concerned about this topic. Her email reads:

“I’ve been thinking hard on those Chinese language “jokes” … my initial thought was “no, not funny, bordering on racism” … you see, as an adoptive parent to kids born in China, I’ve had to confront my own racism, my country’s racism, and racism that is so prevalent it is almost hard to see at times … I have to do this for my Chinese born kids.

I wasn’t sure if I was simply being over sensitive (easy to do when you’re thinking about your kids) … and as such I copied the joke to an open minded international adoption related email group to ask the advice of the members there … the consensus was that the joke was racist and inappropriate. This is from parents who are incredibly intelligent and who have spent years trying to understand racism and it’s subtleties.

I absolutely believe that you did not mean to post something you understood to be racist, that you have a good heart and try honestly to understand & respect your new country … but in my own journey to understanding “white priviledge”, I can’t let this go with out a comment.

I hope you understand … I’m more than happy to discuss this further if you’d like to.”

My initial reaction was to be a bit defensive. After all, I love China and love the language even though it seems to be so far out of my grasp at times! I spend so much time immersed in the language trying to figure it out and make sense of it.

I started googling and found out that there is actually a website that sells t-shirts with some of those phrases along with many other (crude) ones with racist caricatures of people.

After thinking on this, I came to this conclusion. I’m not saying this is wrong or right, it is just where I’m at. It is a thin line we walk here- trying to live in a culture we don’t always understand, trying to find humor to keep us sane, while still remaining respectful of our host country and culture. Humor is a necessity in dealing with culture stress, language stress, and regular-life stress.

I think in the end it boils down to context. If I were to wear a t-shirt with a caricatured “Asian” face and “Sum Ting Wong” on it, I think it would absolutely be rude. But the context I brought this up in was that I’m so frustrated with language sometimes and wish that I could just flip the words around so they make something that sounds like English so I could finally understand something.

The t-shirt mocks Chinese people and the accent that some Chinese people have when speaking English. My post was not intended to be read that way. Rather, it was about the limited number of sounds/words (wang, ding, nai, wei, etc… in Chinese, unlike in English, there actually are a rather limited number of consonant-vowel combinations that are used to make up all words) and how much easier it would be if I could swap the words around to make a fake Chinese that I could comprehend. The sounds in the “joke” are actual sounds in Chinese (some are Cantonese sounds, some are Mandarin sounds) and I found it in a post about language learning on a Chinese language site that I go to when I study.

When I was reading it out loud, I was reading it as a westerner who is trying to speak Chinese but mangling it to pieces, as I often do when I try to communicate here and fail miserably. In the opposite context, I realize it could be read as a Chinese-American with a strong accent.

I want to apologize if anyone was offended by that joke. It was not my intention to belittle anything or anyone. I realize that culture and language are very difficult boundaries to tread. It is very easy to offend when offense is not intended, despite attempting to be careful.

I just wanted to make sure this was addressed clearly and openly. Again, I am sorry if anyone was hurt or upset about that joke.

It is the uncomfortable reality that in a mixed-culture situation, mistakes will be made. As we navigate this new life, we find ourselves confronting long-held misconceptions, attitudes, and thoughts that we didn’t even know we had. When we walk into a new restaurant and say “Wow, this is so nice, it looks so clean and pretty and Western!” we have to address the reality that perhaps we are equating clean/nice as Western and dirty/unkept as Asian. It isn’t always a comfortable realization to address those issues. We don’t like the thought that maybe we do have some misconceptions and attitudes that aren’t correct. But as people in a fallen world, this is reality.

We also have to battle the constant struggle of right vs wrong.  It is human nature to see the familiar as “correct” and the unfamiliar as “wrong”.  It is something we battle daily.  A squattie potty is not wrong.  It is a different kind of toilet to the one I grew up with in my home.  But it is functional and it serves billions of people just fine.  I might prefer a different kind of toilet.  But it doesn’t make the other kind “wrong”.  Honestly, it isn’t even more unsanitary than a western-style toilet.  These things are cultural challenges we have to tackle in our hearts and minds and figure out how we will approach them.

This is an area we discuss often- our heart attitude toward the culture we live in and the way we approach these things. It isn’t easy, and we will make mistakes, but we do want to learn from them and grow.

Well, perhaps only in China can you go from seeing a doctor in an international, modern hospital to seeing 5 donkey-drawn carts full of bricks and peasants.

Today started out foggy. The roads to Beijing were so foggy that the expressway was entirely stopped so we had to take side roads. At some points, we couldn’t see more than maybe 15 or 20 feet in front of us- we wouldn’t see the car in front of us until we were extremely close to it- and everyone had their hazard lights blinking. It was really not something I’d want to experience again!

Libby’s comment in the car made me nearly cry laughing at the sadness/trueness/humor of it all. We had set up a car and driver for the day- a little VW Passat. It was really nice and we get in and Libby goes “Seatbelts! Remember when we had seatbelts in Texas mommy?”

We hadn’t been to the hospital in Beijing before, but we’d heard how nice it is. It definitely feels very clean, modern, comfortable, and secure. After a brief exam- in which they checked and not only are her ears okay- but yay, her tubes are still in- I skipped her follow up appointment this March after she got them put in so I’ve always wondered if they are ok!- we were seen by a pediatric neurologist.

She actually had a fit in the middle of all of this, so the nurse and doctor were both able to see exactly what I was talking about.

He requested that we get an MRI and an EEG. Because during her recent fits she is sometimes unresponsive in a way that is not like a normal temper tantrum, he suggested she might have epilepsy. I am still in the “what? that’s crazy! that’s impossible!” camp of thinking. That could be motherly denial. I don’t know. I’m just not sure what I think. But that’s kind of irrelevant, isn’t it? Anyway, there was no way at that point on a Friday to get the tests done, so we will have to work with the international clinic here to get them done and then get back up there for her follow-up. My gut feeling is that there is just no way that’s what it is. Especially because I was still flip flopping about whether we even needed to take her to a doctor!

Of course, part of that might be parental guilt because we haven’t exactly been nurturing and loving to her re: what we have called fits. If it turns out they are seizures and not tantrums, well, I might feel a little bad about the lectures and discussions and such… but of course, how could you predict something like that?

After seeing the doctor, both girls were tired and needed naps, so we snuck into a little Starbucks nearby (Beijing is seriously a spoiled little city!) and let them rest. I popped into a little import food store and got fresh, soft pita bread, English muffins, and other goodies.

That store (Jenny Lou’s) seriously brings tears to my eyes. First, I get all teary because I see things I’d completely forgotten existed and then I get all teary because I miss them and I didn’t even know I missed them. And then I see the price tag and get more teary because there is noooo way I can justify the price ($10 for a box of Lucky Charms? No thank you!). Pitas were quite decently priced though and I think they will freeze well and then I can pop them out for a quick and tasty dinner! Do you think it is “wrong” to serve ayi’s Chinese dishes in a pita? LOL

Is it odd to see Chinese-Spanish labelling on a Mexican food product? This seriously makes me go “hmm” because that Chinese labelling is from the manufacturer which means somewhere in China, they are producing salsa- for within-China-consumption! I am also curious how they translated salsa (it seems the characters are the same on all of the bottles for what it is… under the Salsa Verde, Salsa Mexicana, Salsa Arriera…) because my ayi and I call them “Mexican tomatoes”. Now I can just say “mexican tomatoes” and she knows the drill!

In front of that store, Libby and I saw 5 donkey-drawn carts piled high with bricks and then loads of migrant workers on top… very interesting!

The final two parts of the day out were my favorite…

#1. Peter’s Tex-Mex. Yum!!! The girls thoroughly enjoyed the place… they serve breakfast all day long and Libby got to eat waffles. The girl looooves waffles. I can’t put it in words how much she likes them. (sorry, cell phone pic- only had cell today)

Alright, I know you can’t see much in this photo, but this is Katie’s mac’n'cheese, which I thought was so gourmet looking and tasting!

And yes, this is unattractive… but it is 9 layer dip with guacamooooole on top. I am a huge avocado freak and was just so excited to get a bit of avocado!

#2 exciting thing- I picked out a beautiful doll for Libby’s birthday present. She will be 5 in a couple weeks and I wanted to give her a special gift- I don’t know why I feel like 5 is “so old” but it just seemed appropriate to give her a “big girl” doll- not a baby, but a real doll. It is “American Girl Kirsten” (really? I don’t know about really!) and looks a lot like Libby, so I think she will be really excited! I was able to haggle out one doll + 2 outfits for $20.  I only mention the price so that all of you moms of girls out there will feel obliged to come visit me!  You know you want to!!!

It was an interesting way to spend our Black Friday- it sure didn’t feel like Black Friday here! No crazy sales and shopping like mad or anything!

And I can now add to my list that I am thankful for *good medical insurance*!