Gaining Traction

Girls Tea Party in our Kitchen

It's happening!  Almost four months in and we are finally feeling like we are settling in, forming somewhat of a routine, making new friends, and rarely going to bed with that "knot in the stomach" feeling that always seems to accompany so much change and transition.  And man, are we thankful!  Can't say that our new normal really feels that normal still; in fact, as we drove through one particular part of town this past weekend with literally every building in sight dilapidated and crumbling, Kevin and I looked at each other with a "pinch me" kind of look and asked, "Is this really where we live?!"  But thankfully, we are seeing our new place for the beauty it does hold, looking for His hand around us, and seeing it in ways that allow us to give thanks for this journey that brings us so far across the Gobi Desert!

Noah and his "triplet" friends as they termed themselves!

rooftop view at a friend's home

I can't say that Kevin is appreciating the weather at this point.  After a relatively cool June with temps only getting into the upper 90s, we've now hit a heat spell that has the high being between 99 and 106 degrees for the next 9 days straight!  Being from Texas, this shouldn't be too daunting.  But the fact that most homes and places of business don't have AC changes the game completely.  Our car does have air conditioning, but even our "upgraded" model Nissan has literally one, two-inch vent in the back part of the mini-van for air to come through.  So NOT much in the way of cool air circulating once you get past the front seats!  The kids seem to be adapting well, and we have fans running in every room (some rooms with more than one).  And after hearing for about a week of Kevin and me being awakened in the middle of the night multiple times due to the pool of sweat we were sleeping in, our sweet parents decided to give us a 4th of July gift--an AC for our bedroom!  I currently have it turned on COLD and then fans in the room directed to blow the cold air out, hoping to cool the rest of the apartment.  This is when our 1500 square feet (or maybe less?) comes in handy!  I've got a group of 18 kids (plus several parents and younger siblings) that will be in the apartment later this afternoon for a series of weekly Writing Workshops I've been conducting this summer for some of the American kids in the community.  Hoping to keep it cool for them!

A Friday Off--new discovery of Pepsi floats!

But back to Kevin and the heat....His baseball clinics have been going on now for 3 weeks, so he's been taking the boys (and sometimes Karis) every morning to go play in the heat.  It's been so exhausting!  The combination of the heat (the field is particularly warm, with little air circulating there), the language (doing the clinics in Chinese), and what he calls the "entertainment factor" (with these little kids wanting to be somewhat entertained during the lessons) leave him wiped out. And then he comes home around 12:30 only to rush out the door for study time.  I've convinced him to drop his daily goal from 4 hours down to 3 during this busy season for work, but there's nothing like this kind of study to leave you physically and mentally exhausted.  I've got a stash of Starbucks iced coffees that he's been depending on daily to keep him alert enough to make it through his lessons! I have yet to make it out to the site where they hold the weekday clinics (it's an hour drive away and the guys have 2 vans filled with kids or equipment--or both--so room in the car is a rarity!), but the kids' description has cracked me up.  No turkeys or sheep running around like our Saturday location's field, but the grass is so high they have to put cones up next to the bases so that the runners know where to go when they get a hit!  Without the cones, the grass is too high to see where they are aiming for.  After being so concerned about what we were going to do all summer with the kids, having daily bball has been such a blessing!  They come home at noon ready to rest and do Legos, willing to get in an hour or so of homework, but filled up after time with friends and really enjoying the game of baseball.  In fact, they're almost getting TOO filled up with bball; Hud and Noah begged for one morning off, so they are actually here playing quietly (which happens only rarely!) and spending time with the kitten Trapper in the hopes that they will be refreshed and ready to get back in the game tomorrow.

The boys and some of their best buddies

Friday is our day off, where I don't do school work with the kids and Kevin doesn't have baseball (and I've convinced him to have that be his day off from study, too!).  Saturdays are full with two sessions of baseball camp, which ends up taking literally all day.  So we're trying to seize the moment for Fridays being good family time and good time exploring the area.  The region we are in truly has some of the most majestic views of grandeur in the whole country, being the destination place of outdoorsmen who want an adventure in nature.  Perfect for our family!  This past week we took off for the mountains again--our second trip.  We went to a slightly different location that was free to get into (rather than the national park we paid to go into last time) and the difference was pretty astounding.  The trees and the mountains were still beautiful, but the amount of trash was literally shocking to me.  You look up at the tree line and feel like you're in Colorado, but then you look down and there was literally trash heaped and strewn everywhere the eye could see.  And the amount of animal manure was also incredible.  There are tons of Khazaks in the area who specialize in renting out horses for riding and also grazing herds of sheep, so the number of "patties" is REALLY high.  There was a creek that ran along the road and trail we hiked which also would have been beautiful, except that it also seemed to be a main dumping place for waste. :(  It made me so sad to see something that could have been so beautiful littered with so much trash!  I was fascinated to know what fueled this practice of dumping trash at random....Obviously the fact that the people here are "trained" to drop their trash anywhere plays into it (there are so many people picking up trash in the cities that it is totally normal to drop it rather than look for a trash receptacle of some sort), but I also wondered if they just don't "see" it because they are so accustomed to it being everywhere? Truly a mystery to me....But we were still able to thoroughly enjoy our time!  We just had to dodge patties and trash, hiking for quite a ways to try to get off the beaten path where maybe fewer people and animals had gone before.  We came home, only about an hour's drive, feeling refreshed by some mountain air and time as a family (and with friends, although this time it was only one other family who joined us).  We hope to try out a new park this Friday (if the heat doesn't keep us in!) that is not too far of a drive away.  We've been hard pressed to find fun parks to explore, but supposedly this one is a winner and I'm keeping my expectations low, hoping that will make it even more enjoyable!

...and the girls (with their pet butterfly)

One of the things that has helped both Kevin and me turn the corner in this adjustment phase is being more pro-active in goal-setting.  We've realized that so many things are new and challenging that it's easy to feel like we're just trying to keep up and survive.  But we feel like we've covered enough ground in figuring things out (language for Kevin, food and daily survival stuff for me) that we're ready to be more proactive and less passive in daily life.  So we've made some long to-do lists each week and are being intentional about how we spend our time.  Thankfully, both of our bodies seem to be hanging in there and recovering well (mine after shingles and Kevin's after his back problems at an impromptu pitching performance several weeks ago), so we're in full swing in training for the sprint triathlon we hope to compete in at the end of September.  We've been told there's a chance we won't be able to register for the event (it's become much more competitive and the spots are limited), so we're holding loosely to it, but are really enjoying the discipline of training almost daily and pushing our bodies a bit.  As pathetic as it sounds, another one of my goals has been to get out of my front door!  I've found that the transition into this community has been even harder than our last one on the east coast; I think it's a combination of the community here not being too open to foreigners and my lack of understanding of the language, as well as having more "needs" at home than usual with the kids and trying to be their only teacher (until hopefully our Chinese teacher will return in August to cover at least that subject!).  But I know that once the colder weather hits in October, my opportunity for meeting and interacting with our neighbors will dramatically decrease.  So I've literally set goals of how many times I get out the door and hang out outside.  So many people congregate in the courtyards during the evening hours that it's easier to meet people and connect with the few people I do know if I am just present.  A major loss for me is that the closest (and honestly, one of the only!) local friends I have just left this week to go back to her hometown for a month, and then shortly after that will probably be heading to Europe (where so many people try to go to study or work).  I've grieved the thought of her not being here and serving as my "insider" to help understand what is going on around me in a culture that still feels so foreign, as well as the welcome warmth of her smile and greeting each time we meet outside!  I have gotten to know her family a little bit (she's been living here with 2 sets of aunts and uncles), so hopefully all is not lost in the form of relationships and friendships that have started to develop.

My question of the hour--would this wall crumble completely if the chairs were moved?

We're connecting more and more with other ex-pats who are here, and are finding several relationships that we can describe as refreshing.  So thankful, as I was especially missing those types of female friendships.  We're back to our previous challenge of figuring out how much we can handle well as a family in regards to a full calendar--how many nights a week can we host without getting too strung out?!  And thankfully our home has proven to be the "meeting place" for our friends' kids.  Which is great, as I am so thankful to be able to get to know these kids better, spend the time with them and my kids, and serve the community in this way, but it's also been a challenge to know when to say no and draw boundaries; and it's honestly been a heart issue for me to truly want to have our door open all the time but also not feel taken advantage of when it seems to be crossing the line.  It's been good for Kevin and me to try to think through how to communicate well with our friends and still have a warm and hospitable place to enjoy lots of kids!  Man, what I wouldn't give for a backyard....

Mountain expedition--once we were past the bulk of the trash

I'll close with probably the biggest bummers that I've experienced the past few weeks, and both involved physical safety and the reality of how precarious it is out here.  Coming home from a ladies dinner (hosted by some of the moms I've gotten to know through baseball, which was really fun and encouraging!), we passed a crowd on the street that was huddled around 3 people (a child and their parents) who had all been mowed down while crossing the street.  They were still laid out on the ground awaiting emergency vehicles to come, but it looked bad.  The number of pedestrians is huge, and they are rarely crossing at lights or places you would expect.  Usually crossing in a larger number makes you think you are safe, but this family obviously proved otherwise.  And then the next day I witnessed a car pulling out of our apartment community gate hit an electric three wheeler where a young boy (maybe 9 or 10 years old?) was sitting waiting for his dad (a local shop owner that I've gotten to know) to load on some groceries to be delivered.  The three wheeler flew forward while the boy flipped back, hitting his head on the bed of three wheeler only to roll off of the vehicle in tears, holding his head and his leg.  Thankfully, when I followed up with his dad a few days later, he said the boy was fine, but the reaction of the driver of the car is what REALLY fired me up.  After being completely responsible for hitting the stopped three wheeler, the man slowly got out of his car and spent about half a minute inspecting his car before going to check on the boy who was at that time rolling around on the ground in pain after the collision.  It was unbelievable.  The fact that the man was obviously so much more interested in the damage to his car (which was certainly there; he had a good sized dent and scratches from the impact) than the child he'd hurt absolutely outraged me.  And there happened to be about 6 police officers loitering around who did VERY little to reprimand the man or even come to the aid of the boy.  I was so furious I knew I was going to start yelling at someone, so after seeing that the boy seemed to be moving and talking, I hurried off with my arms full of groceries, heart pounding like I'd just competed in a race.  I walked in the door and just went off, venting to Kevin about what I'd just seen and how unreal it was to me that people could be so heartless!  Made my passion for reaching others with a love unlike anything they've known that much more compelling.

Okay, enough of the yucky stuff.  Now off to get lunch on the table before the rest of my crew runs in the door and we prepare for writing class.  Such a joy to be able to use my teaching background to help others in a more "normal" classroom environment than what we typically do for homeschooling!  And the kids aren't complaining at all, as their reward is the play time they get to enjoy with such precious friends!