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| How cool an invention is this? |
We landed back in our "host country" almost two weeks ago, and we've got our footing and are running ahead full speed once again! The several weeks we spent in Thailand over the Chinese New Year were fantastic. We had such a great time to rest and reflect on the past 10 months that we've been in our new western city, as well as lots of medical stuff done again and time visiting with friends. Being able to vacation in such a beautiful location that is so close to where we live (well, close I guess is relative; it only takes about 12 hours to get there by plane! I shouldn't complain; we do have friends who went by train--3 days straight on the train before then taking busses the rest of the way! They didn't even know how long the total journey took them, but it was "about 5 days!") is a blessing that we certainly don't take for granted.
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| One of our favorite travel treats... |
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| Karis at Catmosphere--the cat cafe |
So many foreigners travel during the Chinese New Year, and Thailand is such a popular place to go, that connecting with friends there is relatively simple. We had so many friends from our former city who were also there, so we were able to make the rounds. We even spent time with one family that Kevin and I met 13 years ago when we worked at an international school in Manila, Philippines for a semester! It was a sweet reunion, and we're hoping that we can find a reason to make a trek over to their island for a visit at some point. Some of the highlights of our time were going to a night safari (but we went during the day, which we were told was actually preferable), a water park, a cat cafe (which was a "restaurant" the size of your kitchen, bursting at the seems with 22 cats roaming around--even on the tables where we were eating! yuck!), and ice skating. The kids normally love fishing the most, but would you believe that a "storm" blew in this year while we were at the beach. No rain or thunderstorms, just really strong winds that made the ocean unsafe for the small fishing boats we usually hire for a cheap rate to take us out. Everyone was bummed, even Kevin, who I now know looks forward to that as much as the kids!
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| Karis with glasses--and Swensen's ice cream! |
I should probably have started off with admitting my unbelievable blunder. We actually missed our original flight! Our travel plans are typically left completely up to me to arrange and coordinate, and I love doing administrative tasks like that. I have my file all printed out with everything in the order in which it will be needed. Well, this year I fell victim to the challenge of our region's weird time zones. Technically, we are on Beijing time. But no one in my part of town operates on that time; instead we all have our watches set 2 hours earlier. So whenever you schedule anything with anyone, or whenever you see times printed out, you have to clarify if it's BJ time or local time. It is sooooo confusing! Well, our flight info was printed out on BJ time, but I just completely missed that and was thinking of local time. So long story short, we arrived at the airport (thinking we were two hours before our flight) to find that it was actually leaving the runway right then. I've never had such a horrible feeling in my stomach. After many tears and feeling like I was going to throw up for about the next 12 hours, we finally were able to get re-booked on another flight. But that was only after Kevin and I both spent about 6 hours on skype the following day, drove across town to pay one fee that needed to be paid in cash, and then finally caught the next flight available, which was two days later than we'd planned. Kevin was so worried about me after making such a huge mistake that he insisted that I get a complete physical done while we were there in a city with good (and cheap!) medical care!
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| Noah with a jelly fish discovery |
And I'm glad that we did get the medical stuff done, because we got some surprising results. Karis got glasses for the first time (which wasn't a big surprise; I figured she was squinting for a reason!), Kevin is evidently eating too much chicken (weird!), and I have lots of tiny cysts all over in my chest that they think are due to the hormones that I'm probably getting from the chicken that we eat. Bummer! We certainly eat chicken about 4 or 5 days per week, so I'm having to do some major adjustments in our meal planning; I'm trying to get more creative with both beans and vegetables. We're all supposed to get checked out again in about 6 months, which is good timing as we're hoping to do another triathlon on the east coast again then, so hopefully we can time it to do some racing and medical checks at the same time!
Our re-entry back into China was much more difficult than Kevin or I anticipated. It seemed like every individual we met immediately upon entry was just plain angry. Kevin got his foot stamped on (really hard!) right as we got off the plane, the taxi drivers refused to take us to our hotel (literally speeding off around us, knocking over our bags as they hurried away), the lady at the counter of our hotel wouldn't give me an extra blanket and yelled at me for having a child sleep on the floor (even after I explained that I had 4, not the typical 1 here in China, and I couldn't fit more than 3 in the bed!), and every flight and driver that was scheduled arrived at least an hour later than they were supposed to. Sigh. Welcome home! It was a great reminder of why we try to leave the country periodically for a period of de-stressing. It really is unbelievable how it mounts and affects so many areas of your life (and disposition!).
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| Valentine celebration with our Chinese teacher |
In spite of our somewhat rough cultural re-entry, we were happy to be home. The friendships that we have started to form here make returning so much easier! It is culturally appropriate here to buy gifts for close friends when you go away on vacation, and it was so encouraging this time to have a whole list of people to buy for! We've been delivering hand soaps and dried fruit to the friendships that are developing, and it's truly a joy to be getting into the lives of those around us. Our Chinese teacher stayed with us for dinner to celebrate Valentine's Day, and Karis and I taught her how to make our favorite "mug cake"--an individually-sized cake that literally is cooked in a mug in the microwave.
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| Hud posing w a bag of Lays |
So now our "normal" is in full swing. Kevin is back in to work and study and the kids and I are homeschooling away once again. We've kicked it up a notch with our Chinese study, which I think will be really good for the kids and they've handled incredibly well (it helps that we have a precious teacher who dearly loves them!). The weather is still amazingly cold. As I type, it's 4pm (or 6pm, if you want to use BJ time!) and only 10 degrees Fahrenheit outside! Snow is still falling and ice is still everywhere, and I think we've got another month or so of this yet to come. The pollution has been off the charts bad as of late (like over 500 on the 500-point scale), so we've been staying indoors more and keeping the air purifiers on high. Every time I wash my hands I say a little exclamation of thanksgiving; the water in our apartment was shut off for about 36 hours, and that has to be by far my least favorite aspect of living in a developing nation. I had no idea how much I took running water for granted. I grew up camping out, so I didn't think it would phase me too much, but I now see that having a "camp out" mentality makes a huge difference. When I'm in my home, I want to flush the toilet. I want to wash the dirty dishes. I want to do laundry! So every time we lose water and then have it come on again, it's such a reminder of how much we take for granted and how much we expect. (Maybe I should be using first person pronouns here... :) I guess it's sometimes those little things that we expect that can make such a huge difference.
We landed back in our "host country" almost two weeks ago, and we've got our footing and are running ahead full speed once again! The several weeks we spent in Thailand over the Chinese New Year were fantastic. We had such a great time to rest and reflect on the past 10 months that we've been in our new western city, as well as lots of medical stuff done again and time visiting with friends. Being able to vacation in such a beautiful location that is so close to where we live (well, close I guess is relative; it only takes about 12 hours to get there by plane! I shouldn't complain; we do have friends who went by train--3 days straight on the train before then taking busses the rest of the way! They didn't even know how long the total journey took them, but it was "about 5 days!") is a blessing that we certainly don't take for granted. 
I should probably have started off with admitting my unbelievable blunder. We actually missed our original flight! Our travel plans are typically left completely up to me to arrange and coordinate, and I love doing administrative tasks like that. I have my file all printed out with everything in the order in which it will be needed. Well, this year I fell victim to the challenge of our region's weird time zones. Technically, we are on Beijing time. But no one in my part of town operates on that time; instead we all have our watches set 2 hours earlier. So whenever you schedule anything with anyone, or whenever you see times printed out, you have to clarify if it's BJ time or local time. It is sooooo confusing! Well, our flight info was printed out on BJ time, but I just completely missed that and was thinking of local time. So long story short, we arrived at the airport (thinking we were two hours before our flight) to find that it was actually leaving the runway right then. I've never had such a horrible feeling in my stomach. After many tears and feeling like I was going to throw up for about the next 12 hours, we finally were able to get re-booked on another flight. But that was only after Kevin and I both spent about 6 hours on skype the following day, drove across town to pay one fee that needed to be paid in cash, and then finally caught the next flight available, which was two days later than we'd planned. Kevin was so worried about me after making such a huge mistake that he insisted that I get a complete physical done while we were there in a city with good (and cheap!) medical care! 
