Dreaming

Well, it's 6 am and I've had yet another half-wakeful night. I really can't remember when I was able to just sleep right through the night, without my friend, Benadryl. I remember my dreams, though: one night I was in France visiting our friends but I couldn't talk to them; last night I was in some region of the world that harbors terrorists and I could travel through time and space instantly, yet I stayed there. Hmm, wonder what all that means. I haven't yet dreamt I was back in Arizona, as far as I know.

I just can't completely relax, and haven't in months. I am so proud of all the work we've done: researching the possibilities of this project, going after the jobs, landing the job in THE city in the world I wanted to live in most right now, making our house look beautiful to sell, getting the family here, hitting the ground running when we got here to make this place our home. And it does feel like home already. But even so, something in my psyche resents being yanked half way across the world. We have completely stepped out of our comfort zone, and I guess none of us really have our bearings yet, in spite of the fact that we are all excited to be here. So it's my job and Don's to create a new comfort zone for our kids so they feel taken care of.

And as for me, I'm going to invent my own comfortable place, because while I love it here, it's still too new. And it's not in Arizona, because while I liked it there, I also willingly gave it up, and, at least at this point, I can't go back. So my place is a cottage in Sweden, next to a small lake out in the country. No neighbors, just a porch to sit on in the evenings and look at the sun glistening on the lake, while eating cardamom buns and drinking hot chocolate. The cottage furnishings are right out of a Carl Larsson painting, and in the bedroom is a huge white bed, all white linens, soft white pillows. It's late May, so if I wake up at 1 or 2 am, I can sit on the porch, wrapped in a blanket, and watch the sky glow with the rising sun. And then I can climb back into bed, and sleep again, because I have nowhere to be, nothing to do, but be there with my family.

New Blog

I don't have time to do my next post yet, but I'll put in a plug for Don's and my new blog called "What the Snack is That?" in which we review all the bizarre Chinese snacks we have been finding. And there are many. So check out our first posts at www.whatthesnack.blogspot.com . And I'll post again here soon.

Our Apartment

The dining room. The wall "art" has to go.




The living room, Allyne and more bad wall art. We like the couch, though.




Three of the rooms have huge window seats.




The kids are already using these as a place to nap. We're going to get someone to make seat cushions and pillows to make it even more bed-like.




The "atrium", actually a sun porch with a retractable clothes-line. We've basically given Emma carte blanche to put whatever plants in there she wants. She's pretty excited about it. So is the little old Chinese guy at the nursery.




Another view of the living room. Except for the plants and the Wii, everything you see in these rooms was provided by the school.




Emma at the desk in John's room, which is where all of us currently access the internet. That chair gets a lot of seat-time. We asked the real-estate agent for a wardrobe for John; the rooms don't have closets and John's has no wardrobe, either. She seemed to think the bookcase was sufficient. When I asked her where John should keep his clothes, she told me to ask the school. Sigh. Well, the school will have more leverage than we will on that anyway, so I'll take her advice and get them to talk to our landlord.




Allyne and Emma's room. We don't have enough hangars and we've already cleared two stores of their stock. Getting hangars for five people's entire wardrobe is not an easy feat. You can see laundry hanging in the atrium. Why we are air-drying our clothes will be apparent when I do my post on Chinese appliances.




This is the view from Don's and my bedroom window. Not bad, eh? The apartment complexes here all have gardens in the middle. We also have a little store in the complex. As the Chinese always say, it's "convenient". For some reason they love that word. Must have been in Lesson 23 of The People's Number 7 English.




Me and Don's room. We have our own bathroom, too. The beds are hard, like a box spring. I love it. The kids don't.




View from the kitchen.




Stove. They provided a toaster, bread, orange marmalade and tea. What do they think we are, British? We had to get our own wok and rice steamer.




The first dinner I cooked in the kitchen: Unidentified fish, which I couldn't get the fish guy to clean, even though he had just cleaned someone elses fish (I did it myself..mostly), grean beans and garlic, and rice. No one complained, so I consider it a success.




View from John's room. He has the best view with the canal and the city. We just look at the neighbors from our side.

We've landed

Well, after 10 long months of working on this, we finally got to China on Monday evening. Here are some pictures to get started, with much more to come.

We took 15 bags with us. If you include our "personal" bags we carried on the plane, it was 22 items we had to keep track of. Notice our duffle bags from Larada's Army Surplus. John loved the military look.

Our street: Xian Guo Jie. Or something like that.



Our apartment building. Count up four windows to the far left, that window is J's, and the two windows next to it are ours, too. We have windows on the other side as well, looking right into the apartments of our neighbors. Whether they are in their underwear or eating, we're all one big happy human family.



Lest you thought we were roughing it, here is proof we are not. This is the list of stores being build right next door (click on the image for a closer look). Notice we can't even get away from Walmart here. At least we'll have a DairyQueen to keep us happy.


A view of our apartment building, right next to the new construction. The canals are all over Suzhou, in the old parts and the new. Wish we had our canoe...

Fortunes

Even though we'll be eating a lot of Chinese food in China, that hasn't stopped us from craving it while we wait. Here are some of the recent fortunes we've gotten this summer (and, yeah, I know fortune cookies are not Chinese):

“To be eighty years young is more cheerful and hopeful than forty years old.” – I got this one and I just turned forty. Does it imply that forty-year-olds are not cheerful and hopeful? I like to think I’m cheerful and hopeful at forty. I hope.

“The simplest answer is to act.” – Don got this one. Seems appropriate to our current situation, and reminds me of Don’s favorite scripture about “acting” and not letting ourselves be “acted upon”. In other words, we can make our own choices, we control our reactions.

“You will soon be crossing great waters.” – Another one of mine. I laughed really hard when I got it.

“Sometimes travel to new places leads to great transformation.” – John got this fortune. We were all happy he got it because he has the strongest reservations about our move to China. I’m not sure it helped.

“Your happy heart brings joy and peace where there is none.” – This one is mine. See, I am cheerful!

“Consider gain and loss, but never be greedy and everything will be all right.” – Not sure who got this one, but, wow, does this seem to apply to us right now. And, yeah, I think everything’s gonna be alright.

“Success is a journey not a destination.” – I think this was Allyne’s. Couldn’t agree more.

“Try your best to avoid arguing with your elders and superiors.” – This was Emma’s, and wow, did we laugh hard. Not ten minutes later she was arguing with Don, so I said, “Emma, what happened to the fortune?” She replied, “Mom, it just said ‘try’.”

“Past experience: He who never makes mistakes, never did anything that’s worthy.” – This is similar to something I’ve been saying to my perfectionist kids for years, and, more recently, I've been saying it about our move. One reason we are moving to China is Allyne really hasn’t liked her high school experience. Allyne asked me once, “Mom, what if we move and it isn’t better?” I told her, “Well, we can stay here for more of the same, or we can make a change and see if it works out. If we go, at least we’ll know that we tried.”

“Keep it simple: The more you say, the less people remember.” – Amen.