Category Archives: Travel Musings

Betty Crocker, I Am Not

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With the jetlag behind us and Thad already entrenched in his new job, I thought it was time to help make our new apartment a little more like home. Right now, it is a lovely conglomerate of every shade of beige imaginable. I could make a beige-only color wheel out of this place, from the dark camel colored couches (for which I’ve been searching the internet for slipcovers), to the light tan area rug to the orange-ish-brown lamps that look like pineapples, to the dark hardwood furniture, we definitely have “earth-tones” taken care of. The problem is, I am far from an earth-tones type of girl. I’d prefer something more in the jewel-tone range, with rich purples and pinks and greens and blues. All of that, though, is in our UAB/HHE shipments, which may or may not be on their way. (May not being the more likely option this early in the game.)

So, while I await color, I thought I could at least add a bit of American feel to the house and what better way to do that than with a chocolate cake. (I found a cake mix for less than a dollar at a local store, but the frosting was six dollars, so it will be icing-less cake, which is what Thad prefers anyway.) Cake baking, from a box of course, is pretty straight-forward. That is, until you move to China!

I had my not-quite-expired cake (which explains the five kaui price tag), and was ready to bake. The first thing I did was turn on the oven to pre-heat it, but I quickly ran in to a couple of problems. To begin with, the oven doesn’t have words or characters on it, just lots of little pictures, mostly squares with varying squiggly lines coming off each one. I just need my oven to bake, but after digging out the manual, I discovered that certain squiggly lines mean “bake” while a different configuration means “broil” and a third pattern means “grill.” With six such combinations to choose from, I eventually had read through a good deal of the  manual so I would choose the correct box/line combination. With that selected, I moved on to the next knob- temperature. The only problem there was  the oven is European, which means the heat is measured in Celsius, a measurement for which I have absolutely no sense. Thank goodness we have an internet connection in the apartment to help me convert Celsius to Fahrenheit in just a matter of seconds.

With my oven preheating at 178 degrees, it was time to mix the cake. The first step in making a cake in China is to wash the poop off of the eggs. (Well, even before that, at the egg stall, make sure you buy chicken eggs, as there are a variety of goose and quail and other fowl eggs to be had.) Once my eggs were poo-free, they went in to the bowl, along with the oil and mix. While it would be baked and probably turn out fine, rather than take the risk of tap water, I used water from our distiller, which is a giant metal contraption that sits on the counter in the kitchen. It heats and cleans water so we always have a ready supply.

At this point, I thought I was doing fabulously. I had my cake mixed and poured in the pan. (No beater licking here though…in America, I always disregarded the warnings about cookie dough and cake batter, but here I feel like they might carry a bit more weight!) Without thinking much more about it, I popped the pan in the oven, set the timer and headed off to the living room to enjoy some Netflix while I waited for the smell of baking chocolate cake to begin to permeate the house.

After nearly an entire episode of Brothers and Sisters I realized that no such smell was wafting through my apartment. I scurried in to the kitchen, opened to oven door only to discover that there was no heat coming from the oven. The oven light didn’t come on. The cake was still liquid batter.  Ack!

I fiddled with every knob, pushing them, pulling them, jiggling them and wiggling to no avail. With those options expended, I moved on to shaking the oven, slamming the door a couple of times, and cranking up the temperature. Again, no luck.  When Thad got home from work, I was sitting on the kitchen floor, surrounded by the manual and all of the household information given to us by the Consulate, trying to figure out how to make my oven go.

At that point, he reached in to the fridge to get a Pepsi and I instantly noticed the refrigerator light was off. I checked the microwave, which also wasn’t working. A fuse! I must have blown a fuse! (It turns out I cannot dry laundry in the clothes dryer and bake a cake in the oven at the same time. Good to know!)  After showing Thad a closet he didn’t know existed in our house, the one that contains the fuse box, he found the goofy one and got my oven back on track.

The cake went back in for round two of baking, after sure enough, after about half an hour, that chocolate cake smell I was aiming for began to drift through the house. While it wasn’t the surprise of coming home to that scent that I had hoped Thad would have after a long day at the Consulate, after a few missteps and a much too long of baking process, we had cake for dessert last night. It was well-worth the minor bedlam to get there!

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LAX to Chengdu in 24 Hours

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From the hotel’s airport shuttle pickup in Los Angeles to our doorstep in Chengdu, Thad and I logged more than 10,000 miles in almost exactly twenty-four hours. (I suppose it could be worse- much worse. When I just used Google Maps to look up the distance, it told me that walking here would take 141 days and twelve hours. I must applaud Google for them rather exact timeline, as it narrows down the walking time to within half a day. That’s pretty darn accurate! Google also helpfully tells me that my journey on foot will require the usage of a ferry. I think “ferry” might be a bit of an understatement when it comes to a mode of transportation for crossing the world’s largest ocean. Just saying…)

Our itinerary consisted of one fourteen hour flight from LAX to Shanghai, a three hour layover (which became four) in Shanghai and then a three hour flight to Chengdu. What does one do with fourteen solid hours on an airplane? Well, to begin with, one (this one!) is as happy as a clam with her upgrade from the total riff-raff section of the flying metal tube to the semi-riff-raff section, thereby gaining a god-send of five extra inches! (I believe the upgrade was in response to the polite, yet firm, letter I sent to United about my previous travel experience trying to get from Idaho back to Washington DC. I never received anything in my email as a response to my complaint, but our seats just happened to get bumped from the very back of the plane to the oh-so-lovely United Economy Plus section. Those extra few inches are undeniably amazing!) So, with a bit of extra legroom, and still fourteen hours to kill, what is there to do? I passed by afternoon/evening/afternoon/evening (I’m pretty sure we never hit night or morning as we followed the sun) by watching all of the available episodes of New Girl and The Big Bang Theory, making a personalized playlist of as many pop songs as I could find (making the playlist on their system took nearly as long as actually listening to the whole thing!), coloring what has to be the world’s most complex (and now awesome!) picture of a rhinoceros and finishing not only my book about North Korea, but also my book club book. (I know I am *way* behind on book reviews.  Now that we are getting settled, hopefully I will get going on them again!)

What I really want to know is: How is it possible that our three hour flight from Shanghai to Chengdu felt longer than the fourteen hour one from the US to China?!? I don’t think I slept more than about half an hour coming across the ocean, but once I hit that China Air flight, all I wanted to do was sleep! But, of course, I no longer had my miraculous upgrade through United, so Thad and I crammed our long legs into the not very accommodating space between rows and tried, in vain, to sleep sitting straight up.

We were lucky that Thad’s timeline coming here put us in not only on a Friday night, but the Friday night of a three-day weekend. Having that extra day to combat jet-lag before showing up at work was fabulous for him. The weekend was spent wandering our new neighborhood, where Thad took some great pictures of daily life, as it is, in China.

I was thrilled to find that there is an H&M store in Chengdu now! I’ve never been in one in the US, but I promptly skittered in to the one here when I saw it and was thrilled to find clothes with Western sizing in them, some that might even fit me! I’ll be reminding Thad of that when birthdays roll around! We also drove past a Hooters, which is a new addition to Chengdu since we left last time. That one we will not be remembering when birthdays roll around!

After wandering town, both our very authentic-feeling neighborhood and the more touristy JinLi road area, I think we are both ready to settle in and get to work here. My new sidewalk is a bit bumpier than the one in Washington DC (it rained last night and I already stepped on a brick-bomb- the loose bricks that hold water under them, creating a booby trap that splashes muddy water everywhere when stepped upon), but it is good to finally be walking it!

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Searching New Sidewalks

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Between the ever-so-trying trip home from Idaho last week (click here if you missed that saga), Friday’s government-sponsored packout and the subsequent organizing and reorganizing of suitcases to go with us to China, the only time I have to blog is at 30,000 feet above the surface of the Earth.  So, with a five hour flight in front of me (okay, four and a half at this point, since I was just cleared to use my electronic devices), I figured now is as good of a time as ever to get an entry logged and star-dated.

I finally made it home, not on Wednesday as planned, but at 2AM on Thursday morning. After falling into the giant king-sized bed, I slept for a few hours, but once Thad’s alarm when off, I was wide awake, not because I was feeling overly refreshed and rejuvenated, but rather because my uptight, must-be-organized genes were kicking in and I knew I had only a day to get the whole mo-partment ready for the movers.

Thursday was spent taking everything out of every closet, drawer, nook and cranny in good ol’ #905 and placing it in one of four piles:

*Suitcase-These are things going with us on the plane to China, including most of our electronics, clothing for both work and weekends for an indeterminate number of weeks, a variety of shoes to go with those clothes, as well as toiletries and nail polish to get me though until the other forms of baggage transportation come through. (I’m currently sitting at a mere five bottles of nail polish to see me through that period. I will be creatively mixing and matching those colors until my box of sixty-some shades arrives in Chengdu. Don’t ask about the shoe situation. It isn’t pretty.)

*UAB- Unaccompanied baggage is a shipment of limited weight that is goes by air, but not with us. It is supposed to arrive a few weeks behind the owners, but I’ve heard in China that “few weeks” can easily stretch to a couple of months. All of our winter clothes are in this shipment, as well as comfy house stuff, like throw blankets and pillows. Thad’s PS3 and video game collection is also in this load, although I am not sure it will do him much good until the TV arrives.

*HHE- The household shipment is truly the slow-boat-to-China load. It will literally get placed on a container ship, where it will trek across the Pacific Ocean, arriving in the Middle Kingdom at some unknown future date. It could be a few weeks after the arrival of UAB , or a few more months. Who knows! This shipment has all of the goodies I bought at Costco about six weeks ago (again, click here if you missed that adventure!), as well as my Christmas tree, a sizable stack of books, and all of the boxes from our house in Idaho that we packed up a year ago. (At this point, I have no idea what randomness lurks in those!)

*Storage- The final pile from Friday morning belonged to storage. These are things that we didn’t  want to take with us to China, but rather wanted put in permanent storage until we are living back in the US. The tricky part of this pile was that the moving company required a minimum of 200 pounds to put a load into storage, but we were well below that level. (This may be the first and only time in my life that I want to see the number on the scale go up!) We had a couple of boxes that were meant to go to permanent storage when we packed out in Idaho, but somehow mistakenly ended up in Arlington with us. (These boxes include such necessary items as the feather pen used by guests to sign-in at our wedding reception, my 7th grade mosaic of a pig made from kidney beans and split peas, and my ginormous graduate program portfolio.) On top of that, we wanted to put our TV in that stack, as we already have one headed to China from the Idaho house. When the packing company representative came to the apartment a few weeks ago to do the pre-pack survey, he estimated that we were about fifty pounds short of being able to do a permanent storage pile, so we either had to up the weight or haul that stuff halfway around the world with us. With no desire to take my bean-art to China, we searched high and low for random junk to add to that pile, but came up empty handed. It was at this point that I remembered that in the activity room of our Oakwood, there is a bookshelf for taking or leaving books at will. The bottom two shelves have been filled with the same pile of books for a year now- tomes of diplomatic history, Norton anthologies of literature and a few technology textbooks that appear to be at least a decade out of date. Sticking with the fashion rule “if you haven’t worn it in the last year, it is time to get rid of it,” I figured if no one had taken them in the last year, no one is ever going to want them, they would be perfect for my pound-needs. It took me two stealthy trips down there to collect the needed weight, but I was able to get within a few pounds of the requirement, which is good enough for government work!

With all of our earthly possessions boxed and hauled off (an entire day of sorting and piling turned in to a mere two hours of work for the movers), we were left with the mo-partment looking eerily like it had exactly one year before when we moved in. After a few evenings of farewells with friends in the area, time has finally arrived to embark upon the trek to Chengdu. We’ll touch down in LA (with cardigan in tow, just like Miley, although I’m not sure I can get Thad to throw his hands in the air if they are playing his song) in just a couple of hours, spend a day and a half in the Sunshine state and then head out for Chengdu on Thursday.

The section of sidewalk I’ve spent the last year exploring was a great one. I saw more of our nation’s capital than I ever thought I would (parts of it more than I ever wanted to!) and was able both spend time with old friends and make some great new ones. With that said, I also feel like I’ve worn that chunk of sidewalk to its core and it is time to take this exploration on the road. I’m excited to search a new section of sidewalk, looking not necessarily for where it ends, but for where it will lead.

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I’ve Displeased the United Airline Gods

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I’ve come to a single conclusion today- United Airlines hates me.

My plan for today was simple: try to keep the mascara/eyeliner smears to a minimum as I said goodbye to family in Idaho, fly from Boise to Washington DC, via San Francisco and Chicago, and en route, work on a blog post about my two weeks running around the Treasure Valley. It was an ambitious plan, I’ll grant you that, but doable. Definitely doable. That is, until United stepped in and made one holy heck of a mess of the day!

(You’ll remember, when I flew home to surprise Mom last summer, I also ran in to issues with United Airlines. If you missed that lovely adventure, check it out here!)

After a breakfast of French toast at a Nampa diner (it is close to pre-flight pancakes, so it counts), Mom and Dad dropped me off at the Boise Airport just a bit after 10:30AM. My flight was for noon, so the timing was perfect. I got my bag checked in and headed through a security line that was nearly non-existent. It took me longer to get my belt and shoes off than it did for the line to move through the scanners. At my gate I was greeted with a notice that my flight to San Francisco had been delayed by an hour. Thinking this might cause issues with my connections the rest of the day, as they were all pretty tight, I went to the counter agent to ask about a possible “plan B.” Now, when it comes to inquisitive customers, I think I am a pretty laid-backed one, peppering my queries with pleases and thank-yous and lots of smiles, knowing that working with the public is not always a walk in the park. The gal at the counter, rather than considering I might be facing a dilemma, dismissively assured me that there would be no problem and sent me back to my gray plastic chair to await the cattle call of airline boarding.

With the Boise flight taking off an hour late, I touched down in San Francisco with just twenty minutes to make my Chicago connection.  There was still a chance of getting on that plane; that is until mine sat on the tarmac for another ten minutes, waiting for a gate assignment. Once we were docked (or whatever it is planes to do park) I skittered off the plane as quickly as possible and ran for my connecting area, a mere twenty gates away. Upon arrival, pink-faced from my people-weaving sprint, I was thrilled to see my plane sitting there, with the accordion walkway still pulled up to it, but one look at the attendant told me there would not be good news. Not only would she not allow me to board the plane (keep in mind, the lateness was on no part my fault!), but she hardly looked at me as she shooed me away, telling me I’d have to figure it out with the customer service counter.

Customer service- a term used rather broadly by United Airlines it seems. After waiting a ridiculous amount of time to even speak to a representative, the woman “helping” me seemed more interested in when her shift was over than how I was going to get home today. She initially told me the only choices were flights on Thursday or a flight that arrived at Dulles, so I asked her to check other airlines. She wasn’t happy that I knew they were required to do that, and grudgingly click-clacked on her keyboard until she came up with a red-eye flight that left SF at midnight.  With those options on the plate, I took the Dulles flight, which at least was non-stop, even if it did put me in an airport clear across town, after midnight, when the original airport was just a single Metro stop away from the mo-partment.  At this point, I tried asking where my checked luggage might be, but was told she didn’t know and couldn’t know and that I would have to take that up with baggage claim in DC. (With the movers coming the day after tomorrow, the lack of suitcase/personal items is a pretty big problem, but one that I can’t deal with at 30,000 feet, so it will just have to wait.)

With a freshly printed boarding pass in hand, I wandered to my new gate, only to find that that flight had also been delayed. With another hour delay on the docket, I at least had time to get some lunch. (Grilled cheese and fries- lunch of airport champions!)  When boarding time rolled around, we all herded on to the plane in a rather expedient manner, as everyone was eager to get in the air. Doors were shut, seatbelts were fastened, tray tables were locked and seats were in their upright positions- we were ready to fly. That is, until mechanics decided they needed to do something inside the plane, at which point doors were unsealed and almost another hour passed as we sat in our ever-so-comfortable airplane seats. Now, rather than arriving at Dulles a bit before 11PM, the flight will arrive well past midnight. (I am currently on said flight- looking out the window at what is maybe Colorado, or possibly Kansas.)

Why does this always happen to me?!?  I think Thad may be regretting flying to China with me next week, as it seems I can’t get an on-time flight to save my life. At this point, I figure if I can get home by 2AM, I can sleep for a few hours and be up when Thad leaves for work so that I can start the sorting/organizing process for the movers who are coming the following day. I always knew this last week in Washington would be hectic and a bit stressful, I just didn’t realize that United Airlines would compound the pressure by putting a time squeeze on in true anaconda-fashion. (I considered several Snakes on a Plane references to go with that metaphor, but have maturely decided against it. You’ll just have to go there in your own mind…)

Today is Wednesday. Next Tuesday I will be back on a United Airlines flight, headed for Los Angeles. All I can do is pray to the gods who control those “departure” monitors in the airport and hope for the best! (Maybe a sacrifice of a small clock or a watch would appease them…)

UPDATE:

The day may have been a near total disaster, but once I finally arrived in Washington DC, there were a few bits of good news:

  1. Somehow, my bag miraculously ended up on the same flight as me. That means that not only do I not have to worry about it arriving today while I am trying to get ready for our pack-out (which you can see I am clearly doing right now!), it meant that I had a toothbrush this morning when I finally rolled out of bed.
  2.  Super Shuttle was still running at 1AM, meaning I could get a ride home from Dulles! (A bonus- I got to sit the whole way. The last time I was out to Dulles, with Shannon and Joe, we took a packed Metro bus home. Standing with no real support was a great workout for our abs though!)
  3. Not only was the Super Shuttle running (at a cost of $30!), but I was the first drop-off out of nine people on board. That was about the best news I heard all day!!

 

Survey Says…

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Eleven months ago, as I was finishing up my teaching job at Marsing Middle School, Thad and I were in the midst of a career change that started with a cross-country move. Thank goodness those last days were teacher work days and that I had a personal leave day or two left! I had students load all of my books, files, posters, sweaters, and knick-knacks into a friend’s mother’s car, as mine had already been sold, so that I could bail as soon as possible, getting home to where another set of books, files, pictures and knick-knacks were being stored away as well. (As a side note, it is amazing how a classroom can become a second home. I had as much stuff in room 4 of MMS as I did in my first dorm room at college!)

Moving companies are an integral part of the State Department. They come, look at your stuff, estimate the boxing needs and return a few weeks later and unload your house in mere hours. The actual packing day reminds me of a plague of locust, coming through and devouring everything in its path. The movers come in, move from room to room, leaving emptiness behind. Emptiness is the key word there. If something is in the room, it is going in the box. That means the stuff you don’t want in boxes needs to be hidden away, or you may not see it again for months. Make sure the trash is taken out of the house, or it may end up in a box. Make sure the flip-flops you wear around the yard are not left lounging by the front door or they will be carted away in a crate with rugs and frames. And heaven forbid you forget and leave a load of dirty laundry in the basket on the morning of moving day. Months and months later, you are likely to end up with a lovely, gym-sock smelling surprise that is probably best to go straight from packing box to trash bin!

Over all though, the process is really rather amazing! It is all especially astounding to those of us who are used to moving with the help of anyone who can be bribed with pizza and Pepsi! (I’m looking at you, friends and family! I’ve been on both ends of that deal more times than I can count, and as little fun as moving is, we all tend to show up when the offer is cheesy pepperoni and cold cola.)

Today, we started that moving process again. This morning, I had scheduled a pack-out survey for 10AM. I also had an appointment with the Salvation Army to pick up a donation of clothes that were not going to China with us. So, I rolled out of bed and got dressed much earlier than I have in the last few weeks, waiting for either one of them to arrive. By 10:45, I was baffled to have not heard from the moving company. I knew the Salvation Army would be anytime between 7AM-noon, but I thought the moving appointment was 10AM sharp. As it turns out, after eleven months in Arlington, Thad still doesn’t know our address and sent the poor man to some other random, non-existent address, so he was a tad late. (I got the text from Thad warning me of this predicament as the surveyor was leaving the house, too late to be properly alerted!) The company representative was a bit grumpy when he first walked in the door, but I turned on the charm and soon he was joking with me and telling me horror stories of some crazy moves he had helped with over the years.

I do have to say, it is a bit disconcerting to have someone walk into your house, wander through the rooms, opening closets and cupboards and nightstand drawers, making a mental calculation of how much your worldly possessions weigh.  He had questions about whether our TV is an LED (I have no idea!), what percentage of my clothing I was going to take on the plane with me (as much as possible!), how many pairs of shoes were going to be shipped (uhhh, every last one of them!) and how much more food we were going to buy for the consumables shipment (none, although I am questioning the amount of cereal we have…is it enough?)

The sad part of this is, he walk-though lasted less than half an hour. Actually, thirty minutes is being super generous. I would guess it lasted less than fifteen minutes. This guy knows his stuff when it comes to estimating. He would be a rock star in elementary math class!! (Remember those pictures where they would show you a stack of, say, ten coins and then a huge stack of coins and you had to estimate how many where in the huge stack? I was always terrible at those problems! I still can’t take a decent guess at how tall something is, how far away a landmark is or even how many cookies it is going to take to fill me up. I always tend to guess too tall, too far and too many!)

So now, all of my stuff has been checked off on a spreadsheet, my pack-out day has been set and it is just a matter of organizing and reorganizing the piles before that fateful day arrives. Until then, it is off to Idaho for two weeks to make the rounds, visit school and friends and family and the neighbor’s stacking goats one last time before the move to the Middle Kingdom!

 

 

Making a Small Town Proud

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As I sat on my couch last night, tuned in to my first (and probably last) NFL draft, I couldn’t help but wax nostalgic about my years in Marsing. I started teaching there in 2000, just out of college, twenty-one years old and greener than Al Gore. I will forever be grateful to that interview committee that thought giving me a shot at a classroom of my own was a risk worth taking. I’m not sure I would look at someone barely legal to drink and think, “Heck yes, let’s put her in charge of thirty fourteen year olds at a time, several times a day!” But, they did, and I had a great run in that small town middle school. (And I’m forever grateful that those 8th graders didn’t realize just how easy total anarchy would have been!)

I have a rather indifferent relationship with football. I play Fantasy Football with friends from Idaho, but usually am bored with the whole thing, managing my guys as loosely as possible, by halfway through the season. My initial picks center around players with awesome names and those that play for teams with the best uniforms- meaning there has never been, nor will there ever be, a Brown on my team, Playing in Stilettos.  (Although, earlier this week, I did call eternal dibs on the defense of whichever team picked Shea up during the draft. If it had been the Browns, we’d now be facing the crisis of the century.) Watching Shea get drafted #19 on Thursday was awesome! There were high fives and cheers throughout the mo-partment.  (Having been his English teacher, I would have preferred he went to the Ravens, as then I could claim a bit of Poe-influence in his football career, but I doubt he was pondering the brilliancy of “The Raven” or “The Cask of Amontillado” as he sat, waiting for that fateful call.) Shea is a great kid, humble and loyal and a hard-worker. He deserves the attention he is getting and the rewards that are coming for his years of dedication as a student and an athlete. I will proudly wear my McClellin jersey (as soon as it comes out and can be delivered to China!) in Chengdu on game days and root him on for the length of his career.

But, with Shea’s success and the sudden spotlight that has focused on our rural Idaho town, I can’t help but think of all the other great students who came out of Marsing High School over the decade that I worked in the district. There are so many students that I am proud of, whose accomplishments aren’t being splashed on the front page of newspapers or on primetime ESPN, but that are fabulous and achieving great things on their own. These awesome kids aren’t making headlines in Chicago, but they are making their families and teachers proud.

There is Jose, a young man I had in my English class for three years straight. (I had one class that I taught the year I muddled my way, painfully, through sixth graders, and then I moved with them to both seventh and eighth grade. I was their sole middle school English teacher- for better or for worse!) Jose went from a middle schooler who relied solely on his charismatic personality to get ahead in life to a fabulous young man who has worked hard to reach his dreams. (Although, I am sure he still plasters on that charming smile when he needs to get his way!) He is headed to St. Francis College in New York this fall to play basketball and finish his college degree.

Or how about Tyson, who was accepted into medical school last year? He worked his way through NNU’s undergraduate program with the support of his wonderful wife (also a former student) and two beautiful daughters and is now focused on this next phase of his education. He will be a fabulous and caring doctor- an asset to whichever community is lucky enough to have him.

And don’t forget Nicole, the artist-extraordinaire who is chasing her dreams near Seattle, Washington. Her creativity and design abilities always blew me out of the water and now she is putting those skills into action as she explores a variety of genres in the world of art and design, including a great blog about photography. (Check it out here.)

The thing is, this list could go on and on as I tell you about how proud I am of Mayra and Ethan and Taryn and Jessica and Sean and Dixie and Peyton and Rose and Brian and Kacie and Miguel and Jacob and…the list goes on!  (And don’t even get me started on the ones that are still in school. It has been a rough year, to say the least, in Marsing, but watching the kids come together and support and love each other through the tragedies of the past few months has made me as proud of them for their hearts and their compassion as I am of their brains and their academic achievements.)

Marsing has been the foundation for so many wonderful kids who are now adults (as old as that makes me feel!), out in the world following their passions, making their small sections of this planet a better place.

So, congratulations to the newest Chicago Bear- Shea McClellin. You have earned your place in the spotlight and all of Marsing is proud of you! But also, a job well done to all of the other students coming out of Marsing who are succeeding in their chosen fields, who are shooting for the stars and who are also making our little community proud as can be!

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Preparing to Level-Up in Errands

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Errands. We sure seem to have a lot of them lately. Perchance it has to do with that little move to the other side of the globe that is just a month away now. Possibly. Maybe. Conceivably.  Regardless, there has been a lot of little things that need taken care of over the last few weeks- phone calls, emails, runs to this store and that shop, dropping off paperwork here and picking up passports there. Lots and lots of stuff to do.

The dress I ordered to take to Chengdu (see the whole story in “From Coloring Books to Formals”) finally arrived. The shop both called and sent an email last week, so I was feeling the pressure to go out and pick it up. Since I am currently (again) in the midst of a vacuum when it comes to a daily routine, it was no problem to find the time to go to Rockville. It was mostly a matter of finding the effort required to put my book away, close the book review that was in progress and put on clothes worthy of the public and make the hour (each way) trek to the boutique. It was while on this errand last week, mid-grumble to myself, when I realized that in the course of a year, my errand running has gotten (and will get) progressively more difficult.  (If I had been a better math student, I would create a lovely line graph with the X axis being difficulty level and the Y axis showing time and the points indicating where they intersect with a pretty pink line connecting them in a steep upward trajectory. But alas, math and science weren’t my strong points, so instead, a narrative it is!)

I should be grateful for the relative ease of going to pick up this dress. (Heck, picking it out too!)

A year ago, when we were still living in the lovely house in south Nampa (the one that is still for sale at a rock-bottom price if anyone is interested!), if I needed to run some errands, it was as easy as getting an 8th grader to giggle at a fart joke. Say we needed light bulbs. (It always seems like we needed light bulbs and we always put it off until we needed a whole stack of them.) In Idaho, I would just grab my keys (in the figurative sense of getting stuff ready to go, as I always left the keys in the ignition in the car in the garage. Oh, how I loved having a garage!) hop in my cute little Celica and head to the store. Which store? The choices were endless, from the Walgreens and Albertson’s just down to the road, to the Shopko (always a good place to find things- like husbands!) or Target just up the road the other direction. I could get the light bulbs, pick up a few other random goodies and be home before Mabel, the resident basset hound, even awoke from her nap. Light bulbs in a flash.

Now, in Arlington, if I need light bulbs, it takes a bit more planning, but not excessively so. I can always run down to the labyrinth below the mo-partment, in hopes that Rite-Aid has some, but that is always a bit of a gamble. Rite-Aid has an odd and unreliable selection of household items. The more likely scenario holds that I will check the Metro website, pulling up the Adobe document with the schedule for the near-by 9A bus. Once determining the time of the next arrival, I’ll grab my bag and skitter down to wait at the stop that is in front of a creepy, abandoned post office. All the while, I will be crossing my fingers, hopng that the bus actually stops for me. (To be fair, if I am running this errand on my own, which is usually the case, the bus is going to stop. Three times in our year here I have had the bus blow by me at that stop. All three times I have had Thad with me. Something about him just must look sketchy to the drivers!) On the bus, I’ll scan my card and find a spot to enjoy the couple miles ride to the shopping center that is home to our local Target. At Target, I will get my light bulbs and anything else that strikes my fancy, being sure, of course, that whatever I purchase is easily cartable, as it is going home with me again on the bus.  Now, this is where it gets tricky and/or frustrating. Going to Target, I can check the schedule and arrive at the stop just prior to the bus, but coming home, I am at the mercy of the bus. More times that I care to count, as I walk out those automatic doors of Target, I have glimpsed the taillights and smog spewing back end of the bus I wanted to be on. That means, it will be twenty to thirty minutes until the next one. There is no good people watching available from the Target bus stop, but I do get to enjoy a symphony of horns, honking for reasons unknown. All this, for want of a light bulb.

It was while on the Metro train on my way to Rockville to pick up the dress last week though that I realized I should be quite content with my current errand running system, for in just a few weeks, that difficulty is going to step it up a few notches. It is like playing a video game. (This is possibly the worst simile I could come up with, as I never play video games, but I’ve watched a lot, so I think I have a bit of wiggle room here.) Once you reach a certain point in the game, you level up, making each task harder and more complicated to accomplish. Well, soon, we are leveling-up.

I can’t speak for Chengdu, as we’ve only spent limited time there during Peace Corps trainings, but in Chengxian, buying a light bulb or two could become an all-morning process. The first matter was to figure out what exactly we needed. Things never seemed to work in quite the same way as they did the US, so it didn’t take us long to learn to take whatever it was we wanted replaced with us to the store. With light bulb in hand, the next step was to identify the area of town in which the desired item could be found. In Chengxian, there was the clothing shop section of town, the plumbing supply section of town, the live fish/eels/turtles section of town, etc. Once arriving in the electricity-related section of town, it was just a matter of finding a store with the same light bulb, negotiating a price and hoping that the bulb worked when we got it home.

I am sure Chengdu will not be quite as complicated as Chengxian, as there are mega-stores that probably have all these odds and ends items in a single location, but even getting there will be more work than it is here.  Language will always be a bit of a barrier, as will the blonde hair and blue eyes. (Not because it makes me ditzy, but because it stands out and it different from the norm, making me a great topic of conversation that must be concluded before purchasing can occur.)

So, as the difficulty of daily errands is getting close to leveling-up (I can almost see the colored bar hovering over my head as I complete each task here in DC), I am reminding myself to be thrilled with the ease of each chore accomplished, since that simplicity is to be short-lived.

With that in mind, I’m off to buy mosquito repellant and milk. What an odd, and hideous, combination!

 

Brangelina, Meet My Luggage

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As the move to China edges ever nearer, my OCD-like need for organization and control is kicking in to overdrive.  The fact that the last week has been filled with *huge* forward progress is only serving to add fuel to the crazy-lady fire. (Chinese visas have come back, pack-out has been scheduled and tickets to LA and on to Chengdu have been issued!)  It doesn’t help that I’m done with ConGen, that all of our visitors have come and gone and now I have all day to sit and fret about minor details.

One particular point has recently embedded itself in my brain, much like a grain of sand would do in an oyster. (Clam? Mussel? You know, the sea-dwelling, hinged-shelled creature that inadvertently makes lovely jewelry for my fingers and wrists and neck.) Well, the hours of irritating my mind finally paid off with a jewel (or a plan as the case may be) while I was in the shower this morning. (Why is it that the shower is the home to so many brilliant ideas? I used to come up with the best lesson plan ideas while I was in the shower- ways to make kids enjoy writing sonnets or a great new expository essay idea or the perfect activity to help solidify Greek and Latin word parts in the minds of 8th graders.) Anyway, what is this latest tiny nuisance? Luggage. Baggage. Suitcases. Call it what you will, but when moving to the middle of China for two years (and then to lands unknown) the specifics become quite important.

The issue, percolating in my brain, has been about how to get the maximum use out of the luggage allowances we are given, especially providing that the rest of our belongings will arrive anywhere from a month to two months after we set foot in Chengdu. This means planning both casual and work-wear. (Yes, I said work!  I’ve had two job interviews in the past week, which look promising. An added bonus to interviewing via phone from the opposite side of the globe is that pajamas are a perfectly acceptable outfit to wear while discussing your background in education and your enthusiasm for taking on a variety of projects at the same time.) But clothing isn’t the only thing that has to go in those bags. With the rest of our shipment weeks, or months out, daily use items like dishwasher soap, mosquito spray and alarm clocks need to be considered as well.

The State Department allows each family member to check two bags as part of the travel process. Thad and I each bought a large, hard-shelled suitcase last spring as we prepared to move out here. (While I love the color and size of these cases, I do have regrets. They are too heavy!  When nearly ten of my allotted fifty pounds are spent on the container itself, I end up having empty space inside because I am over on weight before I run out of room! Lesson learned.)  So that is two bags, both in good condition. I own another roller-bag, (this one sporting an adorable 70s floral pattern) that is a perfect size for carry-on.  Last week, I ordered Thad a nice shoulder-strapped garment bag for his suits. The one we brought to DC with us is not only too small to fit his growing suit collection, but it is definitely not high quality. I’ve seen what China can do to luggage (on our first move there, my bag came off the carousal in Chengdu looking like it had been used as a buffer in an epic battle between kung-fu pandas.)  Figuring we’ve both got two arms (okay, mine may be weak and lacking in the strength department, but they can pull a suitcase or two), so we each have two rolling bags. That means we’ve currently got an empty hand!

Luggage shopping, here I come!

I knew just what we needed to take that final, coveted spot in our baggage family. I’d seen this bag several months ago, have visited it at the store several times and finally, today, adopted it into our diverse luggage home. (My baggage collection is a bit like Angelina Jolie’s family. I see it. I like it. I add it. It doesn’t matter if it matches what I already have.)  This newest bag is a bit of dark maroon, paisley-pattered perfection. This little guy (okay, not so little, especially once expanded) fills out our last spot. Now, I can roll my hard-shell and one other case. Thad can roll his hard-shell and one other case. (I told him I would carry his garment bag, since I am the one who wants the extra bag to begin with, but we all know when the time comes, I’ll be much to wimpy to actually roll two bags, have my own carry-on and haul the suit bag. But, it sounds good for now.)

So, with that bit of sand successfully coated in slime until it became a beautiful sphere of pearl, my mind is free to conjure up the next unnecessarily worrisome detail. 5 weeks and counting…

Arcade Archives

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I’m not much of a video game player. It’s not just the shoot-‘em-up games I don’t like, it is pretty much all of them. Even the interactive Wii games, while they are fun for a few minutes, quickly bore me and I decide I would rather just go read my book. I’ve chronicled my uncoordinated video-game playing experiences on In Search of the End of the Sidewalk before, in both “Wii-kends are for  Playing” and “Wii-ning Advice.” (Apparently, the Wii doesn’t make me more athletic or coordinated, but it does fill me with puns.)

Here’s the thing though– add in the possibility of winning tickets and suddenly, I am all about the games! Over Christmas break, when Thad and I were home in Idaho, we went out one night with plans to go bowling. Well, the alley was crammed and we were put on a waiting list and given ten dollars of tokens for each person to play with in the arcade while we bided our time. (The bowling alley even gave us one of those cute little buzzers used by restaurants! Since when did bowling allies go from being filled with smoke and mullets to being brightly lit and jamming to pop-music?)

Free tokens? The possibility of tickets? Trading those tickets in for worthless crap at the arcade store? Yes! Yes! And definitely yes!

That night in December, I believe I came away with a purple plastic articulated snake toy that if you wiggle it just right, it looks like it is slithering on its own. Oh yeah, and a bag full of fruit flavored Tootsie-Rolls. Not bad for killing time before scoring an incredibly low total in a few games of bowling. (I blame the score on the massive number of fruity candies I ate between each turn.)

Last night, I was again offered the chance to get my arcade on.  When we moved to Washington DC last summer, I had cable for the first time in my life. Needless to say, for about two weeks, while Thad went to work each day, I kept up with the Kardashians and learned how to stage my home for sales showings. (If only I could make that happen from the other side of the country! I still have a lovely home in Nampa on the market, rock bottom priced, if anyone is interested!) During those few weeks of cable-coma, I saw several commercials for what appeared to be Chuck E. Cheese, but for adults. Awesome.

We’ve been talking about going for a year now, but with our time quickly coming to an end and John and Lulu leaving in less than a month, we figured it was now or never. So, along with John and Erin, the six of us met up for an evening of mediocre food and fabulous games. I knew it was going to be a good time when Thad excused himself from the table to go wash his hands, was gone an inordinately long time, finally returning with a grin, saying “I found the game room.”

As an avid Skee-ball fan, that is normally where I would take up position, but the Skee-balls games at Dave and Buster’s have a terrible return when it comes to tickets. At the arcade, it is all about the ticket collection. Thad racked up good numbers playing the world’s largest version of Fruit Ninja. (Granted, he and John Park have been practicing for that moment on their iPads for months. I’ve sat through numerous lunchtime challenges for such lofty rewards as a Mountain Dew or a York Peppermint Patty.)

The evening included a lot of Fruit Ninja, a basketball competition, Erin braving the Dance Dance Revolution machine, John T. driving a big-rig, a bit of electronic jump roping, more than one game of Let’s Make a Deal, Wheel of Fortune and The Price is Right, as well as some bass fishing and a bit more Skee-ball.

As the helpful wife that I am, I collected all of our tickets first in my bag, soon transferring them to one of the high quality cardboard cups provided by D&B’s. I figured by gathering the earnings after each game, I not only consolidated what we needed to haul around, but also essentially co-opted the gains. What’s yours is mine, right? (I’d say Thad was surprised, but this is the financial model we’ve been living under for the last year, so he is used to it. He goes to work and earns a paycheck; I stay home and spend said paycheck.)

With our credits run dry (we all chose dinner deals that included a $10 Dave and Buster’s play card), it wasn’t quite time to call it a night. First, we had to hit up the arcade shopping center.  Between us, Thad and I grossed 665 tickets. (Rather than run the tickets through a machine, or count them by hand the way we used to at POJOs when I was a kid, the tickets went on a scale, which weighed them and provided a total count. I have to say, I think it was really 666, but that number apparently freaked out the kid behind the counter, so we were left one ticket short when they were put on our card.) My hands wrapped around a ticket card with nearly the same net worth as Satan, I scanned the store for what I could afford. Thad was disappointed that the quesadilla maker was far, far out of our range. Instead, we settled for a Velcro-handed monkey (which I eventually up-traded with John Park for his stuffed Domo, as I have thing for adorable monsters) and four big mystery flavored Laffy Taffys.

So, Domo in hand and a mouth full of pink and green flavored taffy (yes, I know those are colors and not flavors, but at the same time, aren’t they flavors? You totally know what I am talking about when I say pink and green flavored, so I think it counts!), it was time to take our sugar-high selves home.

I imagine it will be quite a while before I hit up another arcade, but with my new Domo-buddy by my side, I think it is time to go to China.

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Building A Mystery (or Resume as the Case May Be)

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As a fan of all things pop-rock, I can’t help but think of Sarah McLachlan’s 1997 hit “Building a Mystery” as I pour over my resume this evening. (Yes, I’m a sucker for pop music. I don’t need quality music, just fun music. If the song has a good beat and a catchy chorus, it wins a not-so-coveted spot on my MP3 player. In fact, the music collection on my player is so horrible, it is embarrassing. This winter, I was having a baby shower at the mo-partment and couldn’t get our internet-TV’s Pandora application to work. Thad had run away, hoping to avoid all things baby, so I had to call him for advice. When he couldn’t fix it via our phone conversation- probably because I had no idea what he was talking about with his technical cord names- he suggested I just plug my Walkman into the TV and play that as background music. Uh, no! I don’t need everyone to know that my shuffle mode goes from Britney Spears to Shaggy to The Black-Eyed Peas, with a little Ricky Martin and Beyonce thrown in there. Needless to say, that baby shower was music-less and my horrible taste in music remained between me and my player.)

But back to Sarah McLachlan and my resume. In what way could music from the mid-nineties and a curriculum vitae turn into a viable Venn Diagram? It isn’t as far-fetched as you might think, because the last time I had to make a resume and prepare for a job interview was in 2000. That’s right. I haven’t had to go through the job-search process in twelve years. Needless to say, making my resume feels like building a mystery.

I taught in Marsing for nine years, covering everything from normal English and reading classes, to electives in poetry and creative writing. Basically, if it was English-y, I was there! But, the jobs I am applying for are not traditional teaching positions. While both have education-related elements to them, they are not ones that will require me to stand in front of thirty eighth graders and get them to love “Annabel Lee” as much as I do, or care that “a lot” is ALWAYS two words! (Seriously, people! You would never write “alittle” or “abit,” so why “alot”??? ) This has meant taking stock of my skills and finding ways that those abilities can translate to new positions.  Again, Sarah MaLachlan puts it well when she sings, “Building a mystery/And choosing so carefully.”  I know I have the skills for these positions; it is just a matter of selling myself on paper (and interviews) so that I am given the chance to show my awesomeness!

My year of self-selected retirement has been great. I’ve gotten to do things that I wouldn’t necessarily have done in Idaho, like motorcycle classes and a field trip to the morgue, but it is time to get back in the saddle again and have a real job.  I am hoping that by the time we board the plane for the oh-so-long flight to China, that carefully crafted resume will have landed me a job, just waiting there for my plane to touch down.

(PS- While I may not live in a church and sleep with voodoo dolls, I do wear sandals in the snow, so maybe the song applies to my life in more ways than one!)