Tag Archives: Chengdu

It’s So Fuzzy! I’m Going to Die!

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PANDAS!!!

That’s right. We’ve been in Chengdu for two full weeks without seeing China’s cutest export, so we figured it was time to make the short trek to the edge of town and see as much fuzzy adorability as possible. Chengdu is starting to get hot and humid in the daytime, so to avoid as much stickiness as possible, and in hopes of seeing actual panda movement (not a guarantee with these large, sloth-ish mammals), we headed out just after 7AM. (I’m telling you- the pandas must be awesome if Thad was up that early on his day off!) The preserve is about thirty minutes, by cab, from our place, but it is no problem getting there. If a foreigner gets in a taxi and mumbles anything that sounds vaguely like “da xiong mao,” he is going to end up at the panda preserve.

For a mere fifty-eight kaui (a bargain at less than ten American dollars) I had my panda ticket in-hand and was ready to witness all the delights that pandas have to offer. We opted out of the tour cart, which could be had for a few more dollars. (Tour carts are a hit with the Chinese people. They like to load up at the front gate and be driven to the major tourists spots of any given locale and then driven back to their original starting point.) We embarked into the tunnels of bamboo that lead the way to the largest of the animal enclosures. (As we made our way through these forested tunnels, that remarked that while it was a nice stroll through bamboo for us, it was a buffet line for the pandas!)

Pandas are split into three main categories at the preserve: adult pandas, sub-adult pandas and infant pandas. There were quite a few adults in our wanderings, but they all tended to be on the “eat sixteen hours a day and sleep the rest” plan, which is pretty typical for a gigantic animal that has a diet consisting of nothing more than the low-in-nutrient (but surely high in fiber!) bamboo plant. The adults are big and fuzzy and black and white, but ultimately, a bit boring. Really, babies are where the action is at!!

We first visited the main baby panda area, where they were three young ones out in the yard. Out of the three, only one was awake. The other two were gracelessly flopped in the crooks of trees, taking their early-morning naps. The one little guy who was up was rummaging around his mom’s bamboo pile, flopping over the edges of his platform and putting on a show for the hordes of people loaded down with giant cameras. This little guy was cute, but little did we know we had yet to hit the baby-panda jackpot!

In our normal fashion, we soon wandered off the beaten path, away from the flag-waving tour guides and their duckling-like followers, and in to a section of the preserve that I am pretty sure didn’t exist when we were last there in 2007. The Moonlight Nursery sign lured us down a back pathway, down a rather steep hill and through some prettily landscaped scenery. About 2/3 of the way down, we wondered if the nursery referred to a bamboo nursery, as foliage was all that we could see, but figured we may as well go check out the plants since we were most of the way there to begin with. Thank goodness we kept going! At the bottom of the hill was another panda nursery, but this one hidden away so that few tourists made the mini-trek to see it. On the backside of this outpost building were what must be the world’s cutest panda twins! These little guys engaged in a mini-battle royal that made its way from the shrubs to the middle of their water fountain, to the top of their rock hill, eventually ending when one got stuck in the fork in a tree! The epic fight consisted mostly of a lot of huffing, clumsy rolling and the occasional ear-bite. I have to say, it is hard to look tough when your fuzzy little bum in sitting smack in the middle of a fountain.

America has many things going for it, including a steady supply of Lucky Charms and cheese (not together mind you!), but when we our great leaders sat down to choose an animal to represent us on the world stage, I think they could have spent a wee-bit more time considering the cuteness factor of their choices. Think about it: panda vs. eagle. A panda is going to win that vote every time, no question about it! I’m considering the need to start a petition to designate a second national animal- something more along the lines of a mascot. How about a porcupine or a manatee or a mountain goat? Even an armadillo! All of these animals have a cute-factor that eagles are lacking. The country could boost its economy through the loads of mascot-related “stuff” that tourists would purchase as exorbitant prices and haul home to their families abroad. (It would work! You would not believe the amount of panda-stuff purchases I saw being made today. Not one to shirk my duty, so far I’ve purchased a handful of panda postcards and a panda toothbrush holder. I am sure this is just the beginning of my panda-purchases over the next two years.)

It may have taken us fourteen days to get it done, but we have now done our official duty by visiting the Chengdu Panda Preserve. I am sure today’s visit was the first of many over the next couple of years, as we’ll have to make the trip with each set of visitors, as one can’t spend any amount of time in Chengdu and not partake of the fuzzy wonder that is the panda park.

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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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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…

Why I’ll Never Be A Tetris Champion and Other Lessons from Costco

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You know how there are things in life that you just don’t think you’ll ever do? Not things that you insist you won’t do because you are adamantly against them, but those things that you just don’t see in your future- those are the ones I’m thinking about. For example, fifteen years ago I would never have thought I would end up living in rural China. (The Dominican Republic was definitely on my radar, but East Asia? Nope.) Ten years ago I didn’t think I would ever take a random hiatus year from work. Five years ago I didn’t think I’d be the proud (although not worthy) owner of a motorcycle license. Well, last week, I encountered another of those “don’t think that’s for me” moments- a minivan. That’s right. A minivan. Pushing fourteen years of marriage and no kids, the minivan has never been on my list of things I wanted to drive. (And this is coming from someone who kinda’ wants to drive everything! I would do almost anything to get to drive a Zamboni.  When I heard the Idaho Red Cross where I used to volunteer was having a forklift driving class, I seriously considered buying a ticket to fly across the country, just to get in on that gig.) But, with a run to Costco looming, my best buddies at the Crystal City Enterprise didn’t think a Prius was going to cut it.

So, with my parents in town for a two-week visit, we loaded into the shiny new minivan and made the two block trip to Costco. I figured with the pre-shopping trip I chronicled in “It’s Not Peace Corps This Time Around,” plus the addition of two extra sets of hands, the trip should be fairly straight-forward. (Who knew Costco was not only blog-worthy, but double blog-worthy?!)

After being granted access to the store after my Dad flashed his members-only card (again, don’t even get Thad started on the exclusivity of a warehouse shopping experience), we chose a flatbed cart over a basket and retraced my steps from the previous outing. The list I created on my initial visit turned out to be more helpful than even my obsessively-organized self would have imagined.  We were able to go up and down the aisles in the same order I had done before, picking up the desired items in the desired quantities. It was like clockwork.

What wasn’t like clockwork? Mom’s and my stacking abilities. We quickly decided that Dad would be the muscle of the group, pushing the awkwardly huge cart up and down the aisles littered with wandering small children and cap-stoned with sample tables on each end. While he did that, Mom and I would get the items and add them to the flatbed. Apparently, we were horrible at this. I guess neither of us is bound for a job in freight-packing or as Tetris champions.  I get the basic concept. Big, heavy stuff should go on the bottom and light, oddly shaped stuff on top. The problem is, Costco doesn’t organize their store from big and heavy to light and oddly shaped. For some crazy reason they put items together by food category rather than size and shape! Thanks for that Costco.

At first, Dad tried to help out with suggestions and the occasional reordering while we were away from the cart, but I think it soon became clear to him that this process was not going to stack up the way he would like. The helpful hints soon became knowing smirks as Mom tried to figure out how to put twelve cans of tuna on top of a giant bottle of ketchup and I tried to cram one more box of Cheerios onto a four-inch empty spot on the side of the cart.

Once we had finally reached the end of my list, getting everything off of the two-page “buy” list, I had to make a decision or two. On my “maybe buy” list, I had included some camisoles, a polo shirt for Thad, some bath rugs and a 7’X5’ shag carpet area rug. The camisole verdict was quickly reached, when they were all out of anything but white in my size. Thad’s polo was an easy decision too, as I think he needs a few more and he could care less, so onto the cart it went. I eventually decided against the bathmats. I still do want to get a few small rugs, as they will add color to the house, but I also think I may have a few in storage that will be showing up in China a couple of months after we arrive.

The big decision was the area rug. Chinese apartments are almost always carpet-less. I know a lot of people think it is cleaner to not have carpet, but I love the softness of it. I love to be able to lay on the floor with a book and read (or with a laptop and write). Knowing that we will be lacking carpet in Chengdu, I really wanted this big, fluffy rug for my new home. I had talked about it with Thad ahead of time and he said he was indifferent.  So, it was off to the rug rack one more time to stare and them and try to make a decision. (Thad will tell you that this is a key part of all of my large purchases. Staring at them. It is as though I think if I look at it long enough, a light bulb will appear above my head telling me what I should do. There might also be a hope that if I stand there long enough, the price will magically go down.)

After a few minutes of staring and a consultation with Mom, I decided we were going to go for it. We had the minivan, after all! The rugs were all rolled and stacked on their ends in a giant box. Out of the four colors available, three of them were easily accessible from the edges of the holding crate. But wouldn’t you know it? The one I liked the most (there was only one!) was in the far back corner. Luckily, we brought the muscles with us! Dad abandoned the cart, leaving Mom to guard the precious stores of pudding cups and Mountain Dew, to dig out the one and only pretty mottled-brown rug from the back of the display. This meant pulling out about five other rugs, digging the last one out of the back of the box and then returning the previous five to their original holding pen. Thank goodness we brought Dad along! There is no way Mom and I would have been able to do that without creating a chaotic mess.

With my lovely rug piled on top of the goods, it was time to bid adios to Costco and head home, in hopes of finding a place to store all this randomness until mid-May. The mo-partment seems to be getting smaller by the day. The little-used dining room table is now totally off-limits, as it has become a make-shift pantry. (Just a few days after the Costco run, I bought a small cabinet at the Eastern Market, which will be fabulous in our home in China, but is currently sitting in the middle of my living room.)

I now have one more thing ready to check of my “getting ready” list, but maybe more importantly, I can cross “minivan” off my list of vehicles to operate. (Okay, technically I’d have to add it first, as it was never on the list, but you get the idea.) Now, how can I get my hands on a Zamboni?

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It’s Not Peace Corps This Time Around

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After thirty one days filled with endless PowerPoint slides, way too many personal comments from some class members, one hundred multiple choice test questions (only two of which I missed and one of those I blame on orphans!), enough fake interviews to know the visa line may not be the place for me and one tedious make-up day (long story!), I can officially cross ConGen off of my list of things to do before we head out to China.

(Short version of the long make-up day story: Because of the classes I missed when we went to Aunt Karin’s funeral a couple of weeks ago, I had to make up the two sessions of training from that day. They were the introduction sessions to American Citizen Services. The thing is, I had already taken the final test on that section, and all of ConGen for that matter, and was just putting in seat time. The first session was fine, but the afternoon one was possibly the longest hour and a half of my life. You see, that session was computer-based, but there were not enough computers and since my class had already “graduated” from the program, my user login was no longer valid. That meant that I took up residence on a spin-y chair at the back of the room. I sat directly behind a young man who obviously was totally uninterested in the lesson.  He spent the ninety minutes chatting on G-mail with a friend of his, mostly complaining about these new rumors that Whitney Huston had an affair with Jermaine Jackson. To quote him directly, “Can’t they just leave Whitney alone? She’s dead. She’s the queen. Let her be!” Whenever he wasn’t decrying the media’s vilification of ol’ Whitney’s morals, he was posting links on his Facebook page to articles about when “douche-bag” became an insult-apparently a novel in 1939 introduced a  pimp named Johnny Douchebag, and it was all downhill from there.  So did I learn anything about serving American citizens abroad during this required make-up session? No! But, the facts I came away with are rather intriguing. I love picturing an old person, born in say the 40’s, busting out the ever so classing d-bag epithet. Makes me giggle every time.)

So now that my days are FSI are mostly over (mostly, because I do have to haul my arm back in for a few more shots later this month), it is time to get crack-a-lackin’ on all of the to-do lists I have formulated over the last six weeks. Today’s check-mark goes to “Costco Reconnaissance Trip.”

Chengdu is a consumables post. (I have no idea why, but I’ll take it!) That means we can have about a ton (literally) of food and other use-up-able items shipped to China for free. Obviously, we have to purchase them, but then the shipping is on the department.  Thad can’t wait to eat Sichuan peppers for the next two years, but my eating habits will be better served with an occasional treat from home. With that in mind, I thought I would do an initial trip to Costco to make a shopping list that included prices and weights so I could mull over my options before actually making any purchases.

I gathered my handy-dandy notebook (not the blue spiral one featured prominently on Blue’s Clues, but rather a cute cream colored one with stylized flowers and vines twisting their way across the cover), a sparkly purple pen and marched myself the block and a half to Costco. As non-card-holders (don’t even get Thad started on the idea of paying a corporation money to shop at its store), this was my first visit, even though it is a mere five-minute walk from my front door. I figured the best way to tackle the daunting cavern of a store was to just go up and down each aisle, skipping the fresh and frozen foods, as they aren’t going to do well sitting on an airport tarmac for undetermined amounts of time.

Here are just a few observations from my warehouse field trip:

*Apparently, Miracle Whip is not popular on the east coast. (Does it fall into the same category as fry sauce?) There were several varieties of mayonnaise available in trough-sized jars, but no Miracle Whip anywhere to be seen.

*People look at you a little strangely if you stand for too long in the cereal aisle, counting unknown items out on your fingers, mumbling quietly to yourself.

*You can buy bras at Costco.  Their packaging claims to guarantee a perfect fit. How is this possible? (Also, said bras only come in larger sizes. Is this in homage to Costco’s giant-sized everything? Do boobs come in bulk?)

*It takes roughly two hours to wander up and down every aisle of Costco, making a three-page list and checking it twice.

*People buy weird stuff in bulk. It is fun, as you wander the aisles, to try to figure out what each person’s deal is. Look in their gigantic shopping cart (or flatbed wagon!) and take a guess at why exactly someone needs that many oversized muffins and three gigantic bottles of shampoo.  The possibilities are endless…

 

Now that my item, amount, weight and price columns are completely filled in, the contemplating begins. What do I want for the next two years?  In reality, I can get pretty much everything I would want in Chengdu. This isn’t Peace Corps after all. We will be making real salaries, be in a huge town and have easy access to supermarkets carrying at least some basic western foods. Whatever I eventually decide to ship will really just be frosting on the cake. (By the way, both frosting and cake are on my list!)