Tag Archives: China

Fourteen and Counting…

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While last weekend may have marked our two month anniversary in Chengdu (click here for that commemorative post), this Wednesday marks yet another anniversary- the fourteenth of our marriage. Fourteen years ago, at the tender age of nineteen, I married an older man. (Okay, he was all of twenty-one. We were babies. I admit it.)

In honor of this annual event, I received a care-package from Idaho a few weeks ago. (It was the first package to be shipped our way, so without knowing how long that process would take, said package joined the rank and file of boxes heading from the US to every corner of the world at an early date. The early bird may get the worm, but the early package gets a skip and a hop and a little squeal of joy in the mail room. It’s the trifecta of excitement!) When the box arrived two weeks before our actual anniversary, I originally planned to set it on a shelf and wait for the big day to roll around, but I quickly found an excuse to not be patient! After picking the box up from the consulate mail area, in order to get it back to my office inside the consulate, I had to open the box as a security measure. Sheryl Crow wisely informed us that the first cut is always the deepest, which holds true not only in the world of heartbreak, but also when it comes to opening presents. Once that initial slice through the packing tape created a peak into the recesses of the cardboard box, it was all over. Package open.

This year’s anniversary goody package included beef jerky for Thad (not my idea of a treat, but he was quite pleased with it), tasty Idaho Spuds for us to share (four out of four of which I ate), fabulous summer plastic plates for our house (very much appreciated, as we are still living off of the welcome kit provided by the consulate, which means we have a veritable Noah’s ark of kitchen goods-two plates, two bowls, two cups, two forks, two spoons…you get the idea) and a couple of new shirts for me (desperately needed, as the few work clothes I bought are quickly getting tiresome, evident in that when I wore the new black and green shirt to work, I had no less than three people comment on the fact that I had something different on!)

But, as super-de-dooper as all of those goodies were, it wasn’t what was in the package that was important, nor even the fact that a package came, but the sentiment behind it. The fact that my parents, each year, acknowledge the anniversaries of the wedding dates of each of their three children and their spouses shows what a high premium they place on those unions.

As of September, my parents will have been married for forty-two years, so there is no doubt they understand what it takes to make a marriage last. In their four plus decades together, they’ve both worked to put the other one through undergraduate and graduate programs, they’ve raised three kids who turned out okay if I do say so myself (!!) and they have served their community through a variety of church callings and volunteer positions.  They’ve done all of this side-by-side, as each other’s best friends.

If one went looking for a role model when it comes to marriage, the search could stop at the home I grew up in.

The fact that my parents have spent more than forty years together and are happy is a testament to the value they place on their relationship. The fact that they now recognize that same united spirit in their children’s marriages with dried and cured meat products and puffed marshmallow goo covered in a thin layer of chocolate-goodness, sprinkled with coconut flakes is just an added bonus!

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Chengdu Redo!

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We’ve reached the two month mark in Chengdu. That means we’ve got two months of hotpot and Sichuan-style dishes in our bellies, but also two months of polluted air in our lungs. On a cosmic triple-beam balance, those may come out dead even. (Really though, I can’t say I’ve seen any negative effects from the air. Some days I can see farther through the haze than others, but as far as how I feel, so far there have been no noticeable side effects. Let’s wait until winter and see if this little bird is singing a different song…)

In the last eight weeks I’ve gone from being unemployed and living in what was basically a hotel (that makes me sound much more vagrant than the reality of the situation!) to fully-employed and living in a three-bedroom, two bath 24th floor apartment with a housekeeper that comes twice a week (which makes me sound a lot more fancy-pants than the reality of the situation!)

I’ve also joined the ranks of the scooting folks in China, (click here for that story) with just one mishap of note. Last Thursday, coming home from work, I was gleefully riding along, actually contemplating what a great, problem free trip is was turning out to be, when a, let’s say “jerk” in case there are any younger readers of this blog, comes up the scooter lane going the wrong direction. Not only was he a fish swimming upstream, but he decided that he didn’t need to yield to the traffic coming in the correct direction. He threaded his scooter in the space between my fabulous fuchsia one and another woman’s less awesomely colored one, clipping mine in the process. This put me into a reverse-fishtail, making the front end of my scooter skid all over the place. To get it back under control, I put my foot out to steady the twisting, at which point I kicked the metal guard railing, smacking it with the top of my foot. My first reaction was thinking I had broken my foot, but the shooting pain soon lessened to a slight throbbing, and with both self and scooter under control (under control doesn’t count what I was murmuring under my breath the rest of the ride home) I made it over the bridge and to my apartment complex. Once in the scooter parking garage, I checked my bike for damage, and finding none, checked my foot, which was a bit swollen and had a few scratches, but was none the worse for the wear.  Just another reminder to always be aware when scooting in China!

A nice apartment furnished with an actual dishwasher and a clothes dryer, plus a bathtub and several air purifiers were not a part of my life when I was living in Gansu. Neither was a the hot-pink scooter, as volunteers, even helmeted ones, were banned from riding them.  Now, these things are just normal parts of my daily routines. I’m movin’ up in the world!

But, while being here with the State Department is definitely a different experience than being here with Peace Corps, some things never change. We’ve been doing a lot of rediscovering things/places we knew when we were in Chengdu for training with the Peace Corps.

Peter’s Tex-Mex is back on the dinner options list, where I semi-regularly enjoy a plate of macaroni and cheese. (Yes Kristen, I always say it in my head with your quirky emphasis! It will never just be regular mac and cheese again.)

We’ve hit up Sabrina’s Country Store for our extravagantly over-priced import needs, such as Cheetos and Pop-tarts and the brownies that I made for my CLO-sponsored New Spouses Welcome Coffee last week. (As I am still learning the quirks of the Chinese oven, as elucidated in “Betty Crocker, I Am Not,” the brownies did not turn out beautifully. They tasted yummy, but they could have used another two or three minutes in the oven, meaning when they came out of the pan, they were a bit on the soft side and ended up squished by the spatula. Then it didn’t help that I had to put them in a Tupperware container in the “trunk” of my scooter! Needless to say, they were tasty but definitely not pretty.)

Since we’ve been back, we’ve also re visited the pandas (click here to read about their fuzzy fabulous-ness), JinLi Street’s tourist shops, where I bought my first round of postcards to send home to family, the Wide and Narrow Alleys and a couple of “antique” markets.

It has been a clichéd blink of an eye. Maybe it is because we lived here before, or hopefully because we are just so dang adaptable, but we’ve quickly created routines and habits to help us make Chengdu home.

Two months. Eight weeks. Fifty-six days. One thousand three hundred forty-four hours. Eighty thousand six hundred forty minutes. Four million eight hundred thirty-eight thousand four hundred seconds. It may not quite be the lyrics from Rent, but it is how I currently measure the life of this woman in my season of Chengdu love.

 

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Maximum Mobility Achieved!

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Scoot- (v.)- To ride a scooter or motorized bike (colloquial)    1) Each morning, the blonde foreigner was a sight to behold as she would scoot to work on her stunningly pink scooter.

 

 

As an English teacher (once one, always one!) I always told my students that when I earned my bachelor’s degree, with it I was conferred the right to add new words to the English language, provided I could assign them a part of speech and use them correctly in a sentence. I would like to invoke this right, not in the creation of an entirely new word, but to tweak the meaning of an existing word so that there is a more succinct way to describe my daily form of transportation to and from the US Consulate in Chengdu.

I scoot to work.

That’s right. I’m mobile in Chengdu! After several shopping trips to peruse the goods available, last weekend I finally broke down and made the purchase of a new scooter.(After nearly fourteen years of marriage, Thad is well-acquainted with my need to look, look again, walk away and then look one more time before actually making a purchase of anything over about $35, so he was prepared for this multi-weekend shopping excursion. Even a trip to somewhere as seemingly ordinary as The Container Store can become an outing of epic proportions.)  With Thad’s much broader vocabulary and more deft bargaining skills, we were able to purchase a bright pink scooter (if Jem and the Holograms were a biker gang, this would be their scooter of choice) for just under $350USD. When you subtract the VAT refund we get for not having to pay local taxes on goods purchased in China, I ended up with fuchsia fabulousness on wheels for well under the three-hundred mark.

Luckily for me, a good friend was looking for a motorcycle class buddy last fall (here’s the story on that experience!) and I hopped at the chance to try something totally new, so I joined Erin in a weekend course on riding. While it isn’t necessary and my scooter tops out at about 45KPH, I have found the background to be a useful one now that I am on the wild streets of Chengdu. (Granted, I may be the only one on the streets with any formal riding background, but at least I know not to kick the dogs and to ride in full-defensive mode-always!)

I’ve now got a week under my belt as a scooter rider and I’ve learned some valuable lessons in that time. These include such tidbits of wisdom as:

*Everyone is out to maim/kill me. Whether it is a bus barreling down the side lane, a passenger exiting a taxi without looking or an overloaded bicycle in the computer district of town, no one is looking out for me other than me.  I should always be ready to make a quick swerve to avoid a possible collision with the bike stopped short in front of me, the car merging into the bike lane because it doesn’t want to wait in the traffic jam or the taxi headed to the gas station for a refill and a rest.

*Calling people names in English is a healthy outlet for scooter-rage. They may not know what I am saying, but murmuring a few choice words under my breath makes me feel a bit better about the situation. Plus,  I have found it is a good way to exercise my creativity! The more unique the epithet, the more justified I feel it is. Just today, as I headed to the consulate, a taxi came to a near complete stop in front of my lane so that he and his passenger could gawk at the white girl on the scooter. Not only did he create a bike jam of semi-epic proportions, but I had to come to a complete stop, with no way to maneuver around his vehicle. At this point, I may have grumbled something about taking a picture, as it would last longer, before blasting my little horn at him until he proceeded forward.

*When in Rome…Riding a scooter in China is a matter of joining the locals and doing as they do. This means if everyone else is crossing on a red light, it is best just to join the crowd and go with them, rather than being the lone bike in on the edge of the crosswalk.  If the other bikers are riding up the bus lane because there is an old man hawking cherries in the middle of the lane you should be in, don’t try to weave around him just to follow the “law.”  Join the bus lane and go a full 45KPH until the bike lane is available again. Local convention trumps established rules.

After a successful week of scooting to and from work for me, and a frustrating week of waiting for cabs in 90 degree weather with 80% humidity for Thad,  I am happy to announce that we are now a 2-scooter family. Thad and I went back to the scooter lane, where he had the lovely opportunity to haggle, yet again, for a bike. Granted, it only took him one trip through the shops to decide which bike he liked the best, but, hey, we can’t all be as thorough (and picky!) as I am.  His does not look like something that would fit right in on an episode of My Little Pony Meets the Care Bears, as mine does, but is rather a very manly navy blue with silver embellishments. We can now create double the ruckus as we scoot around Chengdu together, turning heads and causing a stir wherever we go.

And not to worry, a helmet has been ordered and in the mail. I would like to claim that it is a tame black or maybe even silver, but no, in keeping with the over-the-top color scheme I’ve got going, it is sparkly purple covered in pink and yellow daisies. Upon its arrival, I will officially be the most fashionable scooting laowai on First Ring Road! I figure if the locals are going to stare, I may as well give them something to see!

So, Mr. Noah Webster, please update your book of words to include “scoot,” a verb conveying the action one undertakes when riding a motorized bike. With that, it is official.

I scoot.You scoot. Thad scoots. We scoot.

 

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Go Forth and Celebrated the Fourth!

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What is a better way to celebrate the birth of a new nation than by going out in to the woods in central Idaho, freezing a wild porcupine with bright light, loading him up and hauling him back to town where he will compete in what may be the world’s only annual porcupine race? I can’t imagine there is one!

The tradition of porcupine races in Council, Idaho is decades old, and has been a part of my family’s annual celebration since I was the same height as the spiky competitors themselves. Before each contender is hauled out to the racing ground though, he is put in a cage, strapped to the back of a four-wheeler and driven through town as part of Council’s 4th of July parade. Once all have had a gander at the challengers, each animal is auctioned off, with the winning “owner” getting a cut of that day’s prize purse. Run Mr. Porcupine, run!

Of course, each year there is a jailbreak during the race, where at least one, if not many, of the pokey little guys scurries under the plastic sheeting meant to be the course perimeter. It is at this point that small children are quickly hoisted on to the backs of their fathers, mothers let out squeals of terror and the entire crowd takes off as if a grenade landed in the vicinity of their viewing area.  It just wouldn’t be a porcupine race without a few quills dangling painfully from the calf of an unprepared spectator sporting shorts rather than the necessary long-pants required of such a potentially painful event.

On top of the trek to Council to see the races, my childhood Independence Days were rounded out with evenings spent  lounging on a blanket spread across a patch of lawn in front of the College of Idaho’s library, munching on Idaho Spuds (a wonderful concoction of puffed marshmallow swathed in a thin layer of chocolate covered in coconut flakes) and where we had a perfect view of the small-town fireworks provided by the city of Caldwell.

This  year, there were no porcupine races on my agenda, no Idaho Spuds making a mess of coconut down my shirt, and no red, white and blue fireworks to commemorate the birth of a new nation.

That isn’t to say the day wasn’t celebrated though.

I attended not one, not two, but three separate 4th of July events over the course of the previous week. The US Consulate in Chengdu hosted two events- one last week in Chongqing and one this week here in the city. Both were official parties, thrown to celebrate with our host-country dignitaries and contacts. Official event really means “working event.” The evenings are definitely networking opportunities, where both the Chinese and Americans come with their stacks of name cards, making connections with new people, passing out contact information and building relationships. This is all great, expect for the fact than I neither have name cards, nor, as CLO, am I a contact that people are looking to make. What this means is that as soon as someone I was chatting with realized I had no real power/information, our conversations quickly came to a halt and they moved on to bigger fish, leaving me to swim alone like an awkward little minnow.

The third, and final, Independence Day event was the community one, planned and hosted by this brand new CLO.  As my first official party as the planner, I decided to go informal and low-key. By this point in the list of parties, people were not looking for anything too rehearsed or regimented. I heard that sidewalk chalk (or at least colored chalk) was available at the local IKEA, so I made a trip out there last week, which could be a whole blog post of its own, as I saw not only several people sleeping on the beds and one guy actually preparing a small lunch in one of the sample kitchens, but also a photo shoot in one of the living room display areas! I ordered seventeen pizzas from Mike’s and put a whole lot of soda in the fridge.  With several spouses offering to provide desserts, we were ready to enjoy an afternoon of hazy skies at the pool. (Haze is constant here. Sunshine is a rarity. Chengdu has to be a solar panel’s worst nightmare!)

The day before the party, I checked The Weather Channel’s website, just to make sure I was set for the party. When the site listed Wednesday as having 100% chance of rain, I knew a change of venue was imperative. 100% leaves no wiggle room. It will rain. It will be muddy. There will be no swimming.  I sent out a quick email moving the party indoors and made sure I had a giant roll of butcher paper to take the place of sidewalk for the kids.

After going in early to put beer and soda on ice and bedeck the reception room in glorious red, white and blue, I was set for a rainy day party. But what did I get?

Sunshine!

(Now is not the time to get me started on my feelings about weather forecasters. Yet again, I’ve been misled and mistreated by these “professionals” who peer into their crystal balls of meteorology and divine the future of local cloud cover and precipitation. I put no more faith in them than I do the woman at the county fair whose tent is bedazzled with fake gems and who will read your palm for the low, low price of just $5.)

That’s right. In a city that hasn’t seen actual rays of sun in well over two weeks, my 100% chance of rain day turned into the nicest day we’ve seen in a fortnight. The sun was out, a slightly blue sky was visible and the sidewalks were begging for amateur artwork. Needless to say, the party quickly moved outdoors where pavement was splattered with pink flowers and blue clouds and green trees and the pool was filled with everyone from toddlers to Marines.

So, my 4th of July might have been missing mid-sized spikey mammals competing to waddle across the finish line on a high school football field, but it was filled with new friends, passable pizza and most importantly, some rare buy glorious sunshine! (Rumor has it those delightful little treats known as Idaho Spuds are in a care package somewhere between Idaho and Sichuan as I type.  It’s never too late for marshmallow-y goodness.)

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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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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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!

 

 

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…

Brave Dragons: A Chinese Basketball Team, an American Coach, and Two Cultures Clashing by Jim Yardley

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Brave Dragons: A Chinese Basketball Team, an American Coach, and Two Cultures Clashing by Jim Yardley

Professional basketball and Chinese history and culture are not topics commonly lumped together, but Jim Yardley takes on the challenge in Brave Dragons. I originally picked this book looking for a new take on China, which I got, but I do have to say that I wasn’t expected to be quite so overwhelmed with basketball. (Okay, to be fair, the cover sporting a basketball jersey should have given me a clue that the book would be heavy on the sports, but I looked right past that to the awesome font that also adorns the cover.)

Right off the bat, I must admit that this was not the book for me, but I definitely would have bought it and put it on the shelf of my classroom. There is a strong market for this book. I am not that market. I had some hoop-obsessed students who would have devoured this book, which is filled with the jargon of the game, court-side wheelings and dealings and an insider’s look at what a budding professional basketball league looks like.

Yardley, after a handful of setbacks in is NBA coaching career in the US, is offered the position of head coach of the Shangxi Dragons, a bottom of the barrel Chinese professional team based in Taiyuan, part of the northern coal country in China. He goes there, having no previous experience living abroad, expecting to take full-coaching responsibilities (with the help of a translator) and with a hope of improving the team’s horrible record. Yardley quickly learns that not only is China physically on the other side of the world from his home in Washington state, but that the mental shift needed for this new lifestyle and job is nearly as large.

I love that Yardley took his story off the hardwood, trying to dig into the culture of China to understand what factors might be playing into the decisions being made by his players and his front office. He includes tidbits about the country’s history, about their sports training programs and a view into where the nation might be headed. Like with many things in China, the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) is built on layers of bureaucracy and an ever-present need to “save face.” I had to laugh to myself as Yardley learned to navigate the world of appearances versus reality that becomes so confusing when the concept of “face saving” rears its sometimes befuddling head.

Having read extensively about Chinese history and lived the culture on a daily basis, at times I felt like the book took too cursory of a glance at some of these aspects, maybe playing up the ones Westerners would find odd in an attempt to draw readers into the story. For those unfamiliar with the Middle Kingdom, the book is a great starting place. As a teacher, I would have proffered it to the students who I knew had a love of the game and then hoped it would spark a wider interest in the world. This book is perfectly suited to do that- start with a topic that is familiar and of interest to a wide population and through the medium, introduce an entire new area of exploration to the reader.

Basketball isn’t my thing. China is (kinda’) my thing. Combine them and I end up on the fence about ranking this book. Would I recommend it to others? Yes! There are definitely some of my students who will be getting emails about it. Would I read it again? No. I like the idea, but it was just too detailed when it came to that large orange ball with the black stripes that tall guys (and gals) bounce up and down a hardwood floor and attempt to get in that woven basket hanging from a round, metal hoop. With that said, Jim Yardley’s Brave Dragons: A Chinese Basketball Team, an American Coach, and Two Cultures Clashing earns: