life as usual

As the title implies, I'm officially back to living "life as usual"... at least for now. After a slew of family related visits over the span of about two and a half weeks, I have gotten settled back into a more normal routine. I guess to say "normal" isn't quite fair, because China is infamous for never having anything be "normal". Case in point: last Saturday morning, my co-worker Carmen and I headed for our bus stop to catch the bus to the kindergarten where we teach. Low and behold, the bus stop was longer there. Seriously, the bus stop was moved overnight. I walk by that bus stop every day, and overnight it was moved... seats and signs and railings and all. Luckily, they just moved it down the block.

Another interesting "only in China" moment happened last week. I was walking down a well-traveled street in my highly-populated neighborhood to go visit my parents (while they were still here). I was just watching life happen, and noticed an elderly couple strolling on the grass near me. Suddenly, the lady just pops a squat and starts going to the bathroom. On the side of the street, on a busy street. I just looked at her, and laughed, and kept on walking. Seriously, I love living here.

All other aspects of life are going well. It feels good to be back and work and to jump into a new project. In the midst of doing work for my company in Minnesota, I'm working on a few projects for my company in Beijing. We have decided to re-design our website, and I get to play a big role in that, so it's nice to be busy at work. Language courses are also going pretty well... I decided to re-take the first few lessons of Mandarin, so I joined a class that was just starting, and I feel pretty proud of myself because I'm catching on to everything pretty quickly. I suppose it helps that it's the second time I'm taking it in a few weeks :) I think next week will start to get harder. At times it feels near impossible to learn the language--the characters, the pinyin, the sentence structure; I wish I was here full time to study because then I might actually see some progress! People are here for years studying language alone... my 7.5 hours a week might not get me far. But it's a start.

Life is good. I have met some really wonderful people who I have been so blessed by. I work with such a wonderful staff and have had really generous people take me under their wing to get accustomed to life here. It was great having family around, and Lindsay F. comes next week which will be SO great! We will have a great time buzzing around Beijing (and even making a visit to Hohhot in Inner Mongolia).

Thanks to everyone who has been sending e-mails... they are the highlight of my day! I hope everyone is doing well, and I would LOVE to hear from you if you have time.