It’s a truth that will always amaze me: people can be so vastly different and yet so fundamentally the same.

I’m spending several days with a Chinese friend and her family in another city over the lunar New Year.  Right now, I’m tired and so very full of food and thinking about returning home on the train tomorrow.  My mind is a bit overwhelmed, and I’m having a hard time processing the sights and sounds and tastes and emotions of the last few days into intelligble words.

However, I keep being struck by memories.  Memories of the occasional holidays that we spent at my grandparents with our other relatives on my mother’s side of the family.  Smelling cigarette smoke and hearing loud talking and eating vast quantities of food.  Playing games with your cousins and watching tv your grandpa.  Those things are all the same here.  Sure, the language is different and the food is different, but older ladies are still spending long conversations discussing why I’m not married yet.

I’m so thankful that I’ve been included in this family event on the other side of the world from where I grew up.  And I keep wishing my grandparents, who were adventurers at heart, could be here to see me… and to taste the food!

The second week of vacation was vastly different than the first week.  Mostly because, instead of going out adventuring every day and meeting students, I spent every day, save one, home sick with Angel Cat.  It was not a serious sickness, merely an annoying sickness, to use a friend’s helpful classification.  Between the headaches, body aches, dizziness and extreme tiredness, I watched Lost.  I finished five seasons of the show in a little over 2 weeks, just in time for the premiere of season 6.  But now I am a little sick of them all– the Lost characters, I mean.

Thankfully, I recovered enough to spend yesterday with some dear friends.  It was a day of  challenging conversations,  good food, shared laughter, and faster internet.  I returned home way too late last night but very thankful for His grace being displayed to me through the patience and kindness and love and growth of others.  Then I stayed up WAY too late thinking and suffering from a caffeine overdose.  For the first time in such a long time, I didn’t fall asleep until 4 a.m.    This  caused a bit of a flu (or whatever) relapse today, coupled with the fact that my cat still thinks I need to be up early no matter when I went to bed.  So, I sit here, blogging like a goofball at 9 p.m.  in my pajamas with a headache.

I’m really blessed.

I could write and write and write about the interesting things that happened to me this week, but I will spare you by summarizing.

My first week of vacation was characterized by meeting with a different student each day and eating and then having a fun “adventure”.  I got more creative after too much shopping.  So here are the top interesting adventures of my week. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been such a long time since I’ve blogged that I don’t know where to begin.  I’ll just start with what’s happening now, this week, tonight.

I’m sitting on my little orange couch in my apartment typing.  (Hey, that’s right now!) But instead of being alone or with my old friends sitting around with their macs, too, I’m here with my new roommate.  For a month, I will have a roommate as I participate in some teacher training and an English summer camp.  She’s a new teacher to China, and I’m enjoying her company.  It looks a bit different here in my room, mainly due to the suitcases and boxes everywhere.  As my new roommate is moving in, I’m preparing to move out.

I’ve been offered the exciting opportunity to teach at a another university in a different city.  In less than three weeks, I’ll be moving away from most of the friends I’ve made here and from my now familiar environment.  It will be an adventure in many ways, heading farther into the frozen north.  I’ll have to use my limited Chinese language skills more instead of relying on my many friends here.  I’ll have to reach out to new friends and new co-workers.  I’ll only have one person there who knows me.  However, last summer, I moved here where I knew no one at all, and now the hardest part is leaving those I love so dearly.  It’s amazing to see how much I have been blessed in one year!  I am challenged to trust and move on, praising Him for all the blessings He is giving and waiting expectantly to see His future work.

I hope to keep working on this blog/website so that I can post regular updates here for those who’d like to follow the adventures and hear of His providence to me.

Due to the fact that my blogger blog and my facebook account have been blocked lately, I’ve made a decision to use an outside website for my blogging.  Please be patient with me while I try to learn how to use it and to make it look halfway decent.  Hopefully, this site will enable me to post news updates and pictures more frequently.