A Few Updates

A few updates, on the whirlwind that has been our life for the past few weeks.

1st: China has blocked all access to blogger.com, which hosts this blog. I am only able to post on the blog when Dave has his work computer at home. This leads to very few postings, and few more this week, as Dave will spend the week in Chicago. Again, my apologies for scant reading lately. I'm hoping that China lets up, as we get further away from the 20 year anniversary of Tiannanmen Square. If it does not, I will find a new host.

2nd: Our friend Doug has officially been invited to come to Washington, D.C. for his oral interview. As a reminder, this friend is applying to the American Foreign Service and the process is as bureaucratic an application process as you will ever find. Having been invited, he will log onto a particular website between midnight on June 20th and midnight on June 24th EST to choose the date and time of his interview. He will then send himself to D.C. at his own expense, and will learn at the end of the day whether or not the State Department has accepted him as a future employee. Only 20% of those who reach the Oral Interview will be accepted in the Foreign Service.

3rd: Amazingly, there is still no word on the Wonder Center. The last day of school is this Friday, less than one week away. This leads the speculative parents to believe that the school will permanently close its doors on Friday. We will dry our tears, and prepare our children for a lesser school in the French Concession in the fall. L-- will do fine there, and I think that S-- will stay home with me for another term... if not another year.

4th: We have found mold growing on the walls in the girls' bedroom. We close their windows and their door every night, and have two very young children sleeping in a non-ventilated small room with mold spores growing rapidly. We may be moving sooner than we had planned.

5th: The era of a full house has almost finished. My parents leave tomorrow for St. Louis, after having spent a lovely 4 weeks with us. Amusingly, Dave leaves tomorrow as well. Leaving a deliciously quiet house for me tomorrow night.

6th: We no longer own a home. Our house in St. Louis officially closed on May 27th, without a hitch. A tidy sum of money now sits in our account in the states. We are homeless, in some sense, and although that money offers a lot of security, the sale of our permanent home was a sad release of a security blanket. If ever anything went wrong, we knew we could go back to our house and move on with our lives, surrounded by family, friends, church and affordable living.

Lastly, we enjoyed some wonderful travels. With my parents, we all traveled to Xi'an and then on to Yunnan Province, both in China. Sadly, this will not be posted before Dave and his computer leave for the states. But at least it gives you something to look forward to.