Someone asked me recently if I just love the new house. Well, no. No, I don't love it. I feel blessed that a house which so perfectly meets our needs was available in our price range - in fact, was the only one available in our price range. I feel happy and blessed by this house. But I've got no love for it. However, the house does hold a few very lovable things. Please indulge a quick tour:
1: A full sized washing machine and dryer.
These two machines are both fully functioning, leaving all of our clothes, sheets and towels feeling soft, clean and dry after every washing. We no longer need to run two loads of laundry every day, and we no longer need to hang out our clothes to dry. I've a friend in Iowa who sings the praises of not using a dryer, and I can see how the fresh Iowa air and bright Midwestern sunshine could brighten her clothes. As neither of those ingredients have become available in my kitchen, I am loving my dryer.2: A full sized refrigerator.
We've had one of these before, just over a year ago. Oh, how quickly I forget how lovely this machine is! It holds 5 boxes of milk, a box of juice, 6-packs of both Coke and Tsingdao, a drawer full of produce, and still has room for an entire chocolate creme pie! The chocolate creme pie makes me happy, but I am loving the space in the refrigerator.3. A dishwasher
It has been far too long since I've had one of these bad boys in my home. Even our dishwasher in St. Louis was old and malfunction-y. We regularly found water leaking out the back and had to check out the pipes and connections (and we know nothing about dishwasher pipes or connections - hence the frequency of those checks!). But this machine... goodness me! It can hold the dishes from prep and serving of two full meals for our family. At the end of the day, the sink sits full of dishes to wash by hand - but nowhere near overflowing. And within 1 hour, poof!, all of the dishes in the machine become clean! Sad that domesticity causes so much of my happiness, but I am loving the dishwasher!4. The Terrace
It is time to leave the kitchen, and guide each of you out the doors and onto our terrace. Wide and smooth, flooded with light in the morning and gently shaded in the afternoon, this terrace pulls the whole house above the crowd. Poised on a hill, the terrace looks down over steep growth all the way to a small driveway at the bottom. Small enough that I've never seen anyone walk or drive along it. If we try, we see the back of an apartment building through the trees. But otherwise, we can convince ourselves that we have near complete privacy sitting on our terrace. Now if only the temperatures would fall to where this space become comfortable! But even in the heat, I am loving the terrace!5. The Garden
This house is not horrible, but simply unremarkable. Western tract housing copied in the East, and simply maintained for 25 years. Built for renters, the walls and the furniture are blank and lifeless. Nothing stands out or calls to be loved. But the garden surrounding our house, that is something else. Neatly fenced, I feel safe allowing my children free reign of the yard. They regularly choose to play outside rather than in - something which has never happened in our 3 years in China. They climb over the terrace, down into the "howl" (a cave-like space so named because of an echo), tramp through the mud, and play under the banana tree. I doubt we will be so lucky as to harvest these bananas when they turn yellow. A gardener enters every morning to trim the bushes and sweep the leaves - no doubt those bananas will disappear before they ever make it into our banana bread. But the sheer fact that they grow in my space leaves me excited. I love the garden, and I am loving the banana tree.
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