New Sandals

Cognizant of the fact that the compensation we receive as expatriates could lend itself to significant growth in our personal savings, I have placed myself on a bit of a "spending freeze."  With the spending freeze in mind, and the onset of lovely spring weather, I searched the house this afternoon for my sandals. Last summer I had two pairs of sandals, both purchased on a dime in the states, which served my every need.  They went from the playground in shorts to dinner in jeans to a wedding with a skirt.  For a dime, my summertime footwear had been covered.  Remembering the happiness granted by these sandals, I sought them out this morning to begin another year.  And another year in sandals would make bring them to having been bought on a nickel - a very thrifty nickel.

The sandals were nowhere to be found.

We live in an apartment.  And although the square footage of this apartment tops the square footage of our first house, it is still an apartment with no basement, no garage and no attic for dumping unused items.  Storage must be rather cleverly hidden away.

There were only a few places these sandals could be.  And I assure you, they were not any of them.

Distraught, I headed to the internet.  A girl can not go a warm spring or a hot summer without a pair of versatile sandals.  And since guests arrive in just over a week, I still had time to order some new sandals and ship them to the in-laws' address before they pack their bags.

I jumped to my old stand-bys for affordable, versatile and stylishly sporty clothes and shoes.  Ann Taylor Loft, Eddie Bauer, Old Navy and The Gap all left me hanging.  I found plenty of strappy things which looked none too comfortable, and cost much more than a dime.  I found plenty of flip flops which looked far too sporty to cover all of my bases.  Nothing fit my in between - thick, comfy sole and a suede or leather strap slip-on sandal with the versatility for all (or nearly all) of my potential summer outings.

Distraught at the prospect of ruining my spending freeze, I picked out the top two choices.  Nice enough sandals, the cost of buying them both full price and adding on delivery brought my summer footwear to over $50.  Now I know that many a girl will glad pay that much for shoes - but I am not that girl, and especially when on a spending freeze.

And then I blamed China.

This is a standard resort for me.  If I can't solve a problem, more than likely it is China's fault.  I know how to fix my problems in America.  I know when and how to buy sandals in the states.  But in China, I'm at a loss.  I threw up my hands in frustration and filled Dave's ears with complaints for so long that he decided to search the house for the longed-after summer sandals of a year ago.

I told him it was in vain.  I was positive he was wasting his time.

Five minutes later, he returned to the living room with 4 pairs of sandals.

I didn't even know I had four pairs!  What a lucky girl I am!  And as quickly as that, China is a fine place to live again.

36 Hours in Shanghai

A recent New York Times article has created much buzz in Shanghai.  It seems that most people have heard about it, although few have had the opportunity to read it.  The Times has a regular travel segment called "36 Hours," and in March the NYT spent 36 Hours in Shanghai.

I did a quick google search, and found an article written in October of 2006.  Not what I expected, I read that article first and then moved onto the more recent article.  The difference between the two was quite interesting.  The initial article read like a typical guide to Shanghai - visit the Bund, tour the French Concession, and check out the skyscrapers of Pudong.  The second article still took the typical - eat fancy food on the Bund, and ride to the top of the World Financial Center.  But it also delved a little deeper, into sites I hadn't discovered until I'd been here for a few years.  Maybe a second trip deserves a deeper look?

Or maybe the city just needs more than 36 hours.

What We've Been Reading

A friend loaned me the book Raising Global Nomads: Parenting Abroad in an On-Demand World by Robin Pascoe when she learned that we expect to live abroad for a few years still.  I dropped L-- at a friend's birthday party last weekend and brought the book to a Starbucks, where I began to read.  The first few chapters brought tears to my eyes, as I began to realize how typical my experience and my feelings are for mothers raising their children abroad.

The author defines "Global Nomads" as "anyone who has ever lived abroad before adulthood because of a parent's occupational choice."  She describes the emotions surrounding the sudden moves of expatriates, the cycle of culture shock, and the challenge of negotiating a work-life balance.

Reading this book, I began to realize that although my fears are real and entirely normal of people in my situation (fears of bad schools, unsanitary food, and unsafe medical care, to begin), they are also being overcome by people in my situation every day.  The next location will be no more (or less) difficult than this one.  The community will be every bit as strong as supportive, and likely my children will thrive.

One piece of information I did find quite interesting was the author's opinion on labeling.  She and her experts find value in labeling these children as Global Nomads, or Third Culture Kids.  The labels help children to realize that they fall into a category, and that their experiences, their emotions before and after moves, their fear of repatriation, and their general homelessness are entirely normal.  She believes that the best adjusted global nomads are those who have been familiar with the term for a long time.  Dave and I discussed this, and place it in the same category as the adoption.  At this point, we do not plan to involve Mei Mei in adoption support groups because we do not wish to identify her specifically as an adopted child.  We plan to raise her as we will raise our other children - as our child, who happens to be adopted.  We feel that the same attitude will serve our global nomads well.  We will raise them as our children - children with good brains, weekly chores, and a strong sense of family.  But as members of this family, they will be global nomads and the knowledge of that category may well do them good.

For anyone looking for insight into the roller coaster of emotions and challenges behind raising children abroad, this book is a good read.

Weekend in Guizhou - Monday

The nicest hotel in Anshun also happens to be the only hotel in Anshun. And being such, it does not offer many of the amenities that we are used to. For instance, this particular hotel did not offer a clean bathtub, functioning air conditioning, or an outdoor view through the window. But it did offer a clean bed in a dark and quiet space, so we all eventually slept.

Up early to stop at a village on our way to the airport for our noon flight, we were all a bit groggy from our frontier village dinner the night before and our sticky hotel room sleep. There was plenty of minor fighting and groaning over whose turn it was at the toilet.

And then L-- retched on the bed. Dave and I turned our parent mode to full gear, caring for a sick child, quickly facing dehydration as no liquids would remain in her body, while trying to keep everyone in good spirits and guided toward the door for check-out.

At the hotel's buffet breakfast, we stocked up on white bread and clean water for the backseat of the car where L-- slept and I served as caretaker. S-- and Dave grabbed steamed buns and boiled eggs as well, making a nice picnic for themselves in the front of the van. As L-- rested and began to hold down her fluids, we made some quick decisions. Were we to head straight to the airport, we would arrive 1 hour early. A few phone calls learned that we could not change our flight, and so could not arrive home any earlier. The airport had no useful amenities - nowhere to lie down, no Pedialyte or even Gatorade for sale, and certainly no fresh air. So, we thought, why rush? The last stop on our itinerary was only a few miles off the road to the airport, and so we stopped at 8:30am to tour Tunbao Ancient Village.

L-- spent her time snuggled into the stroller, holding her water bottle close and never more than a step away from one of her parents. We hit the village at a wonderful time, when the shops had yet to open and the children were making their way to school. Rather than being hassled by pushy trinket hawkers, we received simple smiles as shopkeepers set up their wares. Rather than being pushed by other tourists, we were the only guests in town and simply watched as people readied themselves for the day.

This made the perfect setting for me to hang back from Dave and the tour guide, and focus my lens on the town and its people. As I skipped most of the tour, I don't have much narration to provide for the pictures. The location was beautiful - Tunbao is a very small village located among the karst hills and rapeseed fields of Guizhou. The stone village with slate roofs has a lovely green backdrop in many directions. And for your interest, the people of Tunbao are not a minority. They were originally a group of families who moved to Guizhou from Nanjing during a wartime hundreds of years ago. These families kept close to each other, maintaining their close family ties and their way of life inside the walls of their village.

Under Contract

Thanks for the thoughts and prayers - our house is UNDER CONTRACT.

With a little luck, some practical steps and the hand of God, we will only make 1 more mortgage payment.

Whoopee!

Weekend in Guizhou - Sunday

The quintessential form of American travel is the roadtrip.  I spent many childhood hours sitting on the red vinyl back seat, next to my brother in my parents' station wagon as we drove across hours across the states.  We would sleep in the car, eat meals as picnics on the side of the road, and spend hours watching the rural landscape fly past our windows - staring at tractors pulling combines, watching crowds of cows calmly munching grass, and feeling mildly jealous of a life lived far away from everything.

As expatriates living in China, we miss the opportunity to offer our children many of our 

own childhood experiences.  And although I have yet to offer my girls a drive across the flat state of Kansas, I found a lovely substitute in the southern Chinese province of Guizhou.

We spent much of Sunday in a rented van with our bag of books and stickers, our music blaring from the CD player, and our peanut butter and jelly picnic lunches stowed in the back.

The drive from Guiyang to Huangguoshu Waterfall took us two and a half hours and 

worlds away from the congested and dirty cities of China.  While the portable DVD player kept 

the girls entertained, my husband and I spent the drive with our eyes glued out the windows at the pastoral landscape.  A far cry from the agricultural scenes driving across Kansas, we watched small villages clinging to the sides of sudden karst hills.  We saw land split into small plots, being worked by hand by individuals carrying buckets of water or following a single water buffalo.  The seasonal crop was rapeseed for making rapeseed oil - also known as canola oil.  The plants were in full bloom, filling the scenery with a patchwork of bright yellow flowers.

The scenery only began more dramatic as we drove further and neared the waterfall.  Hills terraced with yellows flowers quickly rising and falling again into river valleys.  Thin stone paths winding in between plots of land, wading through streams and guiding up and over hilltops.  Babies snuggled close to their mothers, tied tightly to their backs in brightly embroidered handmade carriers.  Children racing on their bikes down country roads; children walking alongside grandpa and a water buffalo; rows of little explorers navigating the hills and valleys of their world.

We reached the parking lot for Huangguoshu Waterfall and prepared ourselves for a few hour hike.  The path to the waterfall is a simple trail with some steps and hills, and the walk out to the waterfall itself took us over an hour.  We threw our lunches and our children into our backpacks and started down the path.

Huangguoshu Waterfall is a popular destination for Chinese tourists, but although plenty of people shared the walk with us, we rarely felt crowded or mobbed.  We never saw another westerner, and our girls' blue eyes and blonde hair turned plenty of heads.  But most people had come to see the waterfall, which everyone viewed as more dramatic than our children.  People would wave and say hello, but otherwise left my girls alone.

At 2- and 3-years-old, my city girls love the chance to walk on their own, stopping to investigate a spider and its habitat, or picking it sticks and leaves.  The simple path kept them happy the entire walk, and the waterfall left them breathless with excitement.  This jawdropper falls 77.8 meters and is 101 meters wide.  Apparently the river flows strongest and falls most dramatically in July and August, but it still looked mighty impressive from our spring vantage point.

But the best was yet to come, from our children's perspective.  The path continues straight on through a water curtain cave, taking each walker directly behind the waterfall.  The cave dripped with water and stalagtite, with low ceilings and crooked walls.  Our girls became convinced that a monster lurked just around the corner, and spent the entire walk in a combination of giddy excitement and tortured fear.

On the way out, we stopped for a picnic and for a few colorful photos.  Chinese tourists visit Guizhou province both to see this waterfall and to explore minority cultures.  Although the waterfall does not fall in or near any minority villages, the locals saw a place to make a buck and offered costumed young ladies to pose for pictures.  They found our kids so interesting and lovely that we got our photos for free!

Back in the van to continue our roadtrip, and the girls 

immediately fell asleep.  Just as planned, we all spent the next hour in serious nap time.  Everyone awoke feeling refreshed, and ready to hike to the next destination.  Another shorter hike took us to the bottom of The Dragon's Mouth, a waterfall dropping out of Tian Chi Lake where it has just left the Dragon Palace Caves.  This waterfall may have been less picturesque than Huangguoshu, but the power in the tons of water barreling through this small mouth still left us astounded.  

A breathless climb to the top of this waterfall led us to the most enchanting part of our trip.  We climbed onto boats with an adult life jacket on each seat.  The girls wrapped them around their bodies like warm blankets and we entered the Dragon Palace caves, named because the caves look like the crystal palace where the dragon lives.  No longer did we fear the monster around the corner - now we worried that our crew would awaken the dragon in his home!  The majesty and wonder of the caves frequently allowed the girls to forget the fearful dragon.  The curators of the cave and the river had cleverly named many of the outcroppings of rocks with whimsical names like Monkeys Watching the Moon and Groves of Grapes.  But while the rocks had names livening our imaginations, and sometimes red or green lights dimly illuminating them, they were left otherwise untouched and the natural beauty of the place worked with the girls' imaginations to create an amazing world of monkeys and dragons while we rode through the quiet caves on our simple boat.

After a beautiful and exhausting day, we overnighted in the nearest town.  Anshun has a population of 2.6 million people - the population of our hometown in America, St. Louis, Missouri.  Or Orlando, Florida;  Lisbon, Portugal; Manchester, England.  But this city had no downtown, no highrise buildings, and no theme parks.  It felt like a frontier town, with the roads still being paved, goods sold under tents in the street, and rarely a concrete building rising higher than 2 stories.  There were no sidewalks and few trees, and our guide advised us to stay in the hotel.  So tired from our day exploring the Guizhou countryside, we had no trouble following her instructions.

We Have An Offer!

After sitting on and off the market since mid-September...

After originally trying For Sale By Owner nearly 2 years ago...

After holding crummy renters and then sitting vacant...

After I began to lose faith...

We have an offer on the sale of our house.  Will keep you posted...