Wednesday, December 29, 2010

The doldrums.

I have nothing exciting to say today.  No good pictures or stories.  Well, we did have the slowest taxi driver ever yesterday-that is an anomaly in China where taxi drivers honk, weave in and out of traffic, drive on sidewalks and generally get you where you need to go in lick-splickity time.
No, it's the time of year where things slow down.  My classes are  about over for the semester.  The university closes for most of January and February.  I have to decide what classes to take next semester.  I don't want to take the full load since we will be leaving for the US before the semester is over (February through late June).  I am thinking of taking a speaking class, hiring  a new tutor for grammar and continuing to work with my tutor twice a week.  I love my classes at the university but the homework load is 4 -5 hours a day and with a family, foster baby and other stuff, that's a little high for me.
Elisabeth is off for two weeks and we are spending some good time together. We have so little time left before she goes to college and we are thrilled that she still wants to spend time with us.  We are reading books, knitting and watching movies.  It's all good.
We have two sets of friends who have gone back to the states unexpectedly.  Watching their re-patriation from afar has been painful and enlightening.  I've read that it takes about 12 months to adjust to a new country and 18 months to re-adjust to your own.  There are many things that I miss about the US -family, friends, driving a car.  But I don't miss the 24 hour news, TV or stress to succeed.  But I can't wait to go back next summer for a few months after being out of the country for two years.
We are hoping to get some movement on getting our foster son on the official adoption list after the new year. He is such a sweet little guy-any family would be lucky to have him.  Even when he wakes me up in the middle of the night (like the last two nights), he is happy and cheerful and excited to see me.  It's hard to be upset with him when he is like that!

A couple of good China links.

Christmas in China- very insightful!
http://chinahopelive.net/2010/12/05/ho-ho-who-santa-vs-chinas-god-of-wealth

Top Ten China myths- China's new place in the world.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2010/12/the-top-ten-china-myths-of-2010.html


Okay-one picture of our family on Christmas Day.

5 comments:

Alida Sharp said...

I love the photo!! And hurray for slow taxi drivers... I have never had one of those :-)

Ellie said...

So what are you doing with the baby while you are in the US?

Sandy said...

In a perfect world, he'll be with his forever family!
But if that doesn't happen, we'll find another family for the summer. We'll be gone for about two months.

joannmski said...

Sometimes I love a slow week. Hope it's good even though it's not exciting.

Tarasview said...

I love the family photo too!!