Sometimes we miss the weird stuff.....

like having a predictable life!

Most of the time we are reasonably happy here.  We can get many things that we used in America or at least a version of it. We have friends. We have a nice apartment.  Our Chinese skills are improving.  We have Chinese friends.  We are having meaningful relationships and good conversations.  We have some access to English books.  We can watch some TV online.  Have limited choices can be a good thing.

I don't miss politics or 24 hour news or TV.  I do miss our library and bookstores.  I miss being able to use a debit card anywhere I want. I miss going to church. I miss convenience and things that are easy.

Sometimes I get flashes of odd things that I miss.  I miss whole wheat frozen waffles.  I miss little country festivals like Columbia's Heritage Festival.  I miss yarn shops and access to knitting needles.  Chinese knitting needles are super long and require a knitting technique that I am not familiar with.

We miss Trader Joe's and Joe's O's and French Roast coffee. Elisabeth misses Reese's peanut butter cups.  Paul misses speaking in front of groups and I miss teaching (hopefully remedied next year as I stop full time language study and look for a teaching job.)

With fostering our little guy, we have entered into a world that is complicated and difficult.  We have encountered a glitch in our desire to have him placed into a forever family.  I can't and won't post the details but if you think of it, say a prayer for our sweet baby this week.  We believe that he has been brought this far for a reason and that there is a family out there for him.  Our word for him is "Deliverer" and we believe that he will be delivered.

 

The Mother Daughter Banquet

In a desire to honor mother's and daughter, some of the guys in the ex-pat community organized a mother daughter banquet last night.  Different guys were assigned different tasks- for example -one guy smoked the chicken on his roof top smoker.  Some others were assigned entertainment, decorations, plates and silverware and side dishes.  It is entirely possible that some wives had to help their husband's with this tasks.  It's also possible that that is just a rumor.
Anyway, it was a fun evening for all involved.  There were all kinds of mothers- birth mothers, adoptive mothers and foster mothers.  One little girl had been with her foster family for about one day!  She ran around happily in her new environment.  There were teenagers and children in high chairs.  It was fun to be served by the guys and just to relax and enjoy being mothers and daughters.

Of course, I brought my favorite daughter.

There was some music with a few technical glitches.

"The Children's Hour" was read, along with some corny jokes.

The sweet baby came, too.

Sweet little three year old.

A Chinese girl was fascinated by our little guy.  In this one child society, children don't often hang out with children of varying age groups.

Cute toddlers and pretty decorations.

Our friends.

We also sang as a group.

Paul gave the "homily" and if you know Paul at all, you know it was fun and dramatic!

Some things our little guy is learning.

To trust other people.

To turn from back to front when he wants to see something.

To turn from front to back when he wants to do something else.

To reach his arms up when he wants to be held.

How to play peek-a-boo with his blanket.

To fly.....and no, he isn't missing a foot.

After a long day of school and work, we went out for hot pot tonight.  We like a place near our home where you can use individual pots.  We had lamb, greens, mushrooms, fish balls, and noodles.  Really fresh and delicious.

Hand feeding him noodles and fish balls - I forgot a small spoon.  He didn't care!

Full!

My heart is full tonight when I look at our little guy and see how he has grown and developed.  Being in a family really is the best thing for children.

My heart is also heavy tonight as I think of three children who are coming out of an orphanage several hours from us.  This orphanage is in dire straits and the children are not thriving.  Three children are coming out tonight to join new foster families.  All have significant health issues and will need a great deal of love, patience and care.  Think of these three little ones tonight as they are going to an environment totally different than what they are used to.

Discovery!

I've posted before about our cat and his love of using our baby's formula scoops as toys.  He jumps up when we mix the formula and tries to get the scoop. We try not to psychologically analyze this too much..just because the source of the baby's nutrition moves smoothly along our wood floor...we think this is the draw of the scoop.

Occasionally I've wondered what happened to all those scoops.  They seem to disappear pretty often.  I haven't put much thought into it or looked for them.  After all, we go through a lot of formula and there is always a fresh scoop to be had.

So today Paul was cleaning out his office and this is what he found under a large, stuffed chair.

Dust, dirt and a plethora of formula scoops!

So he cleaned them up and dumped them on the floor in the living room (where the floor is swept at least once a day).  The cat wasn't sure what to do with all the scoops.

He quickly figured it out though.  I bagged up the rest to dole out as others get lost.  Why buy toys when you can get them for free!

Total Trust

Look who got another haircut!

Our friends came over yesterday.  We met them at a restaurant for lunch and then they came to our house for tea.  We hung out and generally had a good time.  When you agree to meet your friends for lunch, you know it's going to be a long afternoon.  We were with them from 12:00 until after 5:00.  No American time constraints!

There was talking and listening.

There was attempted playing.

And a few tears.

Didn't we just do this a few weeks ago?

Get those sides even.

The back took a lot of work and a few tears.

Some close up shots of the cute face!

The year of the unexpected.

It's New Year's Day in China and I've been up since 5:17 with our sweet baby.  When 2011 rolled in, I was fast asleep under two quilts as the snow came down outside.  It's been a good year, a hard year, a frustrating year and a year of growth.  Isn't it that way for all of us?  There are no easy years-it's too long of a period of time for that.  There are times of joy and fun and anger and irritation and boredom and more.  That is life for all of us.

So this year...the magic of China as we have gained in language and culture skills.  I started this blog when we came to update my friends and family about the minutiae of our life here.  It's often pictures and a sense of the absurd and a sense of awe, wonder and privilege and amazement that we get to live here.  There is more to our lives than the minutiae that I talk about here.  We often have a sense of frustration as life here can be hard.  It's hard to be the foreigner.  In the US, we had many deep relationships with Chinese people.  Here, it's hard to get deep into people's lives.  People are busy, relationships take time to build.  The city is large and it's hard to keep relationships going.  We left a fruitful life in the US and here it sometimes feels like our fruit is very, very small.  We have no sense of doubt of our purpose in being here.  But it's not always easy.

We've been privileged to travel this year.  In February, we went to Hong Kong and felt like we were in a travel channel program.   Growing up near San Francisco and its China town influenced my thinking of what China looked like-I thought it all looked like Hong Kong!  Narrow streets and high buildings and many, many people.

We also went to Inner Mongolia to teach English for a few weeks.  Beautiful grasslands, sleeping in yurts and no city lights to block the stars.  Amazing.

Elisabeth did a service trip in Yunnan that was life transforming for her.  She is looking at colleges and thinking about SAT's and working hard at AP classes and dealing with some of the social issues that a small international school can bring.  

Of course, our biggest change was bringing in our little foster son.  In some ways, our lives are more circumscribed now.  In some ways, our lives have expanded.  I do know that we will never be the same and we hope the same for him.  A friend told me this year that God is a deliverer and that is my hope and prayer for our little guy this year-that God will be his deliverer.  That he will be delivered out of a grim future into one of family and hope.  That the complicated bureaucratic side of actually getting him to a family would be overcome quickly and that he would soon be with people who love him even more than we do now.

I often read this blog, written by a family who serves in Haiti. http://allthingshendrick.blogspot.com/

She wrote an amazing thing in the last part of a new years post and I quote it here.

Because I love you...each one of you...the lurkers, the dear friends, the people God has lovingly wrapped up in our story...my wish for your 2011 is this one...

May it be unexpected.  Richly and wildly unexpected.  May God write fantastic words into your story this year.  Words that would terrify you if you heard them today...words He is powerful enough to speak into existence and powerful enough to sustain.

I echo this prayer- for you, for me, for our families.  May 2011 be gloriously unexpected.  Let's see what words are written as we live out God's purposes in our lives.