myretroperspective

After last week's trip to Taipei we were determined to have as few plans as possible for this past weekend. As much as we love travel, as life-giving as understanding a little bit of a new place can be, we generally need a bit of recovery time. So this past weekend looked as "normal" as weekends in Shenyang do. Friday we met up with consulate colleagues for a drink after work and progressed to take out pizza (Shenyang does actually have a decent pizza place that will deliver... eventually) and friends sharing about recent adventures. Saturday morning we made blueberry pancakes and skyped with family which is pretty much the norm for Saturdays home. There's usually someone around and willing to say hi at the end of their week. After a few housekeeping items, we decided to check out the Shenyang library and a side of town that we don't get over to as much. I needed to pick up a few ingredients for a chicken salad I made to host our Sunday fellowship group. We didn...

I've been thinking about the ways that living overseas shapes your interests in ways you don't expect. I think most of us anticipate learning something about the host culture, that's inevitable. That may even be in large part the romanticized impetus that draws one abroad. R's love for Chinese tea is a prime example. It's a way that Chinese people relax, and so it's something he's picked up in order to rest here. But what about the other interests that develop on the periphery due to living abroad? Often times things that we miss from our home culture become all the more pronounced. We need an escape when the host culture just rubs us the wrong way and the familiar is too far away. The usual outlets and things that fill our schedules in the US don't necessarily exist and sometimes we replace them with the unexpected. Friends of mine who live out where I did my first 3 years in Asia have taken up dirt biking. They are quite out-doorsey to begin with, but ...

Ok, that might be a bit of a stretch, but let me explain. I started Chinese tutoring this week. The consulate (is awesome and) sponsors a program for both it's employees AND THEIR SPOUSES to study mandarin for free! (note- not all consulates/embassies do this) So Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I have this cute (in a cartoon-type of way) 25-year old (? guessing other ethnicities' ages is so much more difficult, isn't it?) ring my doorbell and take me through Chinese lessons for an hour and a half. Before our first tutoring sesh I was asked to complete a brief questionnaire about my language ability. I didn't want to overstate my skill level, but I may have inadvertently understated it quite a bit. I explained that I studied for 3 years while living in Asia, but I guess that can mean a lot of different things for different people. I was pretty up front about my biggest challenges being my self-confidence and just straight up remembering what I learned 2.5-5.5 years ago....

Our car, our belongings, all gone. I left our apartment at 10am on the shuttle for FSI and came back after my last con-gen exam to a place that looked like it had been robbed. Thankfully we are just free of almost all of our possessions for a couple weeks before they meet back up with us in Shenyang. Today was our pack out! Because R finished his training yesterday but mine goes until tomorrow evening I left the pack out in his hands. We had our consumables set in one corner, our UAB (unaccompanied air baggage that takes about 2.5 weeks to get to Shenyang) in another, and our HHE (house hold effects- read everything else that takes the slow-3 month- boat to China) piled up in the bedroom. About 30 minutes after the packers/movers arrived, R texted me to say we were 100 lbs UNDER our weight limit for the UAB- woohoo! So we could throw in a few more things that we wanted from the HHE piles. From what I can tell, nothing got packed that shouldn't have. I have read horror stories of pe...

photo complements of a friend from my frist year in Asia Many friends have asked with kind concern over the stresses on our marriage during this time of transition.  Heck, I've wondered myself about how we will weather moving our life literally around the world every few years as a part of this lifestyle.  R and I make a pretty good team and while tensions have risen at points in recent months, with so much of our life being in flux, we remain committed to understanding one another. We also always seem to balance each other out- when one is discouraged the other can find something to cheer them up. While this whole foreign service thing is quite the test, my (re)learning mandarin might be the ultimate test of constancy.  You see, I am painfully insecure about my mandarin. This insecurity slowly developed as I was dating R the second half of my time in Asia. I was competent and able to relate on the heart level with friends in chinese, but whenever I was with R I let him o...

It was difficult to pull myself out of bed this morning. In fact, after grabbing my laptop and a mug of coffee, I crawled right back in bed and here I am. Between submitting our bid list today and the death of the new baby panda cub at the National Zoo, what could Monday have to offer? Though I'm working, the whole working from home or coffee shop or wherever lacks the structure I loved about driving north on I-75 to our lovely (it honestly is lovely- quite well decorated and situated on the 13th floor with a glorious view of buckhead & midtown) office 4 days a week from 8-5 in Atlanta. Mondays always seem to overwhelm me as the week stretches out in front of me like a half-marathon course you've never run; it's hard at the start to know how it will shape up.  While I do have some sort of plans, work- or social-related and enough to do, for each day this week, staying tucked in bed a little longer just seems like a good idea. The news of the panda cub death is really ha...