School of Hard Knocks

I suppose eight months into this blogging thing, I can still be considered relatively new to the project. Of course when we started out, everything was new and exciting -- new year, new country, new school, new language... Now we are in August. Its so stinking humid outside that the thought of 'exploring' has kind of lost its bling and now I find myself wondering, what shall I write about? I refuse to be (at least for now) one of those blogs that has only a few posts before it's abandoned, I'm not the type of person to make stuff up, and I don't want to lead you to believe that we have this exciting life where stuff happens all the time and we never know what we'll be doing next (although the latter statement is kind of true).

Truth is, we're now at the point where the fact that I finally found regular flour is enough to send me into euphoria at the thought of what we can eat now. Simply being able to hold a conversation for 5 minutes in straight Chinese, once again makes us feel like adults. I wouldn't say our life is mundane but there comes a time where seeing how little money we can spend in a week becomes a game seeing as though we're trying to stretch our savings as far as we can. While its not as bad as using less toilet paper so we can still run the air conditioner, we're still learning how to live and I'm afraid those things may be boring or miss-understood by some.

Most of our Chinese friends from school, have returned to their lǎojīa (home towns) for a last respite before school begins again and I guess the truth is I'm not so good at just relaxing and I HATE staying inside for a whole day. So my time at least is comprised of visiting the orphanage most mornings and trying to figure out how to lead a healthy, environmentally friendly and somewhat sane life in China. Although half the time I think the fact that we live in China means that there are a few screws loose therefore throwing sanity out of the window before we even moved here but everyone does that one thing that makes their families and friends shake their heads and hope that one day they'll come to their senses. Truth is, we're happy here. We're living the life we know we are meant to live at the point we are at. We walking this road so that we can stop and smell the roses along the way and make sure we don't step in the poop cause we're running to fast to watch were we're going. I suppose we're learning that we don't just want to live, but we want to live life well.

Being that I am an incredibly impatient person, I wish living life was somewhat like it is for Neo in the Matrix...you know, they just plug him in and download all that he needs to know. Bring on the danger and suspense! Did Neo ever have a quiet day? Did the new testament writers ever throw anything at the wall while they were in prison? Did Winnie the Pooh ever run out of optimistic, thoughtful thoughts? You can see I have issues with living a quiet life -- things that I need to get over in myself, obviously! Issues that maybe only China will bring out in our lives for the One that is greater than us to sort out.

Anyway, enough of the ramblings -- after being on mango withdrawal, we finally found some at the down town market this morning...oh me and my infatuation with markets -- I suppose somethings will never change...

Rachel -- 7th of August, 2009