Seeing The Unseen

On Tuesday and I the kids had a great fun adventure and came home with our very first pet. Growing up we usually had a pet of some sort; fish, hamsters, rabbits, dogs, and even some chickens came and went through our home at various stages. As a child I always liked animals, and aside from my allergies/aversion to cats, I always thought when I grew up I would want a pet, preferably a dog. But now that we have kids and live in China, I have decided it is for sure not worth the effort. I am not the most patient person on earth, and I use up most of my patience keeping my husband and children alive and thriving in this strange piece of the world we live in. I'm fairly positive I don't have enough time/energy/patience left to keep alive anything non-human :-) My one plant only lives because my sweet ayi remembers to water it. If she is gone for a long period of time the plant visibly suffers. I even refuse to get fish mostly because I'm afraid I would forget to feed the...

So it's that time of year again. We are experiencing for the 2nd time, although this year with more appreciation for it, the yearly expat exodus. If you don't live abroad you might not even know what the word "expat" means. I sure didn't before we moved here. The formal word is expatriate and basically means a person living outside of their home country. I come from a nice spot in Pennsylvania. Growing up, I never lived more than 15 minutes from both sets of my grandparents. Sometimes we even lived with them :-) My aunts, uncles, and cousins were mostly all within an hour drive. I went to a small private school and was with many of the same kids from Kindergarten through 12th grade, a few I even went to college with. We always attended the same church with the same familiar faces. I still know some of my next-door-neighbors from the house we spent most of our childhood in. Of course people came and went, but it was not the norm. For the most part ...

We are continuing our moving plans and last week we went preschool hunting.It was quite the experience. We went armed with the names of 2 preschools and in hopes that we would come across a few more. We didn't intend to take the kids but it worked out that we needed to so off we all went. I wish I had brought our camera, but someone was borrowing it so you'll have to settle for my descriptions. The college prep: The first preschool was huge, beautiful, and immaculately kept. In addition to their regular classes, the children were studying, piano, violin, swimming, computers, and also took semester trips :-) The headmistress was kind and accomodating, but was more interested in hiring me to teach English than the children. It was also a bit expensive and since we're not attempting to advance our children into college by our preschool choice we'll pass. The pirate ship: The 2nd preschool was quite nice. It was decorated like a huge ship with fish everywhere wh...