Growing up…

We are making progress over here in China. We are starting to get settled in more and adapting to a way of life that requires much more patience.

Tina now has almost a week of classes under her belt, and is adjusting to being a student again. She comes home from class all excited, like that first grader who hasn’t quite grasped the fact that they have at least eleven more years of schooling. Remember back when learning was fun? I get to listen to her explain how to open and close your lips with each of the different tones, and even when you need to bite your tongue.

She walks around the house saying “Huang, huang, hoo-ang, hwang, hwang?” or actually "黄，荒，皇，晃，慌", and then she'll follow that with “There. Did you hear the difference? I think I’m getting this.” I already feel like I won’t be able to catch up.

I’m getting better at accepting how the system over here works and learning to accept the fact that things do not get completed in any sort of timely fashion. I still get incredibly frustrated at least several times every day, but I do think that the overall frustration level is slowly dropping.

On top of being bothered by what I can’t accomplish during the day, I’m also frustrated because we don’t have any real downtime in the evenings. Every evening when I get home sometime its “What do you feel like eating tonight? Chinese?” By the time we are done and get home it’s pushing 21:00 and we’re both exhausted.

We rely on the weekends to allow us some much coveted downtime, along with exploring more of the island and purchasing all of those items we know that we still need.

But now for the good news, we finally have a date to look forward to, that’s right Santa will be swinging into Xiamen at the early date of Wednesday October 10. Yes, finally after almost three months, all of our western belongings have finally made it over to China and are now in the process of clearing Chinese customs.

Ah to be able to cook again, who would have thought that we would be craving that so much? And our wine, that poor lost case of wine, who knows what its been through lo those long hot weeks patiently waiting in a container in LA.

So, growing up? Well we went out and did the grown up thing, we bought a welcome home gift for our wine. I hope they appreciate it…

We also bought them some friends so to help them feel at home.