I can’t believe our time back in the states is already halfway over!  I had minor surgery yesterday to fix my deviated septum.  I think it’s going to really improve a lot of aspects of my health and so we are very thankful to have finally had it done.  I’m pretty doped up right now, so sorry if this is a bit incoherent.  We’ve had a great time since being back.  A lot has happened, so I’ll try to sum up in pictures.

After 24 hours of travel (and very bad experience with Air China…DO NOT fly with them if you can help it) we landed to a warm welcome in Austin.  Our whole family was there along with our best friends, Brian and Julia and their beautiful daughters.  We spent our first few days with Jason’s brother, Brian, and his family in Hutto.  Two years is a long time to be away, but it’s even longer in child years.  Our nephews and niece have changed and grown up in huge ways.  It’s been really nice getting to know them where they are now.  Brian’s beautiful wife, Kimber, treated us to lunch at Chili’s.  The first cultural thing that blew us away was how nice everyone was!  The waitress smiled and brought us drink refills without even having to be asked!

Oh. My. Ga. It’s been FOREVER since I posted anything. I think I kinda forgot about this poor little blog. Well, I actually shouldn’t be writing anything now, either. I should be at a wedding. I’ve never been to a Chinese wedding. But, alas, my tummy is under attack and I can’t leave the house. I’m so bummed I can’t go! We’ve lived here for over two years, but my tummy is still vulnerable to strange Chinese germs. It’s gross. I’ll just leave it at that. Anyway, Jason got to go and he promised to take lots of pictures for me.

We climbed the second highest mountain in the Nan Shan mountain range just outside Urumqi last weekend. It’s another step in trying to conquer my fear of heights. We went with some college-aged friends, which just made me realize even more that I’m 31. We made it all the way to the top (YES!) and then came back down (yikes!). The next day, we were home, and I could barely walk. No exaggeration whatsoever. Have you seen that Seinfeld episode where Kramer wears the super tight blue jeans and walks around like Frankenstein? That’s what I looked like walking around the house. Forget about going down our six flights of stairs. A week later, I’m all better, my thighs are one inch smaller, and I can say I climbed to the top of a mountain. Meena-1, Fear of Heights-0. Yeah, baby. Totally worth it.

We’re getting ready to come home for a visit. The whole getting ready to leave Chinese culture, getting ready to arrive back into American culture transition time is an experience I really wasn’t prepared for. There are so many conflicting feelings. Here’s an idea of what goes through my mind in one day…”I’m sooo freaking tired. Get me out of here.” “I don’t want to leave. It’s like home here now.” “If I have to speak another word of Chinese I’m gonna…” “I can’t leave! What if I forget all my Chinese?!” “Whoa, what IS that smell?? I can’t wait to get outta here for a while.” “How can I leave these friends? (burst into tears)” It gets pretty draining. Despite the fact that he knows he married a total nut artist woman, Jason’s been a stud. I think I can speak for the both of us and say, we’re ready for some r&r.

So, there are lots of things I’m going to miss about this place, BUT I’m going to make a list of some things I’m looking forward to in the states…lots and lots of hugs from family and friends, Kerby queso, driving, a bathtub and candle-lit bubble baths, Sunday morning community, Barton Creek, live music, 100s of boxes of cereal to choose from, English, summer movies, Half Price Books, 24 Hour Fitness, some proper Indian food, more hugs.

Sometimes it can be difficult to find topics to talk about with a new Chinese friend when you’re first introduced. Of course, there’s the usual - weather, work, how much money you make (totally normal to talk about that here) - but then after that it can be one awkward pause after another. I had just met one friend who, after the usual conversation, began talking about television shows and how she enjoys watching American TV. She told me the name of one show she liked, but the name was in Chinese, so I didn’t know which she was referring to. She started describing it to me, and told me a story from one of the episodes…the son wants to cheat on his test, so he writes all the answers on the bottom of his shoe, but he remembers everything he wrote on his shoe and ends up not cheating at all. I immediately had a flashback to being 8 years old and watching Kirk Cameron try to defend his honor on that episode of Growing Pains. I had such a huge crush on that guy! It was a completely surreal experience bonding with a 40 year old Chinese woman over a TV show I watched in my American living room wearing Jellies and Bonnie Bell lip gloss almost 20 years ago.

Going to the doctor in a foreign country is an experience that sometime makes you want to run away, very fast. When the nurse calls me into the exam room, I find out that she can barely speak English. She’s very sweet, but I’m still feeling uncomfortable. My fears are eased a bit when the doctor comes in speaking perfect English. He asks me to go into the bathroom. I look toward the bathroom and the nurse is standing by the door waiting for me. I look back at the doctor for a little more instruction. I’m getting nothing. So, feeling very sheepish, I ask, “What do you want me to do in there?” He says the nurse (who, remember, doesn’t speak English) will tell me. Ok. I go into this tiny bathroom, the nurse follows me in there and closes the door behind her! yikes. There’s a couple of very, very uncomfortable seconds where we’re just standing in there, her looking at me and me looking down at my hands. The nurse then grabs the hem of my skirt, pulls it up and starts tugging at my underwear! yikes. again. While I’m trying to step away from her, she tugs at me some more and then says in broken English, “take off bikini?” (I’m feeling really uncomfortable that she doesn’t speak English but knows how to say ‘bikini’ pretty well). “Oh, ok, I’ll do that myself. Thanks. (nervous laugh, nervous laugh).” She ended up giving me some privacy and everything was fine. I still felt like bolting, but everything was fine.

Chinese beds are not like American ones. Our first year and a half out here, we were sleeping on a Chinese bed, well, really not sleeping at all. They’re hard, very, very hard. Being sleep deprived really helps heighten the whole culture stress experience.

Just before Christmas we bought a new bed, a custom-made iron bed frame with a box spring AND memory foam with a feather bed, imported (Costco, thank you very much). It’s the most comfortable bed we’ve ever had. And it’s like a piece of art, some friends had it made by a local artisan. I’m not really about loving inanimate objects, but this bed is pretty great. Yay for sleep!

We invited some friends over the other night for a big pot of my Mom’s chicken curry. It usually takes all afternoon to prepare, but it’s always well worth it. As American as my parents raised me, the one thing they didn’t hold back on was Indian food. And as Indian cooks go, my mom is one of the best. The sad thing is that whenever I cook it, I miss my parents like crazy.

Several of our friends have been out of town, some for almost a year, and it was so good to catch up and laugh together again. Jason had Feist and the Once Soundtrack playing in the background. Have you guys seen this movie, Once?? I feel completely clueless about what’s popular in the states right now. Everyone and their dog may have already seen it, but if you haven’t yet, see it. It’s a sweet, very small film about the emotion, thought and experience that goes into writing songs, creating anything, really…the music in it will blow you away. We loved it.

It’s stinkin’ cold here right now…the coldest Jason and I have ever felt. The coal the city uses to heat buildings causes an insane amount of pollution, so our lungs that are used to the green Austin environment are taking a beating. We just won’t mention the gunk that comes out of our noses and lungs when we cough. Gross.

We just returned from a little vacation in the south of China. We took the train all the way down there, which was a 55 hour adventure but well worth it since we got to travel with some dear friends. The town we visited, Yangshuo, is this quaint little town nestled between these tall, skinny mountains…the kind you see in Chinese scroll paintings. China’s geography is vast and diverse, but this place looked like the China we’re used to seeing in pictures with lush greenery, tall, misty mountains, fields of rice paddies and Chinese farmers with pointy, triangle straw hats on. Unfortunately, I was down with a fever the whole week…that’s right, the whole week. We got pretty familiar with the four walls of our hotel room. We’re so bummed our vacation turned out that way, but we trust that the Father allowed it. It must’ve been what He wanted for that week. We’re home now and I’m still recovering, but now Jason is also down with a fever. It’s sort of a sad sight at our house right now, but it sure is nice being sick at home rather than out traveling.

We’re having a true white Christmas this year. It began snowing Christmas night and has kept snowing through to this morning. There’s a fresh blanket of snow outside and big, fat flakes floating down from the sky. Some Canadian friends who live across the way were making snow angels and having a snowball fight outside in our courtyard this morning. We couldn’t have asked for a more picturesque Christmas. It’s about 0 degrees Fahrenheit outside, so we’re enjoying the snow from the inside of our warm and cozy apartment while we sip some Indian chai. Being Texas snow dorks like our friends, Chris and Ali, the only way we can properly describe how we feel is that it’s like living inside a snow globe.

We wish we could be celebrating Christmas with all of you! We miss you and hope that you’re having a joyous holiday. Merry Christmas!

during the week meena and i have a policy of only watching/listening to things in the local language to help out with our mandarin study (which we more or less follow), but on our day off we like to watch some tv shows from the states or listen to news podcasts. this morning we were listening to amp’s marketplace friday podcast when an advertisement mentioned this website which takes a quick summary of your consumption lifestyle and tells you, if everyone on earth lived like you did, how many planet earths would be needed to sustain the world’s current population. i did it for our lifestyle in texas, which came out to 4.7x planet earths while meena did it roughly according to our lifestyle here which came out to only 1.4x earths! i guess we don’t know a whole lot about the promised new earth, but i’m guessing things will be such that we end up only needing one.

Though there are only a handful of North Americans here in our fair city, our candy bowl was still quickly cleaned out Halloween night. Mermaids, farmers and even a monkey king (a character in ancient Chinese myth) graced our doorstep, but the highlight of the night was when Spiderman paid us a visit. As Spiderman was enthusiastically demonstrating how he thwips webs from his wrists, a couple of Chinese elementary school kids walked past our door on their way home from school. Not only is Halloween a completely foreign idea here, so is dressing up like superheroes. As strange as this custom may have looked to their parents who were accompanying them, we could see those school kids thinking, “Why can’t I wear a Spidey suit and get candy, too?”