Africa!

And the hits just keep on coming!

I've just noticed I got a hit from a reader in Africa! People on five continents have now visited

"The Johnson's in China."

So, if you know anyone in South America (0r Antarctica for that matter) tell them to mouse on over to our blogspot address.

Things We've Noticed

When we moved to Asia, my grandmother sagely advised that we note things that seemed unusual to us, because after a while they might seem routine.

It seemed impossible at the time.

But we duly noted:

• the grandma catching a ride in her husband's wheel barrow
• the small motorcycle/tricycles piled impossibly high with Styrofoam for recycling
• and the men who would ride up and down the street playing a recorded message from the megaphone dangling from their handle bars, seeking old appliances: computers/air conditioners/refrigerators... their plea for appliances droning loudly from tinny speakers.

So now, as we return to this land and set up our life here again, we note the things that seem unusual ....

When did ...

Every label start having both Spanish and English?

I love it! It's like having flashcards everywhere. (This was a technique some of my friends employed when learning Mandarin, carefully labeling light switches, and appliances with their name in pin yin.) Even in our little white bread community, pages from the Mathematics workbooks are coming home with English on one side and Spanish on the other. In an odd way it makes me feel more settled, our world is remaining somewhat diverse. And, I'm hoping with a little time and effort the 'Spanish flashcards' on everything from my dish soap to Math homework, will help me brush up on my rusty skills from High School Spanish. It's like a free language lesson!!

High School basketball begin to require three referees?

Menard's start selling groceries?

Grocery carts get so big?

When did Everything (everyone?) get bigger?

I have seen baseball sized garlic (aptly named elephant garlic... but does it taste like garlic or elephants?), unusually large (and presumably tasteless) cucumbers ...

Bei Bei commented the other day about the number of kiddos who wear 'pants like pajamas' to school. Is this a dumbing down of dress or, as MGJ suggested (in whispered tones -- which I found thoughtful and discrete, not demeaning) Are some kids unable to fit into pants with zippers? (And before you get up in my grill, I do realize there is a need to insert an "Hello Pot, I'm Kettle, you're black" here. To that end, and in an effort at full disclosure, I will also share here that I outfitted myself with a pair of dashing grey sweatpants for our painting endeavors at The Bungalow, and promised Mr Johnson, before he had time to express any chagrin, that under no circumstance would I leave the house clad in elephant toned, elastic waist pants!!)

And speaking of grills, have you seen the size of vehicle grills in Middle America? Hiding, not so discretely, engines with names like Hemi and Allison, with seating for eight and gas mileage in the single digits. I now completely understand why there was an outcry about Obama's kabash on off shore drilling ... nobody wants to pay more at the pump when they are fueling up 30 gallons (114 L) at a time.

When did said vehicles start prominently displaying so many slogans and vinyl decals?

I have a moderate toleration for bumper stickers, as growing up my father loved to embellish the family 'grocery getter' with nuggets like 'I heart my gas hog' or the little fake switch inside, next to the headlight knob that read, 'activate rocket launcher.' I can even respect a subtle campaign sticker ... candidates name and election year.

However, I married into a family without an affinity for car stickers. Mr Johnson distinctly recalls going out to the carpark in the Wisconsin Dells after watching the Tommy Barlett show, only to discover that the clever marketing people at the Dells had plastered a Tommy sticker to every bumper in the lot. My father-in-law, the senior Mr Johnson, spent the better part of 30 minutes removing the adhesive ad. And I have to say I kind of agree... after spending a good chunk of your annual wage on a vehicle, it doesn't make a lot of sense to 'bling it up' with a $2 sticker.

So we have never had an "support the troops" ribbon magnet, "Can you imagine what that does to the paint color, it doesn't fade along at the same rate as the other paint," Mr Johnson carefully explained. No bumper stickers for us either. So, as I'm sure you've guessed, we're not going to add vinyl stickers of our family as stick figures to our back window, even if we go to Disney World or get six cats.

Yes... I shamelessly stood in a Target parking lot and took this picture.

Click below to see a witty shot on a blog I follow:

http://jedsmommy.blogspot.com/2010/10/oy.html

Feast or Famine

There are either a glut of posts from this site or nothing for a long time.

It's life in America, people .... in the last three weeks I made three trips a day shuttling the three from the Holiday Inn to their tiny public school seven miles up the road. I've been busy mindlessly pushing my cart around big box stores stocking up on all the things you stock up on when you move house -- smoke detectors, brooms, laundry detergent, garbage cans ....

I've been making mental notes, even taking a few photos on my phone.

There will be posts. But there will also be gaps.

Big gaps of time.

Quotable Conversations {Are You from Spanish?}

One afternoon, the first week of classes at her new school, MGJ returned to her school gymnasium to watch her peers play basketball. While in the bleachers cheering the Lady Lions on, she was approached by a pair of early elementary boys.

"Are you Bei Bei's sister?" a first-grade(ish) boy queried.

MGJ acknowledged that she was.

(Now, new students are a rarity in this tiny consolidated community school ... and so when three new families arrived at the start of 2011, it made somewhat of an impact on the community!)

"Are your from Spanish?" he asked.

MGJ shook her head to the contrary.

She later related two things:

1} How popular her Kindergarten aged sister had become overnight ....

2} How "Spanish", might be the only foreign language someone this age, from this community, might have exposure to, and by extension he gave the same name to a culture/country ...

I reminded her too, how six-year-olds are six-year-olds. I thought about how last semester
Bei Bei came home and announced her teacher was moving to New Zealand, when it was actually Singapore; and how I, at a slightly older age, came home on the first day of second grade and announced to my parents that my teacher was from Hollywood. When my parents queried at their first parent/teacher conference with her, how she was adjusting to life in the Mid-West, she looked at them quizzically and informed them she was from Holly, Minnesota.

The determined little guy continued his interview:

"How many airplanes did you take to get here?" he asked.

"Two!"volunteered another youngster, anxious to share his global knowledge.

"Oh," said the first boy, then added, "I don't like airplanes."

And then scampered off, leaving the new middle schooler from "Spanish" to watch the game.

Repatriation Thought {two}

{two: move slowly}

The way I see it ... three weeks in ... is you need to take your time, and not rush into anything. As in, don't commit to volunteer, join a club the requires something of you, a church, or the PTO. There will be a time and a place for these things. And quite possibly joining will help create the sense of community we presently lack. But for now we need time to mourn our old community, and suss out where we might best fit into a new community. We have what could possibly be a lifetime ahead of us in this area, and for now everything seems a little different from what we are used to.

Everything seems to take a little longer anyway for us these days. We take ages to get up and out the door. I am paralyzed by choices at the store. Homework that should be done in a jiffy somehow seems to drag out. We are moving ahead at a snail's pace. But: we are moving ahead.

There is much to be said in favor of a slow pace. We focus more inward, on our family. We share our experiences and really take time to listen ... which might be what is slowing us down, but in the end what just might put us ahead.

I don't specifically remember this 'move slowly' nugget from any of my repatriation research ... although Robin Pascoe strongly urges the unassigned spouse not to jump immediately back into work, and she adds... don't get a puppy.

Two Weeks @ the Express

We've just logged two weeks at the Holiday Inn Express, where we share two adjoining rooms and our "view" is of the Menard's lumberyard next door. We vacillate between being 'so-over-it' and 'okay-with-it'.

I am tired of looking at the laminate furniture and Styrofoam plates. The pancake machine in the "hot breakfast area", where you hit a button and moments later a hot cake rolls out the end conveyor belt style, has lost it's novelty. Yesterday morning I sneaked pop tarts down for the girls, and I don't even believe a.) poptarts should be considered a breakfast food or b.) that they should be consumed on weekdays.

But upstairs in our adjoining rooms, where we've converted our bedroom into the dining area, and the girls bedroom into the laundry/play/children and dog area, there is a small semblance of home. I bought a Chinese style drying rack, which has perhaps already paid for itself with the money I've saved by not feeding five quarters into the dubious looking dryer at the end of the hall for each load of wash I've completed. I bought an orchid, a plant I learned to love and care for in Asia. We pulled out the coffee press and our IKEA children's ware sets from our packed boxes, and in a wise, impulsive moment, splurged on stemware and ceramic mugs for exclusive use in the hotel. (I cannot bear disposable items, both for their lack of environmental friendliness and the sterile feeling they evoke.) I am loving the simple order of owning six plates and four wine glasses, five mugs and a cache of children's silverware. I love the tidiness of washing up these items with grease fighting Dawn dish soap, that was available, but out of reach in China with a price tag of nearly $10. When Mr Johnson went to collect a small number of necessary items on one of our first days here, he came home and regaled me the story of his selection process.... so many choices. In Qingdao, we simply gravitated to the bottle that had a picture of ginger (our favorite 'scent' for Chinese dish soap) prominently displayed on the label.

So we gather around a desk/table with two roller office chairs and a pull-out couch pulled up to create a dining suite. The girls pour over their American homework there with cups of hot chocolate, and later we clear it and reset it with brightly coloured plastic plates and eat regrettable microwave meals, but also sample some fun choices... fresh greens with feta and marinated olives. And, even though Bei Bei pesters us all with her constant swiveling on her non-stationary chair, and Mr Johnson and I squish, though not uncomfortably, with MGJ betwixt us on the sofa, those are perhaps our sweetest moments so far.

The events of the day are hashed out, and details shared, those intimate ones that perhaps only the five of us will appreciate or understand ....

• How EHJ's teacher detects an accent (we hadn't noticed),
• or How MGJ's teachers consider her well read for books she devours simply for pleasure
• Bei Bei, ever the humour provider, in all sincerity (on her second day of American Kindergarten) shared how she already had a BFF, although when pressed, she couldn't come up with her name, simply, "my friend".

looking forward {how it's going to work}

I'm going to continue blogging. I've been asked by several friends to keep it up, and I feel an urge to do so.

But I'm facing a couple of obstacles...

Firstly... quite obviously... we are no longer in China and I dubbed this blog "The Johnson's in China"

My original plan was to document our remaining months in China, which when I first started blogging was going to be less than a year. Enter the recession and our renewed commitment and interest in the region and things changed. So whether or not the name was short sighted, it does present some problems.

Secondly... since we are no longer in China, much of the context of our blog, which was loosely defined as a documentation of our time in the Middle Kingdom, will be noticeably absent.

I am not keen to start a 'mommy blog', there are already a number of great and well read ones going. (And people probably won't be that interested in the great deal I found on boots at Target and what we're having for dinner, anyway!)

However, I do want to keep documenting our family's transition, and how our time in China has changed us and made us into the people we are today.

We are documenting a new culture -- our own.

Even if we are passport holding, amendment proud Americans, there are parts of our home culture we are no longer familiar with. (And this is certainly true for our children who left here so young.) It is important for our readers to remember that this documentation process is not meant to be offensive. We simply will note differences that we see after being abroad.We will sometimes quote conversations we've had, or misunderstandings that generate from our cultural gaps.

There are also issues that are concerning. American's are not often held in high regard in international circles, and if you consider the view points from outside it's sometimes not hard to understand why. Sometimes we will address those issues here too.

Because our focus is changing, there is a good chance our audience will too.

When we were living in China, the blog served as a great way for family and friends to keep up with our growing children and learn a little bit about the language and culture we were learning about. As we come "home", our emphasis will change to documenting repatriation issues, which may prove a little boring to readers who live in the US and don't find the presence of toilet tissue in public restrooms in this country amazing, or the amount of disposable items available here appalling.

And, that, in a nutshell, dear readers, is how it's going to work ....

looking back {i'm dreaming of a white {sand} christmas}

looking back {saying good-bye}

There is great emphasis (in almost all the literature we've read about leaving and international post) about the importance of saying good-bye.

It helps form closure ... for kids and adults.

It helps validate and justify the experience.

We did our good-byes corporately and privately, as a family and as individuals.

Bei Bei and I took one last trip to Polar Ocean World where we said goodbye to all the polar creatures (and I grimaced, for the last time, at animals performing to Micheal Jackson tunes).

We said goodbye to favorite restaurants, haunts, neighbors and friends.

We had last coffees and last dinners. Last conversations. One such evening was so hard to end that we ended up walking home together just to prolong the last moments. Our private sayings of good bye were more intimate, but the corporate ones ended up being equally emotional.

We held a party for (as my friend Dr Julie described) "75 of our closest friends" (She, amused that it could reach that number, teased me for being a social butterfly.) But I reminded her: we've been here five years, and we have three kids with sweet friends ...

It was a special afternoon with a simple meal of pizza and Greek salads, a keg of Tsingtao and made replete with a misspelled cake. We had friends from Russia, The Netherlands, France, England, Korea, Australia, Denmark, China, Taiwan, Italy and the US. We took pictures of each family who came (except, unfortunately, our own) to insert in the album they all signed.

Dr Julie hosted a luncheon for ladies I've known and loved in Qingdao, and her neighbor, and our friend Q, a stay-at-home dad, fearlessly joined the estrogen energy.

Mr Johnson's co-workers held a going away party at work with cheese cakes and speeches and very few dry eyes.

At school MGJ brought in Taiwanese bubble teas to share with her Jr High classmates at their break, and the left over misspelled cake for after lunch.

True to her original request, EHJ opted for an early birthday party instead of a going away shin dig. She used the Shrek party plates she picked last summer and brought in sugar cookies for her class to decorate as a sort of craft cum snack.

On the same day in Bei Bei's classroom I brought in our giant mitten, read and re-read Jan Brett's The Mitten whilst her classmates took turns being the various animals that climbed into the mitten like the creatures in the story. She gave a pair of tiny mittens to each friend. Her friend from the Czech Republic had earlier told me that he loved to kiss Bei Bei on the playground (and her guilty grin assured me it was true.) At her going away party her little Italian friend showed his amore as well.

Each of the The Three passed out their own photo with their US mailing address, our family's Skype handle and their email addresses. It wasn't just saying good-bye, after all, but also the promise of continued communication. This the bitter sweet part of the expat experience. Saying good bye, but always with the promise to stay in touch. And there is great satisfaction in knowing that we now have friends scattered all over the globe, from the bottom of Australia to the Western coast of Canada ... postcards and emails and phone calls still come.