Five Years Time ...

Five Years Time is ...

the long way through college

the length of the pre-school years (sniff ... they go by too fast)

the length of time we spent in China (almost)

Each February we mark the anniversary of our move date to China in 2006. (A date that coincided almost exactly that year with the Chinese New Year Celebration.)

For a related post see last year's Si Nian

http://thejohnsonsinchina.blogspot.com/2010/02/si-nian-four-years.html

Five Years Time is also

a pretty fun little song ...

to watch the equally fun video of this British indie group,

check them out @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8YCSJpF4g4

the video is strangely reminiscent of Napoleon Dynamite ... (loved that quirky film)

"Oh well I look at you and say

It's the happiest that I've ever been

And she'll say

Yah well I feel all pretty happy too

And I'm always pretty happy when I'm just kicking back with you

If you spend the rest of the day whistling, you can totally blame me for posting this dapper tune!

Chicago Chinatown's New Year's Parade

The parade it's self, to be honest, was a little mama huhu.

Chicago was, after all, still digging out from the city's third worst blizzard on record. Days before hundreds of cars had been left stranded on Lake Shore Drive. We weren't sure if it was prudent to even go, let alone drive, so the girlies and I caught a commuter train to the City and cabbed it down to Chinatown.

The familiar, oily smells, and swirl of Mandarin and Cantonese and English, and the piles of white snow everywhere added to our sense of adventure. We met our good friends the M-L family, who also once lived in QD, had some great Si chuan for lunch-- which we ordered entirely in Chinese, found some hot Taiwanese bubble tea, and let the girls loose in a Chinese stationary shop reminiscent of their favorite ones in China. (Only it seemed that the prices were dramatically inflated! Things that would be 4 kuai in Zhongguo where 4 US dollars in Chinatown!) Still the experience was completely worth the efforts it took to get there.

Happy Year of the Rabbit!

Xin Nian Kuai Le!

On 'Not Making it on Our Own"

As I've oft confessed, I love lyrics.

And I love Bono.

And I, so very clearly, cannot "make it on my own".

In this whole complicated process of packing up and moving 'home' there have been SO MANY PEOPLE, who have come along side us and helped us out. People who have emailed from other continents. People who cried with us. People who were there to answer the phone when I ended up in tears. People who walked us through what to expect. People who were honest about how they felt when they'd been in the same situation, giving us the freedom to realize it was OKAY to feel convoluted.

I am behind in emails, and thank you cards. (And so I blog?) I have been overwhelmed and humbled by so many people who have said the right thing at the right time. People who weren't afraid to ask how we were 'really doing' (My Russian friend, who I bumped into in Starbucks in our fleeting weeks in QD, said in blunt, and thoughtful honesty, 'You don't look good .... what's going on?' So I sat down and had the latte I didn't think I had time for, and had a chat that will always stay with me.)

When Shiraz and Tylenol PMs were no longer doing the trick. ("Kudos on combining wine with the Tylenol" my sister quipped, "I'm doing it for my liver," I retorted), I would climb out of bed in Qingdao and look at the sea, overwhelmed by the speed at which life was moving, but also by the tenacity of frienships that held tight, despite everything else. In the morning, with a strong cup of coffee to counter the effects of insomnia, I would play Bono's words loudly over the blow dryer :

Tough, you think you've got the stuff

You're telling me and anyone

You're hard enough

You don't have to put up a fight

You don't have to always be right

Let me take some of the punches

For you tonight

I knew then, what I know now. It was okay to feel weak. There were friends who cared and let us know. And often, it seemed, at EXACTLY the right moment.

For all of you who have reached out, sent notes, FB comments, emails or called. Know how much I appreciate your friendship. Know just how thankful I am for you.

Xie Xie NI!

Shipment Update

Our shipment has gone by rail from California. It's unclear whether or not it was actually 'physically inspected'. I guess we will know for sure when it finally arrives.

We are still finishing up reno's in the basement, so we are taking the moving company up on their offer to store our shipment for another week. We've scheduled delivery for the 22nd, which gives our contractor a day's cushion plus a weekend, and then, because the 21st is President's Day and the girlies will be home, we decided to push it back one more day.

I'm so excited for my fun 'China dishes', my newly framed art and some more soft seating to arrive. I'm a little less excited about cumbersome pieces and boxes of "misc" that will no doubt be the bane of our existence for the coming months.

I'm fortunate to have the helpful advice of friends who have done this before. Going on their tips, we have declined the 'unpacking service' the moving company offers. Which is described below. The following is what the moving company has told us:

I have scheduled the delivery of your sea shipment on Tuesday, February 22. I also want to check and see if you are going to want unpacking done on February 23. When the crew arrives, they will unload the container and put the furniture where you want it and unwrap it. They will assemble what was disassembled and if there is something they cannot get assembled, I will contact a 3^rd party that will assist us. They will then put all of the cartons in the appropriate rooms.

The unpacking consists of the contents of the cartons unpacked and laid on a flat surface like the counter, table or the floor. They will not put anything away.

Unpacking sounds like permanent purgatory. I might never find my 'flat surfaces' again. Thanks Carla, Camby and Gwen for your wisdom. You are some knowledgeable tai tai men!

Update on the Slow Boat

The slow boat from China arrived earlier that we expected, to US shores at least. It sat in a queue in Long Beach for nearly a week waiting for it's x-ray inspection. And then, lucky us, it was selected for a manual (physical) inspection. No further update on where we are at in that queue. Only some pondering on our part of when our forty-foot high cube will ride the rails to Chi-towne, be released from customs, and trucked out to The Bungalow; and why it was selected for physical inspection at all.

packing up in QD
(DAY 1 of 3)

Repatriation Thought {three}

{three: talk it out}

Nothing helps me keep a finger on the pulse of our family's emotional health like talking.

Simple stuff. Big stuff. Everything in between.

It's easy to get caught up in the busyness of the mundane.

But little chats on how everyone thinks things are going .... Little conversations about snippets of life ... help keep everyone afloat during this stage of repat life.

Updates from the parental side of how work is going, or we fee like we are acclimating to a culture that is new and old at the same time seem to help too.

Sometimes the details don't come out to us. They come through that famous sister network, the one that is both taxed and strengthened by the fact that presently three girls share two beds in one room. I love to see the bond that grows and stretches between them. How "the Bookends" (those two feisty souls on either side of our placid middle) can be totally at-each-other's-throats one minute, and quite literally snuggled on the sofa (our token piece of soft furniture - the beds excepted) the next. The Three tell each other things. Some of which is discretely passed on to us, and other stuff that remains for the sisterhood alone.

Sometimes there are tears. But often their are giggles (like when MGJ related the story of being from Spanish). Talking it out. Making it up as we go along. Together.