Trying Not to think about it ...

It's nearing April, the time of year when we need to renew our residency permits... the page glued into our passports that explains we have been granted the legal right by the Middle Kingdom to live in their land another year. 

So, we surrender our passports to the HR department at Mr. J's work, and then carry mini-photocopies of our passport and soon-to-be-expired residency permits in our wallets as proof of our legitimacy to live here. In theory foreigners should carry their passports with them at all times, in fact there is a law in China that you can be fined if you fail to produce them if some authority asks for them. We always thought that was quaint, but last summer, with the ramp up to the 2008 Games, there were actually cases of wai guo's (foreigners) being fined in bigger cities like Shanghai.

The newbie HR gal firmly believed we would need to redo all of the fun medical procedures China requires of its long term guests: ECGs, blood and urine samples and chest x-rays make the list. They have no desire to import people with heart problems, TB or HIV. I have to say I was dreading the possibility of these tests conducted here.

In years past we didn't need to re-do the medical. Our medical was done in the States @ the Joliet plant, where a sweet lab tech in the medical department did our tests. She talked about how back in the day their job was a bit more hands on... they would set bones if someone on the line broke something, but by the 21st century her main job was to be the Weight Watchers coordinator. So, when she got to do the medical work up for a China bound family she was pretty excited (Joliet is not exactly the sending hub for international bound employees!) The x-ray machine was new, so she had come in over the weekend with a friend and did practice shots on herself so she would get it right. "You are moving to China," she confided, "I don't want to make any mistakes!" She chatted while she went about paperwork and prepped for the different tests. She told me who she was hosting for Thanksgiving, which sweet potato recipe she was going with, and just as she fastened the last electrode into place for the EKG, said, "Are you just so nervous about moving all the way to China?" I think the needles went a little funky, because truth be told we were!

We were, however, exponentially more nervous about having to redo all those tests here. I don't think the administrator of the the chest x-ray and ECG would be as keen to make us comfortable. Remember, this is a land of efficiency and little privacy, that has dreamed up such practices as group pap-smear rooms! 

We dodged a bullet. We didn't have to do a re-do. But, for two weeks our real passports are in the hands of the office HR dept, the local government, and the Public Security Bureau. I'm trying not to think that we are basically landlocked for these 10 business days. We cannot fly within China (or for that matter outside) without our precious passports. So, for now, we're just trying not to think about it.

Home is Where you Hang your Heart

Last night we had pancakes for supper. As I was quadrupling for our family of five -- the recipe that, only yesterday, it seems, I only had to double-- I paused to appreciate the simple sweetness of the four perfectly formed hearts of baking powder on the top of the dry ingredients.

Just before we moved across the globe three years ago, my mother-in-law slipped a cute set of heart shaped measuring spoons into our menagerie of kitchen gadgets, poignantly reminding us that she would be thinking of us across the globe, with love, and that we, even during mundane, daily tasks like cooking, would know we were carried in her heart. There is not a time that we measure out an ingredient with those heart-shaped spoons that we don’t remember.

There are special people we want to hold in our hearts too. People, like our parents and grandparents and other friends and family that we want our children to know and recognize even though we now spend only a few weeks out of every year on the same continent with them. We keep in contact with phone calls, and e-mail and our blog. We look at pictures. We hang photos on the wall. And, we hold them in our hearts.

There is also so much about moving to China and our time here I don’t want to forget. So, last fall, when I began depositing Bea at her kindie three mornings a week I finally started a journal of our three years in Asia. I have over 140 double spaced pages on the computer to date. It’s a retelling of our arrival in China. It describes our home and daily life. It’s a record for the kids to someday read. It’s a record, perhaps for us to someday share. I did really well journaling in the fall, but as I’ve become increasingly involved with other things, I have not kept up.

And then I saw those hearts in the pancakes. They reminded me of another heart and another story I need to write-- a story that somehow weaves itself into our lives today.

When my parents moved to Canada I was a sophomore in college. To this day, I don’t know if I remember a more lonely feeling than when I watched that 27-foot moving truck pull out of the driveway in Illinois of the home we would no longer live in. They were moving 1600 miles away.

A thoughtful friend gave me a small pewter heart she had had engraved for me that read, “Home is where you hang your heart.” I slipped that heart into my pocket and carried to back to my dorm room where it hung until the end of the semester. I hung it in the bedroom of my parent’s new home in Canada that summer. Then in the fall, when I headed back to college in Illinois, I hung it in the bedroom I shared with my friend. I took it with me again in the spring, when I traveled to Minnesota to complete my internship. I had the distinct pleasure those weeks to live with my grandmother and I laid the heart on the dresser we shared.

That spring ramped up to a very busy summer. I would complete my internship, go to my parents for a few weeks, and then return to Illinois for my wedding. When it was time to move on, I failed to pack my pewter heart, but in the great excitement of all that was to come, I did not even notice. 

I didn’t think of that heart again until several summers later when my husband and I were visiting my grandmother and saw it hanging on the huge felt map she has above her bed. That pewter heart with the light pink ribbon was carefully hung on a straight pin. The straight pin was plunged deep into the soft red felt. The heart was hanging in Asia. My grandma spent 40 years in Pakistan. That’s where she called home.

Fast-forward a more than a decade. My gently aging grandma still lives in Minnesota. Her body is slowly tiring, though her mind remains sharp. Her heart still hangs in Asia. Ironically, our family now lives in Asia. You might say it is where we now hang our hearts. And in our collective hearts, we hold loved ones from across the globe.

Yesterday Bea stood on the staircase peering down, with a funny look, at the grouping of black and white photos in our front hall. One photo is of our modern Chinese apartment building. Another is of our home in Lisbon. The third is of our three girlies, three years ago, standing at O’hare in front of a mountain of luggage destined for our new home.

“Is Eliza my age?” she asks. I tell her yes, and that little Millie is roughly the age Eliza is now. And sweet little Bea is just a baby. She smiles because she loves babies, though she is very proud is no longer is one.

“Are those both our houses?” she asks inquisitively. She has no memory of living in our old brick bungalow in the mid-West, though she readily identifies with the photo of our Chinese flat. Next month she will have celebrated four birthdays here.

“Yes. They are both our houses, but we live in this house now.” I try to explain. The picture of our American home is a bit unflattering. The trees are February naked. The yard is blah. There is a huge moving truck parked in the long drive under the old maple trees, ready to pack us up for China. I had taken the picture to commemorate the move, but then thought it could really commemorate both the move and the house. It could represent transition. I framed those three photos to help the girls remember where we came from and establish where we are now.

But, I realized, as I stood gazing introspectively at my clever pre-schooler, where we hang our hearts, and who we hold in them is of much greater value than the address we live at. Home is where we hang our hearts. For now, that home is Asia. And, know, dear reader, from that home we are holding you gently in our hearts.

Validate

Validate \Val"i*date\, v. t. [See Valid.]
To confirm; to render valid; to give legal force to.
Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

As in the link from the website of one of my favorite author's to this very blog validates in my mind the choice we made to begin blogging in the first place!

Check it out:
Go to Robin Pascoe's website: expatexpert.com

Under Menu scroll to Links

Click LINKS and then click BLOGS

On the Blogs Page scroll to down

Second from the bottom you find ... (drumroll please) The Johnson's in China

which is, and I quote, "A nice example of a family blog, with lots of pictures, from the Johnson family living in China. "

Yi Bai Ge, from the Far Side of the Sea

Yi Bai Ge ... the 100th post from the Johnson's in China

I feel like this post should bear something especially significant being the 100th. So, in the absence of great photos I'll share this nugget... last week we enrolled the girls for the Fall 2009 term at YCIS. This is significant because it looks like we'll be the Johnson's in China for a while longer. 

Our original plan was to put in 24 months in China and then head back to Chicagoland. We then decided we'd stay until summer '08, which moved to summer '09, and we're now looking at a 48 month total length of stay. (Although, with the present economy and Mr. Johnson's penchant for extentions, who knows when our actual date of repatriation will be!) Which makes us consider who really authors our plans.

We are loving our China experience, perhaps even increasingly so, which is good, 'cause it looks like we'll be here a while longer. We never imagined three years ago that living across a plethora of time zones, on the otherside of the globe, on the far side of the sea, we could be so content. It is not, of course our own doing, but we will rest here comfortably, "hemmed in" until a gentle hand nudges us onward.

Stay tuned, we promise another 100 or so posts yet to come.

O LORD, you have searched me and you know me.

You know when I sit and when I rise;

....Where can I go from your Spririt?

Where can I flee from your presence?

If I go up to the heavens, you are there;

if I make my bed int the depths you are there. 

If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

if I settle on the
far side of the sea,

even there your hand will guide me,

your right hand will hold me fast.

thoughts from David Ps. 139 1,2,7 - 9

@ May 4th Square

This red sculpture is Wu Yue Feng or Wind of May.

It is the site of a large plaza along Fushan Bay. It is a popular spot for tourists to see the coastline, the Olympic Marnina and stroll along the seaside. (Also perfect for kites & scooters!)

A sky full of kites

more kites

This old uncle had a manual reel that he expertly

unwound. He figured his kite was about
500 meters in the air!

500 Meters!

This guy set up shop on a stool. 

His kite was on a reel.

A beggar

Some guys on leave, taking turns photographing 

each other in front of the 

Wind of May sculture (the icon of modern Qingdao)

This vendor sells hot corn on the cob

(Not sweet like the corn we are used to in Illinois)

This vendor sells candied hawthornes 

(like little crab apples) on a stick. 

They are somewhat of a QD specialty.

A pineapple vendor on her tricycle

Click on this photo to enlarge it and appreciate the beautiful detail carved into each half pineapple. These are so tempting, until you think of the less-than-clean knife used to carve her fruit creations!

Scooting Around Qingdao

This is how we spent a recent Saturday in March ...

Our fam @ May 4th Square

The girls "scooting" about.

(Wind of May Sculpture in background)

Bea has a flamboyant sense of style!

Heading out of our apartment complex to 

catch the bus to May 4th Square

(It costs our family 50 cents to ride the bus about 2 km)

Redemption

re·demp·tion (r-dmpshn)
n.
1. The act of redeeming or the condition of having been redeemed.
2. Recovery of something pawned or mortgaged.
3. The payment of an obligation, as a government's payment of the value of its bonds.
4. Deliverance upon payment of ransom; rescue.
5. Christianity Salvation from sin through Jesus's sacrifice.

Redeemed. Our sanity. Our night's rest. Sean's license to drive in the great state of Illinois. All redeemed. After hanging over our heads (and Sean's parent's) for nearly four months there is closure. The fine (a meager two George Washingtons) is paid. We are free. That's the end of the story...

here is the beginning . . .

Three years ago we sold our Honda Accord to a guy from the south side. He signed a $2500 cashier's cheque and drove off in the 1996 two door sedan we brought our oldest two kids home from the hospital in. In was bitter sweet, and weird... because we had listed our other vehicle in the paper, but he wanted this one instead. We decided quickly to sell, even for such a meager sum, and decided to become completely unencumbered of motor vehicles before moving across the planet.

Those days represent such a blur for me... breast feeding, packing, and wondering what a move of this magnitude would mean for us. We sold the car and continued on with the spreadsheet of items to check off before becoming Asia bound.

Skip ahead three years. Imagine it is New Year's Day (how's that for poignancy... not 24 hours into the new year, and we get an urgent e-mail from Becky in IL... she's collected our mail (a monthly ritual for the dregs of mail that still trickle into our rental home on 128 S. Canal.)

Imagine Becky's surprise, and ours, to learn that our vehicle was a violator of the Illinois tollway to the tune of $18,000 (or almost 6x what we sold the car for!!) The guy we sold the car to never registered the car (our fatal mistake being in the confusion of the sale, not to remove the plates!)Failure to pay the tolls, resulted in fines. Failure to pay the fines resulted in revocation of Sean's license!

For nearly four months we've been calling the IL tollway, the IL state police, the WI dept of motor vehicles... a run around, a hassle, a bain!

Last night Sean called the IL tollway yet again. They had received his information: the copy of cashier's check, a copy of the title (which had been fudged by the buyer.)

"Mr. Johnson we see that your documentation is in order. You owe $2."

They took plastic... over the phone.

Redemption. What a sweet reminder during this near-Easter season. The price is paid. The debt is clear. We are free.