America wrap-up, part two (Back East)

The latest part of our journey? During an hour and a half train layover in DC, we managed to squeeze in a 45 minute taxi tour of the Mall. That is all you need to know.

David Wells, Geeeenyus!

"These are the times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and for the character of the hero and the statesman."

-Abigail Adams, from a letter to her son upon his departure to Paris, 1779

America wrap-up, part one (Rocky Mountain Edition)

I'm writing this one week before we fly out of the country, and a week and a day (due to a day layover in Toronto) before we leave the continent. It has occurred to me that there is no way we're going to be able to give you a day-by-day accounting of our travels across the country, but that's okay - you're here to read about us in China, right? So, to tide you over until we get there, a few hastily selected pics of us on our trip. [Apologies if it's a bit Christmas-Card like, but hey, we've got Grandparents reading this...]


First, the obligatory family shot to prove that we are alive and can stand together in front of a waterfall, though the boys don't look too convinced...


...then the kids looking cute...


...followed by Mom and Dad doing Something Important. (The Manitou Incline Trail, in this case. One mile, 2,000 vertical feet, finished in 45 minutes!)

Then, some adventure shots of the kids...

Ysa in the Great Sand Dunes

Xander bungee bouncing

and Zekey taking on ... the escalator. (Did I mention that these were hastily selected?)
Okay, time to add some photos to symbolize the various modes of transportation we've taken, and then it's a wrap! More next post...

What we've REALLY been up to... (abbreviated truthful version)

...is simpler than joining the French Foreign Legion in some ways, but not by much. Jane and I have gotten used to repeating our "Rock Star Tour of America" schedule to anyone who asks, but just in case you haven't heard it (or forgot), here it is...

Accomplished so far:

• One week of Suzuki Institute for Xander in Beaver Creek, Colorado (think piano, not motorcycles)
• Two weeks (or so) visiting with friends and family in various Colorado locations, including Broomfield, Fort Collins, Berthoud, Pueblo, the Great Sand Dunes, and Salida.
• A mule-packing trip into Gila Canyon in Southwestern New Mexico with 25 international friends of Jane's from high school.
• Eight days of program orientation with 60 people going to 20 different countries, located at the Mennonite Central Committee's headquarters (our sponsoring organization) in Akron, Pennsylvania.

Next on the list:

• An overnight train trip (with a 2-hour layover in Washington DC!) on our way to...
  
• Four days in Lansing, Michigan with my mom.
• Four more days in Chicago, with a little final packing and a lot of getting together with friends.
  
• One day in the Toronto area seeing Jane's grandparents, and
• A 13-hour flight to Beijing on Air Canada!

More details may (or may not) be coming soon - watch this space. You can also follow us on Facebook, if you aren't doing so already, or check out my account on Flickr. Hope to hear from you all as our journey progresses!

What we've REALLY been up to...

The astute reader of this blog will have noticed by now that I have added very few clues as to what I and my family have actually been up to since leaving Chicago in the middle of June. This is because we have secretly joined the French Foreign Legion, and are now camped out in the deserts of Morocco with no internet access. The kids are coping well with the heat and lack of water, but are as of yet lagging in their marching ability...

Blurry

I'm up at about 4:30 in the morning, and this set of photos captures my mood in more ways than one. Blurry-eyed, but also blurry in the sense that all of the events of the past couple of months are running together in my brain right now.

When I was a kid, we took lots of family vacations, and my mom made us write "Vacation Books" during a couple of them. A Vacation Book is simply a spiral notebook, with diary entries for what we did each day and all manner of postcards, pamphlets and maps taped inside to show what we did. I still have mine in a box in the basement. As I was packing up and going through my paperwork, I had to resist the temptation to read through them cover to cover to find out exactly what I did in Philadelphia and Washington D.C. in the summer of 1977.

I do remember, however, that nearly every entry started with the phrase "We woke up, ate breakfast, then we...". Not the most original, but it did get me writing about the day. Now that I'm starting my own online "Vacation Book", I'm wrestling with the impossibility of Getting Everthing Recorded. Maybe the simple fact that I'm up and eating breakfast is a good place to start...

A Place for my Stuff

It should come as no surprise that we've been thinking a lot about the stuff we have lately. First, answers to a few more frequently asked questions: Yes, all of our stuff is now stored in a 10' x 15' storage area in our basement, on loan to friends (think our furniture and my paintings), packed and ready to go to China, or given away. On one hand, it seems like we have next to nothing, but having spent the last five weeks packing and unpacking it and carrying it from Colorado to New Mexico to Pennsylvania, it still seems like we've got wayyy to much. (Big challenge coming up: what to do with seven suitcases during a day's layover in Toronto while visiting Jane's grandparents before we leave for China the next day.)



Photo: Some of our stuff spread out to be sorted on my Mother in Law's dining room table in Colorado. And hey, (speaking of useless gizmos...), my new digital camera can do spot coloring in a black and white photo!

The question I get asked the most...

...is probably "Hey Dave, I like chicken, and I like waffles. Do you know anywhere I can get both?"

To which I say, look no further! Your store of choice is on Madison Avenue in Oak Park, and will be opening soon. (Unless, of course, that chicken is actually holding a manhole cover...)



Just in case you're curious, here are the answers to a few of the other Frequently Asked Questions I've been answering lately:

• Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province
• A furnished 3-bedroom apartment on a university campus
• 6th floor walkup
• On the outskirts of a town of 11 million or so
• Teaching English
• Yes, I'm taking the kids
• In a Chinese kindergarten
• End of July!

Think that about covers it. Any other questions? Post a comment, or stay tuned for further details...

Gratitude!

Reading between the lines of my previous post, it should become pretty obvious that this just didn't happen on its own. Indeed, we had so much help from everyone that it boggles my mind just to think about it. We had people who:

• watched our kids while we packed / cleaned / moved / recovered from surgery / etc.
• made us meals
• helped us pack
• gave us gifts
• moved our stuff
• hosted a party for us at their house
• performed for us and our friends at said party
• drove me to work when I couldn't bike
• helped me build a storage area in our basement
• took our stuff
• came down from Minneapolis to take my paintings (twice!)
• put us up in their homes
• put up with us, in any home
• listened to us going on and on about ourselves ad nauseum
• and helped out with other tasks too numerous to mention.

Typing this list makes me very concious of the American myth that we can all go it alone. (Cue "My Way" by Frank Sinatra about now...) We like to think of ourselves as a nation of self made Marlboro Men (and Women) riding alone into the sunset, but we all depend on more people than we realize.

Our Story So Far...

Okay, everyone, you asked for it, so here it is... a fantastic blog describing our life in China for the next three years. (Except that we're not in China yet.) Life's been a bit busy lately, so here's a (very) brief recap just in case anyone missed anything.

• January - spent the afternoon of Inauguration Day interviewing for the job
• February - we're accepted! Jane puts an ad up to rent out our apartment, and we get prospective tenants one week later. Go Jane!
• March - I start out the month getting assaulted while riding my bike home from work, breaking several bones in my cheek. Reconstructive surgery follows, and lots of prescription-strength painkillers.
  
• April - Spending spring break getting all of our belongings out of the apartment and into storage. Back to work after six weeks of recovery time.
  
• May - Camping out at a friend's house while finishing packing and oh, about six trillion different closure tasks.
• June - More of the same for the first two weeks, and the last two weeks of school. Now in Colorado on the first leg of a six week closure tour around the U.S. Details to follow.

There you have it - how to get to China in six easy months! Stay tuned for the next post, where I describe how to build Rome in only one day...

two break-throughs

Well, it's about time for me to see the light at the end of the tunnel! I was sitting at the eye doctor's office today, feeling nervous about, well, everything, and feeling annoyed about this additional optometrist appointment, saddled as I was with stacks of various forms for the doc to fill out on all 5 of us. All of a sudden, I reached for the only paper I had, which happened to be the local newspaper, and scribbled the following notes onto the front page, near the headline bar: "Wait, I've been nervous all along, and anticipating staying nervous. This is BAD! This _whole thing_ is about change, so I need to embrace it!! Every one of these appointments, these tasks, every scrap of paper on the floor, every box; this is what I wanted! This is all a part of it! Change your attitude quickly, girl!"

See, I realized that "living abroad" doesn't just happen by my walking out my front door, turning left onto Woodbine, and voila! - being in a different country. No, sweet Jane, it involves every single bit of work that it takes to get there. China = the work now. China = not seeing my floors due to debris strewn everywhere as if one had taken 4 giant industrial-strength fans and pointed them at every object in my home to see how far they can scatter. China = Mess. China = Here. Now. Isn't that weird?

I had wanted my mind to be stretched, my horizons expanded, my self to grow. One area I knew I would change in is my need for certainty, for order - The Plan - even if only I could see it, or even if it meant my house was a disaster while I chose to focus on other more interesting areas in my life. With all this packing, purging, others going through my stuff, and making lots of decisions but not all, I have not had order, and there have been many deviations from The Plan. Already I'm being forced to be more adaptable. And if I do grumble and throw hissy fits about these changes, already I'm having to get out of my funk in a jiffy, because there's no time to spare. Hence, these opportunities for growth, for these revelations, see?

The other area that's been bothering me is that I have been feeling simultaneously very, very needy of people's time, energy and help, and quite disappointed when some of it doesn't work out. Because of Dave's accident and then because of this move, this has been one of the neediest times of my life. "Will you please watch my kids?" "Will you please take some of my furniture into your already-limited attic space?" "Will you help us move very heavy boxes or otherwise engage in lots of menial and/or back-breaking labor around here?" Then, when plans fall through, or people back out, I'm feeling not only frantic about last-minute begging to yet more *other* people, but also distressed about and mistrustful of people's abilities to commit and follow through.

So the other part of my revelation is that I'm also learning with this overseas-move-even-though-I'm-not-even-overseas-yet how to cope with people's natural needs to back out, with their changes in life plans, with their basic make-up, some of them, as not as organized or, yes, somewhat flaky. Again, I'm learning to deal with change, with patterns I'm unaccustomed to, with moving on.

Hey, at least I've got friends here to ask for help from! Dave pointed out that all these challenges aren't even the hardest of it all. At least we know the customs here and can read the street signs. This is just the beginning of it; figuring out China and our family in China will be a much greater challenge. Yes, it hurts now and yes, there are growing pains. Yes, we're divesting of every material thing and slowly, of seeing friends whom we love here. But at least I can see that there is growth. I can re-train my brain to deal with greater amounts of disorder and change. And I can embrace the friends and control that I do have, as we all balance between self and other, growth and status quo, here and there.

Namaste -

Jane

What is the meaning of life?

Today was a hard day. Not only can I not see any floor in my house due to all the packing - 2 weeks and 2 days 'til we move! - but I also took a continuing education course for my realty license (in holding, just to use whenever we sell/buy again). Dave has just finished his 5th week home after the bicycle incident/surgery/etc.

But then a mom from X's school e-mailed me her packing to-do list. She moves every year to every 5 years, depending on her Air Force husband's next assignment. She hardly saves anything; for example, she saved only one outfit from each of her 3 children from the 0-3-month size.

To me, as I trip over plastic this and trash that, dealing with my physical stuff begs the question, "What is the meaning of life?" When I see that people can strip down their lives to very few material possessions, I get uncomfortable. It's been ingrained in me, due to nature and nurture, to equate stuff = happiness. Stuff = who you are/have been/your past/your present. ACK! I'm getting rid of tons of my stuff; therefore, I'm getting rid of my identity, no?!

Where's the enlightened-Buddha feeling I'm supposed to have? Where's the realization that people who have been freed from material possessions can focus on What's Really Important in Life?

I told the mom in the playground at drop-off that I appreciated her packing check-list, and I said, "Brace yourself, for it really got me wondering, "What is the meaning of life?" Without missing a beat, she chuckled and said, "Next, I'll send you all my inspirational quotes." Good enough. But then she continued, "It's in the people you meet, one or two at every stop, whom you hold dear to you, because of whom your Christmas-card-sending list actually becomes meaningful and longer." She got me at "people." With tears welling and face reddening, I excused myself, admitting that I had to go cry now.

I've not been the best to those people closest to me - my family. I've had enough of my messy and dirty place, and my frustration has been carried out onto my children and husband. Maybe that's the source of my holding on to my physical stuff; the relational stuff just isn't quite "there" yet. This is a humbling realization and a powerful connection: as I sort through, pack and get rid of material stuff, I am stripped to my bare essence and that's what I have left to offer to people. Scary concept, especially when I need to work on what I can offer my family. But I'll do it. As I head into Good Friday tomorrow, as I greet my children and spouse in the new day and days to come, I pray for the clarity, will and strength to face that stripped-down self, be proud of who I see, and offer that to my family and to the world.

Namaste -

Jane