It's August 1st. We move on Saturday the 8th. Moving truck, cleaning the old place, handing over the keys. I like the old place. The new one is pretty nice, too. It's smaller, with a definite spare room that no one would want to live in but could visit for a few days in. I'm looking forward to the snow that they get and keep most of the winter. I've never lived with that before. I'm not looking forward to finding a new church and job and routine, figuring out where to get the car fixed, where to get haircuts, all that. Can I go to the Sheritan in Tianjin instead? I like that idea.

Mind you, I don't want to live in the smog and traffic and smells and crowds. I don't want to ride trains and taxis. I don't want to struggle to communicate every day.

But I would like to take Chinese classes. I would like to experience the enthusiasm of the Chinese college students. I would like to see Kristen and Renee and Marilyn and Audrey and Geri and Phoebe and a dozen other people any time I want to. I would like to go out for pastries with the ladies. I would like to work in the library. I would like to stop at the Korean restaurant to pick up dinner, or call Sisters or the Pizza Box. I would like my weekly massage and monthly pedicure, cheap. I would like to take my mending pile to a nice lady who won't charge me much for fixing zippers and tears.
I don't want utility bill collectors tromping through my kitchen. I don't want heater-fixing men laying on my bed. I don't want the extreme heat of summer, nor the biting cold of winter. I don't want to miss stars and rainbows and donuts and sweet corn.

But I would like to go to International Day at the school. I would like to go to Beijing at Christmas and Bei Dai He in the fall. I would like to walk through the night market and smell the popcorn and sweet potatoes. I would like to stop and get yang rou chuan (lamb kebabs cooked outside) and then a Magnum ice cream bar from the Best Store.

Can't I just have it all??

Heaven is going to be so good.

Moving

I used to think I would have made a good military wife. For a while I even encouraged Garry to go full time in the military, so we could travel around every few years. Now I'm glad he didn't.

We're moving again. It's been almost a year since we moved to our sweet little duplex, and I'm on the internet searching for a new place. Prices are good in Klamath Falls, where we are going, but we got such a great home here, I'm not sure how the next one can measure up.

I kind of wish we had moved from Tianjin to Klamath Falls, and THEN to Roseburg. Roseburg is so green and beautiful, the weather so mild, and our home so nice, that it would have made a good final destination. Klamath Falls is more brown and bare. But they do get snow, and I like snow. And God will point us to just the right home, hopefully next Friday when we go looking for it.

It's going to be OK. And it may or may not be the final destination. We'll see.

Pick up Lamb

Today, my To Do list includes, "Pick up lamb." This does NOT mean that there will be a fuzzy little creature bouncing around my yard. What it means is that there will be little white packages in my freezer.

When we first came back from China, we lived with Garry's sister, and there were sheep in the pasture right outside our bedroom window. They were so cute! I liked hearing them rustle around and call out to one another.

Garry spent most of last weekend helping his nephew slaughter the sheep. I am just too sensitive about these things. How could I have survived if I'd been born a hundred years or more earlier? Surely there were women like me back then, who cringed every time a lamb was slaughtered.

I'm not a vegetarian. I like to have meat with our evening meals. And during our years in China, I grew to really like lamb, too. It was cheap, and came in these funny packages, thinly sliced and rolled into tubes and frozen. It was easy to take those tubes and chop them into something that could go into spaghetti sauce. Nicole hated it when I used lamb in the spaghetti sauce. The nicest thing about it was that I only had to walk to the corner store to get some, so if I hadn't planned dinner for that day or didn't want to brave the meat market, I could get this plastic-wrapped meat that didn't resemble any animal. That's how I came to think of lamb.

But today, I'm going to pick up lamb. There is something Old Testament and priestly and bloody about knowing it was slaughtered just for my family.

I'm thankful for the blood of Jesus that paid my way so I don't have to endure those sacrifices every time I sin.

I don't live in China anymore

This morning it struck me yet again: I don't live in China anymore.

We've been home for the summer before, but for the last four summers it was always with the knowledge that we were going back. This time it's wierd. We're settling in, changing our address, and not going back. Not going back to the friendships and shopping in the open markets. Not going back to the Mandarin roar constantly flowing around us. Not going back to the persistent honking and voices and city sounds. Not going back.

China is starting to seem very surreal, since life here is so vastly different. In past summers, knowing we were going back kept it at the forefront, plus people were always asking us questions about it. Now the questions are almost all about our future, not our past, so the whole experience is starting to fade. I don't like that.

Garry is fully ensconsed in his job and loving it, and Amanda and I are left job and house-hunting. The housing market here is bulging at the seams but we haven't found just the right place yet. The job market is completely depressed, and finding even a WalMart or McDonalds job is next to impossible, much less a nice receptionist or librarian job. So, we wait for Father's timing in all things.

I am reminded (yet again) that life is full of hard things about every phase you are in, no matter what continent you live on. I guess that's part of what keeps us focused on our true future.

Christmas Banquet

This morning was the school's Christmas bazaar and the high school Christmas banquet was tonight. It was at the Sheraton, but our "room" was a huge tent out back! Actually, it was much nicer than it sounds, with carpet and little white lights in a draped ceiling. But it snowed this morning and the cold wind blew in today. It was the first real day of winter temperatures, the kind that make your knees hurt when you walk. So they had heaters all over the place trying to keep that tent warm. At one point we blew a breaker, and after that the lights were dimmed and we ate by candlelight but had heat. It was actually pretty nice. And the decorations were very well done. Most of the entertainment was Christmas related, so it helped bring the holiday in. I've been a little depressed this week, and this helped lift my spirits. Singing Silent Night and hearing The Innkeeper by John Piper read aloud were nice moments, and seeing three teen boys lip-sync the Chipmunks Christmas was fun. The theme was masquerade, so we all wore masks and elegant clothing. We draw stares in everyday clothing.

Today was a lovely way to bring the season home.

It's English, right?

I went shopping with a group of ladies on Monday. We went to DaHuTong, which is where the street vendors shop, so the prices are cheap and they are hoping you will buy in bulk. I took some pictures and bought a few things, some of which turned out to have very funny wording on the boxes. I thought you might enjoy reading them with me.

The first one is a foot scraper, a kind of very serious sandpaper for those of us with very rough feet. The package says:
"Get rid of the rough and hard scurf of foot. Make the foot not to be odorous and itchy but become slick and soft. The foot scrub can massage the foot if using it usually. There is curative effect to neurosis, nephritis, insomnia, etc. When you walk. It can make you relax. When you sleep, it can make you to have a good dream."
I'm excited that this foot scrubber will get rid of my neurosis! I had to look up nephritis, which turns out to be kidney disease.

The other item was a "Two Lint Remover." Now, I have one of these in storage in the states, and I've missed it; it runs on batteries and removes those little lint balls that form on sweaters. I spent $1.25 on it, and felt good about that. But the box turns out to be worth twice that amount.
"The lint remover from our company is the latest product in our country at the beginning of 21st century. In the past unable to remove totally full to bits ball chipping above woolen or artificial doogs, etc, NOW can function as use it. And it is simple to operate, totally suitable for being used in every family. It is suitable for being used in removing bits chipping of fluffed above the clothes, it also clean dust."
So, if you have full to bits ball chipping or bits chipping of fluffed above the clothes, just call me.

It might be a good thing I already knew what to do with these items.

Keep smiling,
Dawn

In Passing

Lately I've been reading my "baby" brother's blog . What struck me about it was his subtitle, "Nobody tells you when you get born here how much you'll come to love it and how you'll never belong here." Never belong.

That's what I've been thinking, almost like the rhythm of a railroad, and I bike the side streets of Tianjin lately. Never belong, never belong. This is not my country. I have learned to cope, I like some things about it, and I can learn to even (dare I say?) love it here. But I will never be a Chinese person. I'll never belong here.

Local people point that out to me regularly. "Waiguoren? Waiguoren." Foreigner. Literally “outside country person.” I am reminded of TV shows in which some hick says, “Too many fur’ners ‘round here.” I’m not sure what American people group that represents; maybe it’s the perpetual tension of the southerners toward the northerners. Maybe it represents the attitude of ignorant people who don’t realize that an overwhelming majority of Americans have ancestors born in some other country.

Waiguoren. Foreigner. Never belong. Interestingly, every time I have heard that the last few days (and it is at least once a day), a verse pops into my mind from Hebrews 11. It says that people of faith “admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth.” I don’t have anything profound to say about that; I think it is profound in its own right. What I am concluding is that every time someone calls me a foreigner, I should smile, because my Father is reminding me that I am a citizen of a far better country – and I don’t mean America.