More Than One Misnomer

You know there's no Facebook in China and for that matter, no Twitter and well they all ride bikes and there's no foreign news...right? China, naturally is still closed to the "Western" ways of the world. And if you believed all of this, you couldn't be more wrong.

A Bit of Ingenuity

Some people just assume that women my age can't cook or that we do take away meals or some sort of nonsense. More and more I find that in my years spent living abroad I learned how to cook "outside of the box" because necessity is the mother of invention and induction.

The Things People Say

About 7 years ago someone told me and my husband that our lives were about to change and said with a hint of sarcasm that life would never be the same again.  Granted we were about to become parents for the first time and honestly had no idea what we were getting ourselves into but what we were about to discover is that our lives were going to be less ordinary.

Hey Beanpole...Listen Up!

The other day I sent my former boss and friend a link to a new app that alerts residents of Beijing to changes in air quality.  He wrote back "we are all gonna die" to which I replied "that's a guarantee" and then rambled on a bit about the trade-offs involved in living here where I can smell everything and living there where I can't smell anything, after all where ever it is you make your home their are positives and negatives.

Endless Summer

Some people might think the title here is going to be all about the glorious weather we have been lucky enough to enjoy for the past six days, but it's not.  While moving back to Boston was not a decision we made quickly the move itself, took place over the course of week give or take a day.

I ♥ the Red Sox

When we packed up our 11, yes 11, suitcases we had to make some pretty hard decisions about what we were going to be bringing back.  There were some obvious I lived in Asia items; handmade scarves from Laos, a wooden Buddha head from Thailand, a red ceramic Mao face, a Mongolian hat and along with the clothes and toys were four Red Sox caps in a variety of sizes and colors that had all made the trip over and would make the trip home.  After all, Red Sox fans never leave a cap behind.

I Am No Tai Tai

There are friends at home I still haven't told about our hired help.  Their astonishment at my need to have someone at my beck and call would give them a moral coronary.Having hired help is of course where my my tai tai life ends.

Animal House No More

I don't know who this woman is but I found her on Boston.com under "yell here, don't yell at your kids" and I was like alright, let's take a gander.

Waiting For Snow

If the jet lag accompanied by three small people hasn't undone my brain the weather forecast calling for snow certainly will.  In Shanghai I expect the world to come to a full-stop when freezing rain or nay, snow touch the ground because well, they have palm trees there and that's unnatural and that umbrellas "yu san" only work in sun and rain, and bikes don't come with snow tires unless you have an unnamed friend's mountain bike.

I Just Flew In

Back to Boston is the theme here...after 2.5 years (although I call it 3 years) living in China because quite frankly a day in China is like 1.5 days in regular life.  Time takes longer when it's life as opposed to say, a holiday because everything is harder when it's regular life.  There is no hotel gift shop in real life with all the little essentials you might have forgotten.