On Drowning, Breath, and Baptism
The summer I turned eight years old I spent a day at the beach. It was supposed to be fun—a family day with my sister, mom, dad, cousins, aunt, and uncle.
Children's Author
The summer I turned eight years old I spent a day at the beach. It was supposed to be fun—a family day with my sister, mom, dad, cousins, aunt, and uncle.
In my last post, I said that my husband and I came up with the brilliant idea of foregoing weekend extracurricular activities for the kids so that we could use Saturday as our “Family Adventure Day” and get out of the expat bubble here in Beijing suburbia and explore China.
A couple of weeks ago, I attended a family event at a conservation club, the grounds of which had a large building, a shooting range, and a pond for dog races.
In my last post I talked about the frustrations of living in China. Simple errands—opening a new bank account, changing phone plans, returning items to the store—become complex projects.
When I first arrived, the other expat moms I met here didn’t bother to sugarcoat their experiences in China. “I’m going to be real with you,” they said. “Be prepared to have good days and bad days.
Any time we move into a new country, a part of us will change. We have to. We learn a new language (or at least pieces of one) or other tricks to enable communication. We learn cultural taboos and make sure we don’t commit them.
I came across a photograph of myself recently.
What do you see when you look at this picture? An old shoe box? Garbage that’s been picked up off the ground? Probably not valuable objects worth saving, right?
I’ve been overseas long enough to know that the media doesn’t always give an accurate portrayal of what life is really like in certain parts of the world.
The noise never lulled in my childhood home—the TV blared even if no one was watching it, and my father, three siblings, and I never seemed to speak in muted voices—our conversations spewed forth full volume.