It's been awhile since I posted some of my thoughts/babblings/randomness, so I figured now might be a good time to catch you all up on what's been going on with us. Part of the reason I haven't been writing much is that I don't like blogspot's new user interface...for some reason, I find it really difficult to format...but maybe that's just me. Anyways, on to some randomness:
- My recent "I'm so supid" moment: When you live in a cross-cultural environment, it's easy to have SO many of these "I'm so stupid" moments....often times, at least for me, they're related to my poor language ability. Yesterday, we were out of power for most of the day. I was chatting with a shopkeeper downstairs, making sure that she didn't have power either (since sometimes it's possible for just us to lose power for any number of reasons). As we were talking, she asked what we were going to do for lunch. I told her I would go home and cook...to which she replied, "but there's no power." I responded, "But we have gas" (all stoves are gas here and there aren't central gas lines, just tanks of gas that you can buy). She smiled, nodded, and we parted ways. After I walked up the stairs, I thought more about what I said...and then I had my "uh oh" moment where I realized I told her, "But we have air" instead of gas. Oh dear...she was probably thinking....uh, that's great...you have air...silly foreigner, how's she gonna cook with air?!? Man, I really gotta work on my language!
- My recent "are you serious?!" culture moment: We live in a place where...well, how do I say this nicely? There are lots of funky smells all around (after all, it's normal for kids to potty on the street, there's lots of people smoking, and some stuff just smells plain weird). Anyways, the other day, our neighbors recently told me that our landlord (who lives upstairs) was asking them what that smell was outside our apartment (I'm assuming he asked implying it was a bad smell). My friends explained that it was our dryer....yup, the "bad" smell that we produce from our house is the smell of dryer sheets that gets piped into our stairwell. Haha! I suppose fabric softener can smell bad to somebody who grew up in a culture that doesn't use dryers (it's one of the luxury splurge items we bought when we moved here). But I never would have thought that fabric sheets smell bad! Ahhh, to live in another culture! :)
- My "I should really blog about this" moment: I was talking with one of my best friends this morning, and she reminded me that I should probably blog about the fact that we're expecting #2! I've been putting it off...hoping that I would get it together enough to share the news first in a letter to friends back home...but I haven't gotten around to it...and I'm now already 22 weeks pregnant. So I guess this will have to suffice as our big announcement to say that we're expecting another baby boy in October. Being pregnant in our locale certainly has had its challenges, and I've definitely done things this pregnancy that I would have never done the first time around. This time, I hiked HuangShan and visited villages while pregnant...though I think I'm done with village trips for now. Anyways, we're thankful that things have been going smoothly and all seems well.
- My "my husband is hilarious" moment: As some of you may have guessed, since we're expecting, that also means we're coming back to the US soon! We've bought our plane tickets, and we'll land at LAX on July 26! So soon! We'll be in the US until March 2013, though a chunk of that will be in TX, where we'll deliver the baby. While we feel like we're in cram mode to get a ton of stuff done, we're also thrilled and excited to be heading back home to catch up with family and friends. The other night, as we were relaxing on the couch, Richard was looking at Korean BBQ and Brazilian BBQ restaurants online. Richard said, "I'm so excited to be going back to the US." I said, "Really? But you're not even burned out," to which he replied, "I know, but I'm hungry!" Haha....ahh, Richard...I think that boy misses his meat!
Anyways, I think that's enough babbling for now...hopefully that catches you up on life with us. We hope to see many of you very soon. :)