During the past week, I was fortunate enough to have my wish for visitors met twice! First, my dear friend Natalie’s parents Diane and Orry came to Shanghai as a stop on their 3 week China trip and I gave them a quick tour of my favorite spots. They were traveling with some of their close friends and it was fun to meet Linda and Nick and bond over being Wolverines. Go Blue! The weather was horrible but we marched through the soggy streets and had a good time even with the bad weather. I impressed myself with my ability to [View Full Entry]

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The last week plus has really flown by for me. I finished my language class on Thursday. I didn’t know I’d be taking a test, so of course I didn’t study. I think it’s better though. The point isn’t to cram, it’s to assess my retained Mandarin. I did fine. I am debating whether to join a group class after the group catches up to me in a few weeks, or just do private lessons. I have started the kids with a tutor and I am going to have lessons with the same teacher twice a week. We’ll see how that [View Full Entry]

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So much to blog, but finding it hard to make time to do it. I think these weekly reviews are working well. Let’s do this thing. Last week was another busy one. I helped out with a new parent orientation at school. While stuffing the welcome bags and talking with the women who were going to be speaking, I was offering my ideas and next thing you know—on the agenda. Darn. I was a bit nervous, thinking it would be hundreds of people, but it ended up being a much smaller group than last year. We had the potential for as [View Full Entry]

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Welcome to blog number 150! Every now and then I glance at my blog stats (read: daily) and today I realized was another milestone of sorts. 150 entries from the time we decided to move until now. Over a year later, and I’m still finding things to write about. We had a good week. Mark was out of town until Wednesday night but he got home in time for our anniversary on Thursday. We spent most of the evening at the school open house for parents. We really enjoyed meeting with the kids’ teachers and my only complaint is the evening [View Full Entry]

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Over the weekend, we hosted our friends for brunch which I lovingly prepared in my teeny kitchen. I made muffins and two types of pancakes to go with the fruit salad and bacon I also prepared. I had flashbacks to my first brunch with Mark in our first apartment together. Similar sized kitchen. The chocolate chip pancakes were a big hit with the kids and adults. I showed Joanna my snack closet--all the food the kids and I brought back from our two week trip home this summer. She was shocked and amazed that we managed to bring that much back [View Full Entry]

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What a difference a week makes! I am feeling way better and far less grumpy than last I wrote. Just a few highlights from my week: Nathan was home Monday and Tuesday with a cold but he's back in the school game now and seems to be doing fine. Emily is doing fine too. Her biggest issue at the moment is not liking any of the school food. So, we are packing her lunch each day. I'm a bit annoyed that she refuses to eat the school lunch, but I will go there soon and investigate it myself. I took a [View Full Entry]

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When I went to the Chinese doctor for my thyroid earlier this year, he talked about qi (“chee”). In my mind, flow and qi are the same thing. I need a plumber. I am clogged. I don’t know if it’s the weather or being sad to be back after such a great trip home, but I am one grumpy expat. I know I’m not alone because I see some really hostile expat faces all over town. In fact, yesterday, when I was in a taxi heading home from being assessed on my Chinese abilities (more on that later) I saw a [View Full Entry]

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We've been back in Shanghai for less than a week and we are back in almost full swing. Our new apartment is good, we are getting used to things. Mark did some amazing work on the place when the kids and I went to the US for two weeks. He did a trip to IKEA and solved a lot of our storage issues by buying and building three dressers and some other shelves/bins for all our clothes. The apartment is furnished but really lacked in the storage/drawer area and it's much better now. I have since been back to IKEA and [View Full Entry]

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The deal is I am up at 3am cobbling together a post to make up for the 2 week absence. I am back from my blog-vacation. I missed the ritual but the time away was probably good for me too. We were so incredibly busy and I had inconsistent Internet access. But now, across the world again, I am connected and back in story telling mode. The night before we left Chicago I am typing this at Natalie and Matt's place--my across the street friends and neighbors. They have fed us many meals while we've been home, including tonight's wonderful and [View Full Entry]

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Wow. We are far too busy for me to spend time blogging--but I gotta. I just gotta. It's part of the story and I must tell it all. I have been documenting our every move for over a year and so as we are getting the new apartment, signing the lease, moving...all I can think is "I gotta write this down!". So in an attempt at speedy reporting, from the scene, I will give a few updates. The apartment search was amazingly quick. I started looking on Sunday and we had a place on Tuesday. Our current landlady helped us connect [View Full Entry]

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