"Let's Not Eat Chinese Food Tonight, Ok?"

Carly and I are kind of in a weird place right now. We've bought our tickets home and we only have two months left here but also we STILL have two moths left. Home is so close that I can almost taste the one scoop of coffee cookies 'n cream with peanut butter sauce and chocolate sprinkles that I will eat when I get there and yet far enough away that when I actually stop and think about it, I get that soul crushing you-still-have-two-months feeling.

We have a bunch of things that we need to do before we go home and often times I feel like, if I do all of those things fast enough, I can go home sooner. Which is not at all true but it still makes me feel better when, at the end of the day, I can check of a bunch of things on the Going Home check list. However, often times, in order to check things of off the list, we end up giving up enjoying where we are right now. So, to keep ourselves from getting too stressed out, or focusing too much on what comes after these two months, we have decided to spend less time thinking about things that have to get done and more time enjoying our here and now and trusting that everything will fall into place as we go.

We have found that we are the most relaxed when we aren't in Lin'an. So, on the weekends, we have started hanging out in the big cities around Lin'an. Most weekends, we end up in Hangzhou shopping, eating, going to the movies and drinking copious amounts of Coco's milk tea but, a few weekends ago, we had a long weekend so we went to Shanghai.

Hangzhou is a big, international city but Shanghai is an even bigger, even more international city. There are foreigners everywhere! (Carly and I aren't used to seeing other foreigners so, unfortunately, we have picked up the Chinese habit of just staring when we see them but thats something we are working on....)There is western food and there are lots and lots of really big stores! It is glorious. Also, there is a really nice subway which makes getting around super easy (as opposed to Hangzhou which is slightly more complicated). Plus, since Carly and I were there two years ago during our study abroad, we got to walk around and remember how much fun we had that semester! We even found the fruit juice bar and the Thai restaurant that we went to on our last trip and got to re-enjoy the coconut curry and the strawberry pear juices that taste like they were sent from heaven.

There was also English everywhere, which was nice but also a little distracting. There aren’t a ton of foreigners in Lin’an and the ones that are here are either fluent in Chinese or fluent in other languages and don’t use English unless they have to (and some of them don't speak English at all...the other night I met someone on the bus and he asked me if I spoke Spanish, French and Chinese before we finally got to the point where we both realized that neither of us spoke enough of the same language to have a conversation). So, long story short, we don’t hear English in places like restaurants or cafes or stores very often. Even at work, unless they are talking to us, everything is in Chinese. I don’t always realize it because Carly and I only speak English and we use English with our kids and even our Chinese has English in the places where we don’t know the Chinese, so it feels like we hear English all the time. It wasn’t until we were sitting in a restaurant in Shanghai and could hear an English conversation a few tables over that I realized just how uncommon it was. And since we usually can’t understand, we don’t listen. But, when you can understand everything someone is saying without having to think about it, your ear just tends to naturally wonder over to what the other people are saying. So much so, that it made it hard for me to focus on what Carly and I were talking about. I did think that I was being slightly dramatic and possibly just making an excuse for my nosiness but then Carly mentioned that she was just as distracted by it. So, it’s definitely real (and being home, with English everywhere all the time, is definitely going to take a little bit of adjusting to). But it was also refreshing!

I love Lin'an but I must admit that when we get back on the bus or the train to head home for the week, I do feel a little sad knowing all of the yummy pancakes and cute clothes that I am leaving behind. But thankfully, our time in Lin'an working and doing all of the things that we have to do help us to appreciate the weekend things like shopping, eating Western food and using the subway that much more!

**Also, with only 2 months left, I am in this weird I-love-China-and-don't-want-to-leave-but-I-also-am-really-missing-America kind of mood so most of the things that I've been thinking about are either related to loving China or missing home which has made me kind of mushy and therefore may make my future posts kind of mushy...so this is just a warning to you all of whats to come. Read future posts at your own risk.**