Mamalogues: Reminiscing

All the snow this week in Texas has brought back memories of a time when I lived in one of the coldest cities in the world. I didn't choose to live there, but being assigned to a school in northeast China was a chance happening. In 1st grade, I remember reading an article about the ice hotel in Sweden, and I thought it would be really cool to sleep on a bed made out of ice.

Well, I didn't actually sleep on a bed of ice, but I was practically walking on ice for six months of the year.

Visiting the ice festival back in 2013.
I wanted to hug some ice.

Getting this much snow in Texas has been a first for everyone in my family. My daughter thoroughly enjoyed herself and spent at least 1-2 hours outside playing everyday. Yes, even when it was 6 degrees outside. I reluctantly went outside as well to play with her and actually had a little bit of fun myself. Although I consider myself a true adult and have fully immersed myself in the world of adulting, I did gain a new insight on snow: true powdery snow has the consistency of damp sand. It doesn't pack well which makes building snowmen very difficult, but has a therapeutic feel to it when picked up and fluffed between the hands. 

The snow, however, inspired me to revisit my memoir I wrote about my year living overseas. I haven't read it myself in many years and decided to take some time and reread it. 

Once upon a time, I had time to write, edit, and self-publish my own book.
Now I just read picture books to my kids. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Reading it this time was a little different because the memories felt more faraway and distanced. If I didn't know any better, it was like I was reading someone else's retelling of their experience overseas. Many of the memories, had I not written them down at the time they happened, I would never remember. Some of the memories bring back clear mental images after reading. I can still remember the faces and names of certain students. I can still remember my apartment number, the floor plan, and the layout of my furniture. 

But a lot has changed.

For starters, I found a lot more grammatical and writing errors. A little background information. When I wrote my books, I would write it, create the book, and order one copy. After that copy arrived, I would reread it and mark corrections in the book. Then, I would go back into the program and make all these changes before bulk orders to share. As I read, I found a lot of errors I still missed as well as some stylistic changes I would change if I were to write it again. I'd like to say despite not utilizing my English potential to its fullest, my writing today is still better than it was eight years ago. 

Secondly, the person I am has changed. I think that's to be expected and beneficial. I'm almost eight years older than I was when I completed the book and my roles as a person have changed. I am now a wife, mother, and still a teacher, although not of English. I read a lot of anecdotes where I wanted to react differently to the situation. But alas, I was not that person eight years ago and reacted the way I did. 

Ironically, I'd like to say my Chinese has gotten better, especially in regards to speaking. True, I am not immersed in the language and do not see Chinese on street signs or store labels, but by speaking Chinese to my daughter and reading Chinese children's books, I am using it almost 100% of the day. I did not do this in China as I had American teammates as well as English classes to teach. 

Reading my old memories made me realize more clearly the extent of what I experienced.

1. There are a lot of creeps out there, and I encountered quite a few. I didn't realize how many awkward moments I actually experienced until I reread the stories I wrote. And these are only the ones I wrote down. 

2. I experienced a lot of cultural confusion. I was neither fully American nor fully Chinese, and being in China exposed a lot of it. There were many times when it made me confused or angry. 

3. Chinese people didn't know how to treat me - they couldn't treat me as fully American and they couldn't treat me as fully Chinese. This put them in a sort of limbo, caught in the middle. And if it wasn't that, they'd flirt with me because I was a special kind of "exotic."

4. I had more culture shock in Thailand than China.

If you were one of the lucky few to receive a copy of this book, thank you for showing interest in a very special year of my life. I hope it was able to provide a fresh perspective and some interesting memories for you to partake in. I do miss writing the way I used to, but I know this time of my life brings me other responsibilities and tasks. Perhaps someday, I will get to bind my writing between covers again. For now, you can read about my life happenings here on the blog. 

Mid Year Check-In

At the beginning of the new year, I wrote a post with a few goals I wanted to accomplish. It's my version of a "New Year's Resolution." Well, Unfortunately for most people, 2020 has turned out to be one terrible year. You can read about my take on the terrible twos here, more for comedic relief than real talk. 

A whole six months has gone by. I can't tell you half of what I did in these six months, But I know the time has gone by because:

• I'm not pregnant anymore
• I have a second child
• There are more gray hairs on my head (I think...I'm not really counting...)

I started the year with three general "goals" I wanted to accomplish. 

1. Finish my cross-stitch
2. Find a new work-life balance
3. Keep my sanity

1. Finish My Cross-Stitch

I did! I finished my cross-stitch. I put in extra hours early this year, stitching at night, but I didn’t finish it before he was born. Somehow, after my son was born, I found time here and there to finish! It took me about three and a half years, but I finished it on June 28, 2020. This is my second large-scale cross-stitch that I've finished. Once again, the irony is that when I purchased this cross-stitch, I was living in China and single. When I finished it, I was living in the USA, married, with two kids two and under.

Originally, I bought this cross-stitch with a goal of finishing it before we had kids. That didn't happen. So then, I wanted to finish it before we were done having kids. That didn't happen either...but to my own credit, I only missed that goal by about three months.

Here it is!

Something often overlooked about cross-stitches is actually the back. If you enter a cross-stitch into a county fair or contest, they actually judge you more on the back than the front. Why is that? The back tells about the journey. Anyone can come up with a nice looking design on the front, but it takes dedication and patience to have a beautiful cross-stitch back.

So what is it about this journey that's so important? 

1. No Knots - cross stitching doesn't involve tying any knots. The ends of each thread are secured by looping your stitches on top of the ends. Every time you start a new thread, it must be secured in this way. 
2. Reaching over vs. starting new - I don't know if there's a technical term for this. If anyone's savvy enough in cross-stitch terminology, please let me know! But this is where instead of cutting the thread and starting in a new location, you take your thread from your last ending point and reach across the canvas to start it in a new location, therefore resulting in a very long piece of thread traveling on the back. It makes the back look messy and sloppy.
3. Consistency - The Xs on the front need to be crossed the exact same way in order to appear consistent and neat. This means if you stitch the bottom left to top right first, it has to be stitched first on every single X. When done correctly, the stitches on the back will all appear to be in the same direction instead of alternating vertical and horizontal stitches. 

Is it obvious to tell if someone's taken their time and cross-stitched the correct way? Yes. If you know what you're looking for, it's extremely obvious. One of the most telling signs is that the back of your cross-stitch should look exactly like the front.

Here's my back:

I have to say, I did a really nice job on this cross-stitch. I've been sloppy on previous ones in the past and learned the hard way, hence how I've been able to come up with my mental list of "what it takes to have a good cross-stitch." The design itself is not a difficult one, especially not compared to the last one I finished, but it fits perfectly for why I wanted to finish it: it's for my children. 

2. Find a New Work-Life Balance. 

I have been able to find a new work-life balance. In doing so, I've cut my students in half, I limit the hours I work, and I'm only teaching online right now. For most of this, I have to thank coronavirus actually. If the virus didn't exist, I would have pressured myself into taking all my students back which would be 12+ hours of teaching a week in five days. Add that onto taking care of my kids during the day while my husband was working as well as breastfeeding, or attempting to breastfeed my son, and that results in one crazy mom. 

I'll never forget the day I put my pump on the kitchen counter and pumped during my 30 minute break in between two lessons while cooking spaghetti on the stove for dinner at the same time after my daughter was born. I don't even know where she was. I think my husband was watching her. 

I'll be eternally grateful for coronavirus that I will not have to do that with my son this time around. But that's pretty much the only reason why I'm grateful for this virus. For everything else, it's ruined a lot of plans, trips, outings, and life in general. 

3. Keep my Sanity

As mentioned above, this virus has helped me to keep my sanity in certain ways. In others? Not so much. It's been a new learning curve to figure out how to plan grocery trips now and be intentional about what I buy. I've had to train my daughter into a daily routine/schedule that doesn't involve going on playdates or wandering stores for fun. But we've found other things that she has enjoyed during these last three months of staying at home and staying out of public places, which has also kept us from going crazy ourselves: going on bike rides in the bike trailer, swinging in our front lawn and "blasting off", swinging in our hammock, watching our neighbors mow and trim their lawns, going swimming in our neighbor's pool, watching bunnies and squirrels, digging in our flower beds which don't have flowers, and learning how to be a big sister, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. 

Overall, I think the transition to having two kids while maintaining both of our jobs and general lifestyle has been pretty smooth. The kids have kept me busy during all this staying at home, and to be honest, it's been nice. I wonder to myself what quarantine with no kids would have been like. I think I would have had a lot more time to do the things I wanted to do and no will to do them. Chances are, I would have sat at home, watched a lot of TV, or spent a lot of money shopping online, neither of which I have time to do now.

I hope despite all the terribleness this year has brought for many of us, you've been able to find some silver linings to reach some goals or discover something new for yourself. 

Here's to the second half of 2020. 

Ice Festival!

I randomly saw something pop up on my Facebook feed today about the famous Ice Festival in China. Being a cold winter day in Texas (35°F, feels like 27°F right now) I'm quite proud to say I've lived in the city where it's held AND attended four years ago. Had some fun reminiscing over pictures. And yes, it really is -35°C (-31°F) or colder there in the winter.

The Entrance. Tickets were $50 USD when I went.

Let's count! Two pairs of socks, two pairs of leggings, one pair of jeans, one pair of track
pants (not pictured), two thermal tees, one long-sleeved shirt, one fleece pullover, one
winter jacket (not pictured), and mittens (not pictured) = 12 different
layers = how to stay warm when it's ridiculously cold.

It's really made of ice blocks that they light up.

Ice slide

Walking on ice. All night. 

Sitting on ice.

Ice tunnel.

The scope of this place is probably the size of a small neighborhood. We stayed 1.5 hours before we got too cold and didn't even explore the whole thing. 

When you're from Texas, you usually get 0 chances to hug ice that's taller
than you. If you're lucky, you get 1 in a lifetime. I'm lucky. 

Do I miss it? China, yes. The cold, most definitely not. Would I go back? Yeah :)