New to me.

Fish drying on overhead wiring. Totally normal.

Our time is quickly coming to a close. We will leave here late December 19th and go to Thailand to celebrate my birthday and Christmas. We will return for a very quick 36 hours and leave China for Indiana on December 27th. Through the realities of time travel we will leave Wuhan for San Francisco at 2:45 p.m. and leave San Fran for Indy also at 2:45 p.m. on the same day. A mental list got going the other day where I started cataloguing all the aspects of this life that were genuinely new. This is how far I got:

I think this is the coolest thing ever. Those big tree bark pieces up top?!? Cinnamon.

Just think, Tucker is just three years old and he will have been on 14 different planes and 7 different long train rides just for our Asia travels by the time he gets back home.

We've been talking a lot lately about how this experience will be viewed once we get home and get some distance from it. I suppose that like many other things, there will be a natural tendency to romanticize the life we have had here once we are snug safe in our comfort zone of home. Life here has never been "easy" or "normal." Just as one becomes accustomed to the routine of their life (however atrocious or fortunate), we have learned to deal with our reality here. Nearly twenty weeks ago, I felt like I had been dropped on Mars, but I figured out a way to survive and just in time for us to leave.

PRIOR TO CHINA,

I had never lived overseas. 

I had never went more than a month without driving a car. 

I had never lived in a society that had a completely different written and spoken language than myself. 

I had never had a playdate where the mother and I completely communicated by Google Translate. (Ironically this was with our Japanese friends that live here. She does not speak enough Mandarin to communicate with me!) 

I had never lived in a place with an elevator.

As an adult, I had never lived completely on cash without emergency (or daily) access to credit or debit cards. This has been a real challenge! I am not good about mentally adding in a grocery store!

I had never seen a beluga whale or panda or kangaroo. 

I had never lived in an apartment this small.

I had never been in a city of larger than 8 million (population of NYC). Let alone LIVED in a city of 10 million and visited ones much larger.

I had never been to a restaurant where the entire menu was in another language and there were no pictures.

I had never seen such poverty.

I had never seen a rodent in a grocery store or train station. 

I had never been the minority each and every day in every place. (Foreign fellowship might be the exception to this...even though there are a significant number of French and Canadians.)

I had never shopped for all our food needs almost completely in outdoor markets.

I had never ridden a train (for anything over 30 minutes).

I had never had a driver. Or lived where walking was the main mode of transportation. 

I had never seen a wild monkey while walking in the woods.

I had never worried about who I talked about Christ with.

I had never went for six months not seeing my parents.

I had never spoken Mandarin Chinese.

China has taught me so much...about the world, about myself, my values, my kids, my husband. The world has shrunk somehow. I love it that Josh and I can have conversations where we say, "Hey, when we get to Thailand, let us go to the Italian restaurant with those Canadians we met in China."