I am taking full advantage of this time to write. Wow - time to have!? Well, Dave is out with our new Chinese friend Joy (actually Dave’s college friend’s friend) and with Ysa. And the boys have just been invited upstairs for dinner at the upstairs neighbors’ home! Their daughter Lang Lang, who is 5 years old, was down here playing. We met Lang Lang yesterday when her mother, who speaks great English and is an English teacher at this university, stopped by to introduce herself and Lang Lang. Today the man who must be Lang Lang’s father knocked, presented us with a package of dried beef, and wordlessly but with a smile nudged Lang Lang through our doorway. Our boys had a nice, mellow time playing K’Nex (building block system) with her. She’s a sweet girl; I just need to learn some Chinese to be able to communicate with her! And now the boys are up there enjoying home-made Chinese food; I’ll have to check out what they had.

We have been HOME now since Saturday (gotta get used to saying that)! Our “waiban” (foreign affairs office assistant) had graciously brought us here from where we’d been studying for 3 weeks. It was about 1 hour away by car (yet still in Chengdu – big, big city). He and his wife took us out for lunch at a convenient place about one block away. We discovered steamed egg, a big plate full of quivering, pale-yellow, smooth, pudding-like goodness.

Right away on Saturday, Luo Bo took Dave over to the Foreign Affairs office. (Well, actually, the very very first thing we did after lunch was go out and purchase toilet paper.) He arranged for our nanny/house-help/local goddess to come over and we figured out the terms of her employment with us. He called for water delivery to be set up for us and they arrived within the hour – we’ve got our own personal office water cooler now!. He arranged for another staff person, Sarah, to come by and answer some of our questions. Dave returned with lots of ______ for us to eat, and then as the kids were being put to bed, I escaped to meet up with Sarah. She and I visited many supermarkets, as they translate them here, and I returned with a bathmat, dish soap, 4 pillows, and 1 bottle and 2 cans of Snow beer.

We spent Sunday, Monday and today mostly cleaning the apartment. Yes, having read “Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui” to deal with our clutter in the last 2 years has turned me into somebody who doesn’t want to have clutter! When I saw the big, beautiful closet spaces all filled to capacity with unorganized stuff, I knew I couldn’t have that. Prior residents sure didn’t want to tackle this project, but now future residents can have lots of space and things organized.

Along with the indispensable help of the “Aiyi,” we have: cleaned every book and bookshelf (6 of them), cleaned windows, walls, doorways, cleaned 2 tall upright dressers, swept and mopped floors, scrubbed the inside of 5 tall storage closets. We have sorted through 24 blankets to determine which to take to wherever has a big enough washing machine. We have washed innumerable washcloths, hand-towels and 8 big towels. We have washed every bedsheet, and sorted out what to keep or not. We have washed every item in the kitchen – 17 glasses, 13 mugs, 19 plates, 8 bowls, many cooking supplies, silverware. We discovered baking soda that expired in 2001, as well as baking powder that expired in 2007, along with other (thankfully, bug-free) ancient cooking supplies. The cinnamon is still a keeper! ☺ We still have to go through a deep drawer of herbs, and another one of I-don’t-know-what… Sorting through 4 shelves of old shoes and the back upright closet full of bike tires, bicycle baskets, 12 duffel bags and other outdoorsy-looking things still awaits us.

The hardest thing to deal with has been the boxes of books and ESL-teaching materials. We have reviewed and thought about every item; for example, pondering if a future student could use something we might not want. We are keeping some items of various styles here for future residents. Many books and teaching supplies will soon go back to the MPC resource library at Sichuan Normal University, where we just spent the last 3 weeks. Several other boxes of teaching supplies we are keeping with the intent of going through them after classes have begun and we have a better idea of what our curriculum will be. As it stands, we have 4 bookcases totally full of books and teaching supplies. We have a few boxes yet in storage on purpose. And we have one bookcase totally full of children’s books; about 1/3 were from prior residents – yay! And we have 2 desks with generous quantities of games, about half ours and half that come with the place.

I am mindful as I clean and sort how lucky we are to have this time, the resources of some very helpful people here, patience (tested, fickle, but sometimes accessible), and a home. The other MCC volunteers across the world are never far from my mind lately. I think about new friends I made who are in Africa and Latin America who have to have “flee bags” ready, should violent emergency situation erupt. I have been taking cold showers (not too hard to do in summer, but still) in honor of my counter-parts in areas of the world where basic sanitation and clean water are difficult to obtain, even with their outsider-privilege. We’re working hard, trying to keep perspective, and settling in.