So where to start..?

Hmm, how about "I'm back!" After some time off in Thailand, a conference with our organization in Hong Kong, and two overnight train rides across a good chuk of southern China, the kids and I are back at home outside of Chengdu, where it's just a bit, um, colder than it was in Thailand.

You'll notice that I said "the kids and I" - Jane is still just outside of Bangkok, where she is participating in an ecovillage design conference. It's a great opportunity for her, and ties directly in to several paths that she'd like to take professionally once we leave China. The conference has been a long one - seven weeks total - which puts her back in China by the first week of March.

So in the meantime, I'm here at home single dadding it, which I'm enjoying in an ever so slightly hermit-ish kind of way. Classes don't start for another week, and because the weather has been so gukky (yes, that's a word), I've been enjoying spending some time at home with them, with no big plans other than making sure they've been properly introduced to all of the Star Wars movies and an extended Monopoly game or five. And while the Lego intergalactic trade routes have been established through our household (much to the chagrim of Ysa, who would rather be playing school), Im slowly finding a balance between easing back in to the China groove on one hand, and planning ahead for our next steps after our time with MCC ends this summer on the other.

Which means writing reports for our organization, writing lesson plans, and getting a resume or six into circulation. Balanced by an occasional dose of procrastination. (My routine for writing material for a deadline: 1) Spend an entire day doing Absolutely Nothing Productive when I know I should be writing. 2) During this time, become increasingly grumpy and frustrated. Give up on any hope of ever getting anything useful done Ever. 3) Open a Word document. Decide on the formatting and the font. Write a sentence, then delet it. 4) Go to bed in frustration after looking at a few web pages vaguely related to the topic. 5) Wake up with the introductory sentence fully formed in my head, with the next five paragraphs writing themselves within a half hour. 6) Wish that I could send a note back in time to my yesterday's self to tell him to chill out a bit and stop the worrying already.)

So in and amongst my routine, I hope to be back to life on the blog again, if only to reassure friends and relatives that yes, we're still around. Content will, as always, be fairly nonlinear, and there will probably be the usual nonapologetic random pauses between posts. (By now, this (and the addition of randomly nested paranthetical remarks) should come as no suprise.)