Roman Riding (posted by Dave)

At least I think that’s what it’s called. If I’m right, it’s when you are riding two horses at once, with one foot on each. That’s what having the internet here feels like sometimes. I can hang out in our apartment and surf the web like I usually do. I can check my bank statement, see a bit of what my friends are up to, and can even get mind-numbingly frustrated with our mortgage company, just like home! In the meantime, the kids have a friend over and they’re watching Scooby-Doo on our DVD player (part of our bootleg movie score from last week).

Then I go out the door of our apartment, down five flights of stairs, take a right down the driveway and another right through the side gate of the campus, and bang! - I’m in China, complete with old guys pushing rusty three-wheeled bikes full of old cardboard, restaurants with piles and piles of steamed buns for sale, and ladies in shiny polyester print miniskirts walking tiny tiny dogs.

Oh, and did I mention that I then make a transformation to a barely functioning illiterate? Just the other day, I managed to piece together the sign for “dollar store”, but usually, my big accomplishment is telling a passerby that, yes, I have three kids and they are ages 6, 4, and 2. This exhausts my functional Chinese vocabulary, and then I have to smile and nod and grunt a lot. Good thing my kids are cute.

Of course, fans of slapstick comedy will know that if you have one foot in one place and one foot in another, (think one foot on the boat and one on the pier) there’s always the possibility that things won’t always go as smoothly as planned. Hence the periodic gaps in the blog posting schedule, email replies, etc. It’s not that we aren’t thinking of our friends and family, it’s just that we’re, um... in China for a while. Don't worry - we'll come back to the internet and visit and let you know what we've been up to...