First Week in Review

We’ve been back from China for a week (and almost a day).

It feels longer than that.

Possibly that’s because each day seems to stretch on and on.  It’s hard even to know when to start counting a new day.  In my mind, I typically start a new day at the point when I get up after sleeping.  But when I don’t get to bed until four (or five or six or seven or eight), and I only get to sleep an hour or two, it doesn’t separate the days out like a nighttime nap does.

Things I’ve learned this week:

It is impossible for any two people in a family to have the same reaction to jet-lag.  We’ve had children up almost round the clock.  The last few days have been a bit better.

Everything we cook is weird.  Fruit is good, and frozen jiaozi (potstickers,) is often acceptable, but ramen noodles are not as good in the summer as in the winter (should have guessed that one, maybe).

It’s fun to go crazy watering the plants.  Weeding is not as exciting.

Assembling things like basketball hoops is only interesting for the first fifteen minutes.  Actually, very few things are interesting for more than fifteen minutes–except movies, TV shows and playing catch (which can take hours).

Chinese TV shows end on cliffhangers so it’s hard not to binge-watch them.

Teenage temper tantrums look a lot like toddler temper tantrums–but feel scarier because the kid is so much bigger.

My kids–all of them–have great smiles (which we never see if we have a phone or camera in our hands)

In many ways it has been a very hard week, but maybe the next one will go better.