Happy [Lunar] New Year

Hello again. I feel like I should just have a running header of "Sorry it's been so long, I suck at blogging, blah blah blah" and have done with it once and for all.
So.
Sorry. Again. I'm just going to pretend that I'm doing the whole new-year-fresh-start thing and disregard the fact that January is over. The lunar new year is just starting, ok? And that is a way way bigger deal in China than the turn of the calendar year (it's like a solid week of celebrating and lighting off exorbitant amounts of fireworks at all hours of the day or night. The Chinese invented gunpowder and are really going to work that for the rest of eternity). When in Rome--er, Shenyang--right?

My reason/excuse for not blogging is that I didn't know what to write about. Part of it was trying to find that balance between being informative about my life and navel gazing. Part of it was that I couldn't think about ways to accurately describe my life here without being too aware of how different it was and then being freaked out about it. I had to let time and familiarity give me enough comfort so that I could both describe the differentness of my life and still function within it. I think I can do that now.

In the time since I last wrote, life has more or less settled into a rhythm. The rest of our belongings were delivered in December, along with the shipment of consumables like toothpaste and canned tomatoes. That made life easier--I don't have to spend so much time finding and implementing work-arounds anymore. I'm grateful that I am able to find work-arounds, don't get me wrong, but boy do they take a lot of energy. I'm still getting things unpacked and organized (and discovering things I haven't seen since we lived in Alabama--each box is a litany of "oh hey I remember that" and "where the heck did this come from?"), but progress is being made. My loom made it in perfect condition and Mike patiently let me stock up on yarns. Thus far I've made a new year's themed table runner and I'm working on a scarf for Mike, which has given me more problems than all my other projects combined and it's only 18 inches long right now. This is a labor of love, I tell you.

I've also found better and cheaper places to buy milk and cheese, learned how to make bipimbap, gotten lost on my way to Wuai Market and accidentally found a cathedral, baked a cheesecake on commission, learned the Mandarin word for plaid (thanks Donal), started ironing Mike's dress shirts on a regular basis, had a demonic migrating head cold, been called as second counselor in the Relief Society, and adopted 11 houseplants and all the marines. We have them over for dinner a few times a month (the marines, not the houseplants). They get fed, I get to feed people and have my ego stroked, it's a good trade.

Life is...life, really. Sometimes it's wonderful, sometimes it sucks, and it's challenging and dull and lovely and odd all at once. I am going to try to document some of that this year on the blog, even if it's just the dailiness of life. That's all I've got, honestly. I'm a daily kind of person, and I am content with that. So hopefully people out there like a slice-of-life approach--otherwise we've moved into serious navel gazing territory and really, no one needs that.

Happy New Year!

It's the Year of the Rooster, so before the holiday the hotel staff came and gave us a...rooster.
 A round, fat, hilariously Chinese rooster. I love it.