Gogovivi

Dear John, It's over.

Think of this post as a "Dear John" letter in which I am writing to tell you that I'm gone and not writing anymore. I don't expect (most of) you to notice that I haven't been posting in quite a while, but I am posting now to tell you that I will not be posting anymore. For what that's worth.

I started this blog seven years ago with a few photos of an empty apartment in Korea, some shots of weeks-old Vivian, and an intention to keep family and friends back home in touch with my daughter's life overseas. During those years, this blog became an important part of my life: it gave me purpose when I felt purposeless, it kept me in touch with friends both real and virtual when I felt my isolation as a foreigner in Asia, and it gave me a way to share my creativity, my writing, and my travels. Over the years it became less about my family and Vivian, and more about travel, photography, and expatriatism.

Now that we are back at home in Oregon, and Vivian is growing, I have some new concerns that I did not have when hosting a personal blog while overseas. I am more aware of a need for stricter personal security. I am also aware that my daughter will soon be starting her own online life (though we are understandably delaying that for as long as possible) and will soon have her own need for privacy. She has already developed a strong reluctance to be photographed, and she has also clearly requested that I stop blogging about her. I respect my child and her autonomy and her future need for personal privacy, so I see no alternative but to comply. Now that we are home, and within easier reach of family and friends, the very reason for this blog's existence is diminished. So I have made the difficult decision to call it quits.

I could have gone in a different direction. Its easy to think of coming home an adjustment-free change. But instead of being exactly who we were before we left, now we are repatriates. Being an expatriate is fun and interesting, but being a repatriate is really much less interesting for everyone. I used to be able to talk about how crazy those Koreans were, or how the simplest facets of life in China defied logic; how fun the travel was, and exploring the strange but true food, but its maybe not so interesting or even appropriate to whine about those crazy Americans. Of how strange life is here, or how isolated and lonely it can be, how inconvenient, and yet how so comfortable and familiar. How it is all those, all at the same time.

Believe me, I want to bitch about repatriation, about American society and commercialism and abundance and lack of appreciation for all those things, but I'm not that blogger. Because although you might not know it, or even believe it, repatriation and adjusting to life in America after living overseas is much harder than it ever was to adjust to living away. Nobody (except former expats like myself) will share any sympathy for how excruciatingly we miss the housekeeper who was in our home for 30+ hours a week. How she was more than a housekeeper, she was our only semblance of family is an entire continent, and she played the role of grandmother, aunt, and friend all at once. Nobody except former expats understand the financial and social blow of returning home, the loss of identity, and the isolation. Oh, the isolation bred by living in a house on a quarter acre instead of in an apartment complex with 20 buildings and who knows how many residents within a stone's throw.

That would be a whole other blog, and that's a blog worth writing, but I am not going to do it, even though I miss blogging. What I have done instead is start a new blog, Garden Home Again. Its a work in progress, an idea that grows in fits and starts, and is already seriously delinquent in recent posts. I want it to be about my dream house (in which I am blessed to live), cooking, creating, growing, inspiration, and urban domesticity.

Gogovivi will remain parked her in perpetuity, or until we move overseas again and I resurrect it (which is not immediately likely but entirely possible in the long term). In the meantime, thank you for your years of friendship and support, and please come visit me at Garden Home Again.

 

 

 

June Sixteen

The apartment is empty; the movers have taken our shipment to the port. There is nothing now but to relax, enjoy the last moments of this chapter of our lives, and prepare to start the next.

The sun is brilliant against a crackling blue sky this morning. But the surf is still big and pounding after two days of summer storms. I wake to the sound of the waves punishing the sea wall, the same morning sound I have heard for the past three years, a sound completely foreign to my ears before we started our lives overseas.

Yesterday we had news that an old friend and compatriot of Bruce's died in a mountaineering accident. It was dark and raining when Bruce told me, and we stood for a long moment savoring the shelter of each other's embrace. Then, as it always does, life carried on and I hustled Vivian off to get ready for school, even as the lives of our friend's wife and children stood still.

Bruce and I have been there before, suspended in that moment when the world crashes down, and watched in silent agony as the world carried on as before. And now, each moment as we prepare to leave this home for another back across that vast ocean, I hear the pounding of the surf and know that although we will be missed by some who remain in China, China will not miss us. In China, all will be as it ever was.

But that's one of the lessons of being an expat, and of life, and of maturity: knowing that regardless of the time spent or hearts touched or marks made, the world carries on as always as we slip from one place to the next.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I should be packing

I should be packing but instead I am thinking too much. My house is a mess, the furniture has all been sold, the apartment rented to another family, the airplane tickets purchased and the dog's paperwork in progress. I am having a moving sale tomorrow and the packers come on Thursday to take our things away which will leave us living out of suitcases for longer than is comfortable.

I confess that when the new job in Portland was confirmed, I felt more reluctance to leave China than I had anticipated. But as my expat friend Anna put it, maybe a person doesn't realize how deeply a place has become "home" until it is time to leave. Despite my confirmed antipathy toward the Chinese government, I am desperately sad to leave my community here. Living here has been a wonderful experience of community and friendship that I think must be truly rare in this day and age.

Despite that, I have become quite enthusiastic about the return to Portland. I am so looking forward to Multnomah Days, 4th of July, blueberries, pony rides, summer camp, friends, new school, a Sauvie Island corn maze, and Christmas at home. I am going to get a tree, a real, live tree, and decorate my house. It is going to be cozy. I can't wait.

Saturday night we had a going away party that highlighted how things have changed since we arrived in Qingdao three and a half years ago. I felt so completely alone when I moved to Qingdao, and my first few stilted interactions with the expat community left me wondering if coming to China was a huge and terrible mistake. It was December, bleak, snowing, and we were living in a hotel room, entertaining ourselves with Chinese TV and swims in the too cold pool.

Fast forward a few years and my back garden is packed full with friends from around the world. They are Chinese and American, Israeli, Slovakian and Romanian, French, Italian, British and Aussie. These people have completely changed my relationship with the world, and the world map on my floor now inspires games about our friends and where they are from.

So thank you, friends for so much more than coming for BBQ and beer, Chinese style, and I will get back to packing now and stop thinking so much.

 

June 20 is coming fast

Suddenly "the move" is happening very, very soon.

Here's what I am working on in anticipation of the impending international move.

• Planning two days of mover chaos June 7 and 8.
• Planning a rummage sale June 5.
• Selling all the furniture in our house that we are not bringing back to the US. Which is almost everything.
• Getting rid of almost every appliance that runs on 220 power (vacuum, hair dryer, TV, etc).
• Off-loading an industrial sewing machine (any takers?) and loads of craft supplies {update: sewing machine gone!}
• Figuring out how to import a rather large dog from China to the U.S.
• Researching cars because we have to buy not one but two cars upon our return to Oregon
• Looking for a contractor to re-finish our hardwoods back home before we move into our house
• Getting Vivian squared away for school
• Signing Vivian up for a summer day camp or two
• Planning leaving gifts for the special people here that we may not see again
• Planning a going away party/neighborhood BBQ
• Trying not to think about it all too much. 
• Researching flights to Seattle leaving on June 20.

From my kitchen: 很快 hěn kuài

 

I hear him outside the gates when he comes to offer his services: He yells in a practiced, resonant, piercing voice, "剪刀 Jiǎndāo 刀 Dāo 磨快 Mó kuài." Scissors. Knife. Make sharp.

I open my kitchen window and lean out and he trolls for business on his bicycle. "我有 Wǒ yǒu," I say, as he slows, turns, and recognizes me. He parks his bike in the shade of the flowering cherry tree as I bring him my kitchen knives.

"今天没有剪刀 Jīntiān méiyǒu jiǎndāo?" he asks. No scissors today?

"有 yǒu," I reply as I return to the house to get my scissors, leaving my knives in his hands.

Knife sharpening is a family business. Three years ago when I moved to JinHai GuangChang I met his father, an leathered man of indeterminate age, his fingernails mangled from years of minor sharpening accidents, his hands scarred. The father smiled deeply, like an inhalation, and I noted that the scars seemed to be relics of inexperience. There are no fresh scars, scars were from his youth.

Now the son has taken over the business and I inquire about his father's health. "不错 Bùcuò," he replies, beaming over this polite chatter from the foreigner. "他很累 Tā hěn lèi." He is very tired.

I linger outside, enjoying the warm spring day and the scent of the blossoms. He wonders why I am taking his photograph, but he does not protest. He doesn't know that these are our last days in China, that perhaps this is the last time he will sharpen my blades. He cranks the sharpening wheel with one hand while holding the blade steady with the other. He whets the blade to a fine edge on a stone, lubricating it with spit from time to time. He tests the blades, then returns them to me for inspection.

"很快 Hěn kuài," he says, and I agree. The blades are very sharp.

Finished, he re-packs his kit onto his bike. Bench, grinding wheel, and stones all back in their place on the back of his bicycle. As he rides away, he begins his chant again.

"剪刀 Jiǎndāo 刀 Dāo 磨快 Mó kuài." Scissors. Knife. Make sharp.

***On this eve of making final plans for our family for this summer, I have realized that despite the challenges, I do love many things about living in China. Much of what I love is what lies immediately outside my windows. "From my kitchen" is a tribute to the special parts of my life that lie immediately outside my home.**

 

Waiting for Carmen

It doesn’t smell like I thought it would here, nor is the sound quite right. On my first morning in Africa, I rise to a smell reminiscent of my hometown  after a spring rain, and a sound distinctly that of my current home in Qingdao, China: a syncopated symphony of construction complete with the pounding of hammers, the buzzing of power saws, and the sporadic voices calling commands over the din. I must confess that my expectations were something more stereotyped; I wrongly expected smells akin to an Indian spice shop: pungent and exotic, and sounds more quiet and peaceful, more Karen Blixen, more bird sanctuary, and less like a city on the rise.

I spend a long day waiting for my friend to arrive. I haven’t seen her in more than 20 years. Not since the birth of her first child have I looked in her eyes, unless you count those few moments at our 10th high school reunion when in a fit of moral superiority, I made an unjustified judgement. Perhaps she remembers my transgression or maybe she never noticed, but 20 years later I still feel guilty for my intolerance and for the assumption that I knew better than she. I am not the same person I was twenty, or even ten, years ago, and I have an apology to make. I have traveled a long way to make it.

I breakfast in the atrium, discomfited by the banality of it all. After living in Asia for more than six years, I am unaccustomed to blending in, as I am typically one of the few fair-headed blues in a sea of wiry-haired browns. Today, though, I am one among many Westerners in this most African of cities. At the table next to me is a salt-and-pepper professorial type nearing the final pages of a scholarly thousand-page book. Scattered around the perimeter of the room are the singles like myself, the ones here alone on business who seem accustomed to breakfasting alone in far-flung places. Nearer the center of the room are the groups of four, eight, even ten, who are clearly colleagues, NGO development wonks, judging from their chatter. I feel simultaneously invisible and out of place. I look no different from any of them, but I am suddenly painfully conscious of my career-less status. I, who left a career in public health to trail my husband to the life of a housewife living overseas; I, who six years ago suffered the painful loss of professional identity, and subsequent recovery, only to relapse amongst this group of enthusiastic and idealistic international professionals.

Breakfast begins a long day of waiting, a day in which I have plenty of opportunity and cause for reflection. I remember the first time I met her. It was my first day at a new school, in a new life, a transfer student in 11th grade. Then, as now, I didn’t fit in very well with my community; I wore my hair short and spiky, dyed a vibrant red, wearing heavy black work boots with my fringed suede jacket, a confused yet bold small-town blend of punk and hippie. She was nothing like me; tall, confident, and a rare beauty, she made her mark on me for her looks as well as her kindness, for on that day, she became my first new friend. She sought me out across a crowded cafeteria, for reasons I have never questioned, and made that first day bearable.

We became close friends and confidantes, but we were not destined to share our lives for long. With her looks, poise, and intelligence, she was on a trajectory to the life of a beautiful person in New York City. For my part, I was on my way to university and I aspired to the life of a smart person: scientist, doctor, wonk, I didn’t really care as long as it made me look smart. She made her mark in the fashion world then I lost her as she created a life and a family somewhere far from me. I built a career, only to abandon it for the transient life of an expatriate in Asia. The passing years intervened.

I sit under the dappled shade of the acacia tree and order a White Cap Lager as I think of our reunion, more than a year in the making and now only moments away. Tomorrow we will travel south, to a region near the Kenya-Tanzania border, and start digging a well to serve a community in need. I get to witness my friend's vision first-hand, and the good she has done in the world. She has seen a need in Africa, and garnered all her resources to help fill it. Somewhere along the way, perhaps through shared toil in the blazing African sun, twenty years of lost friendship will be redeemed.

You can learn more about Carmen's vision and work at A Voice is Heard. Please consider making a generous contribution to this organization and help us make a difference for a community in need.

You Will Eat Cookies

I probably should have included instructions with the cookies I sent to school with Vivian to celebrate Valentine's Day:

1. Open the baggie
2. Use both hands to break open the fortune cookie.
3. Retrieve and read the fortune.
4. Eat the cookie.

I have always loved fortune cookies but have never seen one in China. Why not? Because they were not invented in China and they basically don't exist here (or do they?).

Like fortune cookies, Valentine's Day is a holiday of the western world that is mostly a non-event in China, although the more commercial trappings of the day have been showing up in the shops for a couple of years. Among expats, Americans are one of the few nationalities that really even bother with Valentine's Day, which makes it a fun opportunity to share a little of our unique American culture with Vivian's classmates. You see, she is the only American among 15 classmates, so she's in a truly international environment.

I made a big batch of fortune cookies yesterday using this recipe and I can report that the recipe is great, the cookies came out thin and crispy, and the omission of butter from the recipe means that there are no greasy spots on the paper fortunes tucked inside. I doubled the recipe, which I definitely recommend for first-timers, because learning the folding technique takes some trial and error. Plus you need to taste-test a few along the way...

In a seriously non-traditional twist, I decided to ice and decorate the cookies because I have a daughter who loves all things pink and sprinkly, and these are Valentine's fortune cookies, after all.

Hopefully today Vivian's American teacher will explain to the class the interesting phenomenon of the fortune cookie, the "Chinese" tradition that most Chinese (including my beloved housekeeper) have never even heard of, and how fortune cookies really have nothing to do with Valentine's Day.

 

 

Procrastination Means Love

It has taken me four months of procrastination, but I have just finished editing the photos from a newborn baby portrait session from last September.

Four months of forgetfulness, avoidance, and indecision. I couldn't decide which photos I liked, which I wanted to edit, or how I wanted the final shots to look. I was too busy with other things, and just too burned out with photo editing to bother. The mom even had to come to me and say..."uh, Kiley, I know you're busy, but remember those photos you took...?"

This isn't my normal professional behavior. I usually turn around my clients photographs within two weeks. But you see, this wasn't my normal "client", either. These photos were of my friend Rebecca and her baby Marty(pants), and these photos were special. They were the last of a long series that I started taking of Rebecca when she was 15 weeks pregnant, a series that documented her changing body and journey into motherhood, a series that grew as our friendship grew, and resulted in some of the best photos I have ever taken. These photos were also the last ones I had the privilege to shoot of this beautiful pair, before they left Qingdao to repatriate to the U.S.

It seems obvious to me now the putting off finishing the photos was my way of denying that this chapter is over, that Rebecca and Marty have moved on, and that an ocean and twelve time zones now separates me from my good friend. Although we only knew each other for two years, her influence remains. It shows most clearly in my photography, for which she patiently sat still over the course of eleven different sessions while I tested new techniques, new lighting, and new locations. But it also shows in other, subtler ways. Rebecca taught a 40-year old me to shake my booty, Latin style, as my Zumba teacher. As a devoted and confident Christian, she suffered through long discussions about faith, what it means, who the faithful are, and the loss of all faith I experienced when Miles died, all without defense or judgement. She got me hooked on Chinese massage, to the point that for a time, she and I were getting two massages a week. She is a business woman, a fashionista, a fitness instructor, a Christian, and a true friend.

I want to share some of my favorite photos from these sessions. Like this one, which I took while lying in the pool in my bikini, when Rebecca was so pregnant at 39.5 weeks that she could barely float.

Here, she is 30 weeks pregnant and still teaching Zumba 4 times a week.

Or these two, which I love for their simple beauty, taken as I was learning to wrangle off-camera flash, before her baby bump really even showed.

The photos are finally done, Rebecca. These are the last of them. I procrastinated because I miss you and didn't want our time together in Qingdao to end. With all my love.

Long-Haul Travel with a Kid: My Top Tips

Vivian and I have just returned from our winter holiday, after a 12+-hour flight across the Pacific, followed by a 5-hour layover in Beijing, plus another 90 minutes in the air home to Qingdao. For both of us, it was a long 24-hour stretch with no sleep. The next day Vivian, being young and resilient as she is, didn't let the fatigue get her down. For her, playing with friends new and old was more important than napping. I, on the other hand, spent half the day immobile on the bed, unable to sleep but also unable to even think about any kind of work.

As I indulged in post-travel malaise, I reflected on six years of long-haul flights. These long flights have become so routine in our lives that now I think of a 6-hour flight as "short", and after a dozen hops between continents with a small child along, I have learned a thing or two about crossing oceans with kids.

• Arrival Time: For long flights with significant time changes, I prefer day flights that arrive in the evening over night flights that arrive in the morning. This is contrary to other advice I have received, but I find it easiest to suffer a long flight awake, or mostly so, and collapse into bed for a full night sleep shortly after arriving.
• Day flights vs. Night flights: Arriving in the evening often means taking day flights, which many parents I know avoid. Most families I know prefer night flights so that their children can sleep on the plane. That strategy is good only if your child will actually sleep on a plane. My child will not - EVER - sleep on flights, long or short. Unless its 20 minutes to landing, when she can be relied on to pass out.
• Amenities: Be careful choosing a flight. If parental sanity is even nearly as important to you as price tag, you will want to consider more than just price, duration, and layovers. In this day and age, most long-haul carriers provide in-seat Video on Demand (VOD) with programming that is suitable for children. Find out before you buy at Seat Guru.
• In-flight entertainment: In the event your flight does not have VOD, prepare other ways to entertain your kid. Coloring books, crayons, and books work for us, but become heavy quickly, and only entertain for an hour or two. For us, electronics are the way to go, but most gadgets have batteries that are drained well before the flight ends. We double-up on gadgets when we can (though our budget and our parenting choices restrict this option somewhat). Some flights that do not provide VOD do provide in-seat power for recharging laptops and video gadgets, which can solve the battery life problem. Consult Seat Guru to find out if the flight you are considering has a power option.
• Bulkheads: Be careful choosing seats and re-consider the bulkhead seats. Many families I know always choose the bulkhead seats when traveling in economy class with children. These seats do offer some advantages like extra leg room, easier access to your seat, optional bassinettes for babies, and no disgruntled passenger seated immediately in front of a bored child who might find kicking the seat entertaining. My family has outgrown the bulkhead, though, and here's why.
  • No seatback storage for easy access to the child's playthings, and more importantly,
  • No under-seat storage for easy access to backpacks.
  • The arms of bulkhead seats typically do not lift, because the table and/or VOD devices are stopred inside the armrest. If your child likes to lay on your lap to sleep, bulkhead seats make this impossible.
  • Bulkhead seats are often located behind the toilets. The traffic, noise, and disruption are enough to disturb a sleeping child; the unpleasantness of unwanted smells disturbs everyone.
  • In flights without VOD, the bulkhead is typically immediately in front of the large shared video screen, which is a constant source of visual stimulation that is difficult to avoid and can make it more difficult for restless children to sleep. 
• Last words: Finally, the best piece of strategic advice I ever received as a new parent-long haul traveler: never, ever, let your kid wander around the plane. Good travel manners start young, and letting a kid run amock on the plane sets the stage for a childhood full of headaches. We always require Vivian to remain seated with her seatbelt on; she can't entertain herself by running up and down the aisles, she can't make too much noise, and she cannot ever, ever, kick the seat in front of her. Its easier that way. Trust me.

 

 

 

Around our Thanksgiving Table

• Eight adults and ten children under the age of 8.
• Americans, Chinese, Israelis, Dutch, British, Australian

• Turkey, cornbread dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, ginger carrots, spinach salad, sweet potatoes
• Pecan pie, pumpkin pie, and homemade cheescake ice cream

• Chilled Prosecco, Cabernet and Merlot
• Milk for the kids

The worst part of expat life is being so far from home for the holidays. But the best, absolute best, part of expat life is sharing our holidays and traditions with these amazing people we have grown to know and love, people who come from such different backgrounds, cultures, and parts of the world. I am so grateful for these friends and the opportunities we have had to be part of their lives. Happy Thanksgiving.