I'm at home in China

A few weeks ago I was invited to talk with Marcia and Lisle for their At Home in China podcast. Part One of my interview is up at their website; part two will be up in about two weeks. It is totally to their credit that they somehow took my incoherent ramblings and constructed them back into something a bit more, uh, coherent.

A few things I wish I better articulated in that podcast:

My so-called ayi-less life: I was afraid to say it, so I was glad that Marcia
did in her post-interview comments. One of the reasons we don't have an ayi is because I really can't see us hiring someone to come into our home and take over these things for us on a daily basis. I mean, I know I am not skilled in the domestic arts (I think in high school I was voted most likely to hire domestic
help), but I also can't see us as being absent from managing our home and our
life. I know some foreigners here that so rely on their ayis to free them up for
their own leisure that going back to their home countries for visits become a challenge. "I was alone with those kids all day long and had to do everything myself," one complained to me after returning from five weeks in the States. Someday, too, we will have to live in the US again, and I won't have the ability to hire a small army of help. Why start now? Besides, I can be very lazy, and I really don't need anything that will enable further laziness.

The school question: I didn't mention it in the interview, but we remain homeschool-curious. I don't know if we will, or for how long, but right now in weighing our options here in China, we are more interested in pursuing homeschooling (or rather at the age of four not-much-schooling) than placing Myles in a school any time soon. Our biggest concern educationally was that Myles would not have an opportunity to learn Chinese at the American (so-called International) Schools, but we also knew he wasn't ready to tackle the all-day Chinese pre-school. When we at last found Li Laoshi, it was like a perfect solution for us. He would get the focused instruction in Chinese, and we don't have to send him out of the home. We'll try this for the next several months and see how it works. In the meantime, though, we believe that Myles will learn much more about China spending his day out there with us
exploring China, than sitting in an American classroom. Even if the most Chinese experience he has on a given day is Starbucks. At least he is encouraged to speak Chinese there.

Starbucks: I think I only mentioned it once. Can you believe that?

In recent weeks, as we've been trying to determine the dates for our return trip after Christmas, some things struck me. First of all, that we will be coming back for a second full-year together here as a family. This was supposed to be a six-month gig for Randy. Second, we really don't know how long we are going to live here. In some ways, I still view this as a somewhat temporary move. Other than getting involved in church activities, so much of my own approach to life here can best be described as passing-through. Why bother getting an ayi when I'm just going to go back to the US sometime soon and not have one there? Why bother enrolling Myles in an American school because we think he needs to take advantage of this limited opportunity to learn about China? A good Chinese lesson almost depresses me, because I know I'm not just learning it for fun, but rather because I really do need to know how to speak Chinese.

Somedays I wake up and have no idea how I got here, at home in China.