Simple blessings

I'm not so far gone in spirit, that I don't recognize that "the powers that be" surround me in this experience, surprising me with so many blessings that I can't even keep count. Even from the beginning.

Whatever your faith is...God, mother nature, yourself, etc.

Since we made the decision to do this, so many "cards" that could have gone awry - didn't. Instead, ALL of them fell neatly into place, one by one. It was to my absolute consternation that while I struggled and fought against this move within myself, everything around me simply fell into place. THAT, in itself, was a culmination of many tiny blessings. I often think how much WORSE this experience, thus far, could have been if nothing seemed to go right from the beginning. Don't get me wrong, I always felt like every step in this process was going against the grain due to the level of difficulty! Every thought and decision seemed really, really hard. But, ultimately, everything DID end up falling into place for us.

Now we are here. Let me give you a mini update. Since reaching the date of September 1st that I had unknowingly sunk into my subconscious as a "goal" to reach, I have been...shall we say...breathing a little easier each day since then. The passage of time still remains my closest companion over here and I'm still holding on to it for dear life. But, the 'ebb and flow' of emotion moves in a more natural rhythm as each day passes. After having reached that "goal", I feel like I might as well settle in a bit and look around.

Which brings me to our next Holiday. The next Chinese Holiday for time off of work is the National Holiday here in China (after the one day off people get for mid-Autumn festival). People get a week off. This is a really big deal this year because it was explained to me by a couple of Chinese people that the government revoked their Labor Holiday this year (in May) due to the number of people who travel for it. Apparently, when you have a country with over a BILLION people PLUS foreigners, people tend to travel during the Holiday and "rush" the Holiday hotspots. Pretty crummy to take away the Holiday though, in my own opinion of course. SO, September 29th - October 3rd is a week to really celebrate for much needed vacations around here!

Since my last blog about "travelling", Allen and I have come to an agreement about it and we set forth to pick a nice Holiday retreat for the family. First, we looked into going to Hainan Island (China's Hawaii). But, we were afraid it would just be "China" on a sandy beach..and we can't even verify that the beach is clean. Plus, it has all the "major" hotels, so it'll be expensive and outrageously crowded! Ugh. Not so appealing. Then, we came across some pictures of some beautiful mountains and researched where they were on a map (pictured above). Huangshan is the name of it...Huang (yellow) shan (mountains). We found out that they are located in the same province where our ayi is from, which is actually not very far away from Shanghai...about a 5-6 hour drive. Everyone around us has verified the area is incredibly beautiful! Ok, we picked our spot!

Our primary obstacle now is EVERYONE is warning us away from the area during the Holiday...TOO MANY PEOPLE, they say!!! It'll take forever to get there, prices for hotels triple or more, we would be waiting in line queues all day just to get up the mountain. Not too mention my own secret fears, like so many people getting onto one cable car going up the mountain and workers ignoring the beep, beep, beep...a clear warning of too much weight! And yes, this is already happened to me in an elevator over here. Yikes!

So, we re-evaluated. Spending a Holiday in the constant crush of hundreds? thousands? of Chinese people who don't speak English, with two small kids...just doesn't sound like much fun to me. One of the reasons we decided to go to this location is for the ROCKS...the zen for Kim. haha I just don't think I can "zen" out with so many people around me, cutting in front of us, pushing, no regards to personal space, not understanding me when I say "BACK OFF!", etc. No zen for Kim that way. We will be going to this area and taking our own Holiday at the END of October, when people are safely back at work. :)

Back to blessings. When decisions were in the works about going to Huangshan, there were many details to be worked out, ie, driver or not, ayi or not, pay for both, if applicable, hotel/travel arrangements, hours of work per day, duties/responsibilities for both us and the ayi and driver, etc, etc, etc. Aggghhhh! So, off I went to the ayi company (which we LOVE, by the way). They have been incredibly helpful and generous to us in regards to translation and helping us generally navigate around Shanghai. Blessing! I thought I was going there to clarify a few things. But, that really isn't how things are done here and I don't know why. It's this way consistently everywhere and with whomever you speak to around town. About 3 hours later, I ended up with a written contract between the driver and me and a verbal one between the ayi and me. I can definitely appreciate having all the details worked out for anything, but it's almost as if you say something, it then becomes a practical reality and details must be written down. I just wanted to CLARIFY and ask questions. But, I'm beginning to realize the "question mark" does not exist here in China, whether they speak English or not. And if you preface any sentence with any form of hesitation, it definitely is not heard...it does not exist. You say it...it then becomes reality. No middle ground.

Anyway, in the end, the ayi company took care of me, speaking with both our ayi and our driver, hashing out all the details of both, calling "friends" in Huangshan (who are travel agents)to ask about weather, availability, tips, hotels, etc. Blessings! The driver is willing to drive us, swapping his "real" Holiday with the dates WE have chosen to take a Holiday. This saves us a lot of money. Blessings! Our ayi was going to stay here and take care of Blue when we originally talked about going. However, upon coming back to our house, knowing she is from the same province, and knowing that arranging transportation is not always affordable for the locals, I asked her if she would like to ride up with us to connect with family members. She got very excited. Our ayi's sister lives very close to Huangshan and our ayi indicated that her sister would LOVE to show us around...both in Huangshan and in the little towns AROUND Huangshan. So, after a quick phone call to her sister, confirmations were made and now we have a personal tour guide to the area and it's surrounding areas! Blessings!! Also, our ayi has arranged for a very good friend of hers who also lives in our community to take care of Blue for FREE during that week, coming over 2-3 times a day to walk and feed him. Blessing! And all of this is happening because of our English liaisons, the ayi company and even Mr. Chen, our driver. He works so hard to translate for ayi and us, even though he barely speaks English himself. But, he'll bring out the books and his Chinese translator and try so very hard to "help" us. Blessing!

So many blessings! I feel that despite...myself...harmony exists in our world and NONE of it is of my own doing. Just LUCK. Based on what we have heard from so many other expats, our experience with both our driver and our ayi is very RARE. You should hear some of the stories we have heard! Both ayi and driver seemed to decide from the beginning that they were going to be friends and in doing so, have created a little "team" and all for the purpose of making our lives easier. It's a little surreal...and SUCH a blessing!!