The Jones Team: Things For Which I Am Thankful (aka Getting Past Stage Two)

I have joked to Alex, only half-jesting, that I think I'm entering "Stage Two."

If you look up Culture Shock in the Wikipedia, you will see that the First Phase is the "Honeymoon Phase." This is when you first arrive overseas and everything is new, different, and exciting! You are stoked to see how other people do it, and everything from the new food to the new surroundings are entertaining and fun.

After a few weeks of this honeymoon, however, you enter "Stage Two." People describe it differently (Wiki calls it the "Negotiation Phase," but I think of it as the "Reality Sets In" phase - you start to get a bit frustrated. Here is a quote from Wiki: "That sense of excitement will eventually give way to new and unpleasant feelings of frustration and anger as you continue to have unfavorable encounters that strike you as strange, offensive, and unacceptable. These reactions are typically centered on the formidable language barrier as well as stark differences in: public hygiene; traffic safety; the type and quality of the food."

Don't get me wrong - I do NOT regret having come to China. None of my gripes are even close to enough to make me wish we stayed home (Sorry Mom & Dad). But I am a bit down on the hordes taking our photos all the time, the stares, the touching of the children (Lucia has started to turn away), and there are lots of foods I did not think I could find. Plus, my language is pretty terrible - especially my tones (as predicted). Even when I think I know a word, the way I say it makes it all but unrecognizable coming from a Caucasian mouth, and if I don't have it written down, people basically give me that "sucks to be you" look and move on.

But just this past few days, I have many things to be thankful for. First, we went to Metro (a German chain kind of like Costco, but not in as much bulk) last week. Since we had bought a yogurt maker (apparently the Chinese milk has estrogen, so our doctor recommended making our own from Australian, New Zealand, or European milk) - we wanted to go there to get some German milk. While there, we found almonds, dried cranberries, many ORGANIC grains, canned tomatoes, canned beans, real beer and wine (!), and many other wonderful things. Lucia loved the live fish and turtle mart - we catch 'em, you kill 'em style (I have not yet done this), and we even met a western family there. Then at Sunny's import mart, I found - believe it or not - BOB'S RED MILL items, including GROUND FLAXMEAL. This is a HUGE deal for me! And just today with the help of a Chinese translator provided by Jayland in Shopping Class 3, I found one of two bottles of Canola oil (very hard to find here), and what I thought was wheat flour, but is actually just white flour with sparse pieces of wheat in it. :-) Enough to make my Honey Flax Bread, though, so I am pretty excited! Oh, and I also found yeast this week (jio2 mu3), so Alex has also made a very good loaf of his NYT no-knead homemade bread.

That, and we had a couple over for dinner last night - Preston and his girlfriend Maria - he is the co-founder/President of Jayland, the expat culture training/translation service that Alex's company has hired to help us while we're here. He's just a few months younger than me and this is his 3rd company. Jayland is super helpful, and we are very excited to become friends with Preston and Maria!

With all that in mind - oh, and one more thing - we found a Christian worship service in English for Sundays in Kaifaqu (45 mins away). So even though it's not a Catholic Church (the only one downtown being 1.5 hours away and in Chinese) - we are happy to be able to worship in English, and plan to continue to attend - here are some photos and video of the people that I love more than anything, and a big THANK YOU GOD for helping us while we're here.
It never gets old to see them happy together: