Chopsticks on Fire!

This has been a busy week for my chopsticks. After our initial success at Hunan East, we tried the Golden Dragon Monday, where our waiter George gave us advice on Chinese food and drink, corrected our Chinese pronounciation, and suggested that we contact his niece in Dalian (a coastal city near Beijing) so that we would know someone when we move. How nice is that? The jasmine tea, potstickers and Yang Zhou fried rice were also excellent, and we even had a complimentary glass of Dragon Silk Riesling, which was probably good if you like Riesling. My niece Kelly gave me a fancy set of chopsticks with a little silk pouch, so I am now eating in style. We tried Panda Express on Friday and that was also tasty, so I am happy to report that I can find good food even in the fast food area, at least here in the States. Joe has been practicing his Chinese using our language DVD and a website called Livemocha, where you trade language lessons with someone, both written and audio. He is speaking in complete sentences and tells me he knows what he is saying.

Good news from China: First, we got an email from our new Head of School with our list of email buddies, so I'll be contacting mine (a music guy) soon. Either I haven't had many new questions or I'm just not writing them down to remember them. The principal of the lower school is Tammy Roudebaugh, so my poor students will have to make some careful decisions about who we are! Second, there is a cupcake seller in Shanghai named Emily whose blog is maintained through her VPN on blogger.com, so this blog might not have to switch to another site, I hope. Third, Shanghai has bowling alleys, including one named Sakura that has 40 lanes! Although I probably can't bring my ten-pound ball, I think I might include my bowling shoes. Finally, China does not observe Daylight Savings Time, so this Arizonan will leave her clocks unchanged even overseas! This pleased me greatly until I realized that I was agreeing with a Communist government on a matter of policy, but I'm just going to say that even a blind squirrel finds a few nuts.

On Saturday, we visited the Chinese Cultural Center, which is a combination office building and strip mall with all things Asian, including a big food market where we found all sorts of food, including squid jerky, dried snack anchovies and quail eggs. We passed on all of those things, opting for two types of tea (jasmine for Joe and Extra Gunpowder for me), a tea infuser, and also some music CDs and another book from a different store. We also walked through a huge garden on the backside of the building that had beautiful trees and replicas of various gardens and buildings from China, which gave us some good ideas for vacations once we get there.

Jack's situation is still uncertain, although we have two backups in my two sisters (Jill volunteered also). We will be back in Prescott next weekend and see if anyone there has found a place in both heart and home. We did get a call back from Tiffany the dental hygienist, but we decided not to follow that option. I went to a concert given by two friends of mine who play flute and glass armonica (you need to look this up), an instrument invented by Benjamin Franklin and composed for by just about everyone in the eighteenth century, including Mozart. When I told my kids about the concert and mentioned what great friends I have here, one of my kids said, "Mrs. Rauschenbach, if Mozart were alive today, he'd be your friend!" Kid, you have great instincts, because I always find wonderful and interesting friends, and although it's hard to leave the ones here, I know the ones in Shanghai are also going to be Mozarts.

The Farewell Tour, Part Two

We're back in Flagstaff, which is sunny, but we still have two feet of snow in our backyard. On the remainder of our spring break, we spent a couple of days in Phoenix, where we went on a very familiar hike and managed to shred Jack's pads to bits. He could barely walk for the rest of the week! That gave some support to the idea of Jack living with my sister Rhonda, where he would have a relatively sedentary lifestyle, just walks around the neighborhood. She doesn't really want another dog (having her husband's aging Dalmatian is trouble enough), but this is what happens to dogs in my family, we just keep switching them around.

For the end of the break week, we traveled to Prescott to play in our friends' church, primarily the Rutter Requiem. I have been organizing players for Lenten and Advent cantatas for a few years now, and it was bittersweet to play my last gig for awhile. The choir and orchestra were quite surprised by the news, but hugely supportive and interested in our entire story, which we told ad nauseam until our young high school friend Emily could tell it just as well. I especially enjoyed showing the picture of the auditorium at SCIS, which is a thing of beauty. We also pitched Jack's plight to a few of our friends, so we're keeping our fingers crossed. Jack did nothing to aid his cause, generally barking his fool head off at almost anyone who moved, but he made a fan of our even younger friend Andrew, whose current dog is a bit blind and deaf and is not quite up to the lifestyle of an active boy.

We've had a few Flagstaff anecdotes as well this week. In his spare time, Joe has been checking out the school lunch menu to see what we might get to eat when we are there. In the spirit of preparation, we had lunch at Hunan East, where I had egg drop soup, lemon chicken and fried rice. I used a spoon for the soup, but for everything else I used my chopsticks and Joe even complemented my ability to get a good quantity of rice on my sticks. It wasn't a bad first effort, I guess, and the manager recommended a trip to the Chinese Cultural Center in Tempe to pick up some good jasmine tea (which is served with the meal at Hunan East and is quite nice). When we got back from lunch, I saw a couple of my neighbors shooting the breeze, so I went over to tell them about the plans. They were both pretty surprised, especially after I informed one of them (a college graduate) as to the geographic location of Shanghai. It's not the first time in this journey that someone has said in all sincerity, "Shanghai? Where's that?"

We came across a great quote from the book "China Road" regarding the state of Christianity in China. I had heard about this book from interviews with the author, Rob Gifford, and knew that Joe would enjoy it as much as I did the first time I read it. It has many funny and also brutally honest parts, but here is what Mr. Gifford says about Chinese Christians: There is a purity and an intensity to Christian believers in China, and it overflows in their prayers. Mention Christianity to ordinary Chinese people, and they are not burdened by vision of crusading soldiers, fornicating popes, or right-wing politicians. They have heard about this belief relatively late in the faith's long and winding history, and for them it is a matter of the heart. I can't imagine a more exciting place to be a Christian, or a more beautiful statement of how the faith can be lived. They really do come as children, just as Christ commands, so how will this sophisticated seminary graduate measure up?