It's not all sunshine and roses.

December was a month of loss. My good friend's mother passed, a colleague of mine died of a sudden heart attack, and my Grandmother passed away on December 26th.

In my fifth year of living outside of the United States, this is the closest death that has happened while I was away. My heart breaks for my Grandma and the suffering that she went through during her final days, weeks, and months. I knew my Grandma was surrounded by love and faith during her final days, and that gave me comfort while I was time zones away.



My Grandma was a hard worker, animal lover, flower specialist, and family supporter. Some of my earliest memories of my Grandma are of her washing the barn walls and the pipeline. Washing walls in the barn is about as fun as cleaning mold in monsoon in India-except worse. Although, I know my Grandma had done many jobs in her life as a mother and farmer that far exceeded the struggles of washing walls. She enjoyed sharing with me the stories of power outages from storms, dog shenanigans, crazy neighbors, and milking the cows. She came to the barn and cleaned, until she couldn't. It might be why I always thought it was important to clean the pipeline and walls because I knew she would want it that way. Even when I was little, weak, and tired easily, I would clean one or two sections of the walls and give up until next year when I would clean the same two sections.

Xena visits Grandma, one of the times I'm glad my Mom is such a
photo clicking machine-Thanks Mom for capturing this memory!

Grandma loved her dogs, cats, birds, and any other breathing creature. While it was unacceptable to accidentally mow or trim any flowers in her yard, if the beloved Xena put her big ole butt in the flower bed for a snooze, all was forgiven. The cats that came to dine at Grandma's were never short of food or quality. The pans never emptied because my Grandma worried the cats would cross the road for food and get hit by a car or worse end up at the neighbors.









She had an extraordinary garden that looked like it was in a home and garden magazine. She knew the names of all the flowers and how to care for each plant to make it through Minnesota winters. As mentioned, her love of cats and dogs may have trumped her love of flowers, but it was rare the day that a beautiful arrangement of flowers did not brighten her smile.


And above all things, my Grandma loved her family. Her worries were usually focused on my Grandpa-much to his dismay, but her worries also surrounded the wellbeing of her entire family: have you eaten? are you working? is your hip hurting? did you eat enough? did the hay get done? And don't even bother lying to Grandma to spare her worry. She knows. She knew. 

Delivering Grandma good news was its own reward. I'd find myself searching around the farm for signs of life and growth that would relieve some of her worries. We finished the hay, a cow had a baby heifer, Kyle's putting the wagons in the shed, and Dad's milking is about as good of news to my Grandma as finding out you just won the record Powerball of $1.3 billion.

Watching my Grandma over the past few years has been hard, but I know that she stuck around to share in the many gifts that continued to bless our family. Great grand babies were coming at rates that made names hard to keep track of, but she held many and proudly displayed all of their pictures. She also got to meet one of the most important people in my life: Anwer.

She loved whole heartedly and lived with passion, and I am so lucky to have had such a passionate and loving role model in my life.

Many of the grandkids and grand babies-not all.

Chinese fave: Yangshuo

For October Break, we traveled to Yangshuo and had an amazing time.

We rented bicycles and rode around the countryside in sun hats. 

We rented a scooter to cruise further. Note: maps of Yangshuo are not drawn to scale or directionally accurate.

One of the nights was the blood moon, and we tried for a long time to get a photo that showed how amazing it looked (regretted the lack of tripod packing). There was also a power outage at the same time! What a treat. The lights you see are from generators. 

Would you like some honey?

Sometimes China just doesn't get me. Language being the obvious, it can be challenging. Anwer is roaming around speaking at a near fluent level now. So, it's basically like being in India where he can speak Hindi, except worse because very few speak English in China. In India, I could around a lot easier with English and smiles. Here I have English and smiles, but I get blank stares in return.

China does not get food allergies or food restrictions. Anwer and I do not eat pork. China loves pork. It's likely that everything we order has traces of pork. Even with Anwer's Mandarin speaking skills, we often get pork in our dishes. Recently, we were at an American themed diner in Suzhou. I tried to order a breakfast combo and sub out the pork sausage for salmon. Lots of charades and description, the waiter said, "Ok, I understand." Except, I still got pork sausage.

There's an amazing grocery super center called Auchan that I frequent for its low prices. Picture Walmart during the holidays but everyday. I've seen managers in one Auchan wearing rollerblades on the weekend because they are constantly being "called" and by called, I mean shouted at from one of the 100+ checkout lines. Efficient. Going to Auchan is like going to war. Perhaps necessary, but no good outcome is possible. Life is lost no matter what you do. You get to the checkout and realize with dread that something you wanted to buy doesn't have a barcode. At this point, you have no choice but to leave it. To lose your spot in a line that is four or more shopping carts deep to weave through aisles of chaos to find that item is not worth it. To have a manager rollerblade over and try to call someone in that department while the four+ shopping carts with toddlers pulling stuff off the shelves behind you is not worth it.

I ordered a ginger lemon tea at a bakery/sandwich shop. I tried to ask the girl if I could get some honey on the side or with it. (We were speaking entirely in English for this conversation.) She couldn't understand me. I do not know the Chinese word for honey. So I said, a ginger lemon tea is fine. When I went to get some hot water to top off my ginger lemon tea at the same bakery, the guy who was serving asked me, "Do you want some honey?" YES! I would love some honey.

And this is what my life in Suzhou is like. Honey. No honey. 

Being a conscious Chinese consumer.

Anwer and I try to make as many reasonable efforts as we can to be conscious and as environmentally friendly as we can. It is not easy, but we try.

1. No Bag
We try to bring reusable grocery bags or use our backpacks whenever we buy groceries. If we're ever picking up something quick or have to purchase produce in the grocery store, we may come away with a plastic bag. We reuse our plastic bags as much as possible. Considering that every type of produce must be weighed and bagged in most places, I'm making a conservative guess that we have saved over 280 bags in the last year. China loves plastic bags, maybe more than other places. They like to double bag things also. One of the few Chinese phrases I know is how to say I don't want a bag.

2. Minimal packaging and buying in bulk
China has Sam's club. The strange thing about it though is that most things are not necessarily "bulk" packaging. They often just wrap two normal size boxes together, which actually increases packaging and plastic waste. I recently was shopping for toothbrushes at Auchan, which is like the local Super Walmart--it has everything. This is what I was facing:

There were approximately 432 choices in this aisle alone! This did not include the imported tooth care aisle either. Trying to choose the least package wasting, cheapest price, and most likely to actually clean my teeth toothbrush was no easy task.

3. Bring your own take-out dishes
We successfully brought our own take-out dish for the first time last night. We don't eat out a lot/have a lot of leftovers, but we cringe anytime we do because it means a plastic container is coming home with us. Obviously, we can reuse these, but if you saw our tupperware drawer, you'd know we don't need anymore!

4. Bring your own towel
Since I am lucky enough to have a private bathroom in our PE office for the female PE staff, I can bring my own hand towel. This has probably been my largest paper/waste saving effort in the last year. I drink a lot of water, which means I pee a lot. I also wash my hands regularly from dealing with PE equipment and working outside. Assuming that I conservatively use 1 paper towel/time, I've saved approximately 900 paper towels in the last year.

5. Buy local
We don't have the farmer's market scene, Trader Joe's, or other organic options like many Americans have. There are lots of regular vegetable and fruit markets for us to choose from. Prices are cheaper, more variety, and less package and wasting. There are some organic options in grocery stores and through imported places. Buying imported items creates another web of crazy when you consider the carbon footprint that item has. My weakness is cereal. I will always buy cereal until I find a sustainable replacement.

It's sort of like cleaning your house. As soon as you clean one area, you realize how dirty another part is. We're trying, and people are noticing. Our local veg and fruit shops are accustomed to our "no bag" policy and often tell other people about our efforts. I urge you to start small. No bag.

My life has been a series of packing and unpacking.

It has been far too long, and I have been far too busy having fun and working hard to update you all.

Since returning to Suzhou in early August, things have been busy. Anwer began his second year of Mandarin, second semester of his Masters, taught third graders for a month, and continues to seek adventure in Suzhou. I began my first semester of my Masters, my second year teaching IB in China, attended a PD conference in Jakarta, attended a PD in Shanghai, went to Huangshan with 27 11th graders, went to Guilin and Yangshuo with Anwer, and continue to bake and cook things with pumpkin. We certainly can't complain, and we are so grateful for all of the experiences we continue to have here.

I'll start with photos from Huangshan (Yellow Mountain).

We went rafting in a stream that also had roller coaster features. They had to turn the water "on." 

We climbed straight up stairs to get to the top of Yellow Mountain. It took between an hour and three hours for our group. 

It had so many Mussoorie-like features. Misty mountains being one of them.

We woke up for a sunrise with hundreds of other tourists. 

We stayed in a gorgeous village that was used in the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. 

The trip was great fun. We left at 6 AM on Tuesday and returned just before 7 PM on Friday. This was the school "Camp." I use quotations because we never actually camped. We stayed in a series of hotels and ate all of our meals at restaurants or hotels. I had ice cream. I also ate congee a few times because I was soo hungry, and the choices were limited. 

The best summer ever.

I know that I am one of the luckiest people in the world. My summer tales and adventures certainly demonstrate such.

We started our journey heading to Colorado where Anwer would be attending his week intensive for his Masters course. Our base was Alamosa, a small town with domesticated deer that roamed the streets. Kasey came to join the fun as well, and we went to Pike's Peak, the Great Sand Dunes, and enjoyed the Alamosa Street Art Festival.

Pike's Incline

Then we headed back to Minnesota to hang out for a couple weeks of non-stop country fun.

At the Winery

My favorite photo of the summer!

We made the longest journey ever and dropped Kasey and fam at the Dells, stopped in Lake Geneva to see some friendly faces, trained to Chicago to reunite with some of the Wolfpack, visited some more friendly faces in Kenosha, and then picked the fam back up in the Dells.

Then we flew to NYC to hang out with Amanda in her stomping ground and had such a lovely time.

Not bad views from Amanda's apt!

A few days later, and we were back in India.

So happy to see these crazies after a full year!

Our future home in Mussoorie!

The view from my future window.

Chatting over chai at Oakland Getters

To say that we had the best time ever would be an understatement. We almost saw everyone we know and love in 6 weeks. Can't wait for next summer to do it all again!

One Year in China

It's crazy to think that my first year in China is almost over. We leave in 6 hours to head to the airport to begin our crazy summer adventure, and I cannot wait to show Anwer everything!

This year has been another year of learning and challenges. Anwer and I moved to China and were no longer Mr. Anwer and Ms. Shannon. We left behind our Woodstock Family to explore what else was out there. Transitioning has been amazing and horrible at the same time. We live with plenty of water, heat, electricity, and no fear of predators. Although, it has not been easy to rebuild the network of support that we had in Mussoorie. We are accepting that Woodstock is the island. You can't go back to the island.

Looking back and reflecting on this year, here are some highlights, lowlights, and accomplishments:

• I took on a Head of Grade position for a co-worker on maternity leave. I learned a lot about myself and what I hope to do in the future. 
• We purchased land in Mussoorie!
• Anwer began his Masters in Counseling in an online hybrid program from the US.
• I joined an improv group and performed in my first show in June!
• We moved apartments and now have an open kitchen and a real oven! We're probably going to get fat.
• We continue to wrestle with the problem of pollution and how it impacts our lifestyles. 
• Anwer is speaking Mandarin very well! I am not. 
• We went to an island and travelled with Chinese strangers turned friends. 
• Visiting our French Connection in Beijing! It's like a post-Woodstock support group in China. 

Visiting these fabulous people in Mussoorie! 

The remaining Oakland Getters Crew

Finishing in fourth place in the Suzhou Amazing Race with a team of newbies and non-Mandarin speakers!

Christmas in Minnesota!

The efforts of my best Halloween costume ever.

Being surrounded by millions of people all the time!

First visit to the Great Wall and a Half Marathon for fun!

International Family Day at SSIS

After my first improv performance!

Tomorrow, we head to Colorado for Anwer's week intensive course for his counseling program. Then we'll be in Minnesota, Madison, Chicago, and New York before leaving for India. More adventures coming soon...