A Day in the Air

The most common question I get about moving to China is "How many hours is the flight?" Well, in fact, it takes four flights, but the total in-air time is looking like it'll be about twenty-one hours this time. 

I leave Nashville at 5:30 am Thursday morning--so of course I have the be at the airport a couple of hours before that.  Right now we're planning to go to my brothers' place in Nashville Wednesday evening, and then go from there, instead of going from here at two in the morning. 

My first flight is to Atlanta--yes, going the wrong direction.  I find it quite entertaining to search for flights sometimes; sometimes the routes seem so nonsensical.  The flight to Atlanta takes just over an hour, and then from Atlanta I fly to L.A. (about five hours), then from L.A. to Beijing (thirteen hours), then from Beijing to Wuhan (two and ten minutes, if I remember correctly).  None of my layovers are too long, so really we're making pretty good time.  I'll be meeting up with some of the other American teachers who I met in June in Nashville and L.A. 

When I arrive in Wuhan, it will be 9:00 pm Friday night.  This schedule may seem a bit crazy, but really it's pretty well designed--I won't get much if any sleep Wednesday night, so I should be able to sleep on the flight to L.A.  Therefore, I'll be awake flying into China, but tired and ready to sleep when I finally get to my apartment sometime Friday night.  I have to flip-flop my day and night due to the time zones anyhow, and it's easiest to do it in route like this. 

When I do tell people the flight plan, I get a lot of grimaces.  Twenty-one hours in the air?  You poor thing!  Why do people hate flying so much?  I love traveling and every part of it--I don't think I've eer been bored in an airport.  There's shops, restaurants, and of course endless people watching.  Besides, you have books, magazines, other travelers to talk to, and the view out the window of planes taking off and landing. On the long flight, there's usually so many movies I haven't seen yet that I can't fit them all in.  Even after all the flying I've done, air travel has not lost its magic.  I just love being on the move.   Now, if only airlines had a better record of getting luggage to the same place at the same time, flying would be perfect.  Please pray for my luggage. 

Flying over the lakes of Wuhan, February 2010

Home Decorating for the New Expat (or anyone, really)

Edited with Pixlr-o-matic

 One of the few downsides of moving internationally (unless, of course, your company moves you and provides a moving stipend and a shipping container, which has never happened to me) is that you don’t have room in the suitcase for a lot of knick-knacks, curtains, or framed art.  Now, some people don’t mind stark white walls decorated with fingerprints of unknown past tenants, but I need color.  What’s the fun of a new apartment if you aren’t going to decorate?  

Since I have neither excessive money nor space, but want to be able to cover those white walls quickly, I have to improvise.  I usually pack colorful calendar pictures, photos, postcards, etc. laid flat in the bottom of my suitcase for some quick décor without taking up much packing space.  This time around, however, I have found some websites with ideas for more unusual, but still packable, decorations.  I’m really looking forward to adding some of these to my wall collage once I arrive at my new apartment in Wuhan.  I’ve gone ahead and had some things printed at Walgreens so that I could get them in a larger size and on photographic paper, but you could also print them on regular paper on your printer after arriving.  All of the following are free except one, and it is noted.

•   Tagxedo:  This one turned out to be a bit addictive, at least for me.  First, you enter a list of words, or a poem, or a quote, or something of the sort.  I used the lyrics to my favorite songs. Then, tagxedo creates a word collage; you can choose from a variety of shapes for the collage, or even upload a new shape yourself.  Finally, there are dozens of color schemes to choose from—this is where I spend a lot of time, choosing from among thousands of possible combinations.  The end result is a unique personalized collage; you can share it, print it, or save it as a jpeg of various resolutions. (See example at the end of the blog).
•  Pixlr-o-matic: An easy-to-use photo-editing program lets you add filters, special effects, and borders to your photos.  
•  Block Posters: This is a tool to take your photo, blow it up to any size you want (the default is about two feet by three feet, but you could make it anywhere from a sheet of paper to the size of the whole wall), and then print it in sections on a regular printer.  This is the cheapest way I’ve ever seen to make some really big wall art.  Check out the gallery for some great ideas of things you can do with it. 
• Craft Jr.'s Paper Chains:  Especially useful if you have kids or like a bit of whimsy, these paper chain patterns are fun, and there’s a lot more than just the traditional children holding hands.  I especially like to owls and the rockets. 
• 20 Going On 80 :  This blog has some great decorating ideas, and she has a page of free printables that are really cute, for the walls, for crafts, and for various holidays.
•  Big D and Me's Kitchen Printables:   The blogger made a fun collage in her kitchen; some of the items she bought off of Etsy, but the ones she made herself she offers free to download.  
•  The Pretty Blog: This is predominantly a wedding décor website, but this page of free prints would work on the wall, too, as long as you like pastels. 
• Tip Junkie: Life is to be Enjoyed: A cute print of a joyful quote, available in three colors; there are a lot of other printables for all occasions on this site, but this one is most suited for a wall decoration.
•  Taidye's Printables: Really fun and bright prints, most with Bible verses; I really like the Einstein quote one, too, and the one that says, “Rock like Fraggles!”  (Or am I showing my age by knowing what Fraggles are?)  Oh, and the nest one, and…
•  Google Books (Life Magazine): Did you know that Google Books has every issue of Life magazine from 1935 through 1972? And you can print the pages?  A lot of the covers show the major historical events of the twentieth century, and if you’re into a vintage look, the advertisements are almost addicting.  A lot of the appliance advertisements would look adorable in an I-love-Lucy style kitchen, and the car ads with their mountainous backgrounds show a rustic sense of adventure.    
• Graphics Fairy: The Fairy has a plethora of vintage postcards, clip art, backgrounds, pages from old books, and other graphics available; these could be put to a lot of uses if you’re crafty.
•  Scrap Your Trip: SYT is a scrapbook supply site, but they have some incredible 12x12 papers that are beautiful photo prints—check out Italy under International Scrapbooking for some of the best examples.  Besides that, a lot of scrapbook paper has great patterns and colors, and would look great as part of a wall collage.  The paper is of course not free, but for about a dollar you can get a 12x12 print of Venice or the Cliffs of Moher or a Saguaro cactus in the desert, just to name a few.  
• Simple Crafter's Free Wall Art:  To gain access to the printables on this site, you have to register your email address, which is a minor annoyance, but once you do, there’s quite a few word art things to print, including a collection of holiday word collages. 
• The Cheese Thief: This one takes just a bit of work on your part: she offers a template to make an eye-exam chart that you can customize with your name and details. 

I’ve found so many great things this time—I have a feeling I will run out of walls to put them on in my apartment.  I can’t wait to move in!  

Made with Tagxedo, using the words to Freebird

Suitcase Dreaming

Is it weird that I daydream about packing when I’m bored?  Do any other travelers do that?  I mean, I’ve been thinking of my clothes in terms of whether they would make the cut to be put in the suitcase for months.  I’ve been mentally packed since before I signed the contract. 

Now, I’ve got less than two weeks until departure, so all that daydreaming is becoming a reality.  Of course, some items of clothing have fallen out of favor since I first began thinking about it, and several new things have made their way to the top of the list thanks to a little shopping spree at Wal-Mart the other night.  I have to be sure to take the clothes I’ll need, because I am sure not shaped like Chinese women.  If I have to, I could have some things made to fit; there is always a street where you can find excellent tailors, but some things would be a little embarrassing to have done that way. 

 

I had a three-day weekend in early July with no plans, so I drug out the suitcases (nearly two months early).  I sorted through my winter clothes and packed jackets, turtlenecks, and my corduroy  pants.  I chose several of my favorite scarves (you can't even tell there's a dent in the pile still hung over the headboard), and I got together all of my close-toed shoes that I knew I wouldn't wear again before leaving (between May and September, I live in flip-flops).  I've kept one of the suitcases sitting on the couch in my room, so I can toss miscellaneous items in as I think of them. 

 

And now, here I am, a week and a half until time to fly...my last day of work will be Friday, and then I leave the following Wednesday night (well, my flight isn't until 5:30 Thursday morning, but by the time you figure in an hour of drive time, and checking in three hours early, etc. I might as well say Wednesday night).  I'll have five days to finish up repacking what I'm taking and what I'm leaving.

 

I'm known as the master packer in my family; I've lived out of a backpack for weeks at a time, so I've had lots of practice at putting a lot into a small space.  When flying, weight, not space, is my limit; I could fit a lot more into my suitcases, but the darn weight restrictions limit me. 

 

Once I get settled into my new apartment, I guess I'll have to mentally start packing for winter break. 

From the Desk to Vietnam (ITC Week 21)

 For week 21 of the Indie Travel Challenge, we’d like you to tell us what your travel dreaming tools of choice are. Do you still pull pages from magazines? Do you keep a spreadsheet on your computer, organized by country? Do you have a smartphone app or a website you love?

When I talk about trips I’ve taken or places I’ve traveled, one of the common responses I get is, “I wouldn’t even know where to begin to do something like that.”  How do I get from a blank piece of free time to getting hit by a motorcycle in Vietnam? 

To begin with, I love maps; I always have.  When I was a child, we had a dusty red set of encyclopedias, already years out of date.  The last volume was my favorite—an atlas with hundreds of maps of different parts of the world.  Now and then, I would pull it out and flip through, reading the names of distant cities and seas and mountain ranges. 

Maps still fascinate me.  I like to navigate on road trips, and I like to keep a map updated of where I’ve been.  Google maps is one of my most frequent distractions when I have down time at work.   Most of my trips start there; I start with my city, and zoom out: what’s to the north? The south?  What’s along the way between me and another major city? What loop could I go in that would include the most places I’d like to see?  If I go this direction this time, and that direction another time, what will I find? 

Once I have an idea of the general possibilities, my next step is usually lonelyplanet.com.  A bit clichéd, maybe, but useful, especially if I’m not already familiar with a country or region.  Lonely planet gives a list of “top picks”; while some of these are unavoidably touristy, it gives me a good idea of what’s on offer.  Then, it’s back to google: first stop, google images to see the place, then google search to find out about its importance and history and all, and finally back to google maps to plot it on a custom map I’ve created for the trip.  Repeat process, until I’ve plotted everything I would like to see or do on the map.  Then it’s time for lonely planet again, as well as train schedules, flight websites like Kayak and Vayama, bus schedules, etc.  What route is feasible, both time-wise and monetarily?  Once I figure out what would be entailed in getting to each destination, I can choose a route that will include as many as possible without backtracking too much.

Once I’ve got a general route, then I can find out about hostels on hostelworld.com or hostels.com.  I don’t usually plan a strict itinerary; in fact, the longer I travel, the less detailed my plans get.  I make a list of things I’d like to do in a city, but once I arrive I decide the specifics based on the weather, my mood, and what other discoveries I make along the way.  Here are the websites I use the most, if you want to research a trip of your own:

General Travel Information 

•  Lonely Planet
•  Google Maps
•  Trip Advisor
•  Wikitravel
•  Travel China Guide

Flights

•  Kayak
•  Vayama
•  Air Asia
•  (Within Europe) Ryanair

Trains

•  Rail Europe
• Travel China Guide: China Trains
• Indian Rail
  

Where to Stay 
(These are hostels websites, but they also show inexpensive hotels, bed and breakfasts, etc.) 

•  Hostels.com
•  Hostel World

Travel Articles, Podcasts, and Stories

•  Amateur Traveler  My very favorite travel podcast (also available on iTunes), but there’s a lot of good stuff on the website, too.
• Rick Steve's Radio Show  (also available under podcasts on iTunes)
• Rick Steve's Europe  Advice and planning for a beginner traveler to Europe 
•  Matador Online travel magazine
•  BootsnAll Travel articles, geared towards long-term independent backpackers 
• Vagablogging The blog of one of my favorite travel writers, Rolf Potts

Misc. 

•  Time and Date  Good for figuring out, until you get used to the time zones, if it’s too late at night to call home.
•  XE Currency Converter  Useful until you get used to a different currency.

Train to the Future

Today, I am on a train to Rapallo, near Genova.  Matteo and I are going to spend a few days with Nadia and her family at their house by the sea.  I've finally come out from under the clouds that covered Milan, and it is a beautiful evening here in the mountains we're crossing—or, we would be if we weren't mostly in tunnels.   Matteo will stay until Saturday; I will probably return to Milan Wednesday evening or Thursday morning.   I have things I need to work on before going to the convegno in Firenze next week.  It's a little strange—while writing this I keep thinking in Italian and translating back into English. 

I can't get out of my head today the book I just read—A Touch of Betrayal by Catherine Palmer.   It's one of series of four, of which Tammy has and I borrow the second and third.   I read the second first, but the third one I read twice because I wasn't ready to get out of the story yet.  I think the titles of her books are a little overdramatic, but I enjoyed the stories.  The books are Christian romance novels, which I love, even though I don't always want to admit that, being a serious former English major and all, that I like such fluff.  But, it's wonderful just to read for the pleasure and escapism of it, something I just don't do as much as I used to. 

It's wonderful, too, to read books written about people who live in my "real world," –people who follow a code of morality and whose relationship with God is a part of day-to-day life   It's something refreshing to me in today's culture where God and spiritual things are completely left out of popular entertainment.  I wish we were more open to talk about our spiritual lives.  That's probably the most important reason I have for wanting a husband someday—I want someone to be mutually accountable with, someone to pray with, to talk about my spiritual ups and downs, to encourage each other.   I want to raise my children to be truly integrated—not to compartmentalize spirituality from other aspects of life; I know I often have.  Growing up, it seemed we so rarely talked about our faith.  We prayed together at meals, but almost never at any other times.  I want to be more comfortable sharing that part of life together.   I'm hoping things will be different now that Dad also had become a Christian,  We need to take advantage of the spiritual high the family is on now to talk more openly.  It's also something I need to put into my work here in a much bigger way.   I'm more of a project person—I plan things, do thing, teach—but I'm not as good at building deeper relationships.  I get along well with everybody, but often at a fairly superficial level.   I need to find a way to work in more discussion of where people are spiritually and their highs and lows; I need to work towards more meaningful conversation.  It is difficult when I only see most of the church members briefly after the service on Sunday.   I need to make it a priority to find a way to spend more time with individuals outside of church activities; I would like to invited people over to my place for lunch, but I haven't yet as I didn't know if people would really want to come all the way out to my place; it's out of the way for most of my friends.  But, maybe they would. 

Back to the book I mentioned earlier—the series is set in various parts of Africa, and is about three sisters and a brother, as adults; as they find love, find God, etc.  My head has been in Africa all day.  I would love to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro.  Now, there is a motivation to get in shape!  Grant, the man in the story, is an anthropologist living with the Maasai; he is studying their stories and myths, and trying to write down all these important parts of the heritage before the children all go off to the city and the ancient culture is lost.  It sounds like a wonderful work.  I've though the last few years that I would go back to grad school, and then teach English literature.   But, it seems so meaningless in the grand scheme of things, to be wrapped up in the minutiae of academia.  I want to be involved in missions; I would like to study languages, cultures—to travel.  And yet, somehow it seems selfish or unwise to live my life like I want to live it.  What I really want to do is, after next summer when I finish my commitment here in Milan, is to find somewhere else to go to teach English (or whatever other job is available), and learn another language.  I think I could learn Spanish fairly easily, now that I speak Italian—I can already understand it pretty well.  I was reading online the other day that English teachers can earn quite a bit of money in Korea.   However, I really need better certification.   And, I don't know if I'm brave enough to move to Asia, to a country I've never seen, with such a very different culture.   But, somehow, I would like to learn another language, and I want to travel. 

There are people who save up some money, and then just go travel—backpack around the world.   Why not me?  Then I think—it would be more responsible to get a job, earn money, settle down—but why?  You only live once.  The only thing really stopping me is wondering what mom will say.   Everybody will think I'm crazy—but I just want to be free.   And I don't have a husband or children, my parents are still young and in good health—so to who is it irresponsible?  But how do those who backpack find the money to do it?  I, so far in life, haven't been very good at making money.  But it has been worth it—I wouldn't trade the time I've spent doing mission work in Italy for a high paying but lifeless job in an office.   Somehow, I want to see the world.  And then, after a few more years, I do want to marry and have children.  I often feel that biological clock ticking—the older I get, the more I look forward to having children.   I've come across several websites on homeschooling lately—it's something I'm very interested in.  

And then there's finding someone to marry.  Reading these romance books make me wonder if I'll ever find anyone to feel that strongly about to feel that way about me.  I daydream, but in reality—I'm not the type you find in romance novels   I know God has a plan for me, and that he will send the right person into my life, so it isn't something that I spend a lot of time really worrying about.  It's just that sometimes I feel lonely for someone I haven't met yet.   Usually I'm fine—I'm happy being single, and I'm not at a point where I want to settle down.   But sometimes—it seems to be about a month out of the year or so—when it seems I feel lonely more than usual.  It hasn't been too bad yet this year (it was downright depressing last year, around May), but still I want someone to talk to, to tell all those little details of everyday life.  I can talk to Mom about most things, but as close as we are, there are still things she doesn't understand—some, because we are of different generations, and some because I live in a different culture.  She doesn't know the people I know or how they think, or the ups and downs of life as a missionary.  And besides, it's expensive to call the U.S.!