Wish list

Before I started to write this blog, I sort of sat and stared at an advertisement at the top of my computer screen. It says "Memorial Day Sale" at Ace, the helpful place. Do I even remember what a hardware store is? I'm picturing the one at home. It always was sort of a comfortable place to go, usually with Mom. We'd get mulch, or paintbrushes, or light switch plate covers, or a room heater, or a hose. Everyone wore little red vests who worked there, and many of the customers wore coveralls or jeans and outdated shirts. And everyone spoke in that Kansas way of talking, and nobody ever seemed in a hurry.

Now why am I getting sentimental about Ace Hardware of all places? I'm sure when I eventually do see it again, I won't really care. But then it makes me start thinking of America in general. America seems like this very distant place that might or might not actually exist. I hear about it in the news, or from my students, or from my family through Skype. And now that I'll be back in America in just a little over a month, once and a while I think about what it's like there.

Anyway, I also sometimes think of America when I trek across the city to Metro, the German foreign goods store, about every four or five weeks. I usually don't get a whole lot--maybe some spaghetti sauce, salad dressing, raisins, or peanut butter. When I went recently, I splurged and bought a box of blueberry muffin mix. Yummmmmm...

So today I finally got around to making the mix after trying to collect the ingredients needed to bake it. I bought some eggs from the lady and her vegetable cart on the corner alley. I bought a little baggy of milk from a cardboard box in the tiny school store. And I had to put fish oil in place of vegetable oil, which doesn't exist, or is too difficult to find. A muffin tin doesn't fit in the toaster oven (real ovens are rare), so I made blueberry bread. Sometimes cooking food is more effort than it's worth, but this time I think it was worth it. :)

And I'm going to write about other things I'm looking forward to this July in America. I'm super excited to go to the gym (it is culturally unacceptable for girls to "work out" here), I will be even more excited to see shoes and clothes in my size and length (everything is made for tiny fairies here), I'm going to run and sit in the grass (if you find any grass here, usually it is more dirt than grass and other people are most likely sitting on it), I want to drink water out of the tap and not have to boil it (like most other countries in the world, you can't swallow the water from the faucet in China), I can't wait to chuck toilet paper down the toilet (if you throw paper into the toilets in China, it's a mini-disaster), I want to dry my clothes in a dryer (instead of line drying everything), I want to stand in a bathtub (instead of taking a shower in a "shoilet," which is taking a shower over the toilet), I think it might be nice to have some fresh food (instead of MSG, oil-saturated dishes), I can't wait to see the blue Kansas sky (you can't see the sky most days because of the buildings or clouds or pollution here), I can't wait to fully understand what people are talking about, I will be glad to really say or write what's on my mind, it will be nice to not be a celebrity for a couple months, and I can't wait to see and hug my family after so many months!!

Thanks for letting me share. It wasn't meant to be a complaint list; I think it was been good for me to live more like 90 percent of the world lives since September. And I have realized that America really is an exception. I'm just looking forward to a little rest.

Time to for me to go to English corner/everyone-talk-to-the-foreign-teachers-at-once place. See you next time!