Home again, home again
I am enchanted by wireless; right now I am sitting on the couch in my living room (I am in my own living room!) stealing the wireless from ADAPT next door (signal strength: very weak and oh! I don't even think that most of livejournal knows that I have a laptop now; it was bought in a fury of aaahi'mgoingtochina right before I went to China) and it is warm in here (Oregon is the first place I've been in a long time that is appropriately cold (I am ignoring Inner Mongolia for the moment) and right now I have blankets and the couch and my dad reading a backlog of newspapers (they've been gone for two weeks and we get three papers a day (except Saturdays, when there are only two)) while football is on the television (the Beavers won the civil war! Not today; a couple days ago; we watched it on my grandfather's crazy gigantic tv (he doesn't watch that tv; he sits in his chair and naps while watching a smaller and less scary tv
and now I declare an amnesty on dangling parentheses because I don't feel like going back and figuring it out.
So. I have been gone from here for a long time (not so long, really).
In the time since leaving China, I have eaten fried jiaozi, baozi (both baked and steamed), ma po doufu, si rou chao mian, crazy fatty pork like we ate in Hangzhou, tapioca pearl milk tea, xia chao fan, and basically everything else we ever ate in China. We went to Hawaii for Thanksgiving, which is to say that I stopped there for a week and met up with most of my family on the way home. I hadn't been out there in ten or eleven years.
It was... strange. It was great to see Harry and Cara, and Elias is adorable and starting to talk and he likes to play catch. We walked down to the beach and except for the first day, he loved it. He is good-natured and friendly and has the most charming smile. Harry and Cara and I talked a little about what I want to do next year, and I said I didn't know, but I'd thought some about just moving to Portland and looking for something to do; he said that he and Patrick and I could all get together for dinner once a week, and I find that idea so tempting. We're not a close family, exactly, but we want to build closeness? I dunno. And I like the idea of seeing my nephew while he grows up. The thought makes me question the thought of going abroad next year - I want to be closer to my family.
Hawaii was crazy; I don't even know what I want to say about it - my grandpa has a beautiful smile. I felt more out of place in Hawaii than I did in China, probably just because Hawaii shouldn't have felt so foreign, but the language they speak there is strange and not quite the same (I like to listen to Hawaiian accents). Thanksgiving dinner was cooked in an imu (I was very confused when my mom kept talking about how we were gonna be preparing the imu on Sunday and what I heard was that we'd be preparing the emu on Sunday) - on Sunday, my uncle folks dug a big pit in the backyard and filled it with wood and stones, and on Wednesday they cut up banana stumps and leaves and put burned the wood in the pit to heat the rocks, then piled food and banana stump slices and leaves and it's complicated and I don't know how to explain it, but in the end there were like a hundred pans of food - turkey and pork butts and boiled peanuts and craziness all steaming in the backyard overnight, and it was this crazy time consuming communal thing - lots of families came together to do the prep work and cut up the stumps and dig the pit and everything, and lots of families put their food in, and they all laughed and teased while they worked and after the food is all in and they cover it with burlap and a tarp to keep the steam in, they all sit around and drink beer for a while, and it was a pretty beautiful tradition (*laughs* They do it for Thanksgiving and Christmas and on special occasions (they did it after my parents got married!) and it is neat).
Anyway. Love to many people, you folks included. I'm gonna go unload the car, maybe? (only not really, because I have a cat sitting on my legs and keeping me warm)
and now I declare an amnesty on dangling parentheses because I don't feel like going back and figuring it out.
So. I have been gone from here for a long time (not so long, really).
In the time since leaving China, I have eaten fried jiaozi, baozi (both baked and steamed), ma po doufu, si rou chao mian, crazy fatty pork like we ate in Hangzhou, tapioca pearl milk tea, xia chao fan, and basically everything else we ever ate in China. We went to Hawaii for Thanksgiving, which is to say that I stopped there for a week and met up with most of my family on the way home. I hadn't been out there in ten or eleven years.
It was... strange. It was great to see Harry and Cara, and Elias is adorable and starting to talk and he likes to play catch. We walked down to the beach and except for the first day, he loved it. He is good-natured and friendly and has the most charming smile. Harry and Cara and I talked a little about what I want to do next year, and I said I didn't know, but I'd thought some about just moving to Portland and looking for something to do; he said that he and Patrick and I could all get together for dinner once a week, and I find that idea so tempting. We're not a close family, exactly, but we want to build closeness? I dunno. And I like the idea of seeing my nephew while he grows up. The thought makes me question the thought of going abroad next year - I want to be closer to my family.
Hawaii was crazy; I don't even know what I want to say about it - my grandpa has a beautiful smile. I felt more out of place in Hawaii than I did in China, probably just because Hawaii shouldn't have felt so foreign, but the language they speak there is strange and not quite the same (I like to listen to Hawaiian accents). Thanksgiving dinner was cooked in an imu (I was very confused when my mom kept talking about how we were gonna be preparing the imu on Sunday and what I heard was that we'd be preparing the emu on Sunday) - on Sunday, my uncle folks dug a big pit in the backyard and filled it with wood and stones, and on Wednesday they cut up banana stumps and leaves and put burned the wood in the pit to heat the rocks, then piled food and banana stump slices and leaves and it's complicated and I don't know how to explain it, but in the end there were like a hundred pans of food - turkey and pork butts and boiled peanuts and craziness all steaming in the backyard overnight, and it was this crazy time consuming communal thing - lots of families came together to do the prep work and cut up the stumps and dig the pit and everything, and lots of families put their food in, and they all laughed and teased while they worked and after the food is all in and they cover it with burlap and a tarp to keep the steam in, they all sit around and drink beer for a while, and it was a pretty beautiful tradition (*laughs* They do it for Thanksgiving and Christmas and on special occasions (they did it after my parents got married!) and it is neat).
Anyway. Love to many people, you folks included. I'm gonna go unload the car, maybe? (only not really, because I have a cat sitting on my legs and keeping me warm)