Home after the Holiday

Bri's post motivated me to get back to this after about a month off.  I've been meaning to post about our last holiday since our return 10 days ago but life's been busy.  The first week back from a break and the last week before a break bring added stress for teachers.  We have a week off for Chinese New Year next week so its been a blur and it is hard to keep the kids productive.

Bri and I learned some interesting things about ourselves over break.  It will be easier to share a few of those than summarize our entire break.

1. We miss the little kids in our life so much when we're away.  We're lucky to have facetime and skype to stay close and check in but those don't compare to holding a little niece or hearing two year old Kinsleigh calling your name when she wants you to get the Cheetos off the counter.  We filled most of our free time with the kids in someway.

2. I'm getting old.  All of the swinging kids from my arms and crawling on the floor were rough on my shoulder.  I'm going to try some traditional chinese medicine and I'll blog about that sometime.  It was all worth it though.

3. Our lives revolve around food...and we like it that way.  Bri and I laughed that we could recount each day of the trip by what we ate.  Each meal reminds us of who we saw or what we were doing at the time.

4. We're very thankful we've chosen careers that allow us to spend so much time with friends and family.  Heading back to Shanghai after a three week holiday we kept asking ourselves how our friends and family that don't have that time off ever rejuvenate or have time to just be.  

5.  We're very lucky to have so many homes.  It was odd how arriving at so many different places on our trip made us feel at home.

     I was really surprised the night we returned, after traveling for about 23 hours from door to door Bri said, "I'm surprised to say this but it in an odd way it feels good to be back."  It was a weird feeling but I felt the same way.  We'd been home, but we were home again.

   That thought was revisited the next morning.  I was unpacking and I yelled down the hall, "I only took 4 pairs of socks home before holiday and I brought 12 pairs of socks home yesterday."  Then I paused, and thought about it.  We both laughed that I had used the word home twice in the same sentence in reference to two places, nearly 7,000 miles apart.  That really summed up our trip, besides spending over 24 hours in a plane we felt at home in numerous ways and at numerous places.  Special meals, the smell of fresh air, familiar sights of a city or of a past job, but most often laughter and conversations with people we love, friends and family.

A couple days after returning I received a letter from Granny.  It ended with a line that fit this blog perfectly.  

In case the note is hard to read on your screen it says:
P.S. 1/10/12- Jerry's lunch had a chinese fortune cookie: Your HOME is a pleasant place from which you will draw happiness.

     That captured our feelings from the trip and summed up why so many things could make us feel at home.  However, as I write this I'm wonder...in a week we should be on a beach in Vietnam.  I anticipate that will be a pleasant place and I hope to draw happiness from that experience.  So could Vietnam be home too?  And by the way, did you know when you eat at a chinese restaurant in China you don't get a fortune cookie! That tradition began in San Francisco.  Now I'm rambling....

Matt