OK...we're back from our visit to the States. I intended to post something here earlier in the week but the jet lag has been killing us. We were in the US just long enough to get our internal clocks adjusted and it's been a real struggle to get turned around. We were hitting the wall around 4PM everyday and we were all in bed by 8. Then, of course, we were up at 2AM. It's getting better but we're not quite fully recoverd. I read once that the adjustment takes one day for every time zone. If that's the case, we've got another week to go.
It was great to celebrate Christmas with family and to catch up friends. We've been gone for only 5 months but in some ways it seemed longer. Another good thing about going home was how easy things are there. I'm often asked what is the worst thing about living in China and my response is always the language barrier and how difficult it can be to communicate. So many times, things that should be easy become almost impossible. Like trying to tell Shen Bo when to pick us up at the airport. Prior to leaving, I had given him our itenary with dates and flight numbers and thought we had it all sorted out. Then, while we're loading our bags to head for the Cincinnati airport, I receive a text message from him telling me that he has been waiting for us at the Pudong airport. The whole misunderstanding was cleared up with a phone call but this is just a small example of how we waste a lot of time and effort on simple things.
This trip home also made us realize how much our perspective has changed in a short time. If you've been reading all the posts here, you've seen me describe how everything here is so crowded and there is no personal space (I actually counted one day and we had 22 people in an elevator at my office). So when everyone was complaining about how crowded the malls were and how bad traffic was, we were thinking, "Gee, there's not many people out today."
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