So my real excuse for not writing for two months is because I am 14 weeks pregnant and the last two months (during the first trimester), I have been too exhausted to do anything but sleep, exercise, work and sit on the couch watching TV. There are a few exceptions to this, but honestly, I have never been so tired. I know it was all for good reason and that I should enjoy my pregnancy, yadda yadda, but honestly, it was not fun. I can say that more easily now because this last week I have started to feel pretty good again and am getting back some energy and am not disgusted by the thought of 80% of the foods I used to love (only 40% now).
The summer was really a whirlwind. I kept myself very busy since Andy was still in China. I worked A LOT, I exercised A LOT and then I spent as much time as I could outside of those activities with friends and family.
It has been a busy summer and unfortunately I have not written because too much has been going on.
Talking with him reminded me of all that we have learned living here and the naivety of a newbie. His business is commodities trading of some sort and his boss from Texas had sent him here because the China office was not meeting their deliverables and seemed to be disorganized. He has grand plans of getting things organized and fixed up in a few months while at the same time traveling extensively to Japan and India as well. I just looked at him and smiled and said, “good luck with that.” After that, he was talking to my friend Junie and he turned back to me and said, “you guys are depressing.” I asked why and he said that I had shot down his plans of doing well, rapidly at work and then Junie was explaining to him why you should not give money to children begging on the street. (Often, the parents will do cruel things to the kids to put them in a pathetic state in order to exploit them for money. Junie should know as she has spent countless hours volunteering at an orphanage that had kids without thumbs and eyes from parents doing just that. Also the kids on the street are not in school and by giving them money it encourages the cycle.) I quickly agreed with Junie and the guy looked genuinely depressed. I really had forgotten how much we have learned living here and it took a guy fresh off the boat and eager to succeed to remind me of all of the lessons learned.
