NOT A STRANGER, NOT A STRANGE LAND

We've been coming to China for very nearly 20 years. In that time, we've done something marvelous-- we've made a second home in a second culture across a very big distance. We've made quite a lot of friends, and as one might expect over nearly two decades, lost a few. But it is a great comfort to be here when we can manage it. Our trips here afford not merely time to explore this marvelous and (okay, sometimes strange) land, and to see our friends here (who always ask, as soon as we arrive, when we will next come back) but to glance back towards our primary home, and get a fresh look thereof. Anyone's home is a lot like a Monet painting-- it's nearly impossible to see from close proximity. And because of that fact alone, traveling a great distance at regular(ish) intervals is essential to getting a clearer view not of one's life, but of the place and circumstance under which the life is lived. For the boys, this is as natural as breathing, as they've made the long flights and learned the new language and whatever one grows up doing is always, however it appears to anyone else, normal. No matter how we might sometimes wish the distance were not so great, the fact is that without the distance we could not gain the perspective that it allows. So we'll continue to suffer the slings and arrows of the long flights, and focus on the goal-- time in our second world.