China, Jai You!

Whatever language I had been faithfully practicing every day in my car to prepare for this move, it was clearly not Mandarin. People have been staring blankly at me, head cocked to the side in a mixture of confusion and amusement and irritation, whenever I've tried my few words and phrases. Embarrassing.

After the deafening cheers in the stands during yesterday's kayaking races for the Olympics, I turned to the Chinese guy next to me and asked him what he was yelling: "Jai you!" He said, "It means, go!" Last night, I asked my friend, Alex, what it really meant, and he explained, "Literally, it translates to 'add oil.'" When you want to win or go faster, you need to add a little fuel. I love that.

So while my family slumbers on this morning, I thought it was about time that I committed my personal resolutions for the next year in China in blog. Here's how I want to add a little fuel for myself! Justina, jai you!

• Acquire some basic Mandarin language skills! While it's impractical to think that I'll be fluent in Mandarin after a year, I'd like to be proficient enough to have a real conversation. Not just a transaction of information: where is the bathroom? I would like two orders of these dumplings. You know what I mean. Exchange ideas. And really, it would be absolutely amazing to get fluent enough that I could speak with my mom. Have a true conversation with her.

Translation: hire a Mandarin tutor, make sure to get out of my expat compound and practice the language with real people!

• Write my next novels! So my agent kicked me in the rear end when I saw him in L.A. a few weeks ago, telling me it was time to Get Back to Work. The truth is, after my last book tour which lasted almost SIX months, I was burned out. Absolutely and completely burned out. I took the entire summer off of writing. That's one long dry spell, longer than any I've ever given myself. Even when I was launching readergirlz with Lorie Ann Grover, Janet Lee Carey, and Dia Calhoun, I was writing--and even finished North of Beautiful during our most intense time. As my writer-friends have assured me: I have just been filling my creative well. I think they're right. Now, I am yearning to get back to the empty page and spend hours writing. I have four (count them, four!) book ideas that I've been ruminating over the past year or two.

Translation: commit to writng 3 full days a week and 2 mornings a week.

• Throw myself into the China experience! My year in Australia with my husband flew. Absolutely flew (except for the first few months when I had to adjust to all the racism...). So I know my time in Shanghai will be fast. I want to get to know the city, the quirky neighborhoods, the secret places to eat and shop. I want to travel in Asia (and have already booked our trip to Bhutan!). And I want to meet the cool, creative people who are changing the face of China now: the architects and designers, the directors and producers and writers and artists, the entrepreneurs.

Translation: set aside a day a week to explore the city. Pick out the places we want to visit in China and Asia. And interview cool people. This is all about feeding my creative well.

• Take exquisite care of my family, friends, and self! And of paramount importance to me, I want to make sure my family is safe and happy. So I want to do what I can to help my kiddos acclimatize to their new home. (That might mean volunteering at their school as a writer-in-residence since my eldest still--so far!--doesn't have a problem with me being onsite with him. I realize this will change sooner than I like.) One of my very best friends from college lives 10 minutes away from me now in Shanghai! I definitely want to devote some great quality time with my girlfriend. And finally, the big 4-0 has proven to me once and for all that my metabolism is slooooowing down. Must work out. Every. Day. Or I will take on the shape of a round Shanghainese dumpling.

Translation: breathe.

And take new exercise classes: try out tai chi! fencing! heck, racewalking!

Geocache with my family! And just have fun.

Shanghaied

Ni hao! And so our life in China begins.

The night of our Big Move, I couldn't sleep. So at 3:00 a.m., I just got up and cleaned the house. My parents had mentioned that they would try to come wish us goodbye. We waited and waited. No sign of them. As we pulled out of our driveway for the last time, there they were, ambling down the street. My mom looked so sad that I wondered whether we were making a mistake, leaving the country. Leaving them behind. But my husband reminded me, "They're visiting in a few weeks."

Three movies on a plane later, we arrived! (Question: was Anne Bolyn truly as conniving and cruel as the movie made her out to be? Now, I'm curious and want to read about her.) Traveling with 6 suitcases (not to mention 2 stuffed animals, 1 guitar case, 4 carry-on backpacks, and 1 loaded Kindle!) was a shock to my system. I--Ms. Traveling Light--never check luggage if I can help it. I like being unencumbered. I like walking off the plane and being directly on my way. When my husband and I moved to Australia for a year (before kids...and those are the operative words), we took one suitcase each. One. Each. That was it for the year.

We all woke up at 3:00 a.m., hungry and totally wired. As we waited for stores to open, we took a walk (already stifling in the thick, hot air) and then escaped into the air-conditioned Tourist Tunnel underneath the river. There, we hopped on a tram, narrated as part horror show (weird heh-heh-heh laughter) and Disney.

Foraging for food was a good reminder that we were in a different country. Here, luckily, everything was translated into English. What I liked was ordering our meal via placemat. We just circled whatever we wanted.

Then it was on to the first store to get basics for our new home: towels, sheets...mooncakes. The mid-autumn festival (celebrating the full, fat moon and family) is in a few weeks, and already the mooncakes are out in stores. Even ones selling linens! This is the fanciest box I've seen:

Picking what we wanted was easy. A half-dozen salesladies fluttered around us. Paying for what we needed took a bit of time. Cash registers aren't at the front of the store. Instead, we finally spotted a cashier, located in the perimeter, in front of the changing room. Two people cut right in front of me. And that's when the "exciting" and "surreal" concept of moving to a foreign country became reality. Finally, I tried out my feeble Mandarin when a third person squeezed in front of my cart: "Bu!" Which communicated effectively enough: the line is behind us.

Off to Beijing tomorrow for the Olympics!

Racing Thru Omaha

After My Summer That Never Was last year where I spent too much time with my computer and not enough with my kids, I promised myself that *this* summer I'd take a short break from writing. However, I hadn't counted on us moving in a few weeks to China (which has eaten up more time than I thought it would with all the stupid little details entailed with changing continents). Nor had I realized that my kids would qualify for the Junior Olympics in track & field. Which meant we just spent an entire week in Omaha, NE.

Tsk, tsk to any of you who are groaning: Omaha! What's in Omaha?!

Newsflash: I loved Omaha! Loved it!

In what other city could you get a flat tire (I hate Hertz rent-a-deathtrap), and the entire fleet of valets at the first hotel you ka-thunk-ka-thunk your way to runs out and changes the tire for you? It was like having my own Indy 500 pit crew. And then the front desk crew felt sorry for us that we had to wait and plied us with soft drinks. Let me repeat: we weren't even staying at that hotel! (Embassy Suites, downtown Omaha: the staff rocks.)

Still, talk about culture shock. Not since I lived in Australia way back in the early '90s has my sheer presence been able to stop conversations at restaurants. Repeatedly.

So there we'd be, my kids and I would walk in to any establishment in Omaha...and forks would literally be arrested midair as diners swiveled for a good look at us. But then we'd get big, welcoming smiles, and people would return to their meals. I figure, these stares will be nothing compared to China when locals will look upon me as though I'm an idiot for not being able to speak the language.

(FYI: for a great source of restaurant recommendations, check out Chowhound where foodies hash it out.)

My favorite Omaha moments:

• cheering on my daughter as she got her PR (personal record) in race walking
  
  
• watching my son take the podium to get his medal
  
  
• bringing together my mom and her little sister who haven't spent any real alone time in years. Look how cute they are, giggling together. They stayed up until midnight every night this week just gabbing.




• hanging with my own little sister at the botanical garden
  
  



• geocaching in gorgeous parks with the fam. (Here's my hubby.)

• And did I mention how cute my mom was with her sister? To sisters!