Belated Post: First Season Finale - June 2008

Before we knew it, our first five months came to a close on June 27, 2008. It felt strange. We had in the freezing cold of winter arrived at this strange place to a strange house and begun new lives. Suddenly, 5 months later, it was hotter and more humid than we had ever felt, and we had to suddenly shut down the life we had so methodically built in Shanghai. In some ways it felt like we had been through a lot (and we had...). In other ways, it felt like the time had just flown. It was strange to be a part of an entire community that was going on freeze. Most of the expat activities just stopped and everybody said goodbye as they prepared for home leave (significant numbers were leaving for good).

While I was packing on the day prior to departure, Henry was out on his scooter and gashed the side of his foot. This resulted in my taking him to my employer (Parkway Health) for stitches (and delaying my packing by about 3 hours). Note that this was the second child who got stitches since we'd come to China!!

I have yet to get a good night sleep prior to moving cross-continent. This time I was up pretty much the whole night trying to get everything organized....

Eric was not flying home with us. When we arrived at the airport, Henry informed us he could not walk, so we got him a wheelchair. This ended up being the saving grace because we would not have made our connection in Hong Kong had he not (it was a very tight connection and we were late). I commended him on his great sacrifice for the family!


The kids were totally spoiled again in first class, but this at least allowed me a little bit of a break after the all-nighter.

It was the start of a wonderful summer in LA, visiting with friends and family and most of our favorite places. We were so happy to have time with so many of our friends, but totally regretted that we didn't have time to see everyone we would have liked to. It flew by way too fast.

More updates will be coming soon. We returned to Shanghai August 14th and the kids are already back in school.