LeahAndMark.com

Today is an easy day for us… we’re postponing the Great Wall trip until the end of the month when we come back to Beijing after our travels to Guilin, Chengdu, etc.  Still adjusting to the time difference, plus all the walking, talking, language translation, etc. that takes up much more energy than a normal day in the States. 

Yesterday’s highlights were visiting the China Care Children’s Home and going to the Donghuamen Night Market.  Babies and food are two of my fave things.  China Care was awesome!  The babies were so cute, and I was relieved to see that they are also incredibly well cared-for.  They have very loving staff, and nice facilities, too.  It’s not really one building, but rather the Children’s Home is run out of several apartments in Shunyi, a suburb 45 minutes north of Beijing.  I was happily surprised that we actually got to hold and play with the babies!  The children have all come to Beijing from orphanages in other parts of China to receive medical treatment for various conditions such as cleft palates, heart problems, hydrocephalus, etc.  They get the necessary treatment and follow-up care here, and then they are placed in foster care once they are all better.  Or, for the few whose conditions are terminal, they are placed in a nearby hospice.  (Oh, there go the tears…. crying on the keyboard now.)  But most of the children have conditions that are easily fixed with surgery, so that’s the good news.  About 1/3 of the children currently are adopted.  They’re hoping that number goes up, up, up to 100%, of course, but in the meantime the children receive really great foster care, much different from the U.S.

Picture Time!

The night market was fun, too.  Some of the food was great, some….eh.  Not great.  But it was good times.  Mark will tell you all about it, I’m sure.  You’ll be glad to know we survived two absolutely insane taxi rides yesterday.  Not all the taxi drivers are crazy….I think most of them are pretty great.  But we somehow managed to find two on a suicide mission yesterday.  Happily, disaster was somehow miraculously diverted and we arrived safely at our destinations. 

Tea time!  I’m over and out. 

I’m Yelp Elite. Although kind of silly, I’ll add it to my list of distinctions that I have *earned* (earned? After writing a certain amount of reviews and generally being slightly active in your regional yelp online community, you write an email saying why you should be given Elite status!… I should dig mine up. It rocked.)

Anyways. There are regular yelp events and then there are elite yelp events - the elite ones seem to have more/better food/drinks. Oh. So at a recent one which ocurred on a top secret date at a top secret location (nah, just kidding, but it did occur at Food Studio.) Leah and I went down and met up with some of the elite-ers.

Leah and Wallace! - he’s a college professor at ummm… Moorehouse? Somewhere, but genius!

Leah and Tulie - she’s awesomely the living life of the party. Always. I’m very happy that she moved to Atlanta to go to med-school ’cause now we know her!

Leah! Mark! Tulie! Dio! (not his real name apparently - but we’ll keep up the charade!)

Omg. Look. It’s me… standing next to two other asian people in the same picture! Having lived in Phoenix for so long, I’ve never had that happen! (and not even with my family - because my brother and sister are half black and so it would only be me and my mom who look really asian in our family photos - everyone else is still in the Philippines.)

- Mark

It’s not that I don’t have my own family, because I do, and they’re great, but when you have a large extended family that lives close to each other… family entails many more things.

I am fortunate to be close and even included/accepted as one of theirs - and it’s an interesting experience. Aside from their family in particular, the whole ‘large extended family’ is a foreign experience for me - and one that I’m glad to be a part of. It’s partly my own fault, but my relationship with my own family is slightly distant, even though the underlying love and everything else is always there. I missed my sister’s graduation and not being able to go hit me harder than I thought it would - even though I really was struggling to get finances in order at the time… but still, that realization that ‘money’ is always keeping me from things… is frustrating. And while I wish I was fighting to push back how much not having money ’stops’ me… I know I’m only getting more money so that the lack of it can stop me only slightly less…  Paying off all my debt this year should help out considerably.

Happily, I have already purchased my ticket to fly out to Phoenix in May for a few days and attend my brother’s graduation. And even though I missed my sister’s, it does seem like this one has more weight, or rather, a different significance since only a few years ago, it was a real issue whether or not Ryan would actually get up and do something with his life…or at least… get to a point where he could go live it. Because being stuck in a depression, deep in a hole without a clue as to how to even begin to climb out… that was Ryan at times, and then one day, I’m sure with my sister’s help, he started moving forward, and then all of a sudden it wasn’t an upward climb but merely a gradual walk up an incline out of a cave instead of a deep, deep hole in the earth.

I am going to take insanely too many pictures of my family when I see them again.

-Mark

It is becoming increasingly difficult to get up and do any real work on the weekends. The days (and nights) are simply too packed now and when Friday night, or Saturday morning come around… I want nothing - or rather, I want to do nothing. Nothing at all. Except hang out, with other people or even just myself, all of it is all good.

Whereas we used to wake up around 5,6, 7am on Saturday, the clock has been pushed back and it’s usually around 8am when I finally get up… to make coffee and fight back doing anything for as long as I can. Since moving to Atlanta, I can say that weekends are better, slower, and I just feel more alive on Saturday and Sunday than I ever did in Phoenix.

Maybe it’s just where I am in life at this point, because I’m looking forward to so much more, both with Leah and for me individually. With the China trip rushing at us, even though I have my finances literally planned out on paper through the end of October… it’s all open to everything that may come our way.

So on this early Sunday afternoon with writing assignments gnawing at me and school projects sitting there waiting to be taken care of, everything else is at the front of my head and the urge to run and live is always fighting the structure of preparation associated with work and school.

This was breakfast today. After getting up, I went down the street to pick up some supplies:

• Eggs
• English Muffins (Wheat!)
• Tomato
• Avocado

Total: $8.72 + Cheese we had, and coffee we also already had… breakfast for both of us!

It made us ask the question: Why don’t we do this more often? - we really should.

My new camera is great, and while I’m not the best at taking great (good) shots… it doesn’t seem to stop me from snapping photos forever and ever… and ever.

-Mark