Writer's Block, or Nothing to Write About

This is a pretty good example of how normal our life has become. Nearly half of all the photos in our December file are portraits of Baotou (above) and Chengdu (somewhere eating bamboo, I guess). The kids are using the camera more than us.

A thousand years ago (or, as Thompson and Thomson in the Tintin books would say, to be precise: last July) when I set up my blog I had a clear idea of what it should accomplish. It would document for friends and family our daily trials, tribulations, and triumphs of our adventures in Inner Mongolia. For the first four months my blog lived up to my expectations: you got to experience our bewilderment over chaotic streets and a new culture; visit Beijing and Datong with us; go through all of our physical ailments and one big Thanksgiving dinner. Lately, however, I’ve found myself in a really weird predicament. Life here has become normal—or as normal as is possible for someone who doesn’t really interact with anyone outside of our building in any more meaningful way than to get potatoes or smile idiotically while saying “yes, yes” as the vegetable lady reads me the riot act for not putting Grace in thicker long underwear. Except for the fact that we live in a postage stamp apartment in Inner Mongolia, in many ways we could be living our same normal humdrum lives as back home. Routine, in other words, has taken over adventure, and I don’t have anything flashy, witty, or exotic to share with you.

On the other hand, a lot has been happening on the domestic front. This is where my conundrum sets in: do I reveal all the minutia of our life, something which we don’t normally write about at home, or do I wait until something momentous and new happens, and then write about that, leaving our personal lives in the background? Since we’re crammed into such close quarters, and are linguistically quarantined from everyone around us, little things that we perhaps wouldn’t normally notice are amplified in their importance to us. But are these events blog-worthy? I mean, I’ve made an incredibly awesome pumpkin bread three times in the last week, using sweet potatoes from the garbage can guys on the street corner and dried cranberries and walnuts, and we all love it and it makes our lives cheery, but it’s not an event that is any different from what occurs at home (with the exception of the sweet potato substituted for the canned pumpkin, of course). We’ve started skating at the university across the street, which means not having to take a cab, and it’s cheaper and nicer skating, too, but is it important enough to tell you all about it?

The skating rink at IMNU--a flooded dirt field. That's Grace and me on the left in orange, Samuel is on the right in gray sweats and a red and blue coat.

Believe it or not: they actually thought of holding hands and skating together all on their own. How cute is that? Blog-worthy, though?

And finally, the Tintin comics have taken on a huge role in our house: they’ve helped Samuel move from not reading anything without coercion this summer to voraciously reading all his Tintin books, and then to make the leap from a comics-only diet of literary consumption to reading his first-ever novel, Redwall, written at a level most middle-schoolers might find challenging; and now, Grace has picked up the tradition and is learning to read from Tintin.

The usual breakfast routine: Tintin and sweet potato bread. That's my crockpot on the desk behind the table. No room in the kitchen, so our dinner cooks in the living room.

As I write, Dave, Grace, and Samuel are watching a Tintin DVD. Samuel wants to grow up to be Tintin (I guess this might have to fit into his busy schedule as the 5^th Beatle). Okay, maybe this last item might be blog-worthy, since it may mean Samuel will lead a charmed life as an eternally young journalist fighting bad guys and uncovering political intrigue the world over, but it wouldn’t make it into my blog for ten years yet. Stay tuned? And when I took Grace to a market this afternoon to find a present for her brother, she said “Mom, I’ll talk to the lady and bargain with her.” And she did. In Chinese. Yes, I think that is blog-worthy, but I didn’t take pictures and the whole thing only lasted for about 5 minutes.

Anyway, I hope this explains why I’ve been awfully quiet lately: nothing too zippy to report. On the other hand, we have been practicing with the other American teachers for an upcoming Christmas banquet being given in our honor this Thursday: the students are going to give a talent show, and we must do our part—Dave, the kids, and I have been roped into waltzing for a dance number the American teachers have organized. At least we will not have to do the swing or hip hop portions of the skit, and we’ll only be "on stage” for one minute. This of course opens up an interesting question of why there are Christmas decorations all over Hohhot, when Christmas is not only not a Chinese holiday, but it’s a religious one at that (I’ve heard, however, that Chinese students like to celebrate Christmas by drinking a lot, since it’s not a holiday proscribed by centuries of Chinese tradition) and also why there are three Christmas trees and flashing lights in the lobby of our building. There will be a post on the banquet. And Dave must teach on Christmas Eve, but he’s just showing a movie (Polar Express). While he is supposed to teach on Christmas itself, he will just run over, push the start button on the movie, and come back to join in the Christmas madness.

So there you go, a non-blog-worthy post, but at least you know we aren’t suffering some new kind of plague and that we are all well and happy (and getting fat like everyone else this time of year, munching on Christmas cookies and sweet potato bread).