It's good to be home?!

Katie and I returned to Beijing last night after six weeks in the United States on holiday break. It's nice to be back, although I think I am finding it more difficult to adjust than when we first arrived.

Living with my in-laws for six weeks was wonderful. We got to enjoy good company, great accommodations, and all the comforts of Kansas farm life. (read: baked goods, adolescent labradors, and family) In Beijing, however, there are cartoon rats adorning the foyer of our apartment building in celebration of the new year, healthy mouthfuls of motorcycle exhaust on every corner, and live turtles looking particularly depressed in Wal-Mart seafood displays. Oh, and we forgot a bunch of the Chinese we had learned before we left. So it's back to the flash cards...

But in re-stocking our apartment with groceries, we discovered that Sam Walton's behemoth legacy at Zichinglu sells organic produce, so we bought some tasty ingredients for dinner tonight. Also, thanks to our extended absence, we now know how all of the dirt gets into our apartment because there's trails of it sticking out from telltale holes in the window grout that were not apparent earlier. Finally, it's nice to note that the people of Beijing have not changed a bit: we tell them that we speak Chinese poorly, then they tell us that our Mandarin is better than most Americans. They're nice.

Getting back to Wal-Mart, though: for whatever reason, they had an old Communist anthem playing on the sound system on endless repeat, an all-new, 12'-wide display of shrink-wrapped "meat snacks," and more than enough trash bins to accommodate "the spitters," who used the receptacles liberally. Also, we immediately fell back into the habit of saying whatever crossed our minds, now that we don't have to worry about nearby English-speakers. But after seeing the mushroom display at Wal-Mart, we have a hankering to learn how to cook traditional Chinese food.

So We think we're going to sign up for Cooking Classes with Chun Yi. She runs a cool little business in one of the last remaining traditional courtyard neighborhoods (a.k.a. hutong), so we're going to pay her a visit sometime this week to learn about all those fungi we didn't recognize. Should be fun...