things i want that are back in china

• my bike
• my cello
• my apartment that i intend to paint and clean out and rearrange
• my classroom and lesson plans and students
• my responsibilities at work (weird, i know...it's probably related to feeling like i'm doing something i know is useful and helpful to other people)
• my friends over there
• milk tea
• school lunches (hey, we have good food there)
• the humid summer hotness (i'm crazy, but i like it, sometimes, because it's like that feeling of summer in the air, which is probably similar to japan...it involves cicadas chirping)
• taxis
• my knowledge of chinese being useful

hmm i had a longer list in my mind and most of it slipped away.  but i will be back with them in less than a week!  and then i will be missing all the other people (mostly people, not things, except for avocado) everywhere else.  it always ends up like that, everywhere i go.  so i try to be glad for the now, because my "the now" is blessed.

as edna says, "i never look back, dahling.  it distracts from the now."

and that's totally not true for me.  i look back all the time.  looking back in the right way is helpful.  but looking back in the wrong way is distracting.  missing people excessively is for sure distracting.  i should know.  i personally have found some combination of looking back while looking ahead and also focusing on *the now* to be very useful.  i've often found the way to have a good perspective on some issue in life is some combination of two extremes.  so i think edna is wrong. partly.  but she's still awesome.