Life Lessons Learned as a Jane of All Trades

Crossing Guard
- Dressing for the cold, sometimes less is more. Layers should be loose enough to have some give. If they are tightly packed on, the cold comes right through. I also learned that taping two handwarmers to myself (one to my back and one to my chest) worked wonders.
- Dressing for the cold is a carefully honed skill, but it can be done
- I still feel chilled after being in the cold for an extended amount of time
- How to give directions to the DMV that relocated during the time I worked as a crossing gaurd

Cleaner / Housekeeper
- How to clean a mirror or glass and leave no streaks
- A well maintained toilet is not hard to clean (actually it's easy)
- Cleaning is easier if using fewer cleaning chemicals for the following three reasons: 1) water, friction, and elbow grease are the main things that clean, 2) the chemicals are potent and not a lot is needed to kill germs, 3) the more chemicals you use, the longer it takes to rinse them away
- Cleaning is a physically demanding job, and the people who do it are doing honorable work
- The best rags in the world are not expensive, they are your old towels and wash cloths

Natural Landscaper
- Lawn is less awesome than most Americans make it out to be. It gives us no food, doesn't do anything for us except look vaguely pretty, and makes good picnicking spaces. But tons of people spend so much time, energy, and money to fertilize and mow these endless fields of grass to what point?
- There is huge diversity and beauty in Wisconsin's native plants and wildflowers

Restaurant Clerk / Busser
- The customer isn't always right, and they might just be at the wrong restaurant
- Subway should definitely have horseradish available
- Working in a high class restaurant, even in the lowest position, is a million times better than working at Subway
- The diversity found in kitchen staff of a restaurant can be one of the best perks to the job

Volunteer, Missionary / Living Overseas
- I don't need to be near my parents and family to survive
- Homesickness was never so bad for me as many people describe
- Being away from home opens your eyes to new worlds, new ways of thinking, new ways of life
- Opening your eyes to other worlds helps you see your own world more clearly
- You can't fix everyone's problems, even as a full-time volunteer
- Other countries have much to boast, but the longer I'm away, the more I appreciate the beauty Wisconsin has to offer
- Building relationships with people who speak a different language from you is possible, it just takes extra work

Nanny
- Kids can't be forced to develop in an area before they're ready. They can only be budged.
- Young children don't benefit that much from doing homework all evening after being at school all day. They would benefit more from eating a family dinner and running and playing like a kid.
- Kids are amazing creatures and parents are willing to do a lot for their success
- It is extremely rewarding to care for kids and to watch them grow

Parks and Rec Children's Activity Leader / Art Teacher / English Teacher
- Kids are a joy to teach, and very difficult to teach
- It is easier to focus on children's' behaviors than on the root of those behaviors
- I prefer teaching smaller groups of kids than large groups of kids. The benefit is so much greater in small groups or in one-on-one interactions.
- It is always best to come more prepared than necessary
- Being able to deviate from the plan in a pinch is a very important skill in teaching
- Kids are ALWAYS at least a little bit unpredictable
- Kids are a ton of fun to work with

Wife
- Onion and garlic breath are the worst! Kisses are better held off until the next day in extreme cases because toothpaste doesn't always help
- Getting married was a better choice than I ever realized it could be. I love being partners for life with my best friend, and I love waking up next to him each day
- The happiest husband is also a well-fed husband
- Guys are more sensitive creatures than people like to make them out to be. They need to feel respected and encouraged by their wives more than from anyone else in the world
- When your husband feels beat down by life, being there as his wife is one of the best things in the world to pick him up again
- While nobody is perfect, Rex is one of the most caring, gentle, thoughtful guys I have ever known. He is honest and wants the best for people, even if it means telling them something that is not easy to hear
- It is a lot easier than I ever realized to unintentionally say something about Rex that makes him feel discouraged or put down
- It is necessary to be willing to apologize and talk it out with Rex when I make mistakes (and they do happen!)

Daughter-In-Law to a Taiwanese Couple
- My mother-in-law has really good strategies for preventing nasty smells, cockroaches, and mold from filling your house
- My in-laws have different methods of showing their care and concern for us than the ones my own parents default to, but they really make a lot of effort to make me feel welcome and to make sure we're doing well - even with our little language gap

Living in a Tiny Apartment in a Tropical Climate
- It is totally doable, it only presents unique challenges not imagined by most of my American friends
- Plants, a couple of beautiful things, and personal photos go a long way to making a space feel like home
- Mold, cockroaches, and potent smells are some of the biggest motivators to maintain a clean kitchen
- Regularly doing just a little cleaning and straightening goes a long way to making a space feel like home
- Choose your purchases carefully. Each one takes up more space, and if it does that it needs to add somehow to the quality of your life

Thoughts of Beginnings

This is a little tidbit I wrote as I was still struggling through my first trimester:

"Each morning a struggle to get out of bed, each new day a struggle to eat breakfast without throwing it back up again, each day a struggle to find food that won't make me feel immediately repulsed, many days a struggle to finish anything before my energy is gone and I find myself simply exhausted, finished, and ready to sleep the afternoon away.

"This is the common struggle of many women long before they ever meet their child. For some the external symptoms are more or less extreme; for each person and each pregnancy, the experience is different. But before we know anything about the baby - personality, gender, physical features, etc., we fight through the days of exhaustion or nausea waiting until we know this child that seems to have come from out of nowhere.

"I have learned the stories of some for whom the morning sickness was so extreme that they felt suicidal - and yet would go through it again because they are now very happy and contented with their children and in their role as a mother. All these things a mother endures for her children - and this is long before the dramatic event of [birth], the continual [work] of feeding and nurturing, the struggle to teach the child how to live and live well as a person and as a part of society."

What an amazing process it is to become a parent.

On Learning the Chinese Language (and feeling it can be done!)

In March I began to take Chinese classes with actual classmates. I haven't had classmates that I can see with my eyes in forever because so many of my studies have been online. I find the experience enjoyable, if not at times grueling. The process is also very rewarding when you begin to see the results. It was a wonderful experience to read a paragraph to my sister-in-law recently who only had to tell me how to pronounce a couple of characters when I sat down to do my homework at her house recently. She was surprised at how much I am now able to read! I was happy to surprise her. My literacy still doesn't apply well to restaurant menus and groceries, unfortunately.

It is also a milestone to observe that many of my thoughts come to me in Chinese, and I even find myself waking up in the morning speaking Chinese to Rex rather than translating my initial Chinese thoughts into English. It's interesting how versatile the mind can be.

Chinese is a different process than learning, say, French, Spanish or German. Those are languages with a phonetical system of writing. Each word sounds like itself, even though there may be words that sound alike. In those other languages you can see a sign somewhere, sound it out, and ask someone what that word means (or guess at its meaning.) In Chinese you see a character, and until you have been taught its meaning and pronunciation, it will mean literally nothing to you. Chinese has one syllable words which could have a plethora of meanings on their own, and context is necessary for people to understand what you mean.

An example of the reality of this might be something like this following conversation.

Me:          What does "present" mean?

Teacher:   *blank stare*    Which "present"?

Me:          I don't know. (I try to pronounce the word again applying all four possible tones, which you might be able to imitate by means of my punctuation) Present? Present! Present?!?! Present...

Teacher:    Oh, do you mean the "present" like "gift"? Or "present" like the one that means you're here? Or "present" like the one that means "report"?

Me:         Yeah, the one that means a gift!

So you get the idea. One time I said "pig" instead of "Lord" to explain a song I know in Romanian. I had to sing a line of a Chinese song in order to give her the context because I had no recollection of which tone "Lord" is said with.

Teacher:    What was that Romanian song about?

Me:           It's just saying that God is truly "pig" over everything

Teacher:    *blank stare* You mean...

Me:           *singing* Lord, I come before you...

Teacher:    Oh, you mean Lord! That is in the fourth tone, not the first tone. Otherwise you're talking about a pig.

Chinese is also achievable; it just requires long, patient, persistent hours of effort in order to become literate. Each word has to be learned for itself, and yet the same parts of the characters are frequently recycled. One benefit is that there are words that you can "sound out" because it has a radical that often indicates a general pronunciation. But a character with that same radical might be said "zhong" "dong" or perhaps "chong". But it's helpful for guessing.

Chinese grammar is relatively easy especially compared to the Western languages we're accustomed to learning, but you do have to become familiar with word order and the logic about how to formulate sentences. We would say "I went to the store yesterday" but Chinese would say "I yesterday went to the store." We say an address starting with the house address, and ending with the State. Here they begin with the biggest thing first, for example: country, county, city, district, road, house number, name.

My listening and speaking in Chinese is still more advanced than my reading and writing, but I am happy to say that on both my final exams this year, I got 90 or 92%. I was surprised to get such a high grade in my August final exam because I had missed so much class time that semester due to morning sickness and/or an urgent need for sleep.

On Becoming Someone's Mama

Unless you don't know already, I'm expecting a baby! She is due on February 2 and we are becoming more and more anxious to meet her, not just feel her kicks.

I have a few observations about becoming a mom.

1. Mom's sacrifice a lot for a little person they know nothing about. Especially in the first trimester of pregnancy (and for some all throughout the pregnancy like my sister) we endure physical difficulties such as perpetual nausea, exhaustion, and a plethora of strange things our bodies do to us while forming a tiny person inside.

2. Morning sickness is worse than I imagined (and mine wsan't even that bad). It's not always like you feel normal and suddenly you have to puke, although that can happen. More often than not you feel like you're unwell with a stomach virus. You might feel better at noon, or you might continue to feel ill all day. I know one lady who had to stay in bed for 12 weeks of each of her five pregnancies and would throw up as much as twelve times a day.

3. Becoming a parent can be overwhelming. (I've got to take care of this vulnerable little life and be responsible for it until they turn 18 years old?!?!) Yet, the longer I anticipate the baby coming, the more excitement I get.

4. Each culture has very different ideas about what is good or bad to do during pregnancy and immediately after the birth. Chinese culture has an especially long list of superstitions, traditions, and practices that are not going out of vogue any time soon. Western thought is much, much different on these things and affords expectant and new moms a lot more freedom than Eastern culture. This merits a blog post of its own.

5. The first few weeks when you start feeling a baby kicking inside of you is very faint, and it seems somehow wrong that there is a living thing, maybe the size of your hand, kicking and squirming on the inside. Does it remind anyone of a parasite? (I apologize to my daughter if she one day catches a glimpse of this blog. I truly don't think of you as a parasite, but it truly is a strange sensation. Since you're not a boy, you have the chance to find out for yourself one day.) By the way, Rex loves feeling the baby's kicks, too!

6. Somehow, there is a love that grows for this unknown person growing inside. When all I know about the baby is that it exists, that it is growing, and that it is my child, it is still possible for a special kind of love to grow. I now know that my baby is a girl, that the doctor said her tummy is a little big, and that she likes to suck her fingers and spin in cartwheels (or did, she might be too crowded now), but I know nothing about her personality, her potential, what she will become one day, or anything.

7. It is super easy for my mind to become entirely absorbed by the subject of babies, baby prep, and baby care, as well as the development in the womb week by week. Four more months seems like an eternity to wait for her arrival, and yet it is also so very short!