Back in the USA

My apologies to all for the lack of entries while I was in China. I only have lame excuses (lots of work hours, difficulty posting entries with the restrictions in China, blah blah blah), so I thought I'd post an entry with some random observations and thoughts now that my 4 month assignment has ended and I am back in Topeka, KS USA.

Things I missed from the US while abroad:

I never knew what I'd actually miss from my life until this opportunity. I'm going to not mention the obvious (friends, family, etc) and look at the more mundane and, to me, surprising. The other thing that was surprising to me was that I missed "things" very little. But of the things I missed here were my top ones:

• Being able to drink water straight from the tap
  I learned this lesson the hard way (and found a great doctor in She Kou, the area where I lived). Every day (after that experience) I used bottled water - for drinking, for my waterpik - and every day I spent at least some time considering when I would purchase my next bottle (I bought 6.5 liter bottles from Wal-Mart at least twice a week). Thankfully I never had to worry about not having water, but I became a regular water mule around Shenzhen. I also never considered what effect cool water in my waterpik would feel like on my teeth ... ouch!
• My flavor of toothpaste.
  I took over a couple of tubes of the stuff, but ran out about two months in, which led to a great experiment in, and understanding of, the differences in flavor profiles for China versus the US. I thought, when I bought my first tube of Crest toothpaste that I mistakenly picked up shampoo, but it tasted almost exactly like the shampoo I use. The next tube I picked up tasted vaguely like a floral bouquet. Although I never found one that was similar to what I'm used to in the US, I did have a chance to try other flavors besides shampoo, and bucket of flowers - lemon zest was the best I could find.
• A place to get my haircut
  I should have found this early on, but I put it off and by the time I got ready to come back, I found myself rocking the mini-mullet. This is the longest I've gone without a haircut since I was probably an infant, although I have no memory of that stage due to significant repressive abilities. I knew going in that Asian hair has a completely different texture, so you want to select the barber carefully. What I didn't know was that most haircuts in Asia also include a shampoo and numerous scalp massages. The latter did not appeal to me, so I decided to become shaggy-doo and relish the vast amount of long, gray hairs. Not to worry, haircut happening at noon today!
• Chipotle
  This may seem a little weird, but while I loved the varieties of Chinese food I ate and found great Indian, Greek and Thai restaurants, the one restaurant I found myself missing while in China was this one. Perhaps it was simply missing the ability to consume three times the normal amount of needed caloric intake in one sitting, but I did have a couple of food dreams involving a big veggie burrito. 'Nuf said on that!

And these were the big ones ... there were lots of things I did not have (super high-speed internet with a stable connection, US ESPN (there is a ESPN Asia, but I could only watch so many recaps of the Rubgy World Cup), Facebook and Social Media (I had Twitter twitches from withdrawal initially), my car ... but, as Alisa Saville Lybbert has discovered (check out her blog at http://livingoutsideofthebox.com), there is much "stuff" that simply clutters my life and inhibits my enjoyment. That, to me, was one of the best insights from this experience. I think I'll be more mindful of the important things, as well as some of the little things that I've taken for granted.

I miss Shenzhen, the team and the friends I made there and it is also good to be back home. I'll post a few more entries of thoughts from this experience and then make some other entries as I return to Asia for shorter trips in the future. I've got to figure out a way to turn a trip to Jakarta to another jaunt down to Australia, as it's only about 4.5 hours more on a plane. As long as you are already nearby ...