How?

I was talking to one of my co-workers today: a teacher who works part-time, so we don't have many opportunities to communicate. Two years ago, he just decided to up and move from England to China. To "check things out." Um...what? How can people do that? I don't understand. Now, TWO YEARS LATER, he takes Chinese classes all day, and teaches 5 hours a week at my school. I'm no stranger to Lady Wanderlust, sure--I did move to China after all--but really. To move to a country like China--CHINA, PEOPLE--without a job or language knowledge, just to "check it out?" My OCD sense was tingling as he casually told me these things. "Many people here are running away from something, but I just decided I wanted to check it out over here."

I am thinking about being afraid of missing food, but I'm so far unable to force myself to remember how delicious a turkey sandwich from Potbelly tastes, or a chocolate cupcake from Dinkel's, or the Taxco entree at Las Mananitas, or a spinach salad with olive oil and spinach and cherry tomatoes from my kitchen.

Which is good! I don't want to remember these things!

I want to savor the weird bun filled with sweet red bean paste I have for breakfast most mornings, or the greasy pork and leek dumplings from a street vendor (15 for 2 yuan), or the sauteed spicy tofu and fluffy mushrooms from this place near my house, or the "3+2" espresso sandwich crackers I guiltily buy from time to time, or the ji ro chow bing I eat for lunch every day.

Goodnight. The weekend tiptoes to the edge of the horizon, like the sun allegedly does every morning (not that I could see it through the pollution or anything).

(Literally, in my afternoon class, I look out the windows and see a wall of dark clouds approaching some tall buildings about 2km away, and think it's going to rain. It never rains, though; it's just pollution, only 3-4% of which comes from automobiles in China.)