Why China?

Why China? Why Shanghai? These are the questions I’ve been asking myself, not to mention the questions I have received from friends, family, and neighbors. To fully answer the questions, I have to start at the beginning.

Growing up in Iowa – smack in the middle of the Mid-West, I enjoyed my childhood and was thankful that my parents exposed me to various cultures through museums, books, movies, and trips to D.C., NYC, and Chicago. From early on I wanted to explore the world around me.

In college, I took an intro to Asian History class and was hooked. I was fascinated with Chinese history, culture, language, religion, and art. After graduating in 1996, my DH (Darling Husband) and I moved to Kunming, a city in Yunnan province, to teach English at a teachers college. At that time the only other countries I had visited had been Canada, Mexico and the Bahamas. To say I experienced culture shock within the first 24 hours of landing in Kunming was an understatement. China at that time was different than it is today, and Kunming very different than the cosmopolitan Shanghai. After a few weeks we settled into a routine. My favorite memories of that time are spending time with our students, playing mahjong with locals – trying to hold a conversation in our pigeon Chinese, traveling to a resort town in the Himalayan mountains, visiting Beijing in January, and navigating our way through daily life. It wasn’t always easy – like taking a shower and planning meals were a bit of a challenge, but we adjusted and the things we experienced changed us, changed me.

When we returned to the states, my DH and I agreed that we wanted to live and work overseas again, but first we had to make some money (the foreign teacher gig was more for the experience vs. the money ) and work on a few of our other life goals (like starting a family).

In 2004 we made the decision to expand our family through adoption and when exploring all the options, we both agreed that an international adoption in China was the right choice for us. In 2006 we returned to China to adopt our DD (Darling Daughter). After adopting our daughter we resolved to return and once again live in China.

After an extended maternity leave, I returned to work. While both my DH and I worked, his career had taken off and had lead to an incredible opportunity that would require relocation to Shanghai, China. Neither one of us hesitated and was excited about returning to a country we had come to love.

So here I am, a girl from Iowa, wife to the love of my life, mom to an incredible, funny, silly, beautiful, toddler, living in Shanghai getting out and exploring the world around me, after all, “The purpose of life is to live it, to taste it, to experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.”