Anyway, I've been surprised at the things I've been doing instead of packing. Like baking butterscotch blondies, for example. Who bakes butterscotch blondies four days before leaving the country with four children? And they weren't even that good! I think I'm in denial. I can't believe we won't be returning to this place in the fall. I can't believe our time here is over.
Worst of all is having to say goodbye to my dear friend, Xiao Fu, who is 7 months younger than me and a thousand years wiser. She is handling all, and I do mean ALL of our insurance claims after the wreck, and she is brilliant. Just brilliant. Had she been born into a different family, she could have been a lawyer, and a dang good one at that. We tell her so and she dismisses our praises, saying, "G0D is helping me." I can't stand the thought of hugging her goodbye this weekend. I just can't stand it.What G0D has next for us really excites me, but this chapter has been such an important one. The past four years have been like that 10 minutes of the movie that you definitely don't want to take a potty break during. More has happened than I can even recall, and I am definitely not the same chick who flew in from the U.S. in the summer of 2008, jetlagged and shellshocked and scared out of my mind. The thing is, I truly have fallen in love with this city and its people, local and expat alike, and its food, and its easy pace, and its unending sunshine and sprawling flowers in colors so bright they don't look real. All I can say is, this time in my life has been an absolute gift.
Goodbye, Spring City. You hardly knew I was here, but I knew it. I certainly knew it.
Fare thee well.
