K: Aged to Perfection

This post is dedicated to a man who has a lot to show for 55 years...

Shown here with a family who trusts, respects, admires, and cherishes him.

Happy Birthday, and here's to many more! 

We love you, Dad.

N: Ocimum basilicum

Our team (of three) at the school is made of some pretty unique people. Yes, the Todds are part of the team, and being a Todd I am partial to at least one of them. Occasionally I'm partial to myself too. After having worked together for A's first semester here, we were excited when she made the decision to return another year. In August, after arriving in Beijing, we were given a packet of materials that was designed to develop team dynamics. One of the things we were supposed to talk about was our skills. In college, I remember talking with a friend about skills. She believed that there is something, maybe only one thing, but nevertheless, something that each person is just naturally good at. As a team, we've spent some good time on this question, tweaking and adding and developing our unique skills.

K is an excellent judger of space.  I will cook something and she will know exactly what size of Tupperware to use to hold the leftovers.  Something not too big and something not too small.  Truly, I tell you, this IS a skill.  She can also apply this skill to packing for trips.

I am a box maker.  It sounds ridiculous, but I have been honing my skill for a number of years.  There was a Simpsons episode that had a chili cook-off, the one where Homer ate the peppers grown by patients from a Guatemalan insane asylum.   Homer always brought his own spoon.  In the voice of a whisper and with mystery, Lenny Leonard says, "They say he carved it himself...from a bigger spoon."  I can make boxes from larger boxes.  Give me a large box, and I will make it into a beautiful smaller box.

A can whistle.  She can whistle like crazy.  The idea that you just put your lips together and blow doesn't apply here.  She doesn't even have to purse her lips.  And she can tie a cherry stem in a knot with her tongue faster than anyone else.

We asked our friends in the city about their skills.  One that deserves to be noted comes from our friend M. She can fold a fitted sheet, by herself, with the end result being a sheet that looks like it's a folded flat sheet.  THAT is a skill.

Our week went smoothly.  A had a birthday. K rocked it in the classroom.  I got patted on the bottom by a stranger with a smile.  My basil looks good too.  All pictures were taken with A's new camera.

Bloomin' Home

N's mom sent us these pictures from the Todd Homestead in Rockwall. Spring is our favorite season in Texas, and we think these blooms deserve to be seen. The red buds are at the dry creek bed behind the house, the dry creek bed that Mom and Dad made themselves. The other picture is of the first iris blooms this year (in front of the house). If you're ever in Rockwall, you really should stop by...

K: Murphy is Chinese

If all you really need to do in a day is knock out a box full of email, then the internet will be down. If you have a half an hour and you really want to shower before going to class, there's no water. If you are planning to have dinner on the table at 7, the taxi driver doesn't know how to get your house (even though he said he did when you got in.) If you've projected plans for your day and accomplishing a task is contingent on one factor, guarantee you've set yourself up for failure. I've heard of Murphy's Law, I've given credit to Murphy for a mishap here and there, I've laughed at a few of his little pranks, and then I met Murphy... in China.

This I know is true: In China, everything takes longer than you think it will.

Today. Actually, this story begins four weeks ago... speaking of taking longer... when we rode our bikes to the other side of the city to meet some friends for lunch. The weather turned bad so we decided to leave our bikes at friends' home and taxi back to ours. Until today weather and free time refused to play nice together.

Today, the three of us: N, A (our teammate), and I taught class at 8:00am. Class lasts 1.5 hours and on Tuesdays we're all finished teaching at 9:30. We returned to the office and worked on some grading/lesson planning, and two hours passed unnoticed. Sidenote: A and I like to get our run in before lunch. N thought we should skip it in favor of an early lunch and an afternoon bike ride. So we put the plan into action figuring an hour for lunch at a local restaurant (yes, that's quick... i told you everything takes longer in China), a few minutes to change clothes, 45 minutes to taxi to Ningda, 15-30 minutes to chat/get bikes ready to ride, and 1.25 hours to bike home. what time is it? 3:15, at the latest. Still time to tackle that inbox, finish the lesson for next week, make the dinner that didn't get made last night because the taxi driver... don't get me started, and read those assigned pages of master's work.

Remember the contingency thing? Lunch, change, taxi went off without a hitch; we were even twelve minutes ahead of schedule when we reached Ningda. (Type A? Nope.) Now, we've just got to wait for the baomu (housekeeper) to come let us into our friend's house (she's teaching) and we'll be on our way. 2:00, no baomu. 2:30, no baomu. 3:00, no baomu... you see where this is going, but lucky for us we had... UNO. Around 4:00, we figure we might as well wait for our friend to come home. We visit for a few (that was in the original plan), ride down to the man with the airpump and get air in the neglected tires, make a couple of stops to accomplish something on a to-do list whether or not it was today's list, figure we may as well eat while we're out, and head home. Home at last, 7:30pm and too tired to do anything that really needs to be done.

Even so, we figure we've got ol' Murph beat. We know his secret ambition is to get us all bent out of shape, and he may have won a victory here and there in the past, but not today. We found the bright side, time together and a topic for a post. =)

Connecting the ddots

Hello! and welcome to the Todd's brand new blog.

Living overseas, we've noticed that mass communication with friends and family in the States becomes information based and businesslike.  Some of the more interesting common occurences in our lives, like nick's jerry-rigged waffle iron turned sandwich press, become irrelevant next to the bigger issues like health and well-being.  Of course the folks at home want to know about those things; we are happy and healthy, by the way, but we figure some might like to know that the waffle pressed sandwiches we ate for dinner were delicious.  Anyway, we figure this will be an easy way to invite those who care to know both the grand and mundane happenings in our lives.

ddotTodd. it's a palindrome... get it?  We're going to give this blogging thing a shot and see how it helps us to keep the ddots connected.