Last evening we were walking through the apartment complex where we are house-sitting for another American family who is currently on home assignment. A teenage girl passed us wearing a homemade t-shirt proclaiming in large handwritten print, “NO PAINT, NO GAINS.” This is, of course, a derivative of the expression which is incredibly popular among English language learners in China, “No pain, no gain.” We teachers become exasperated with this trite conclusion to many a tale of woe, but on this occasion I must confess being nothing but amused.
We arrived at our temporary home in Yinchuan late on Wednesday night travel weary but safe and with all of our baggage in tow. We’ve spent the last four days reconnecting with friends both foreign and domestic and settling in (which in this case may be defined as deciding what we need and what can be stored until we move (again) to our permanent home), but most of all we’re battling the beast that is jetlag. This is the price we pay for staging our two lives on opposite sides of the globe, but you know what they say… “No paint, no gains.”
