The Name is Stone, Rosetta Stone

I use to joke about having Sesame Street Spanish skills.  Now I joke about having Kai Lan Chinese skills.  Problem is, Kai Lan skills won't help me much in Shanghai.  "Xie xie" (thank you) won't keep me from eating the duck tongue, quite the opposite I'm afraid.   Which brings me to the following confession (in my best Italian accent for some reason):  

         I donta speaka the language.  

Or even recognize a single character of the "alphabet", or tell the difference between a word and a sentence, or I tell when I am being blessed out for being an overweight American.   But hey, why let that little intellectual gap keep you from moving half way around the world?

This language barrier is truly the one thing, besides the drivers in Shanghai, that causes most of my anxiety.  It is a completely different ballgame than the Romance languages I studied in high school and college.  Thank goodness for the creation of Rosetta Stone Language Learning System.   Rob is sending the headset so I can start practicing from home.   Rosetta and I are going to become fast friends.  She is the cure to my language inferiority complex.   She has to be the person to keep me from eating duck tongue.   Actually, I figure that as long as I can tell my ayi that I don't want turtle, insect, or rodent anything for supper , I figure I'm in good shape.   I'm excited about getting started and filling in my intellectual gap.

Excusez moi, do you put duck tongue on your pizza?

I may even brush up on my French.  I may even get you to brush up on your french.  We could do this together, well separately.   Once we all have at least broken French, we could meet up in France, say Paris, and enjoy a cup of coffee together.  We could even have french toast, french frites, or even french crepes and speak to each other in our newly found French accents.  This is totally doable!  Get your passports, Chickies.  Allons-y!

Who Knew I Wanted to Move to China?

The beginning of this great adventure actually started about 6 months ago when my husband found out his next job assignment would be in Shanghai, China.  While he had talked about the opportunity on different occasions, I didn't really think it would ever happen.  SO imagine my SHOCK when it did! Then the questions started: 


      Where would we live?         What would I do?      What clothes would we need?      How am I going to communicate?     Where would my children go to school?      What would we take with us?    What would we eat?   
    

(See children, all great thinking begins with questioning!)  :)

                                        View of Shanghai from my hotel room last summer


I realized all my questions were about my fears of the unknown.  When I stopped worrying about all the things I didn't know, I realized that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for me and my family.  So my dear children, this is my story about how dreams can come find you when you are least expecting!  Always keep your mind open and grab dreams when you can!