If I don't hurry up and write something, I won't have anything for January!

My post count for January 2010 is a big fat goose egg. And I'm getting heckled by Dawn. So I guess I should write something.
2010, huh? Ten years since I graduated from college. The year that my firstborn will turn 5 and start kindergarten. The year we will return to the U.S. 2009 seems like a big blur.

Anyway, life here in Shanghai is just chugging along. John is back in school and Betsy has also started going to a little Chinese nursery school two days a week. We're staying busy at work and preparing for vacation and Chinese New Year. We're trying to mentally prepare for repatriation in just a matter of months -- when we break it down into weeks, we're shocked and saddened by how quickly our last bit of time here is going to fly by, with all the preparations and packing and goodbyes.

So, when will we be home? Our visas expire June 3. So, sometime before June 3. :-) Most likely it will be the last week of May or the first day or two of June. We will be back in Texas in late March-early April to do some house hunting. Then just about 6 weeks after that, we'll be home for good.

But I'm not going to think about that right now.

Instead, I'll think about how happy John has been since starting back at his old school. It was almost as if he had never left -- he has a new class (the Bees!) and new teachers, but many of his classmates are friends from last year, and his cubby was there waiting for him on the first day. The "courses" are a little more intense this year -- they have English and Chinese, Art, Music, Media, Math, and Gym/Playground time every day, as well as Life Skills, Astronomy/Science, and Geography. Each month they study the country of one of their classmates (January was Turkey). Now they are preparing for their big Chinese New Year concert.

And Betsy seems to like her little school. It's just a little tiny place, about 8 kids, and she is the only Westerner. She isn't too thrilled when I leave her there, but she is always happy within a few minutes (as other moms have told me) and doesn't want to leave when I go to pick her up. She's going to school on Mondays and Wednesdays, and on Wednesdays I go into the office for a few hours which is SO great.

Let's see, what else are they up to ... John is still completely obsessed with his Legos that he got for Christmas. Obsessed may not do it justice, actually. He will work on them from the minute he gets up until we drag him to bed, building the same things over and over again. His new favorite book is Where the Sidewalk Ends, and he's been reading a few poems from it every night.

Betsy's vocabulary really increased this past month, which I would attribute to school except that no one there speaks English, so who knows. She is very clear and precise in her speaking when she wants to be ("More. Cookie. PLEASE.") but most of the time, it takes some context clues to figure out what she's saying. She also tends to speak only in last syllables, so that "Come on, Mama" is just "On!" and a giraffe is just "raff." She loves to run -- and fast! -- and her hair is crazy long. Most days she looks like Animal from the Muppet Show when she wakes up, and we have to chase her and then tackle her to try to tame it into pigtails.

OK, fine. Pictures. :-)