The Beginning of the End

It's May 1st. One month from now, our bags will be packed* and we will be headed to the Pudong airport for our last trip from Shanghai to Austin. A one-way trip, because our great Chinese adventure will be over.

When I flipped the calendar page to May this morning, it felt weird. I was confused as to how it got to be May so fast -- like I missed April entirely. I counted back the weeks. The first 12 days we were in Austin, plus a week of jetlag, followed by a week of me being sick and then a week of Betsy being sick. Yep, I had missed April entirely.

And wouldn't you know, Shanghai decided to be pretty just in time for us to say goodbye. I am totally a fair-weather friend of this city. When it's gloomy and cold and smoggy (as it has been for what feels like forever), I don't like it much here. But the minute the skies clear and the flowers start blooming, I think it's a wonderful place. At the end of this week we finally got some spring-like weather -- and if you are cynical, you could connect the dots between the pretty days and the start of Expo. Not that I'm complaining, because I love this weather even if it is government-sponsored.

Anyway, our last month is here and there's nothing we can do to make the days go slower. We are finishing up our shopping and getting things organized and starting to think about saying goodbyes -- which isn't fun, so we stop thinking about it.

We are definitely looking forward to being home, and we always knew that we would have these mixed feelings of excitement and impending loss when it came time to leave Shanghai. So, we'll just make the most of our last month, because May 31st isn't that far away.

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*Who am I kidding? Anyone who knows us can be sure that a month from now we'll be frantically shoving things in bags on our way out the door.