The Harsh Reality

In my last entry, while griping about living in other peoples’ houses during furlough I wrote, “at least in China I can close the door, pick up the remote, crank up the heat, and tell my wife what I want for dinner.” To quote my good friend Willy Wonka, “wait a minute, strike that, reverse it.” That was the case at our old China apartment. Of all the aforementioned luxuries, the only one we are afforded while living at the orphanage is that I can close the door.

After traveling half way across the globe and arriving at our new home 26 hours after we left our last, we were rudely greeted by a bitterly cold apartment. Obviously the 12 hour time change got the best of us and we headed straight to bed - in a bed that is not ours, with borrowed sheets, in an apartment that is not ours, with the temperature reading around 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Luckily, I knew exactly where the kids’ sleeping bags were. I tucked the kids into their sacks, inside of which they still had another 30 degrees to spare before they would start to get cold. I had no idea where chyloe’s and my sleeping bags were. We spooned for warmth.

If you have ever traveled 12 time zones in one day then you know what sort of confusion your internal clock experiences. The boys woke up at 4:30 a.m. so we put a movie on for them and I returned to the spooning position. We didn’t want to get out of bed.

The first and most obvious reason is because it was so cold outside of our bed. On top of that, we had only had bread, peanut butter, and Oreos to eat, we had no means of transportation, all of our stuff was still in boxes, we couldn’t unpack because we had no place to put anything, and it’s not even 5:00 yet.