Comings and Goings

September has been quite busy at the Chan/Tomaszewski household in terms of guests. We had the privilege of hosting one of our best friends here in China, Meredith, during her last few weeks in China. We had a lot of fun with our extra roommate, and even though she's only been gone a few days, we miss her already!



She's now making her way back west to start her new life in NYC, and is taking the long route home and stopping in India, Dubai, Turkey, and Croatia.

Earlier in the month, we were also happy to meet up with our China friends, Ting (Rachel) and Stacey. Ting is currently going to school and working in Manchester. and continues to be baffled by the fact that people pay to get tan, since whitened, pale skin is so envied in the East. She is also living with a group of Muslim guys, and had plenty of entertaining cross-cultural stories to share. She has a new appreciation for the utter confusion Zach and I felt when first arriving in China, and we had a good laugh about being the 'clueless foreigners' and discussed how humbling and challenging living abroad can be, regardless of where you're from.

And we finally had our first non-family, repeat guest, Superstar Deb Heydel! Deb is a Georgetown friend, and made the trip to visit us in June, 2006. She was back in Asia this month for a meeting in Japan, and was sweet enough to skip over to Shanghai for a few days to catch up with us. We had a great time reminiscing about DC days, ahh grad school....

We're guest-free for October (as far as we know), but look forward to more visitors in November!