Being Home

We've been home a week today. How quickly time goes by.

We returned to the gentlest of snowfalls, and the fastest of snowmelts.

The sunniest of sunshines (for February).

And the Spring-ests of Winters.

It warmed up to 40 F this week. I took photos outdoors and we went about without jackets, if briefly. And this evening, I sat in the garage in running shorts and Tshirt, after a bout on the treadmill, to sand some wood pieces for a project. 

In spite of this kindest of homecomings, we miss Singapore. We miss its warm pools and happy beaches. We miss the shorts, the swimsuits, the golden sun. We miss the funny food. We miss the many exciting ways to get around the city - the multicolored taxis, the double-decker buses, the trains, our own flip-flop-shod feet. We miss the markets and the tiny stores that have everything you might need and then some. We miss the friends who took time off work to travel to be with us. We miss Grandma and Grandpa and all the cousins who are so much older than the girls that they don't quite know how to address them. We miss the wild spontaneity of being on vacation and being able to choose obsession (swimming every day in the same pool) over variety (swimming in other pools).

The first night we were home, we made ourselves stay up to pretty close to a decent bedtime before conking out. We were up a few hours later, semi-lucid and thinking about what Grandma and Grandpa were doing at that very hour halfway across the world. Emily cried for quite a while because she missed them. She has never cried about missing people before, and least of all at 3 in the morning. Or 5. I don't remember. I was close to tears, too, but mostly because I was desperate to get back to bed and not carry out emergency counseling sessions with my own children in the wee hours.

We love being home. From the first moment we stepped through the door, dropped our suitcases on the floor and ran through the house, smelling the air and scrutinizing our bedrooms, we felt elated to be back. But -oh - the disorientation! What do we do first? Is there milk in the fridge? Why am I not hungry? Why am I ravenous? Why do I feel so sad? Why do I feel so excited to unpack? Where do I put all this STUFF?

It felt strange not hearing Mum and Dad's voices, even though mentally we knew we - not they - were the ones who left. It felt strange being Queen of a kitchen again. It felt strange to the kids to be in their own little beds and not cuddle together in Grandma's and Grandpa's big one (G&G had slept out in the living room), telling stories till they dropped off to sleep (or till someone went in to tell them off). It felt strange looking at each other's tanned faces, thinking how completely out of place they looked against the scanty snow on the brown trees outside.

And then, slowly, it began to feel normal. We got out the old carousel filled with markers and made Valentines for school the next week. We shook out our snow pants and packed them in backpacks and totes. We wrote out grocery lists and went shopping to stock the fridge. We bought fresh bread and bananas, and baked chocolate chip cookies and muffins. We ran on the treadmill and danced in our leotards and tutus. We sifted through email and newspapers and whatever the Postie brought. We reset our watches. We cooked meatloaf and scalloped potatoes and ham and tossed salads. We played computer games and wrote blog posts. We did a full week of Mad Chauffeuring to and from school. We went to a birthday party and a school conference. 

Today I finished folding the last basket of laundry that had been left from before the trip. And I went to Home Depot for supplies begin crafting again. I thought of Dad, but with mirth, remembering how he'd practically camp out there in his orange shirt last summer, buying wood to build our picnic table, looking suspiciously like an employee or shameless fan.

Tomorrow we have friends over for a playdate. And on the weekend we'll watch movies, do groceries, drink soup, build wooden and cardboard structures, maybe even plug the machine in to do a little sewing.

It's good to be home. But there is a little part of me that I left behind at the Equator, that calls it home, too. I like knowing that it's there and that there is so much richness in both places that define me. Have I ever shared this verse that I previously never gave a second glance to but now makes me smile? Here it is:

"The (boundary) lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance." - Ps 16:6. 

It is always hard to say hello and goodbye over and over again, but I am grateful that the Lord has always planted me where (as they say in Sesame Street) the air is sweet :)

I Have Sunk To New Lows

I'm craving aeroplane (or airplane, as they say here) food.

'Tis very sad, but I need to be honest. Most aeroplane food is vile, but there is one particular meal on the incoming leg to Minneapolis from Narita, that includes an oddly tasty Japanese pickled ginger noodle dish. I am always happy to eat it, not only because it is a far superior to the alternative - The Radioactive Omelette - but also because it really is tasty. 

And so, far the past few days since we got home, I've been craving that soy-and-ginger combination of flavours. Today I decided I'd better cook something close to it, or else languish to death, like a pregnant woman forced to eat hay when all she really wants is grass. Or something like that.

Remembered that I had a pack of noodles in the basement pantry (aka laundry room) that had been around for a while. 

I just hadn't realized how long awhile it really was.

Ah, well, I'm no stranger to expired Asian food, so it was perfect.

Now those noodles are not ideal as fried noodle, since they are a little on the gummy side. I didn't even buy these - someone gave them to me. People will still make them into Pad Thai and other similar dishes when they cannot find superior noodles, so it's not as if they are wrong. Just not ideal. 

Thought I'd document the process, for the kids, and also as my defense for why I let my Asian food hang around the house for years, rotting maturing.

First, the noodles were soaked in cool (not hot) water for about half an hour.

While they were getting all soft and tender, I made the garnish. Two eggs were beaten, diluted with a little water and seasoned with light soy sauce and black pepper. 

They were swirled into a thin crepe-like omelette around the wok, then sliced into strips.

When we do fried noodles in Singapore, the egg garnish is often prepared like this - separately, set aside, and saved for the presentation. We don't scramble it the way it is done in fried rice - it's too crude for noodles.

Next, the vegetables were washed and diced. We usually use choy sum/yau choy but I had collard greens in the fridge, and they were a decent substitute. The stalks were separated from the leaves, to be added into the mix at different times.

The bean sprouts were washed, drained and left as is.

One large garlic clove, minced, and a nice chunk of ginger root, skinned and julienned.

One serrano pepper, sliced thin, in place of the more colourful red chilli peppers we use in Singapore,

plus one and a half chicken breasts, sliced into thin strips, marinated with sesame oil, cornstarch and black pepper.

All the ingredients prepared, the next step was to take a break and clean up. It's a good habit I learned from Mum - clean up as you go. I could never sit at the table and eat an Asian meal that I'd cooked, if the kitchen was a mess from the cooking. Oddly, I can easily and happily wolf down Western food with grease-caked pans and utensils strewn about the counters behind me. I think I'm compartmentalizing something, but I don't know exactly what.

Then the assembly began - and this part goes very fast!

In this order, all the ingredients went into the wok:

• Garlic
• Ginger
• Collard Green stems
• Chicken
• Collard Green leaves
• Noodles
• Chicken stock
• Bean sprouts
• Light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, fish sauce
• Black pepper

and everything was tossed like lo hei, and left to simmer under the cover for a while.

Then it was served and eaten

to the accompaniment of a delightful not-very-Asian tea from M&S.

Better than airplane food, if I may say so. 

But -darn it - I forgot the shitakes. 

I knew there was something missing. It took me the whole afternoon to figure it out.

This meal was an hour to put together, and only I will eat it. Which means I still need to cook a separate meal for the other people who live in this house. More for me, is one way of looking at it. But it's also why I don't cook real Asian food very often. And why stuff hides out in the backs of cupboards for so long, only seeing the light of day every few years. Hee!

Congkak

Reunited with an old playmate in Singapore this month. This is my old congkak boat - the South-East Asian equivalent of the mancala game that is played here and in other parts of the world. Grandma (Dad's side) bought it for me when I was a little girl, along with the shells the game is played with. As I understand it, "congkak" is the Malay word for these little cowrie shells, and also means "counting in your head (without writing it down)". When I moved to the US, I packed the shells with me, in their beautiful wooden box

but we didn't have room to bring the boat as well. Mum saved the boat all these years and on this trip, I bundled it up, packed it in our suitcase and reunited it with its shells in our home in MN. In spite of how it looks, the boat isn't heavy at all.

Read more about how to play the game here.

Valentine's Day!

Urgent, emergency crafting this past weekend! We got off the plane on Friday, remembering that the following Monday was when all Valentines were due in all three girls' classes, so we spent Saturday and Sunday making them.

Emily made her cards,

 Jenna made her cards,

and Kate hand-wrote four of hers (brava, Kate!)

before she grew tired and let us help her mass-pack little goodie bags for the other kids in her class.

Then off to school they went, handing out their Valentines, enjoying Valentine crafts

and reaping a nice harvest of trinkets, cards and candy.

This is the first year all three girls got school loot, so for the purpose of documenting this uh... educational milestone, we took photos. Here is Kate's:

Here is Emily's:

and here is Jenna's, carefully arranged:

With that holiday over, we now return to our usual stupor while we adjust back to life back in MN with lingering jet-lag. Actually, it's been good, now that the children have started sleeping.

More Watercolor By Emily

Emily finally brought home her Cool & Warm Colours masterpiece this week. This was the lesson that she recreated with her sisters at home here.

This is her Dream Cloud, that she made in conjunction with Martin Luther King Day. One wonders what was going through her mind when she chose the subject of her dream.

And this is not technically paint - only the white snowflakes are - but it was a pretty piece done in (in her words) "construction paper crayon", and worth appreciating.

Back home

We're home in MN now. It was 11F (-11C) today. Hard to believe that just 24 hours ago we were walking around in shorts in 90F weather and swimming in pools the temperature of bathwater. Our tans make us look falsely refreshed and energetic and vibrant when we're really sort of dim-witted from the jetlag. It's half past seven and everyone has gone to bed. We kept everyone up till just only, through a combination of hurried Valentine's Day crafts, face-washing and strategically-timed feeding. And I snuck in a nap on the sofa, which is the only reason I'm still awake now, typing this. We'll be posting photos over the next few days/weeks, so see you then!

P.S. Photo taken by Eunice, at that glorious Cantonese place, with the pig-shaped red-bean buns. Thanks again for lunch, Ooonis!

The House Where We Lived

Last week, we rode the bus to the beach (again)

and stopped by the condo complex where we lived until Emily was a year old.

She didn't remember much of it, being so young. But we gave her the grand tour, anyway.

This was the pool she and I swam in when she was very little.

See?

That was 2005, almost 7 years ago. 

We were only a family of three, then. 

We walked on to the beach.

And then we got hungry, and while we were having lunch, it rained. So we stayed in the restaurant (it was McDonalds) and had ice cream.

In the following days, we've been to another beach, and pool-swimming three times. We've met up with friends and family, and eaten lots of food. So much to report here, and not enough time to journal it all. Jenna wrote an email back to her teacher, with a couple of photos in the attachment - we decided it was faster than sending a postcard. Emily is working on her email-postcard today. The only thing we wished we had a little more of, is some good sunshine, for some really spectacular photos.