Like most of you, we can't believe how quickly 2010 has come and gone! It's been a year of adventure for us as we have continued to call Beijing our home.
Seth started attending the on-campus preschool in the fall of this year. He went from loving it to hating it in the course of a week, followed by a long stretch of loathing it. He now seems to have come to terms with the fact that school is a regular part of his life, and at the end of the day he always tells us that "School is fun!" He especially delights us by showing us the kung fu moves he has learned--is there anything cuter than a three-year-old doing kung fu?--and we've already seen some progress with his speech. His latest accomplishment is being able to count from one to ten in both Chinese and English. He'll be translating for us before we know it!
Seth's Ayi of two years resigned this fall to be with her husband in another city. Though we understand her reasons for leaving, it was a difficult transition for us, and we miss her greatly. Thankfully, she recommended somebody to us before leaving, and we now have a new Ayi, Xiao Da, who comes in the afternoon three days a week. Xiao Da does some cleaning for us, picks Seth up from school, and even comes to watch Seth some Saturdays when we are especially busy with lesson planning or grading.
Laurie has been extremely busy this fall. Some major changes to the English curriculum at our school resulted in a lot of additional lesson preparation for her. In addition, this year Laurie has taught three one-month English training programs for adults heading overseas, the most intensive of which was this past November. She hasn't had much time for hobbies lately (other than shopping TaoBao.com, the Chinese version of eBay), but when things are a bit slower, reading and digital designing are still her favorite pastimes.
Benjamin is teaching business at the same school, though with expected staff changes he thinks it is likely that he will be asked to teach calculus again in the future. Thankfully he enjoys both subjects, especially the interaction they afford with the students. He still enjoys playing video games and is hoping that Seth will start to show a little more interest in the year to come. He has, however, developed good friendships with some other expatriates who enjoy both video games and college football.
We were very blessed to take two major trips this year, one without Seth to Sanya ("the Hawaii of China") to celebrate our five-year wedding anniversary in January, and the second as a whole family to the U.S. during our summer break, when we celebrated Seth's third birthday. We were also blessed with visitors from the States: Scott Childs, Benjamin's cousin, and Greg and Mary Leffel, friends from Kentucky, were here on business in the spring and fall, respectively.
That just about wraps up our year, so the only thing left to do is to wish you the joy of the Christ Child this holiday season and in the year to come!
