Proof of busyness

Life as of April is hectic! My husband tells me that I make my world hectic which is crap which may be the case but nevertheless…it is crazy. On the things I can take “credit” for are: changes in the way my family eats and changing anything I can in my environment that will make me healthier and happier.

We have a very American way of eating…meat constantly and not enough fruits and vegetables. Who the hell has time to eat a pound of leafy green vegetables every day? So, as I mentioned before, I have been preparing green smoothies every day. Take a handful of spinach or lettuce or whatever green leafy veggie you have and toss it in the blender with some fruit and any other healthy stuff you have around. Flax seeds, cinnamon, herbs, wheatgrass…whatever floats your boat. The end result varies on what you put in (shocking I know) but for the most part they taste anywhere from good to really yummy. Since this change we have both felt fuller throughout the day, lighter (hard to explain but like we aren’t so heavy) and have both had less cravings. I have been eliminating as much salt from my diet as possible as well as bread, white pasta and meat. I have lost 2 pounds (though I am not trying to lose weight, just be healthier) and my skin has been looking a lot better. I also found the Insanity program and we are going to try to start that! Going to be different…hope our downstairs neighbors don’t complain…I hear there is a lot of jumping jacks and jumping in general….yeah, we’ll see.

Anyway, I started looking into water filters and found a great company, Aquasana, that has a China branch and their filters are specific to the interestingness of Chinese tap water. Filled with Chloramine, it has less of a smell than Chlorine but is a carcinogen…aka causes cancer long term. We don’t ever drink tap water, opting instead to buying tons and tons of bottles of water, but I read that taking one hot shower in Beijing unfiltered water is the same as drinking 4 gallons of tap water…awesome. So, we got a filter for the shower, a filter for the bath and a drinking water filter for the kitchen. It has been great.

                In other news, my husband’s boss’s wife J is a therapist and she works at an international clinic here, which is (shock) international, and has branches in Singapore and New Zealand...and just about everywhere else. She thinks she may be able to get me some work there doing testing! This would give me actual working experience in the counseling field before getting my degree (basically unheard of!). This is in combination with the fact that one of my coworkers has gotten the police interested in the foreigners in our office and I will be working from home until further notice (yeah..now permanent). Seems to me like the perfect time to have a meeting with the boss’s wife about future opportunities.  I got this work at home news upon stepping foot in the office this morning…surprise…turn around and go home.

                Add to this my regular work responsibilities and a full load with classes, and I have been feeling hectic. Does this not sound hectic or does this sound like I overreact and hectify my life?

Hair Removal Woes

Everyone knows that hair removal is a pain. Shaving is tedious, but cost effective(ish), yet you have to do it over and over and over and that is tiresome. It cuts the hairs at an angle making them stronger and sharper and for someone like me, with sensitive skin, any skin that rubs those sharp blades are quickly irritated. 


Waxing is a great alternative, but the salon is expensive and time consuming. Waxing at home is, in my experience, on a continuum between hilarious and painful. I have tried the wax that needs to be microwaved and that has never worked. I just last night tried the Veet strips and today I have less hair, but also less skin and wax that I cannot get off...not all of it is in a very convenient place to even try to remove. Yeah, that's unpleasant. 


In my experience of having a professional do the waxing for me, I have developed some very strong opinions. In Athens (Georgia, not Greece) I went to this wonderful spa (Urban Sanctuary) that used products that were as close to natural as possible. The wax they used was hard wax, meaning that you pull the wax itself off, no strips needed. It was all natural, it didn't stick to your skin and it didn't leave any residue behind. I would recommend picking a spa that uses this wax, or buying this wax yourself if you want to do it at home. 


The spa I go to here in China uses hot wax with strips and generally irritates my skin. I have never in my life had an ingrown hair until I started going to this spa and now I can literally count 5+ at any given time. These ingrown hairs were the reason I got the Veet strips, thinking that at least if I did it myself I would have no one to blame but yours truly and it would cost me less. As it turns out, I do not have the stones to rip strips from my own skin...I am too much of a wuss. So I had hubs help me. In the process, I had maybe 2 layers of skin ripped off, 75% of the 100% of the hair I was trying to remove actually removed AND hubs accidentally got my hair (from my head) stuck on one of the wax strips...goodbye to 20-30 strands that had to be CUT OUT. I was pissed slightly upset. 

Not as effective as the regular but less painful

Hurts like hell and ripped off my skin

 So, now I will now continue on my journey to finding a better solution to this problem. Lazer hair removal would be great if....

1. I were in a country where I trusted someone to do it 
2. I had the kind of expendable income necessary to pay for it

I have neither the trust nor the expendable income so that will have to wait a few years.


What will I try next? Hard wax? Epilator? Sugaring? Does anyone have an experience with doing either of these at home? Please share...I need all the help I can get. 

Customer Service

Subway in China is quite an experience. Not THE subway, although that is an experience in and of itself, but in this case I mean Subway the restaurant. Yesterday while standing in line waiting for my sandwich this is the thought that was running through my head...


While I stand in line watching the girl who is the first person in the assembly line that is Subway I am struck by her hatred of her job. It is evident to anyone that watches her make a sandwich. She Hates it. Why should her disdain for her job be taken out on my sandwich though? She shreds the bread, attacking it with the knife, tossing it down on the counter and throwing on the meat, followed by the cheese. It's almost like she is intentionally making them uneven so only every other bite will have both tastes. She does all of this, again, with a clear hatred for the menial task. 


She does this regardless of whether you are sweet as can be or curt with her. Some people are just content being surly. Motivated enough to ruin your sandwich but not to change her circumstances. 


Other than my lunch experience, this week was busy. Last week was busy and this coming week will be busy. My boss is back in town, we are slammed with work and we are expecting to get 2-3x the amount of work we have now coming in over the next few quarters. Certain people in my team are under preforming and have been for quite a while and nothing has been done. That is all changing now and over the next month people's weaknesses will need to disappear...if they don't, next month, people will be fired. It's tough but it needs to happen. So sorry for the hardly ever blogging over the past month but work has ratcheted up and I have had to spend the weekends trying to relax, work out, shop for the next weeks groceries and work on school. Soon I will find my balance and blogging will come back in!


Rejoice! Winter is almost over!

 <---------------Goodbye 




Hello --->

Green Smoothie Recipe

With Lent fast approaching, hubs and I have been discussing what to give up and what to take up. We have both decided to give up alcohol and to give up eating meat for dinner. I have been wanting to move us towards a more vegetarian way of eating for a while and this is the perfect time to try it out. For the last two weeks I have been actually cooking meals for us and now that I'm practically an expert (that's a joke) I want to shake things up again. For other cooking challenged wives out there, here are the recipes I have tried and where I found them:


More Than Toast blog 

• Easy Creamy Chicken Wonderful
• Healthy Crispy Chicken Fajitas Wonderful even though I hate cornflakes

All Recipes: Green Pea Pesto Recipe (Didn't love this one but with some tweaking it would work)

Plus another recipe that was flour covered chicken pan fried and then left to simmer in balsamic dressing. It was WONDERFUL!

Anyway, I digress. I wanted to have a healthy shake today after I worked out for the first time in almost a month a little while. 

My Recipe:

A Handful of fresh spinach, 5 large strawberries, 1 banana, 1 small piece of ginger, 1 cup of water, 1 cup of orange juice and 1 tablespoon of brown rice protein powder all blended together and it turned out great. I knew it was healthy so I was going to drink it regardless of whether it tasted like grass clippings or not but alas it was healthy and tasted good...so rarely the case. 

Try it out and let me know what you think or post healthy recipes that you make that are also tasty! Any vegetarian main courses you know of would be greatly appreciated. 

Happy Weekend

One Year in China Part 2

So, more than 1 month later (my mantra of 2012 it seems) I am posting the second half of my first year in China.
Recap: Arrived: November 2012, after 1 night at the Marriott, lived in a rat trap for 2 weeks, then moved one step up for 3 months while we made some friends. Once I got a job we moved into Upper East Side

Now we live here and love it

We visited places like this

Chaoyang Park

Mutianyu Great Wall

The girls I went to the wall with...Great Wall of China trip with me and 3 girls from Japan

Thank you smog

Steep stairs that they did not want to walk up :)

The Summer Palace

1000% Humidity and no makeup...

We had our first wedding anniversary

Anniversary presents

Visited 798, the art distrct

And then...

In the beginning(ish) of our second year in China, we returned home to the USA for the first time for Christmas

My dad and me 

Father and son in law

And us

I hope that everyone has had a wonderful beginning to 2012!

On the 19th I had my 24th birthday and couldn't be happier with my life. I got to see my family and friends again, I have a wonderful husband, a great job and a wonderful future in front of me.

I found this great picture on a new blog about a really heartwarming family 

Better Late Than Never

For effort number two to write this post...my (insert ugly expletive) VPN bumped me off and now I am re-writing this post...Moving on

The topic of this post, my favorite subject, me and my wedding. Yes, that was almost 2 years ago. Nevertheless, the first time around, we planned our wedding in 3 weeks and because it was in June, a lot of people were not able to make it. We had a group of around 30 people at my parent's townhouse and had a great time. Yet, a lot of family and friends were not able to make it due to the short notice. So, my wonderful parents hosted yet another wedding reception in our honor. This time, invitations were sent out months in advance and we had a much larger tun out. Family friends and family members shipped registered gifts to us for months in advance and hubs and I had two Christmases this year. It was so nice to open wedding gifts so long after actually getting married. Wonderful time...I recommend celebrating your wedding as often as possible. 

Our stationary for the invites

The one downfall to having a separate wedding and wedding reception is that my mother thought it would be ridiculous for me to wear my wedding dress again. I am not a very well endowed girl...but my wedding dress did so much with so little. 

That dress

This dress...still nice, but you see my point

I loved my wedding dress so much. I tried on only 5 dresses before I found this gem and had to own it

Probably one of my favorite shots

A great picture of the dress...good thing hubs never reads my blog because he hates this picture...thinks he looks creepy

The back of the dress

Now, a photo dump from Wedding Reception Numero Dos

Two of my best friends...plus my uncle and family friend in the background

+1: Geoff

The always important and inevitably blurry bar area...

It makes total sense that the bar picture is blurry...the woman that ran the bar made some stiff drinks. I took my first sip and felt like someone had tossed a lit match down my throat. Thankfully, the same friend who took my wedding pictures was at this party also taking pictures:

This one makes me laugh...that look on his face

Me and the other wives of my husband's best friends

Sadly, one of two pictures where will and I make it into the same shot. Positive: This couple gave  us an awesome gift

Overall, the night was wonderful and we had a great time. Sorry it took me almost a month to post this, but after two bouts of food poisoning in 1 month, jet lag from returning to China, starting a new semester and going back to work....I've been busy. 

Chun Jie Kuai Le: Happy Chinese New Year