Happy Birthday Arthur!

My grandson is one year old on February 5th. I'm excited to see him this summer, but bummed I'm missing out on spending time with him now. Grandpa? Ya know, that doesn't make me feel old. Actually, I look forward to embracing that role when the time comes. Whatever he wants to spend time doing, that's going to be our thing. Of course I'll try to introduce things to him, but I really want to just be with him. This is the picture I currently have on my phone of my two favorite boys.

I'm super happy to hear that Russo and Arthur are good buddies. Moira tells me that Arthur is getting much better about petting and not grabbing.

Kaleb has a birthday coming up too. Will have to check with Moira to see if he has any current needs or wants. Feels like a cheat code, but probably just do the Venmo thing. I'm slowly buying gifts for family and friends here in China, but those won't get delivered until I come home in July. The cost of shipping things back to the states from China is crazy expensive.

My plan this summer is to fly back to Bellingham as soon as I can after school gets out. My last work day will be July 1st or 2nd. Hoping I can make it home by the 4th. Odd thing. Traveling east means I get to go back in time. I'm sixteen hours ahead right now. If the entire trip takes sixteen hours I'll arrive at the same time I left. Weirdness. I guess after the spring forward thing due to daylight savings it will only be fifteen hours, but that's still a lot of time. It's all relative. That Einstein guy was onto something.

Just had lesson one with Paul on learning some more Chinese. Good stuff. Some parts are starting to stick. I know I have to use it if I want the learning to be worth while. We focused on numbers a bunch today. I feel fairly confident writing and speaking up to one thousand in Chinese now. The writing part was anew thing today. Forming the characters has specific rules. That was interesting. Drawing them from left ti right and then top to bottom all the time was interesting. Remembering these rules helped in remembering how to form the characters correctly.

I'm sure the Chinese balloon is all over the news in the states. Nobody here knows or cares. Feels like posturing by some people that are looking to pick a fight. Let's hope cooler heads prevail.