Lucky to love and be loved

Sometimes I think it's important to stop and realise how lucky we are. I have loving parents and friends that I share very special bonds with. We all love to feel loved but an even more amazing feeling is being able to return love unconditionally and do and give as much as you can to make others feel loved and add to making others lives feel full and happy.

With a few weeks left here in Western Australia before I head back for another 10 month run in China, I'm filled with a mixture of emotions. I'm extremely excited that my closest of friends from China accepted the invitation to join me here in Australia for the last few weeks of my holiday. I will get the chance to give back some of the amazing generosity she shows to me when I am in her home country. For someone who has not experienced a western country, I think Australia will be an amazing adventure for her. It will be a lot of fun for me as well as Nettie, introducing her to my hometown, different foods and showing her the sights. Her English is very, very good and I know she will value this opportunity to be in a completely English speaking environment and learn so much from being here.
With the arrival of my dear friend comes the reality of leaving my parents here again in just a few weeks time. I love and miss them very much when I am in China but the support that they always show for whatever I choose to do has got me to where I am now and I hold on to the fact that they want me to experience as much of life as I can and never hold myself back.
I will fly back to China with my friend which is comforting and I wonder how different things will be. Last year I was flying into the unknown..."what would China be like, would the job be o.k?, how would the people treat me? would I make friends?" Obviously all these things made a big enough impact on my life for me to return again. This time it's not unknown...I have learnt much of the language and made great friends. The school is very good to me and I enjoy teaching the kids.
How will this impact on my second year in China? Will I be more adventurous and brave :-)Generally feel more comfortable and at ease in such a different lifestyle?
It's all part of life's big learning curve :-) The amazing thing about loving people unconditionally is the biggest buzz that you get when you give to please and how somehow, it works around in a complete circle of giving and more giving, which comes back to you ten fold...and so on and so on..

Strange But True!

Tonight (with thanks to a Mozilla Firefox add on) I sat down and watched live streaming of CCTV 5 (China Sports channel)on TV-Fox. I made the experience even more like my past 11 months in China, by eating a bowl of instant noodles whilst I watched :-)

York Rainbow

York Rainbow, on top of Mount Brown, originally uploaded by sooy2.

I took Daisy for a walk around on Mount Brown yesterday...The weather has been sprinkling us with rain on and off and we were lucky enough to catch this rainbow whilst we were uo top...very pretty!

Revamp

Hmmm not sure if I like the new look blog page yet??

Stop whinging people and start thanking !

People often like to complain....whinge, whinge, whinge. Sometimes I wish I had a voice recorder going so people can hear themselves back. The other thing I notice a lot is how people love to discuss tragedy and bad news... I think there should be a channel on T.V and radio dedicated to good stuff, providing a tonic or remedy to help even out the flow of bad news that we are flooded with.
Anyway I have decided to write about a couple of things that I am truly thankful for.

1 : I have been meaning to mention this for a while.... SKYPE : Thank you, thank you a billion times thank you. SKYPE keeps me in free regular contact with my family and friends by text, voice and video (and cheap phone calls and text messages to phones). The world is a much smaller place thanks to you. Living so far away from my loved ones becomes much easier with regular contact.

and today

DELL COMPUTERS : I have had Dell computers for a few years now and never had any problems. My last laptop is still under warranty (just) and it has been playing up quite a bit lately. After talking with technicians and being guided through some very useful ways to update, diagnose and fix problems...they decided to have a look for themselves. They sent a technician to my house and he completely pulled my laptop to pieces, put in a brand new motherboard, fan and heat sensor, sync thingy?
He has also ordered new speakers as mine don't seem to be playing loud enough and someone will come again on Monday to fit them.
So to Dell....BIG THANKS !

My World...where have I been?

Today I thought I'd have some fun with google maps and start adding the places in the world that I have lived and visited. Its a lot of fun and as you can see I have included the map on my blog. If you click on "My World" it will open the full map showing that I have lived and travelled in England, Ireland, China and Australia. I really should start putting the many places I've been to in my home state of W.A but there are so many I haven't got around to them all yet. Next I'll try and work out how to add the photo's to the locations :-)

Classic Comment

I guess with me home for a while my dad is feeling a little out numbered yet again. Yes we can be known to give him a hard time but it is usually for his own good as he is frequently getting himself into trouble :-) He has been trying to find something to pin on me since I have returned ranging from "We use much more toilet paper now your back" and the other day whist driving to Northam "accussing me of eating all the biscuits" Why I felt the urge to defend my 1 biscuit a day I dont know :-) ANYWAY...Mum piped up with "HEY so who's been eating all the biscuits while Sue was in China....People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones". Dads quick reply was "THEY SHOULD WHEN THEY WANNA GET OUT! Poor Dad lol.

Transition

I'm back in China for my third year, time flies! My 5 weeks back in Australia went quickly and it was wonderful to be with my family. We spent lots of quality time and had some great days out at places like the Perth Zoo and Kings Park. Lots of shopping with mum and meeting my new niece Mathilda was a joy. Hey I didn't realise my Brother could cook such a great cake:-) Thanks...delicious!

Playing Golf with Jude and Super Golf with Anthony....very cool.

I miss you all and it's really great to see everyone, the big family get together gave me a chance to catch up with the just about everyone. I haven't had time to blog as three days after I got back here, I headed to Shanghai for about 13 days. 24 hours each way train ride, 3 days in total at World expo and then time checking out the wonderful city and hanging out with Nettie, Carol and Netties sister Helen.. Didn't have my laptop with me...so just catching up now.

The wise words of Lao Tsu

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of Lao Tsu (Daoism) and Buddhism etc...but in Australia not so many people know of Lao Tsu...so imagine my suprise when in my little home town of York today I came across this sign outside of "The York (Palace) Hotel"...Such wise words. Are they trying to use some kind of reverse psychology to advertise "Black Forest Cake" lol.