A quote that says it all.

"'Farewell!' was the cry of my heart as I left him. Despair added, 'Farewell, for ever!'"--Jane Eyre, Vol. III.

We leave tomorrow.

We're Okay

I don't know if I have any regular readers anymore, but if I do, you probably are aware that we're in Southwest China's Yunnan province. You've also probably heard of the quake. Well, we felt it, and it woke us up, but Pu'er (a.k.a. Simao) is 200 km away from here, so we're okay. We've had folks who are worried about us, but we're okay. 3 dead though, in Pu'er, and many more injured. It tortures the mind to think about it.

Sorry!

I haven't posted in ages because I've been busy and there's really nothing to write about. Okay, I was looking up 9/11 on World Book and the most striking picture was that of the Statue of Liberty holding her torch over a couple of smokestacks that used to be skyscrapers. But that's hardly anything you want to know.

Things are winding down here. Two more weeks of school after today, then two weeks of packing and saying goodbye, then it's time to go...home.

Home? What is home? I was faced with that question while listening to a tape with my favorite songs on it. One made me think about Qi Shan so much that my heart ached, but two songs after that was the uncomparable Atwater-Donnnelly singing "Song of the Cowboys". Immediately, I was back in Seattle on a winter evening, often late on a Wednesday during Lent. Both songs brought tears to my eyes from associations. I don't have associations of a place--just an event--with a song unless there's some homelike aspect to it. Oh, I don't know! It's just surreal. And last year I was half-wishing that something would come up and we couldn't come back.