Firsts and Lasts

With facing the prospect of a different life, a life after China, I find myself becoming increasingly nostalgic as I look back on all the memories and experiences we've had here. Some, admittedly, I'd rather forget: Green and black smelly eggs, garlic breath on public transport, spitting on the pavement, grey polluted weeks and the idiotic drivers are not going to be things we pine for when we leave. But as we start to think about what we're packing and what we're leaving behind, I start to think of all the "lasts" we're going to have over the next few months and I start to feel sad.

Like shopping at IKEA. I love IKEA, the monstrous do-it-yourself furniture store down the road, with great deals you simply don't get elsewhere. I will miss the 3kuai hotdogs at the end of a long shopping splurge, the cute displays, the way they manage to get me to buy tons I don't need, and of course watching the weird Chinese people catching up on their sleep in the bed and lounge section. The fact that SA doesn't have an IKEA store is not in their favour in my opinion.

I will also miss the cheap DVDs, hundreds of titles and series for no more than 12 bucks each. I can never go back to Mr. Video and rent a new release for 3x what I can buy it for here. I am simply ruined.

We haven't posted a lot in the last 2 years because it seems that it's the firsts and the lasts you remember vividly. I will never forget our first time on the Great Wall of China, our first dodgy Chinese meal, my first solo bus and taxi ride, the first time I bought groceries or could communicate what I wanted with someone who didn't speak a word of English. Since then however, there have been hundreds of bus and taxi rides, more hideous meals than I care to recount, numerous boring trips to the Great Wall where I feign interest, and even more grocery store visits that went by unnoticed. I didn't write about those because that was just life. But now we might be leaving, and I need to savour every moment because every trip, or meal, could be our "last" there. We are even planning a weekend away to the Great Wall at Easter as a family! And of course I need to stock up on the latest DVDs and what IKEA has to offer. So I will need to make those "last" trips count too!

So here's to the firsts and the lasts,and everything you don't hear about in between.