I did that time warp thing over the weekend otherwise known as a high school class reunion. For some reason, I thought the class of 1979 would class preserved in time like a loaf of Velveeta. Well, surprise, surprise, surprise. My life took a left turn from what I had planned, my 401 K downsized to a 4, my […]
Etch-a-Sketch
Last Two Dollars
The only thing more exhausting than visiting 10 countries in five days is visiting one country in thirty. My trip to the USA was stuffed like my suitcase, bursting at the seams, starting in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, a mere 7589 miles from Kunming, China to finalize my divorce. No happy endings, but I do get my maiden name back-and my […]
Reading People
I don’t know what smell was more alluring, the smell of old books or the red peppers. It was a hole in the wall Thai book noodle shop in Ayatthaya, Thailand. The eighty cent train ride from Bangkok transported me back in time to the land of ancient temples and cheesy paperbacks. I browsed the browning pages while waiting for […]
Bang-cha-cha-cha
So, between my semi-annual my-body’s falling-apart check upand street-food crawl in Bangkok, I stopped at a café for a cup of WiFi when I started talking with a guy named James. He has your typical ex-pat bio. James is a former country dancer employed by a high-tech business in Portland but he’s working at the India branch. Like I […]
The Dress
Girls dream all of their lives what to wear on their wedding day. But what do you wear on the day or your divorce? My final hearing called was scheduled for November 2nd, one thirty in the afternoon Wisconsin time. But being in China, that would be 2:30 am, thirteen hours into the future. It had been arranged that […]
When Life Gives You Buttbeans
Copi Luwak or butt bean coffee seemed like the perfect way to drown my sorrows on that anything but Good Friday.
Sharpies
It was like cleaning out a junk drawer before a move. It was the last few boxes of our storage unit containing the remains of our marriage. But instead of rubber band balls and expired coupons, it contained fragments of my life that I could not part with or bring with me to China. Diaries. My grandmother’s China. My purple […]
My Chinese Friends
One of the hardest things about divorce is your friends telling you, “Ginger, you gotta get back out there.” But in China, there is no “there”. Finding English speakers is tough in Kunming. And quite honestly, the only relationship I’m really interested right now is with me. But my ears do miss English, gosh, they crave English: I’d lick […]
Morning Sickness
I have morning sickness. I know what your thinking, I’m not pregnant, I didn’t eat some some weird genetically modified vegetable that resulted in a bun in the oven. It’s just that every morning when I wake up in China, it’s still yesterday in the States, and my lawyer is firing me off emails before wrapping up her day. So […]
Too Much Change is Still Good
I tried my best not to stare at the doll-like holes on her forehead. “I’m trans gender.” “Oh really?” My acting was bad as her hair transplant but her voice was water to my parched ears. We were in an English language desert, the Thai Immigration Bureau in Bangkok, located a three hour bus ride from anywhere familiar, as was […]