Country Living

Most of you know I was brought up in small town America, so moving to a big city in China has been an adjustment in and of itself! Although I enjoy the conveniences of modern day living, my heart longs for rustic life, log cabins and green lush vegetation all around me. So, when a Chinese friend off handily commented that she would invite our family to her home in the countryside during the harvest season, I excitedly took her up on her offer!

We left on an incredibly rainy day. In fact, as I packed our rice bag full of extra clothes and blankets in case we needed them, I wondered if there was any way I could get out of going outside in all that rain with four children, two big bottles of oil (which would be given as a gift), a large rice bag for luggage, and umbrellas. It was pouring buckets outside and I just didn’t see myself enjoying it one bit!

Needless to say our host was more than enthusiastic to get our family into her home, so we forged through the rain, waited for a taxi to finally have mercy on our group of soaking wet travelers, and headed towards the bus that would eventually take us to our destination.

If you take a look at this this photo album you’ll get a better idea of what our trip looked like once we made it to the countryside.

In the end, I was glad we’d forged through the rain and made our way to that rustic little home nestled among kind neighbors, green lush vegetation for my eyes to feast on, and clean fresh air!

The end to this trip was the icing on the cake though. As I was waiting for our van driver, a bicyclist rode past with white containers of red things in his basket…oh, how wonderful it was when I realized that those red things were no less than raspberries (something we thought was nowhere to be found in China)! We soon found some sellers and headed back to the city loaded down with my new find!