Where We’ve Been

China: Yangshuo 2 days, Hong Kong 2 days, Shenzhen 27 days

Highlights

Yangshuo Weekend: We kicked off the month with a long weekend in Yangshuo, a *small* town about three hours from Shenzhen by train. It was a fantastic weekend, full of lots of relaxing at the hotel pool, facing our fears rock climbing, cruising on the Li River in a bamboo raft, and spending a full day exploring a small corner of a new-to-us province. We loved working with the Alila Yangshuo, bringing some much deserved attention to their property, but we still found lots of time to chill out. Best of both worlds.

Clarifying the Future: The upside to all this downtime is that we’ve spent a lot of time this month solidifying some of the long-term plans we have for the future and talking about budgeting for travel. This includes reviewing our investment strategy, doing about a hundred retirement calculators, and researching which countries may be perfect for us to eventually plant some roots. We have no answers but it’s good to feel like we’re working toward something, especially since our lives don’t involve some of the typical goals, like sending kids to college!

Lowlights

Bored: July has been the quietest month around here. We purposefully didn’t make any big plans, knowing that we have a busy couple months ahead of us. But it feels like the entire city is on vacation, jetting off to summer holidays and we’re not. Drew reminds me daily to check my privileged life at the door, and it’s obviously true. A big message I got from childhood was also that it’s good to be bored. I could never wait for those long summer days to end so I could go back to school already. Anyway, it’s been quiet and peaceful and I’ve read seven books and caught up on all the TV and read all of the internet. I’m looking forward to a busy August!

Dog Days of Summer: It’s still hot. The end.

What We’re Loving Lately

Online Shopping: At the end of August, we will be back in the States to celebrate my sister’s wedding. Whenever a big visit home looms on the horizon, we take the opportunity to place online orders on some of our favorite websites (shout out to Thred Up!). My parents have already been prepped to expect a bunch of boxes to arrive in advance of us. For this trip, we’re both planning to place some clothes orders, and I’m going down the deep rabbit hole of day planner research. You’d think that living in China, where most of this stuff is manufactured, would make the shopping process cheap and easy. You’d be wrong. Sizing is different, selection is different, brands are different and most nice items are exported and re-imported, resulting in a total savings of zero dollars. Let the online shopping begin!

Coming up in August

We’re kicking off the month with two long weekends away. This weekend we’ll be in Phuket, Thailand, a trip we booked…yesterday. Next weekend we’re heading to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to see some friends from Shenzhen who have an apartment there. The KL visit has been planned all summer, but this quick jaunt to Phuket was entirely spontaneous because I got the itch to get outta town and we got a great deal on a flight. As if I need any more excuse than that.

At the end of the month, we’ll be packing up for the US, where we’ll hang with family and friends and celebrate my sister. And see our nephew and see my other pregnant sister before she has her baby this autumn. Lots of life events, lots of things to celebrate.

Stay cool, friends. I’ll do my part.