I’ll admit that my last post was Unusual. But this, O Reader, is because my last post wasn’t so much for you as it was for My Dear Lynne, who is Not Quite Languishing in China.
Lynne called me this evening, at 9:30 my time and, coincidentally, 9:30 her time (which would be convenient and even better than the one hour’s time difference we’ve endured for the past several years while she lived in Chicago– except that it was 9:30 Tomorrow Morning for Lynne). And this is– despite my understanding of the rotation of the earth on its axis and the sunrise and sunset and the dividing of the earth into time zones– Somewhat Surprising for me.
Anyway, Lynne called me this evening and it was So Good to hear from her, as this is the first phone conversation we’ve had since she called me from the tarmac in Chicago. And I was especially glad to talk with her because, while she is Not Quite Languishing in China, she is having a Hard Time.
This is to be expected, and I told her so. A move is a huge stress in anyone’s life, and this is true whether you are moving across the country or across town, but if you are moving to the Other Side Of The World, then it has to be Particularly Difficult. And it’s not as though the move itself is the issue– the move with its fourteen-odd hours on an airplane with a toddler and its subsequent twelve-hour jet-leg– no, what’s more at issue is the packing and packing and packing one did before one left. And the obtaining of visas for the children and the passports and the sorting and the taking of things to the give-away and the general mayhem that accompanies a move of this magnitude.
It is No Small Thing to move to China for three years.
And then, when they arrived, they learned that the air shipment (which included, among other things, all of Lynne’s cooking gear) would be arriving in another week instead of Right Away. Which means that most of the comforting things that would be coming from home wouldn’t be coming just yet. (Lynne shared a Most Endearing note about the family dinner the other night: she made chicken soup for the six of them in one tiny sauce pan and so had to do it in stages, transferring items as they cooked into a bowl on the countertop. I Love That.) (Let me just say for the record that the Stevensons–had they been in this situation– would have ordered Chinese. Ha!)
And then last Saturday little Gwen broke her clavicle when she fell out of bed. That’s not exactly what one hopes for when one has been in a new country for, say, a week.
And so of course she’s having a Hard Time. Of course she is.
You can imagine the solace one would find, in this situation, in having contact with the world one left behind. The pleasure one would take, wouldn’t one?, in continuing to have contact via the worldwide web, visiting and enjoying the blogs of friends, sharing one’s blog with others, getting and receiving e-mail. You can imagine that would be comforting. I know you can.
But here’s the kicker: Lynne can’t read blogs while she’s in China. There’s some sort of block that is preventing her access. Somehow she is able to post things to her own blog, but then she can’t see them, can’t check them, and can’t even read the comments people are making on there.
This is So Sad.
So Lynne called me tonight to find out how to program her blog to automatically e-mail her all the comments people make (she can get to the blog dashboard to do this, but all the characters are Chinese, so she doesn’t know what she’s seeing). We went on-line together and I guided her to the right place, and now all comments to her blog will end up in her e-mail account.
This is a Very Good Thing.
But we also discovered something else– something we didn’t know blogger had to offer: I can have all of the things I post on my blog sent to her e-mail, too. And that’s the meaning of the last post. I set up my blog to e-mail her the posts, and then I posted something real quick (“Are You There?”) just to see if it worked.
And it DID.
So here’s what you do. Find out if your blog system can e-mail posts to Lynne, and then do it (six_liptaks@yahoo.com) . It will make her So Happy to find out what’s going on. And also head over to her blog, where you can read all about making chicken soup in a little saucepan or Gwen falling out of bed or see photos of the really spectacular view they enjoy from their Shanghai apartment. And then make a comment which will, as of about 9:45 tomorrow morning (hee!) arrive in Lynne’s e-mail box.
Yes, please do. It just might make her day.
