Introduction: Growing up, Moving to China, Falling in Love and Returning Home.

When I was growing up my mother taught me how to sew.  She was and is still quite the sewing pro.  She even had her own company at one point where she would make clothing adapted to help people with disabilities.  It turned out that a lot of her designs were too complicated to sew for anything that could be manufactured so eventually she closed up shop.  Today she makes jewelry by refurbishing vintage and costume jewelry pieces and what not.  She actually has a blog as well which you can check out at http://www.refurbishthis.blogspot.com.

You know you rocked these in the 90's also!!

Back to my story...I learned how to sew when I was young.  I remember making a ton of scrunchies!  I mean it was the early 90's, what else was a girl to do?  But it when it came to anything more complicated I was not very interested because I knew I had to use a pattern.  I never had the patience to learn how to use a pattern.  Every time my mom would sit me down and try to explain how to use a pattern I became uninterested and would direct my attention towards something a little more exciting!!  I was never an inside kid, just the opposite!  Anything to get me outside running around was what made me happy when I was young.

Graduation, watch out world here I come!

Lets fast forward a few decades!  I graduated from college in 2009 with a degree in International Business and Economics and Financial Economics and a Certificate of Proficiency in written and spoken Mandarin Chinese.  I listed all of that out because graduating with a double major in Econ in May of 2009 did not lend itself well to getting any sort of related job.  Any entry level job at a bank was being overrun with applicants from banks that had just gone under or had been acquired by other banks. So trying to get a job with no experience competing against experienced professionals did not bode well for me.  Looking at my chances to get any job I decided my best course of action would be to move to China and try to get better at speaking Chinese and I thought maybe I could make something happen out of that.

The struggle; this is how far I had to bend over to do my dishes.
This apartment was made for someone much shorter.

My life in China would have made for a great blog but the government blocks blogging websites in China and even with the use of a VPN I found attempting to blog very difficult and just gave up.  To sum up my life in China I will say that it was constantly a struggle, nothing was ever easy but I have never felt more alive in my life!  I get butterflies of excitement in my stomach just thinking about it!!  Every little thing was a new adventure.  Figuring out where to buy something like a butter, a spice or masking tape felt like the greatest accomplishment.  Learning how to say a new word and having people actually understand you speaking Chinese felt amazing!!  There is something about living there that makes you want to stay and continue to fight and struggle even though you know life is much better in the U.S.  I just always felt like I knew how to get by in the U.S. but getting by in China was a brand new experience and I loved every minute of it!

There were so many things that I learned how to do while I was in China.  Things like cooking from scratch.  I learned that if I wanted certain foods to eat I would have to learn how to make them myself.  It was really hard in the beginning.  I lost a lot of weight because I did not know how to shop in the Chinese grocery stores and I was too scared to buy produce and other goods from people on the streets.  After a while I learned how to cook and feed myself and gained all that weight back!!  Pretty soon I got used to doing things the hard way.  Taking the bus across Beijing an hour and a half one way just to get to the store that sells western cheese and other imported food became common place and an hour and a half did not feel like what an hour and a half felt like in the U.S.  I gained a huge deal of patience and it seemed like time didn't matter as much.  

Every once in a while I would think about little things that would make a task SOOO much easier.  Things like a full size oven, if only I had that I could cook one normal sized pizza and not four tiny pizzas in my tiny toaster oven.  Or I would fantasize about having a food processor or blender so I could make things like hummus!  It would have been possible to buy a food processor but I never seemed worth it since I knew my time in China was temporary (although I didn't know how temporary, 1 year?, 2 years?, 5 years?) so it never seemed worth it to spend the money on such a convenience.  Did I mention I was REALLY poor?  I only used the imported foods for special occasions because I just couldn't afford to go there!!  

One problem I always ran into was getting clothes to fit.  My 5'7", 135 lbs figure was much to fat and tall for any Chinese clothing.  The only other place to turn was to go to international clothing stores such as H&M.  Since I was so poor going to a store like H&M would be for a situation where I had no choice and had to buy a new pair of jeans.  When my jeans would rip or tear I would think about how easy it would be to fix them if only I had a sewing machine!  There were so many times that I wished  I had a sewing machine.  If I had one I would be able to make anything!!  Fabric is so cheap in China that I would have been able to make anything I wanted on my budget!  But again the temporary nature of my time in China made me feel like buying a sewing machine would never be worth it.

He's such a nice young man
that he let me use his pocket
as a purse on the subway!!

While I was in China I met a very nice young man, also an American, also a poor English teacher.  We started dating and before long I knew I was no longer going to be Miss Independent traveling the world alone.  Suddenly my plans included another person!  It was a very strange change of pace.  Not only going from being single to being in a relationship but going from doing everything on my own, fighting and struggling to get by, to having someone by my side fighting the fight with me!  My quality of life improved and so did his when we combined forces.  We moved in together and life was good.

Moving across the world to be together...definitely worth it!

At one point the new man in my life told me he wanted to be a lawyer and return to the U.S. to attend law school.  I was not very happy about this.  I wanted to be young, wild and free in the world!!  Not young wild and BORED in the U.S.!  I wanted adventure not a job with benefits.  But a very unpredictable series of events transpired and I found myself in China with an apartment lease about to expire, no job since I had quite mine and an amazing boyfriend saying goodbye because he was going back to the U.S. to look at law schools.  Having no desire to teach another word of English and realizing life in China was much more bleak when living it alone I knew what I wanted to do.  The morning he left Beijing my decision was made and I bought a one way ticket to the U.S. to be with him and start a new life together in a new country.  I mean I can still have an adventure in the U.S., just a different type of adventure.  There are TONS of things I can still learn how to do here that I have never learned before!  Being in the U.S. gives me the chance to do things I couldn't do in China and wouldn't you know it one of the first things I did when got settled in our new home in Missoula Montana was buy a sewing machine.  After a few attempts I am finding that every time I accomplish a sewing project it makes me "sew" happy!!  Let the adventure begin!!

Me Sew Happy!!!