What I will miss

We always want what we can't have. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

These truisms apply to many of life's essentials: love, home, family, and the icecream scoops I shun those days before zipping into that dress. That void makes memories and desires all the more vivid. Whatever it is, it is washed over in a dripping nostalgic light, basking in sentimental reverie. Living abroad in Shanghai for the next year or so will definitely be a whirlwind of challenging new experiences, some that will certainly charge up my batteries with carpe diem, grab-life-by-the-balls jolts, and others that will beat against me like hurricane waves slamming against exposed sea walls. On those days, I will certainly miss the ease of home, among other things...

1. riding my bike around Charleston (and general simplicity of just getting around town!)
2. lounging around the house on Sundays reading the NYTimes and cooking eggs with my family
3. pre-parties at my house before heading downtown with friends
4. high-tide (see pic). There is a home-video on my third birthday displaying me running full-throttle off of the diving board into the deep-end of Aggie's pool. I'm still intrigued by the water, which is why I am particularly enthralled with high-tide-- how the water is brimming at the marsh's surface and about to spill over the land around it.
5. surfing
6. clean air & no-smoking laws
7. Pandora (last time I was in Shanghai the system said it does not yet work overseas. I am keeping my fingers crossed for progress).
8. English fashion magazines. Reading Mandarin or Cantonese fashion-writing is too tricky for me. I tend to get impatient. Although their fashion editorials are brilliant at times.
9. American grocery stores (Whole Foods and Publix, anyone?) (&grocery shopping on my mom's cc)
10. how America has clean bathrooms on every corner.

Now that I've purged that out of my system, I vow to somehow re-incorporate all of those things of my new life in Shanghai. I can learn to love the mayhem of Carrefoure, adapt to the odour of chimney-smoking scruffy Chinese men, and whip-up brunch with my new roommates. Surf in Thailand?? Soak in high-tide on the Bund.