Rainbow - Blogabond

Well, I was having a hopelessly homesick day today. The paperwork that we thought was coming, is not the paperwork we need to progress the adoption, just more paperwork really. Augh....Then I proofread this Chinese Engineering textbook last week to make a little extra RMB. That was another nightmare for another day...anyway I was told I get paid "about 2000" and then they had some random word count thing and are cheaping out and now paying 1350. Ugh, of course I should have known reading some of the errors I saw, the command of English could naturally be so bad that "about 2000" could be translated to whatever. Then in my Chinese class, its near the end of the semester and so even though I love my teacher and classmates, it is so frustrating because I got a little lost a few weeks ago and by now that means I'm really lost. My name #@#$#@ is #####@% airplane America. Huh? So we get out of class and it just pours. Course we have no umbrellas but I wanna go home so we run. We live close so its not too bad. Then the ayi cooks rice and green goop. My teenager has a fit and doesn't eat and my 4 year old wants to pick out all the meat scraps, so we are sitting there with the ayi at dinner, all exhausted. And the ayi says flower, picture (in Chinese, of course, she knows my limited vocab). She just is so proud of this amazing pink african violet plant I have. It is truly an amazing plant, it blooms from May to December. Blooms and blooms. Anyway this week, it is having the best bloom ever, over 10 flowers. The ayi is so taken with it, she pulled the water delivery guy in to look at it. She even pulled out the fertilizer to show him exactly how we have such an amazing plant. Poor guy was like, nice flower, people are thirsty, I gotta go. So at dinner, I thought we were making small talk. I nod and turn to look at the flower. There is a rainbow.
I so needed to see that. Yeah, it arched at the coal towers. It wasn't a spectacular rainbow, but it was real. It is the first rainbow I've seen in Harbin. I've lived here for a year and a half. I so need to see natural beauty in the concrete jungle. And I've looked and looked for rainbows here. Everytime it rains we look, where's the rainbow? We guessed we couldn't see it due to the skyscrappers or pollution. But there it was today.
So I have hope again.

the flower and the rainbow

Rainbow in Harbin

Harbin, China

Heading South?