Maternity Leave

Hello! Nimen Hao! It's been months on top of months since I've posted anything here, but I wanted to brush off the old Bamboo Village blog, because I'm getting ready to come out of my maternity leave!

I've been feeling rather disconnected from my former home in Sichuan, so it was very welcome this week that the team from NPR headed back to Chengdu. They've taken up blogging about their trip again, and you can read their Chengdu Diary here. I am very interested to follow their reports of how my dear Sichuanese are faring one year after the big earthquake.

I'm not even sure if I will have any readers here anymore, but I'm going to try to start posting as much as I can. As you may or may not know, my status has changed since I last wrote: I'm now the proud and astonished mama to twin boys. They were born on the most auspicious of days: 8/8/08, and this month they are 8 months old. I figure a little Chinese luck would do me good as I venture out of the realm of Stay at Home mom and into that of Work From Home Mom. The focus of my writing here will probaby take on this theme as I pick up the pieces of this business and get it going again.

Requests, ideas, feedback, advice - it's all welcome! Talk to you soon!!

child labor

Today on The World, there was a segment discussing child labor. Specifically, they were talking about exactly the issue that we're trying to deal with at Bamboo Village Educational Fund: children dropping out of school in their early teens to become migrant workers. Click here to read the transcript from today's broadcast. You can also check out their photo stream here.

This also prompts me to stop procrastinating and let you know that Zhang Lin has been accounted for! Daniel just returned from China on Sunday.

More Sichuan Coverage

Today on Talk of the Nation, they're interviewing NPR reporters who were actually in Sichuan when the earthquake struck.

After 6pm Eastern time, they'll have it uploaded so you can listen to it. Here's the link.

I've been looking for current blogs written by people on the ground in Sichuan, but am having a hard time finding any that are really talking about up-to-date issues. If anyone out there happens to have any links, I'd love it if you'd post them in the comments.

Daniel is leaving tomorrow for his trip to Chengdu, and of course I'm just longing to be on the trip with him. I hope he'll be able to take a lot of photos, and beyond that, I hope that he'll be able to help in some way. Maybe he'll come back with some new ideas for Bamboo Village and how we might be able to help from here.

Thank you for your comments - it really meant a lot to me, to feel like Bamboo Village is something more than just me posting random things about the Fund or the shop. I was also amazed yesterday to be contacted through Etsy by someone asking when the shop would be opening up again.

I'm not yet sure when I will be able to get the shop back up. It involves quite a bit of space, and of course, the physical ability to run the shop properly. The twins are due sometime between September 5 and October 10, so that last 6 weeks is probably out, though my sister has said she'd help me run the shop. I don't know... we're living out of boxes right now. Part of me really wants to get things rolling again, especially in light of current events in Sichuan. If anyone has any advice or ideas, I'd love to hear them!

Finally, we still haven't located Zhang Lin. Daniel is going to make sure to track her family down while he's there, and he's carrying her scholarship money for the next school year with him. I'll let you know as soon as I hear anything.