We're in the home stretch of our first year now. The first half of the second semester is complete. Right now it's hard to stop from looking ahead to the summer and the familiarity of America, if even only for a few short weeks. I was thinking about what I've missed about that life, the small things that often get overlooked, and I drew up a list of five American things I wish I had here in China, but never will. I was also thinking of titling this post ALOFATIWIHHICBNW, but that's just annoying.

1.) Clothes Dryer: Seriously, my clothes are huge. Since everything has to be dried manually now, all of my pants and shirts are about two sizes too long. I look like I shop discount at the Big & Tall Store. I never realized that small machine not only makes your clothes fluffy and warm, it keeps them in their normal shape.

2.) Dish Washer: We do a lot of hosting here, which means that not only do we have to wash an inordinately large amount of dishes, but we have to wash them regularly since we don't want a sink full of dirty dishes for our guests to see. On the plus side, we do have a divided sink, which adds a little sanity. Also, our dear Program Counselor Renee packed one of those handy soap dispensing sponge things for us. But how I long for those days of loading, pushing buttons, and letting technology do the rest.

3.) Voicemail: When we first bought our cell phones, I surprised to see that our plan didn't come with voicemail. Little did I know that such a feature wasn't missing only from my phone but everyone else's, too. Further still, I didn't foresee that this would result in people repeatedly calling or texting you if don't answer because they can't leave a message. Grrrrrr.

4.) Car: OK, this needs a little explaining. When I write "car," I don't actually wish that I had one. If you've ever seen the traffic here you would understand. And that's not even considering the difficulty in parking. What I mean is the ease and convenience of getting in a car parked in my driveway and driving to the store. If I need something that's not in our campus market, I have to invest a minimum of 2-3 hours get somewhere and back. Travel time is often longer than what you actually want to do.

5.) Taco Bell: Asians don't like Mexican food. Fried snake, shark fin, and "Cold Black Fungus" are apparently good eats, but a bean burrito is not. Go figure. While KFC and McDonalds are so dominant in this city that some of my students actually assumed they were indigenous, Taco Bell has tried and failed. Thankfully, I wasn't around when this happened, for such a situation would have been mortifying.

All in all it’s not a bad list of things to miss. They would be great things to have, but life without them still isn’t too shabby. The fact is I could probably come up with a longer list of things I appreciate that I have here, but maybe that’s for another post and another day.