An Ayi

If you happen to wake up in the middle of the night thinking about all the things there are left to do, all the people there are to see, all the ways to get in trouble before moving to another continent, sometimes, maybe sometimes, you also get some good news.

BJ is 16 hours ahead of us in San Francisco during the winter months.  So now it is just after 4 a.m. on Thursday morning here and they're already nearly done with Thursday.  This is why we lose a whole day of our precious lives when we travel there, only gaining it back if we come home.  Try explaining that to an eight year old.   In any case, they've had their Thursday so they've had the day in which our potential already Skype-interviewed ayi had her interview with "the other family."

Our interview with her on Sunday evening went so-so.  My abysmal Mandarin was essentially no use at all, and LiLi was feeling shy and a bit weirded out by Skyping (though we did lots of it last summer and even after we came back to SF and left my niece still in China Skyping with her regularly), so luckily Lee Ayi's current employer though German also spoke enough English and Chinese to be the translator.  We left the Skype video on long enough so we could see each other, then turned it off so we could speak more fluidly.  Sometimes there's a delay and more garbling w the video on; audio alone works best.  I liked Lee Ayi a lot and got a great vibe.  Her current employer said that she's very bright, has the requisite (for being a homework helper) high school diploma, and has years and years of working for expat families.  When we discussed cooking for us, which is often part of an Ayi's duties, she was concerned that maybe we'd want her to cook Western food!  Apparently she worked for a family that didn't want her to cook Chinese food but preferred Italian or some such.  LiLi and I just laughed.  Really, the food in China is amazing, all over.  We went to a restaurant in Sichuan with my cousins and when my cousin asked what vegetables were available, they said: well, anything.  Because you order and they just go out to the market right there and get whatever veges, totally fresh, that you want.  Anyway, of course we want Chinese food when we're living in BJ.  I'm sure we'll want an occasional sandwich or pasta (or latte!), but those can be had there too.

So...When we last left Lee Ayi, she was going to decide between the two of our families after interviewing with the other family on Thursday.  The other family has a toddler and presumably needs regular morning hours, and we need mid- to late afternoon and evening/dinnertime hours which seem less desirable to someone who is commuting by bicycle and may have a husband at home.  (Yeah, I'll write about gender roles another time).  Oh, and Lee Ayi has a kid at University in BJ (a huge, huge deal).

And guess what?   She chose us!  Matching the other family's offer of slightly more per month for the 30 hour work week (about usd30) and our promise to help her find another gig when we leave.  We have an ayi!  Wow!  Double wow!  I'm so happy.

I have to say what I've said to some friends before that this whole move has required some kind of patience, a quieting the mind, or whatever the equivalent of faith, is from me.  Each of the really big things, LiLi's school, my job, this, has been suggested or hinted but then gone into a week or two of dormancy before coming to fruition.  I've had to resist the impulse to act on my mind's agitation around the not-knowing, stressing out about whatever it is when I don't have any control whatsoever (though I have to admit to sending a follow up email to Lee Ayi's current employer attempting to sell us...okay so I gave into the monkey-mind in this occasion).

I'm just hoping that the rest of the big items follow the same path.  A place to live!  A subtenant for home!

But here, now, we have our Ayi.  I'm so happy!!