Our tiny, huge planet

I'm not feeling well at all today. Spring colds are the worst. It must be the contrast between feeling so, so crappy and the beautiful weather. When you are sick in the winter and fall it feels right to be bundled up on the couch with a cup of hot tea. Not on a day like today. Especially when there is so much work to do at work and at home!

But I am getting something done. I had an instant message chat with the mother of one of the girls from China who is coming to visit Sunday. I speak no Chinese and Shine's mother speaks no English so it was a bit of work to type in English, copy/paste into Google Translate, copy/paste the Chinese characters into the message window, and then reverse the process when she wrote back to me. Whew.

This morning I sort of figured out how to use the audio/video. I could see Shine's mom but she couldn't see me. We could hear each other. She spoke Chinese and three words in English and I spoke English and three words in Chinese. She giggled and apologized and there were long, long pauses while we tried to figure out what to do next. (Lots of giggling and apologizing.) Luckily, Shine's mom figured out what to do. She contacted a third party -- her friend in the UK. So we had a three-way chat in three time zones with two and a half languages while the mom's friend's toddler hollered and banged on the keyboard in London. So funny and so much fun. Hope will call Shine at 5:30 tonight when Shine's mother drags her out of bed to talk to her new friend in Minnesota. Results will be posted, so stay tuned.