Heading into the New Year

I'm normally not one for resolutions in the New Year. In my mind, setting a list of goals for yourself all at once is stressful! Instead, I make commitments to myself all year round, and spend a good part of my time working to achieve them. Every day is a challenge and a potential accomplishment. Baby step resolutions make for daily successes.

Right now, I'm working on worrying less and loving more. It has been my mantra lately and so far, it's been helpful to keep in mind. I have this bad habit of worrying about things beyond my capacity to change, like the weather or other people's opinions of me. Perhaps the first example is not really that great, since the weather in Shenyang is most likely always going to be "cold," in varying degrees of the word. But my overall realization has been that it takes a lot of effort to worry about the future, effort that would be better spent focusing on the now and loving it. And believe me, it feels great to live in the now.

So what's happening now in the 'Yang?

Well, the bid list is out. All 28 locations. And my choices are all AH-MAY-ZING. I couldn't be more fortunate to come out of a high differential post with so many awesome options. The list has places like Madrid, Tokyo, Istanbul, Jakarta, Cairo, Moscow, Panama, all huge hotspots and major cities. Can you believe that out of that fantastic list, I didn't even mention my top three?? In my mind, they're even better... Needless to say, I've been enjoying the research process and I'm looking forward to submitting my list in February and getting my answer in March. Surprisingly, I haven't been worrying too much about the list, probably because it's fantastic. What happens will happen and I'm happy knowing that I'll probably get one of my top 5 bids coming from Shenyang.

In other news: I just came back from an awesome ski trip to Beidahu in Jilin with "Bill" and "Ted" from the CONS section. So many times this weekend I thought about Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and how we were kind of on our own China adventure. Hope to write an entry about that this weekend. Coming up, we have the Chinese New Year (Feb 9-13) and I'm planning a trip to Burma with some consulate folk. I'll write a full post about that as it gets closer (wait, it's only two weeks away!) with more details. Looking WAY down the road, Mom & David are planning on visiting in late March/early April after my birthday, which gives me GREAT excitement to begin to plan. Mom: I'm already lining up the restaurants we're going to eat at! You will LURVE it here. Can't wait to have you <3