About

Making collages goes way back for me, and this blog is merely an extension of that.  My mother used to open up a brown paper grocery bag for a working surface, give me a shallow dish of white glue, and set me loose with fabric scraps, dry beans, buttons, glitter, dry pasta, sequins, paper, and rickrack. Here I am, still creating but now online with an assortment of ideas, photos, words, and feelings.

I’m a homeschooling mom of one child — Sprite, who is ten.  We moved to China when she was three, so she’s always been homeschooled although she was a daycare child at the mere age of 8 weeks! So I’ve lived both sides — a working mom with a child in daycare and now a stay at home, homeschooling mom. This blog is my 17th anniversary gift from my husband, and I named it my collage because it’s a hodgepodge of things that are important to me — family, China, faith, traveling, photography, and creativity.

You can contact me via email or by commenting here at the blog.

Because it’s rather unusual for an American family to be living in China, when people see my blog, they start wondering and asking questions. That’s perfectly natural!

Well, here’s my effort to answer some of those questions. Please realize that if I haven’t answered a question here or if I’ve answered it vaguely, it’s probably because I don’t want to divulge the information in such a public place as a blog. Please understand and respect the need for privacy on the Internet. Ask yourself if you offer the same details on your blog. And if you do, should you?

Frequently Asked Questions …and their answers

Q. Why do you call yourself Jimmie?
A. That actually is my name. Ha! Really!

Q. Are you in China as a military family?
A. Uh, no. Check your politics. There are NO US military bases in China.

Q. What ARE you doing in China? What brought you there?
A. My husband works here. And I now have the privilege of being a stay at home, homeschooling mom. This happened after three years of being a working mom and ten years of being a working woman. I love it!

Q. How long have you been in China?
A. Seven years.

Q. Do you and your family speak Chinese?
A. Yes, we speak Mandarin Chinese. My husband and I are not fluent, but we can have daily conversations and survive without too much problem. Sprite, our daughter, is bilingual, having lived here since age 3.

Q. How did you learn Chinese?
A. We had private tutors who help us through textbooks (called Chinese Made Easier in case you want to know). And of course life is your best teacher. That’s called barefoot language learning — learning on the “streets” through daily life. Read more at this blog post – How to Learn Chinese.

Q. Do you like living in China?
A. Yeah, most of the time. It’s home now. We have what we call “Bad China Days” when we dislike living in China. But doesn’t everyone have a bad day now and then when everything goes wrong? Because we live abroad, we tend to blame those bad days on our surroundings and say that “China is making me crazy” instead of realizing that LIFE makes us all crazy sometimes. You can have a frustrating day anywhere on the planet.

Q. Do you have one child because you must obey China’s One Child Policy?
A. No, foreigners are not held to that law.

Q. Isn’t homeschooling illegal in China?
A. No, homeschooling, although unheard of among local Chinese people, is not illegal for foreigners. Nno one is regulating how we educate our child. Most people consider it strange, but it’s certainly not illegal. Learn more about Homeschooling in China.

Q. Can you cook Chinese food?
A. No! Why should I? I can get it fast, cheap, and delicious at any nearby restaurant. And with no dishes to wash! I cook “western” food at home.

Q. Does your family like Chinese food?
A. Shoot yeah! I think this is a hilarious question because the answer is so obvious! We love the food. Doesn’t almost everyone like Chinese food? I mean, all over the world you can find Chinese restaurants. Why? Because the food is GREAT! And let me tell you, what we get here is about one hundred times better! (And by the way, this question also ranks high in the “Top Five Questions Chinese People Ask Us” category. People all over the world worry about unusual food.)

Q. Why do you blog so many pictures of China?
A. I’m interested in photography. The blog gives me an avenue to showcase some of my pictures. Also I see it as a way to educate others about this fascinating country and culture.  But I blog a lot about homeschooling when I think it will be helpful to others or when I just want to show off.

About My Blog

My blog is hosted by Doreo, which I’m very satisfied with. My sign up was a bit complicated because I live abroad, but Frank, a Doreo associate, helped me through several days of problems, emailing me back and forth until I got successfully set up.

For more about setting up a self-hosted Wordpress blog, read this entry.

My header and button were designed by The Pixel Cafe, an Etsy shop.

Tiled background is courtesy of BgPatterns. The email me button was created at Da Button Factory.