Hey guys, if you’re read­ing on Google Reader, click on over to the blog for a sec. I’ve done some basic re-design of the blog. I’ve tin­kered with the header, some logos, and some design details. I’ve cre­ated a back­ground pat­tern too! What do you think?

You prob­a­bly noticed, first and fore­most, that I’ve changed the title of the blog. It’s no longer Peeps from Abroad. Yes, I know, this is prob­a­bly the worst thing to do when you author a blog, but since all ten of you read­ing count for a small and young audi­ence, I had faith this you’d fig­ure out what’s going on.

I wanted the change, mostly, because since I’ve moved back to DC, I’m no longer “peep­ing” from “abroad”. The title just didn’t seem to fit any­more. When I started the blog in Novem­ber 2010, I planned to share with friends and fam­ily back home what I was doing in China every day. Look­ing back, com­pared to where I am today, there was SO much uncer­tainty in my life.

Roman­ti­cally, I was about to move halfway across the world to be with a guy that I wasn’t 100% pos­i­tive I was going to be with me in the long run. Luck­ily, my gam­ble paid off thanks to my per­sua­sive ways (I like to think I cooked my way into his heart).

Geo­graph­i­cally, I was about to leave place that I had begun to call home and that I loved, to go to a place that none of my friends had ever heard of and I had no idea what to expect. I ended up lov­ing my time in Guangzhou, and trav­elled in a way that I never though I would.

Emo­tion­ally, I was grap­pling with a loss of one career and the poten­tial start of five or six. I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do, though I knew what things I liked and what I hated. I just couldn’t set­tle on what to do in between. Now I’m finally set­tling on a direc­tion. It’s not an easy direc­tion, but at least there’s a direction.

Finan­cially, I was sort of in the pits too. Liv­ing in NY will kind of do that to you.

Cre­atively and adven­tur­ously, I was strug­gling. It was tough for me to grad­u­ate with a degree in art, and then end up work­ing as an assis­tant, only to get fired, and then start work­ing in restau­rants again. Liv­ing abroad, I met bet­ter friends that I ever though I would. I honed my Chi­nese and I devel­oped my hob­bies. I real­ized that life is a path, and that all my expe­ri­ences will do some good.…some day.

As you can see I was at an in-between phase in my life when I started this blog, unbe­knownst to me. I’d like to think that I’m out of that rut (but I don’t know, maybe I’ll look back in four years and mar­vel at how lit­tle I know now). So, in honor of becom­ing one step closer to being an adult, I’m re-titling this blog.

As to the focus of this blog, it’s not going to change dras­ti­cally. I’ll still focus on trav­els and the pho­to­graphic mar­vels that places like China and Africa nat­u­rally pro­vide, and then I’ll also blog a bit more in-depth about my life as a diplo­matic wife (that sounds so weird to say), more about my life as a home cook, and hope­fully share my jour­ney as an aspir­ing writer.

I chose ‘Here and There’ after a long brain­storm­ing ses­sion. Do you know how hard it is to come up with a blog title?? Two pages of scrawled notes and I like this one the best. It’s nei­ther here nor there, because it’s both here and there. Fig­u­ra­tively speak­ing, and geo­graph­i­cally speak­ing too. It’s sort of a mess, it’s sort of pulled in all kinds of direc­tions, and it’s sort of every­where. Just like I am.

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