Heyyyyy future me.

This may be a shorter one, because I don't have too much to say this time. But, it's been a long while since an update, so I figured that I better write down the few things I have been doing, else I forget about them forever.

So for personal things, I've started down the road of getting my American Teaching License. Don't get too excited - this isn't because I have any desire to teach in the States, but only because it tends to look good on a resume. The only catch is that I don't know if I can get it. It's a big if, because I doubt if anyone has tried to do exactly what I'm doing. Usually a license requires classroom observation (in the US of course), and a renewal every few years.  I think I may have found a way around that, but it will require a lot of testing, paperwork, and waiting. Fingers crossed.

So, what have we been doing lately? Hmm. We uhh... got a toaster oven. I made bread once. It was okay. And the brownies were not bad. Yup.

Got that going for me.

Compelling reading, for sure. Alright, for more interesting stuff, our next Guangzhou Tourist spot was Huangpu Port. A bit out of the way, it required a bit of a lengthy metro ride down to the far side of the river. Now to back waaay waaay up a few hundred years, Guangzhou (back when it was known as Canton) used to be the only way into China for foreign goods. Well, this was THE port where all those foreign goods passed through. They have a small museum with, you guessed it, old trade goods that used to be kind of a big deal. In particular a fair number of clocks, which were all the rage since China didn't know how to do that until they copied the Europeans. This place also gave America its Chinese name, mei guo (美国).

Fun tangent for that, 美 = beautiful and 国 = country. The story I was told, and choose to believe because I can, is that the first ship to sail to China from America was shortly after the Revolution. Because the new country wanted to make a good impression, they got their fanciest ship and loaded it up with flowers. That combined with a giant shiny flag ('Murica) led people at Huangpu to call it "the beautiful country". Is the story actually true? I'm not sure, I've only heard it from other people, and have yet to find a source for it. But could be?

For the rest of the port, it's pretty much like an old town you can walk around. It has some kitchy craft shops and people taking wedding photos. Also an old lady that makes liquor out of her house. We sampled some rose, peach, and chrysanthemum spirits that were all unique in their own way, and bought a bottle of the peach. And speaking of alcohol, that makes a perfect transition to our visit by Elana!

You may have heard of Elana before, as she is the infamous globe-trotting friend who lives in Bangkok. She decided to come stop by GZ for a few days on her way to Hong Kong, and we couldn't be happier to have her. It was a brief, day-and-a-half sort of trip, so we tried our best to squeeze in way GZ had to offer - a walk around Beijing Lu, visiting some of the famous temples, Liwan Park, a lot of food, and some skyscraper sightseeing around Zhujiang New Town. It was a nice change of pace, to share the place you (now) know very well with a friend who doesn't. It also is a reminded that Ella and I still have a lot of GZ to uncover. We're slowly making progress, but especially the southern end of the city is pretty untouched.

Well, not completely untouched. I was asked, I think as a courtesy, if I wanted to join the Grade 2 class on their field trip. To probably their surprise, I said yes. I was told that I was the first foreigner to ever join the class on their semester outing, this time to Vanilla World. What is Vanilla World? It's sort of like a kiddie theme park about 30 minutes away. Despite then name I did not see any vanilla, just a bunch of carnival-type rides. The first half of the day, we chaperoned the kids around to various places. I got to ride on a few, although c'mon - none of them hold a candle to places like Kings Island. Think like, rides that are at a church festival. Anyway they loved them, and then we broke for lunch. I assumed we would eat with the kids, cause you know, they're like, 9 years old.

Nope.

I still don't know how to feel about this, but after the kids started eating all the teachers are like "Okay bye - meet you back at the bus at 3." Then we left the park to go have lunch in a restaurant. One of the teachers got pretty drunk, which was funny, but mostly we just sat around and socialized. I felt a bit guilty, because here we are eating restaurant fare while the kids get rice and a hot dog. After lunch we went back to just ride on the rides ourselves for the rest of the day. Sure we saw some kids here and there, but at no point was there any plan other than "meet here at some time". Only one person got lost that day, and it was me. I don't know if they made some announcement I missed, but suddenly the park just kind of emptied as all the kids ran to their meeting point. Except, nobody had ever told me where that was. I walked around for a bit and considered "Well... looks like I'm getting a Didi (Uber) home." But I decided to go back to the bus, and it was still there. About 20 minutes later, the group arrived. Amazingly, to the best of my knowledge, no kids were lost during the day. I don't know if I should give credit to the kids for being responsible, we got super lucky, or everything was just far more planned than it appeared. It sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen in the US. But in the end, everything worked out. So perhaps there shouldn't be.