How's everyone getting along?

Things have been going pretty well on the Shanghai front. It's getting colder now, which is a nice change of pace from... never being cold. We experienced a bit of that back in February, but it'll be interesting to live in a cold climate for the first time in 8 years or so.

Speaking of, this (somewhat) shorter entry is about when I first came to China, in little old Hangzhou. Ella and I made a day trip out there over the weekend, the first time she's been. And the first time I've been back in, well, since I left. Oddly enough I first came to Hangzhou in November, so it's almost the 9 year anniversary since I left the US. I'll save the big reflections for next year, but I was curious to see if Hangzhou is the place I remember.

For the most part, yes. But better.

Back in my day (old man voice), living in Hangzhou was nice but sort of inconvenient. In other words, more convenient than almost everywhere in the US save NYC. Food delivery services hadn't taken off yet, there was no metro, and you had to put the public bikes in the docking stations. Now Hangzhou's metro is coming along nicely, with about 5 lines, the ever-ubiquitous-in-China dockless bikes, Didi, etc.. Plus now I actually know some Chinese, and with Ella in tow. But before that, let's do a little "before and after", separated by almost exactly 9 years.

So. Thoughts. In the first pic I look kinda fat. I blame that on leaving America about 1 month prior, and the couple of layers of clothing. But still - better now. The second pic is big improvement since Ella is in it. But also, my hair! Oh man. Low maintenance for sure, but nah, that's too short. I don't think I want to do that again.

Now, on to the more famous sights in the city. So the first destination was one I can actually name now, Hefang Street. Hefang Street was where the bus from my little district of Xiaoshan terminated, so it was the jumping off point for all of my Hangzhou excursions, back in the day. Well I'm pleased to say, it's same same but different. The biggest thing is that they cleaned it up a bit. For example, the food street I was looking for was just a series of carts on the sides of the alley, with communal tables in the middle. Now Singapore style, they've moved them into a covered building, like a hawker center. I get why, I suppose. But I miss the ambiance of rubbing shoulders with a random stranger, chowing down on bamboo rice and xiao long bao. But it was a nice intro to Hangzhou, because it still is quite pretty, and one of those places you can sort of get lost in.

The next spot was a place I had never been before, Hu Xueyan's home. I'm not expecting anyone to know who that is - I didn't. But basically he was a super rich guy, who, I gotta say, has a pretty nice taste in making a Chinese home. It's what you'd expect from a rich Chinese dude, with lots of courtyards, ponds, fancy woodwork, etc.. But what I did like is that he had a lot of caves in and around, which even on a temperate day were a good few degrees cooler than outside. I can see these being super nice to have during the summer, and were just cool to explore.

Then we get to the star of the show, Leifang Tower. I really like Leifang. Even though it's a modern reconstruction of the original (which collapsed around 1920 or so?) it's quite pretty and has a great view of West Lake. At a fraction of the price and a better view compared to Wuhan's Huanghe Tower, it's really the way to go for your Chinese tower experience. I remember years ago, standing at the top of that tower, looking at the islands in West Lake, and thinking "I wonder how you get there?" And then giving up because I spoke no Chinese and the English resources available were hard to come by and outdated.

Well, I'm happy to say this time we did make it to the largest of the islands, Three Ponds Mirroring the Moon. Yes, that's the name. Also there are 4 ponds. I don't get it either. If you don't believe me, I present Exhibit A:

Sure looks like four to me. Maybe they mean the lantern things.

Anyway, there's not much to do on that island. It's a pretty place to walk around, what with all the ponds full of koi fish, large lillypads, and bridges. The main draw though, is the southern view which is what's on the back of the 1 yuan note. You can see how mine compares.

After that, we wanted to go to a tea plantation. I had been there before (I think?), but it was honestly getting too late in the day. Instead we opted to go downtown to get some food, and maybe check out a night market nearby. The night market was pretty forgettable, selling the same sort of phone cases, clothing, etc.. We stopped at a restaurant nearby though, and I had tomato bamboo noodles - definitely the meal highlight of the trip, they were amazing. After another train ride back, we didn't get home until around 11 o'clock. An exhausting, busy day for sure, but we'll definitely be back to Hangzhou. Now that the big tourist stuff is taken care of, there's a couple of friends still around that I need to catch up with.

Ah, rabies. My old friend. But we'll come back to that.

For National Day, Ella and I decided to take a trip to a place we've always heard about, but never been. In fact, way back in Thailand-days, we were discussing where to move in China. And one of the places on that short list was Wuhan. Because we had both heard lots of nice things about it, it's pretty centrally located, it's pretty consistently warm year round, and... well, that's all I guess. So off we went to have a look.

To start, Wuhan is a city divided by the Yangtze River, and it's pretty much in the dead center of the populated parts of China. It was where the Wuchang Uprising happened, which started the downfall of the Qing Dynasty, and establishment of the Republic of China (the one now controlling Taiwan - not the mainland People's Republic of China). Other than that, it has a long history as sort of the "hub" of China, Silk Road, railroads, yadda yadda.

But what is there to do there? Well, we didn't much know ourselves, so this would be a trip of discovery. It's about a 4 hour train ride from Shanghai, and we arrived around dinner time. Our hostel was in the heart of a massive outdoor market/pedestrian area, truly the largest I've seen outside maybe Taiwan's Keelung's Temple Market. Blocks and blocks of food, shops, and more food, I don't think you need to go anywhere else to get any Chinese cuisine you want. Western though is another story, and throughout this trip I was surprised at how few western brands there are in Wuhan. And I don't mean like, White Castle, I mean like anything. There aren't even many convenience stores. It was a bit of shock coming from Guangzhou and Shanghai, where you can't walk for more than 30 seconds before passing another place to get a drink. It's more of a reminder of what I remember China to be when I first moved here, that if you don't know how to find what you want, you're going to be pretty miserable. Like, coffee. Good luck with that. But we did eat a lot, from Wuhan's famous Re Gan Mian (Hot and Dry noodles - with peanut sauce and pickled vegetables) to the not so famous Cheese and Sausage Stick (which was amazing, btw). Overall I found Wuhan's food to be really plain. Not that it isn't made well, just that their dishes tend to stick to very few ingredients, with one of them a starch of some sort. Like, brown sugar cakes - literally just a rice cake with brown sugar on it. Or Chinese donuts (you tiao). It's just fried dough. They do what they do well, but I'd prefer something with more variety.

But anyway, for the first stop we went to the Hubei Provincial Museum, which according to the internet is one of the better museums in China. Now, this is now the 3rd "one of the best" provincial museum I've been to (Guangdong and Hunan before this). I gotta say... provincial museums, I'm not feeling you. The Hunan one in Changsha was probably my favorite of the three, but nothing there blew me away. And the Guangdong one is sort of special because Ella reciprocally-proposed to me there. Hubei's... meh. They have a nice sword. I liked the sword. The coffee shop on the roof was nice. Other than that, skip it. Internet, you have lied to me.

BUT, next to the Hubei Provincial Museum is the Hubei Art Museum. The internet had glowing reviews for it, including "Not worth the 10 yuan", "Maybe stop by if you're passing, but otherwise skip it." "So-so museum". Internet. You sit on a throne of lies. The Art Museum is waaaay better than the provincial museum, and I hate art. This place had cool art. This is like, top 5 art museums I've been to, and per Ella's interest in them, I've been to a lot. I actually took pictures of art. Do you know how rare that is? Also, it wasn't 10 yuan ($1.40) to get in, it was free. So, definitely go to the Hubei Art Museum, and skip the Provincial Museum. Unless you're super into old swords, I guess. It was a nice sword. But not worth the trouble to see only that.

So, next we went to a place that could only exist in China. This mall called "City of the World" decided that they have way too much money lying around, and that it's high time they live up to their namesake. Maybe you are thinking "Oh, it's sort of like Epcot, with little touches of different regions, and samples of the world's cuisine." And you would be wrong. By "world", they mean Europe. And only a few parts of Europe, possibly because they got that far before finding out how ridiculous this is. But they managed to finish a Little Italy, Little Spain, Little France, and Little Germany. It sounded just bizarre and worthy enough to take a look. What would follow is one of the weirdest things I've seen in China. (until we go to Fake Paris near Shanghai - look for that in the future) It was the uncanny valley of western culture. It was like, 99% there, but that 1% missing just made it seem like something was... off. Maybe it was The Cathedral of the Burger King, I dunno. Then again, maybe it was the T-rex on top of the German Beer Hall. While I applaud their grand vision, the thing that sullied it was there was not a single damn foreign food restaurant in the entire place. We looked. In person, and on the internet. The closest was a super fancy French restaurant about half a kilometer away, in a mall. That German Beer House? Full of noodles, rice, stinky tofu, and milk tea. Why? I don't know. Such a missed opportunity, but then again, the fact that so much effort was put in to miss the opportunity makes it unique and special. I will miss you, weird Europe. But you probably want to see more pics, so here they are.

The Cathedral of Saint Burger

Keeping with the weirdness, another site was a temple. I know, I know. "You've seen one temple, you've seen 99% of them.", says I, many times. Well, I suppose this was the 1%. It's a Buddhist Temple that was made to look like a Christian church. Why? I don't know. I've given up on Wuhan making sense, they have this weird thing with making things look European somehow. Even the buildings in the city have a sort of European vibe to them, which they actually pull off in a way. But this temple... whew, where to begin? It was made in what looks like an old parking lot of a working class neighborhood, but there were still a fair number of people there. Mostly posing for photos. Still, it had a kind of "half done" sort of look. It is worth it for the photos, but not much else.


If you look on any travel guide of Wuhan, the #1 attraction in the city is Huang He Lou, or Yellow Crane Tower. No doubt your search will show countless images of a beautiful, ancient looking Chinese Pagoda, maybe lit up at night, looking all majestic and cool. What they don't show you is that to get that photo, they had to shoo about a million people out of a place the size of a Starbucks. In truth the $10 ticket gets you more than the tower, it gets you access to a park. oooOOOooo, a park! With tourist things to buy! And overpriced food! And well, we didn't go. I'm not entirely surprised, it being national holiday, but I've been to other Chinese pagodas before. Leifeng Tower in Hangzhou, for example. It's taller, prettier, and has a great view of West Lake. Huang He Lou has a view of the back of someone's head, most likely. But otherwise a Chinese city. Anyway, we saw it from a distance, which seems good enough. Cool architecture.

Other than that, a lot of our time in Wuhan was just checking out the city. As mentioned earlier, they have a lot of European inspired architecture. I don't know if that's a leftover from past colonial missions, or they just want to be cool, but it looks a little different from other Chinese cities. Around the cobblestone street area, there's a lot of little restaurants, and even a couple of cafes. Now several days without coffee, we stopped by one to get a very overpriced but very much needed coffee. And this is where our stupid story gets interesting. This cafe had a lot of cats. Like, six? Seven? As we were enjoying the break, one cat nearby was being very playful. So I wagged my finger around, and he decided that it was a thing to be destroyed, as cats do. I didn't notice until later, but he had actually gotten me to bleed a bit. But I just washed it out and went on with my day. Then Ella mentioned the "R" word. This had not crossed my mind, but I thought more about it, and it seemed quite ridiculous. First, I had a rabies shot 5ish years ago (stupid monkey, I will never forgive you). They supposedly last 5-10 years. But more importantly, the owner knew these cats, it wasn't really a bad cut, I washed it out, cats rarely have rabies, and it's usually from a deep bite. But it's one of those things that when you get in your head, it gets really, really hard to push the "What if... death?" out. I was reminded of the time when we had just left the house for our trip to Indonesia, and Ella said "I wonder if I closed the refrigerator door." THANKS, ELLA. But really, I'm glad she said something, just to know we're looking out for each other. Anyway, I've just been dying to use my new health insurance, so off we went to a clinic to get a rabies and tetanus shot. The poor nurse working there at night during national holiday, who was probably straight out of med school and drew the short straw, said Wuhan actually has a bit of a rabies problem now, so I guess it's for the best. Plus now I'll be all up to date, and I shouldn't need many shots this time.

BUT, here's where the story gets really dumb. First, this nurse wanted to give me one of the shots in my ass. Huh. Well, that's new. Fortunately, the clinic we were at was pretty quiet, because this trip has been full of us passing people in the street and me getting stared at, with people whispering "psst pssst foreigner psst psst" under their breath. So I am glad my butt did not become the center of attention for the 5th People's Village Clinic of Wuhan. Second, and far more destructive, is that I am under strict orders to not have zero alcohol and only light caffeine for one month. I find this instruction dubious at best. I mean, I can understand not drinking a bottle of vodka while getting the shot. But caffeine? A beer once a week? When I go to another, proper hospital for a follow up in Shanghai, I have promised Ella and myself that I will follow whatever the doctor says. Ella is so wonderful, she said she'd join me in this. Let's see how long that lasts, for our joint sanity.

I feel official "settled" now.

I'm going to bore you a bit and talk to future me about our new life in Shanghai (with photos!). To sum it up, living next to "things" is a game changer. I think one of the things I didn't like as much in Guangzhou is that the only place in walking distance was a supermarket and a few local restaurants - and even that was about 15 minutes. What a change to here, with so much being a few minutes walk. Farmers markets, western and local restaurants, banks, Carrefour (like Walmart), movie theater, malls (they just opened another yesterday, so now there are four right next to each other), and two metro stations. One of the lines has a lot of the popular sights and nightlife of the city, and the "fun stuff" starts just 3 stops up. So this is definitely the closest I've lived to the heart of a large city, and the closest I've lived to a metro station. I think it's not a secret how much I like metros, so the only way things could be improved is if I could move my work and home on top of one. (or in one?) But for now, I thought I'd give you a tour of our neighborhood. There's so much around that I feel we still have a lot to discover, but at least you'll get an idea of what "regular life" in Shanghai looks like.

Outside our door

Our street

One of the malls

Footbridge from the mall to metro

Not on the commute, to Ella's disappointment.

Speaking of work, I have my commute worked out. I've walked once or twice, but it's about 25 minutes. Then I took the bus, which took about 15. I found out it's much faster to take a bike. China is pretty big on these dockless bikes, where you scan a QR code on the back and it unlocks. They cost 1.5 yuan per rental (20 cents or so?), though you can buy packages to lower the cost. At first I was a bit nervous about riding a bike, as I hadn't done it consistently since Hangzhou. But in Shanghai it feels a lot safer. They have dedicated bike lines, and I'm by no means the only one using them. I'm starting to recognize people who leave around the same time as me, so I like to think we're the most uncool bike gang in the world. I never thought I'd be one of "those" people who bike to work, but here I am.

Speaking of work, work is... not what I expected. I thought working at an IB school, everything would be run professionally, I'd be the newbie teacher, and at the start I'd work my butt off to catch up to everyone else. Nothing could be further from the truth. Essentially, it's not that much different from any other school I've worked at, minus a bit more collaboration between the foreign and local staff. While I'm not the only new IB teacher, during an icebreaking game I was surprised to find I'm the 2nd most experienced in our department. But it's good in a way, not unlike my situation in Thailand - people just sort of assume you're doing the work and leave you alone. I like it, but I can understand how some (such as Ella, for example), would find the lack of instruction (and confusion on where to get things) unnerving. One nice thing is that I only have two classes, whom I each see 6 times a week. This is the first time I've gotten a chance to really know my students well, and although there's more lesson plans to juggle, it's overall less and more satisfying work. I can't say I'll be there for 10 years, but right now I like it. Let's see how that changes over the next few months.

This is the part where I talk about all the amazing sights we've seen in Shanghai. I'm sorry to say there's not much to talk about. In truth, we've been super busy socially. We've been hanging out with two couples a lot, who are all just stand up folks. The six of us are new to Shanghai as well, so we're all trying to figure out where the cool stuff is. For example, we recently went to a stand-up comedy event, which surprised me at how funny it was. We did that once before in Bangkok, but I felt this time was even better. Other than that... lot of malls, eating, and drinking. We even had a pal from Guangzhou stop by, which was a very welcome surprise. However, I do want to mention something. I noticed one of our new couple friends, who-shall-remain-nameless-to-potentially-avoid-embarassment, takes photos of their food. Now, I admit I'm not on the Instagrams. I don't know if that's the culture there. But should I be taking photos of my food? I suppose it is different than what you get in the US. I just can't think that anyone would care. If you would care, give me a shout, I'd be happy to oblige.

We did explore a little bit though. One stop was Longhua Temple, which I just thought we'd see because it was a metro station wee passed. It's a nice stop if you're in the area, not worth a trip. It does have a lot of stray cats though, so it was a big hit for Ella. The more interesting temple option is the Jade Temple. While I didn't really see any jade, it is a remarkably well preserved (or more accurately, renovated) temple that wouldn't be out of place in a kung fu movie. I feel this is worth a trip if you're a visitor to Shanghai, and maybe if you're a local. Although as I've said many times before, "If you've seen one temple, you've seen 99% of them." Still, it's been a while, so it was a nice distraction. Next to the temple was a weird sort of arts district, which had an exhibit on technology. I don't really know what a live display of German flight logs has to say about art, but... well, it's there I guess? They did have these cool AR displays though, so that's more my speed.

Another place we went to was the Shanghai Movie Museum, which is pretty cool despite me not knowing any of the movies or actors. Normally it's 60 yuan ($9), which is probably not worth it. But they had a discount week of 30 yuan ($4), which is worth it. It's not exactly huge - you can blow through it in about 45 minutes. But they did have some interesting stuff. For starters, when you walk in there's a light up red carpet complete with the sounds of an adoring crowd, which basically made the whole thing worth it. But in addition to that, there was a lot of stuff that you can appreciate even if you don't know Chinese cinema. Things like video cameras from the early days of movies, props, projectors, and film development. They also had some interactive stuff for the kids (and me), demonstrating stop motion and other physical animation stuff. Worth it if you're strapped for stuff to do, probably not if you're just here briefly. But because I live to embarrass Ella, I took a video of her there which I am quite proud of.

Anyway, next week is National Holiday, which means a week off of work. Ella and I have tickets to a place neither of us have been before, so you'll have to wait for the next update to see where that is.

Well, we've certainly made our way around these past few weeks.

We took a train from Guangzhou to Shanghai, because it wasn't that much slower than a plane and a lot cheaper. It was pretty uneventful overall, and we went from the train station to the hotel we had booked. Except when we arrived, just like the droids in Mos Eisley Cantina, the front desk person pointed at me and said "We don't serve your kind here."

Actually they were very nice, but they didn't take foreigners. Apparently Shanghai has some rules about that, that the rest of China doesn't. Annoying, but oh well. Instead we went to another hotel recommended by the school, which was... meh. But it would be our home for the foreseeable future, because we had three jobs to do:

1) Find an apartment
2) Sort out my visa
3) Get Ella's Shanghai residency

The last two were just paperwork, so unless you are on the edge of your seat wondering about the intricacies of Form 10B-7, I'll skip that. We booked a real estate agent, who was just awesome. We told them where we wanted to live, our price range, and suddenly we were off on motorcycles zipping through the neighborhood. We had a place picked out in two days, oddly the first one we looked at. We were moved in just two days after, and here it is - or at least, the bedroom plus a little bit of the living room and kitchen.

Actually funny story - our agency, Lianjia was really great. But we did look through others. One day as we were getting dropped off for lunch, a dude approached us (I guess seeing we were with Lianjia agents) and asked if we wanted to look places he had. Thus, he was branded as "creepy dude", because that's either quite a coincidence he was there, or he's being pretty stalkerish. Not having anything to do, we did look at his stuff - meh.

I also used another app who's name escapes me, that had beautiful apartments for quite cheap. I asked if they were available, they said yes. I asked for the address, and they were just not matching up - some addresses we had even seen before, and they were not those apartments. When I pointed this out, some ghosted, some tried to bait and switch, while one just admitted the listings were fake to get clients. Thanks for the honesty guy, but also no thanks.

Anyway, I love our new place. It's in between two different metro lines, lots of shops and restaurants outside, and there's three malls just down the street - and they're building a fourth. We spent the week just settling in, getting supplies, and cleaning. We actually have a legit mailbox now, the first time I've had one since leaving America. If you want to send letters/postcards, throw me a message and we can work out an exchange.

After that... off to America! I had about three weeks before work began, and a new nephew we had never met. He would have to wait though, because our flight was to New York. Ella and I had about two days there, or as I've (somewhat) jokingly said, "two days where we lived in The Met". I like The Met. It has some cool stuff. Ella *really* likes the Met. She took a billion photos of a bunch of art, so go look at her Facebook. We also went to The Met Cloisters, which is probably the best kept secret of NYC. Not a secret I guess, since The Met promotes it, but many don't bother to go to the northern tip of Manhattan. Their loss, because it's totally worth it. It's an old monastery from who knows when brought over from Europe piece by piece. You know when Indiana Jones said, "This belongs in a museum!"? This is where it goes. Great place, and better than the actual Met (sorry Ella).

After our little art tour, it was off to Cincinnati. Oddly enough I don't have much to say about Cincinnati. We didn't do much except meet people and eat. Managed to get to the museum (nice, smaller than I remember). An old historical house in Burlington. But mostly a lot of meeting, eating, and drinking. Not that I'm complaining. I managed to catch up with many of my old friends. Like in Thailand, it's "same same but different." They're still the good folks that I know and miss. I enjoy hanging out with them. But life is pretty different now. So many of them are starting families, one even having a baby while we were there. And I'm really happy for them, because they're happy. But I'd be lying if I said that I didn't miss the old times we did have, where we would hang out at bars and people's homes until 2am with no responsibilities until Monday morning. While I don't think I could stay up until 2am anymore without coffee distributed via IV, I'd still like to give it an attempt. Sadly I don't think that could happen anymore, but who knows - maybe one day.

The family is mostly in the "same same" camp, minus our two new nephews. While not surprising, it is interesting to see the older one develop much more of a personality in the past two years. Apparently his personality is "I will never stop talking", in which case he takes after his mother. He is fun, but oh my god is he exhausting to be around sometimes. I don't know how they do it. I'm lucky as a teacher, because after 40 minutes, I'll leave and won't see this kid for another week / a few days. Parenting is just... relentless. I guess I'd learn to love and appreciate it if I was in that position, but currently I'm glad I'm not. The younger nephew reinforces that idea, because he's much more chill. He doesn't really fuss much, and is pretty quiet. Considering his loudmouth brother, they may have a relationship pretty close to mine and my sister's, where I had to wait for her to fall asleep before meekly asking "Is it my turn to talk now?" We'll see how he turns out.

Anyway, full of Mexican food, we weren't heading back to China just yet. We also had three days in New York with Mom and Dad on our way out, you know, to see what exists outside of The Met. Many things were a repeat of my visit a few years ago - the statue, Natural History Museum, Wall Street, Chelsea Market, Chinatown, etc.. As to be expected as one of the "capitals of the world", New York has a bunch of great stuff to see. And I'm sure many of you have been there before, so you don't need me harping on about stuff. But I do want to mention two areas you likely haven't been before, but Ella found on this trip using Chinese website magic. First is The Museum on Eldridge Street, which doesn't really have an accurate name. It's an old Jewish Synagogue that was left to ruin, but now they give tours about it. It was surprisingly cool, and really beautiful, so I'd recommend checking it out. The other standout was Teddy Roosevelt's birthplace. It's just an old house run by the National Park Service, but the tour is really nice. The house is also pretty interesting, and costs a cool $0. Can't beat that.

Now sitting on the flight back to Shanghai, overall it was a good trip. We didn't stay long enough for it to feel stagnant, yet still had almost every day filled with things to do. Plus I got to show Ella NYC, the only city in America I could really ever imagine settling in. Maybe one day we will.

And so, another chapter of my life comes to a close.

As Ella and I wrap up for our move to Shanghai, a lack of responsibilities (yay!) has given me a lot of time for reflection. These past 2 years have been quite momentous, and there's a lot to unwrap. Just like I did with Taipei, Bangkok, and Bangkok again (I missed Hangzhou?), I thought I should reflect on my time here. Previously I tended to focus on the people and culture, but that's kind of hard to do this time. At this point, Chinese culture is in some ways more familiar than America's, at least on a day-to-day basis. It's hard for me to pick out things that are unusual. Like, mothers holding their baby over a sewer drain to pee? Getting into a no-holds-barred fist fight over who gets to grab the check? That's everyday stuff. Not to mention, we're just moving to another part of China, making it a bit moot. Instead, this time I'd like to break things down into 3 parts: Guangzhou, my professional development, and my personal development.

To start, Guangzhou's location is awesome. Macau, Zhuhai, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong are all spitting distance away, and Macau and Hong Kong might as well be different countries. They each do their own thing, and I really enjoy the contrast. They're both doable on a weekend (and a day trip if you're really ambitious), so I really appreciate them. Especially Macau. I've become a big fan, especially because it's often overlooked. It reminds me of Laos. There's not a lot to do there, but what is there is just amazing. And, this is key - all these places each have their own international airports. This makes it pretty easy to be a hub for... anywhere.

Guangzhou itself I describe as "fine". Not great, but comfortable enough. Something that always sort of bothered me about Guangzhou, is that there is no big reason to come here. What I mean is, Bangkok has the Grand Palace. Paris has the Eiffel Tower. Guangzhou has nothing distinctive. You have Canton Tower, an overpriced view of clouds. Or some would say Changlong, which is basically King's Island with a zoo. There's no "must see" here. If you ask Chinese folks, they'll say Cantonese food. Which, can definitely be good. Great in fact. But I'm not as much of a foodie to really appreciate it. The actual cultural attractions in Guangzhou, that would be befitting of its role as China's international gateway for hundreds of years, is pretty small. Huangpu Port is such a tiny footnote now, it's not really worth seeing unless you live in the area. But the significance of it is so large, I think they could easily develop it to be a big thing worth seeing.

Instead, it's a large city not unlike many others. There are good restaurants and bad restaurants. Good malls and bad malls. Perfectly comfortable, but nothing that makes you stand back and go "Wow, this place is awesome!" For me, Taipei had that in the parks and night markets. Bangkok had that in the absurdly happy, party atmosphere. Guangzhou is just there. It is. It's a good, comfortable "is", but ultimately a forgettable one.

Switching gears to me professionally, I fell a little short of my expectations, but it's otherwise been quite good. I've had the pleasure of working at some great schools in the past, as well as a mediocre one (up to you to guess which). But one thing about all of these, is that the students were controllable. They were either old enough to not go insane, or had very involved parents that were waiting out in the lobby for them to finish class - and they knew they'd be in big trouble if they acted up. At this school, the kids only see their folks on the weekend. Combined with the larger classes, and diversity that comes with different upbringings, economic level, parental involvement, etc., I've run into my fair share of troubled kids. The first year, it bothered me a bit - when you have this asshole kid who is trying his or her (but almost always, his) best to derail your class. It's like a mosquito that you swat, but then when you look at your hand you find you've missed. And it's flying in your face minutes later. On a few occasions, my patience wore thin, and I harshly scolded them. I've noticed over time, that's changed. I don't take things (as) personally anymore. For better or worse, I'm starting to see it as just a job. I've set rules, both with the students and with myself, and take it as a "Way to go, dummy. You've gone and done this. Now I have to enforce the rule." It's not something I would think about after class anymore, which is probably a good thing for my sanity. And that is probably the best takeaway I could ever have from my time here.

Otherwise, I've accomplished a lot. I have gotten my Google Educator Certificate, a Cambridge IELTS Certification, my American Teaching License, and wrote a book. Seeing that spelled out, it looks pretty amazing - especially the Teaching License, because I don't think I'd have my new gig without it. To be honest, I thought DELTA would be partially on that list by now. Ella and I both failed the first exam, which I would be disappointed but not upset about if I felt it was my fault. But I feel it is assessed in a very unfair way. I won't go into specifics, but wow, what a frustrating ordeal that cert is. I'm curious myself what the status on that will be in a year - Did we press on, or jump ship to the DipTESOL? It's a moot point, because neither of those will be relevant until (if) we do teacher training, and that's a few years away. But we'll see.

Personally has definitely been the largest development, on account that I went and got married. Now that it's been a year, it somehow feels like it was so long ago and yet still new. I do know it feels darn weird to say "I'm married", or words like "Husband" and "Wife". I think if you told 'pre-Ella' me that I would be married by now, I wouldn't be shocked, but I would be a little surprised. I've always been a sort of independent, reserved person. It turns out that you just need to find someone also like that, then you can be independent together. Honestly my life has changed very little, personally, since I've met Ella. I still do the same things and have the same hobbies. Admittedly, I do probably eat more meat than I would otherwise, on account of Ella being part carnivore. But I don't find that I've really "changed" myself, which bodes well for my (our) future sanity. Knock on wood. Professionally she's changed me quite a lot. I feel more pressure in some ways to do well, because before if I screw up, it's just me that it affects. But now if I screw up, it affects both of us. And I don't like to inconvenience people. So that's probably a good bit of positive pressure to succeed. I think I would have accomplished very little if it wasn't for her ambition.

The friendship personal front is a little more complicated. We've made friends here, for sure. But I don't feel as many or as deep as I would have preferred. I've been thinking about why lately, and there are three factors that I think explain things. The first is time, which I'm okay with - I was in Bangkok nearly 4 years, Ella 5. We've been here for 2. The second is our professional development took a lot of the time we did have. The first year was a fair amount of work to make all our lessons and get settled, the second was dominated by the DELTA. The third is that our school is a bit isolated. The little village across the street is fine, but nothing special - it's a place to get groceries and food. But to go somewhere with a more social atmosphere is a bit of a trek, so it's something we didn't do as often.

Now, so much for making excuses - how can we do better for next time? Something I've started to keep in mind is a silly trick from an old book, Dale Carnegie's How to Make Friends and Influence People. While it is cringy at times, and very outdated, something that did stick with me is to say peoples' names. I've tried to do that with my students (although with nearly 500 of them, it's mostly a lost cause), and it does seem to help. I'm going to (try) and resolve to do that more. Another, which I learned from a friend of ours here, is to volunteer some personal details. Not like your bathroom habits or whatever, but information you normally only get from knowing someone a while. I don't know... things like dating history, social views, your secret hobby you don't usually tell people about. In the case of this person, it's helped me feel much closer to them very quickly, which is a good takeaway. The others as well, bunch of nice folks. Some of them unfortunately already left back to America, and probably will be there for the foreseeable future. The others... well, I wouldn't be surprised if we see them in Shanghai one day.

You may have (not) noticed, I've been throwing in my favorite pictures of Guangzhou throughout this blog. I'll end with a few more.

Seeya, Guangzhou.