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.