Too cute!

Last we left... me, I wrote about our trip from southern to central China, ending in Xian. Hard to believe that was 4 months ago. I wish I could say that I've done a lot since then, but honestly I haven't been. As always, Ella is studying for something so we've mostly stayed put. There are a few places in Shanghai I want to check out - probably during Christmas. That's the one day of the year where I am sometimes off work while kids are still in school, so I'm going to use that to my advantage. Disney maybe? Or the brand spanking new Shanghai Planetarium, which is still impossible to get tickets for. It is the largest in the world, and I'm certainly a sucker for that.

Anyway, I guess I should talk about my new job. I had previously written that my old job wasn't terrible, and I was willing to stay on. But a new gig came along that offered a higher salary. I told HR "Hey look, I have another offer, if you can come even close to it, I'll stay." Instead they offered a token increase,  so, their loss. Speaking to my old colleagues there, it does seem to have gotten slightly better, as honestly the previous year I was a bit overworked - although the previous previous year was a cakewalk, so I didn't put up a fuss. I say this with a healthy amount of privilege, as I feel incredibly fortunate to be teaching in Asia. I've said before how I consider myself to be semi-retired with the standard teacher workload, and I stand by that. Maybe for some it's too much, but when I consider the hours I put in when I was working in IT... yeah it's no problem.

Balloon cars for science class

So, the job itself. I teach a lot more than just English now, also doing science, humanities, writing (which I guess is still English), and an elective course. Overall it's a little less work than I had last year, but something I really like about this place - it's a standardized US curriculum. I know exactly what I'm going to teach from now until the end of the year, which I can assure you, is not the norm for ESL teachers - Chinese run schools seem to be "seat of your pants" operations, with little info more than a week or two out. And of course, things can change with no warning, so there's not much point in planning far ahead. Here, you can always work on the next week, or next next. I've been burning myself pretty hard early this semester while I have motivation, and now I am about a month and a half ahead of schedule. That's pretty awesome, and I hope to have the entire semester finished in about a week or two. That means easy coasting until the midterms, which sounds really nice. In general, that's always been my attitude with work - hurry up and finish so you can go do the things you like. This is just the first chance I've ever had to do that long term.

But still, this is a departure from my past experience of teaching English, because I'm a regular Grade 5 teacher in an American system. While I can scarcely remember my Grade 5 experience with Mrs. Hall, I do remember her being one of my favorite teachers from my primary school days, so I hope I'm doing as well of a job as she did. It's a different sort of responsibility than I'm used to. In the past, I would show up for 40ish minutes, upload English into kids' brains, and then move on to repeat the same process with another group several times. I was sort of like the class uncle, where I come in and play some games, but I leave the big responsibility to mom or dad. Now, I am dad. I'm the manager of 22 kids, and it requires me to more frequently be the adult in the room than I'm used to. I see them and only them for most of the day, so we've gotten to be close very quickly. Honestly, I feel pretty lucky because all but one are great people. That one... well, they have some anger issues they need to work on. I guess they think that throwing a tantrum will get results, and maybe it does at home. But after having many years experience seeing 100+ different kids each week, believe me, I've seen it all. For him, I can't help but laugh and think, "Is that all you've got?"

Maybe that's why experience demands a premium. It's not that you're better at your job, it's just that you're jaded enough to roll with things.

Actually, that reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend the other day - it was his birthday, and I asked him what he hoped to accomplish in the next year. After, he turned it back to me, which I wasn't prepared for. Grasping at straws, I said I hope to be more chill. He laughed and said that I'm already very chill, so there's not much to improve on. I appreciate the sentiment, but I explained that, like everyone, I have things that upset me. Then these things live rent free in my brain for a while, where I'm usually mad with myself for letting them happen, and just in general it occupies all my thoughts for the next however much time. When I was younger, it was probably measured in hours, and on rare occasions days. But eventually, after mulling it over, I always have a breakthrough moment where I take a mental step back and think "Alright, this ruminating isn't getting me anywhere - how do I solve this?" I've noticed as I get older, the time to get to this breakthrough moment has gotten shorter and shorter, and now it's rare anything upsets me for more than a couple minutes. But I'd still like to get that down to seconds. Maybe that's just something that comes with experience - sort of like a kid who doesn't get an ice cream thinks their world is ending. And we think "Ha, you've seen nothing yet." I guess over time, life just tempers you by throwing bad stuff your way, and you either A) learn how to deal with it, so the next time isn't a problem, or B) experience worse things that make others seem not a big deal in comparison. Hopefully my next year leans more towards the "A" side of things. But both seem not great, so I probably should have come up with a better answer.

Maybe finish a Taco Bell 3-person set by myself. That would be more fun.

Now, it may seem like this would be the end of the blog, and it was for about a month. But it was still too boring to publish, I felt. It needed something exciting like a trip somewhere. But instead something else happened.

This bonkers story begins when we came home one day after work. Walking upstairs, we heard "Meow! Meow!" We thought it was just one of the stray cats outside, except when we get home, there is a black cat parked right in front of our door. None of the strays we know are black. Why our door? Why the big fuss? I have no idea. But we have video evidence of our first interaction thanks to Ella.

 

So my thought is that someone left the front door open downstairs (happens pretty frequently). This stray got in, came upstairs, got hopelessly lost, and is now freaking out. So our plan was to shoo this cat out of the way, get her some food, and then send her back outside. Not wanting to get scratched, we gently nudged her with the door, and she just casually moved out of the way. "Oh right on, this cat is chill!" But then she decided "Nope, I want to be in there." and made a beeline into our apartment. This was followed by a lot of cursing, as she quickly ran to the laundry room where we have some junk from the previous owner.

This has just turned into a thing.

So this terrified cat is in the corner behind an old disassembled bed. We're trying to coax it back out. So I'm standing on a chair, trying to annoy it enough that it will leave. I'm trying to push it with a broom, which I guess is not the best choice. Because as I'm trying to push, the bristles are sliding over her. She seemed to enjoy that a lot, closing her eyes and pushing her head into the broom. Okay, Plan B - we tried leading a trail of kitty treats towards the door. Which she was all too happy to eat the closest of, before running back to her corner. Arrgh! Plan C. I learned that while she was down with kitty broom massages, her butt was not. So I kept poking her around the tail with the other end of the broom. We also removed hiding places, blocked off routes, and eventually, EVENTUALLY, got the thing to go back out the door. We shut it, breathed a sigh of relief, and took a breather to think what to do next. Because of course, she was outside meowing her little head off. For one, we were worried about her, and also, there's no way we or the neighbors would get any sleep if we didn't solve this.

Alright. Next stage. We can do this. Carefully, ever so carefully, we open the door, and with brooms, gently begin to nudge this cat downstairs and back outside. We're making progress, pushing her downstairs one floor at a time. She seems to not love it, but was remarkably polite about the whole thing, all things considered. Well, she wasn't hissing or putting up a fuss at least. As we round the corner to the other set of stairs, we pass by the neighbor's. Who apparently had their door open a crack.

Oh no.

So the cat also sees this, and deciding "unknown new place" is preferable to "two humans with scary sticks", dashes inside. I am gobsmacked. This did not just happen. All the lights in the apartment are off, and nobody seems to be at home. Well. Congratulations to our downstairs neighbor. They now own a cat.

Realizing we're totally out of our league, we left to tell the apartment security guard about the ridiculous series of events that just occurred. While he is quite old, he appears completely unfazed. Apparently, this was not his first (cat) rodeo. He comes back with us to check, and yeah, nobody is at home (but they left the kitchen light on? Weird). During this time we noticed our neighbor had a cat scratching post in their living room, so, good news! They apparently like cats, now they have another one!

But now, this is where I (think) the story took shape. We live right above these neighbors. They probably left for the day, and forgot to close their door. Their cat gets out, then wanders around. Realizes it's lost. She thinks our door, one floor up, is home. Locked out, she starts freaking out. So when we open the door, she dashes into what she thinks is home. She then quickly realizes "Oh my god, everything is different! AHHH!" and hides in a corner. When we pushed her downstairs, to the correct apartment, her kitty brain snaps back to reality and thinks "Oops, that's right. I actually live here. Bye humans!" And then I thought, to top this all off, the owner would come home later that night, completely unaware that their cat has put us in this ridiculous situation. (Alternatively, they come home and are completely confused as to why they have an extra cat.) Anyway, there's more videos on Youtube of the saga if you want to take a look.

Regardless, the cat will probably just take a nap. After that fiasco, I need one too.

Xian is not my favorite place. It doesn't deserve all the blame, but ever since we came here it has been one travel disaster after another. Some of that has to do with the flooding in Zhengzhou and the typhoon in Shanghai. And not to diminish the tragedy of those, especially Zhengzhou, but they have added to a mess of a holiday.

It began before we left, that our train was cancelled despite us not going to the flooded area. But the train would after, so bye bye train, hello frantic last minute rebooking. And then after arriving in Xian, our hotel said despite saying so online, they don't allow foreigners. I know that sounds weird, but some provinces make hotels require foreigner certificates to accept them. Most places have them, maybe 75% or so. Except in Shaanxi Province apparently, because we spent about an hour calling around before finding a not-so-great place.

I'm complaining too much, so here's a cute cat.

Now calling a car to get to our new place, our driver was kind of nuts. I think he was having lunch when we got on the app, because his GPS didn't change for about 10 minutes, which he said was traffic. Then he drove crazy aggressively, which we would learn is par for the course for everyone in Xian. I'd be concerned for my safety if the traffic didn't keep the top speed to about 30 kph. That put us off from Didis, but the metro is only marginally better. You have to scan a QR code every time you go in for a health check, and they're intense about checking you actually did it. Shanghai does this too, but uses phone towers to keep track of things, so it's pretty seamless. Xian's just creates bottlenecks of people at every check point you have to fight past. Ugh, just move to the side until you're ready to walk through.

The mess doesn't stop there, but let's put a pin in it to talk about the city. We were pretty excited to see the Shaanxi  History Museum, as it is apparently one of the best. I have to assume that is so because they have no tickets available for weeks. <sigh> We had lots of other stops scheduled around the city though, so we spent the whole day out and about. And honestly, I'm not that impressed. We tried the Xian Museum (meh), the Xian Art Museum (actually quite good, but very small), the Xian Provincial Art Museum (just bad... sorry artists) and the Xingshang Temple (actually pretty good for a temple, but it's a temple). After a day of being fairly disappointed, we called it early to rest up for the Terracotta Soldiers the next day.

So, here we go, the big sight to see in Xian, and perhaps all of China. The Terracotta Soldiers are about 2 hours away from downtown, which we took the metro to get 80% of the way. When you get out at the closest station, the touts are super aggressive to get you to hop on their bus. We had read stories online of those buses going to a fake Terracotta Soldier museum pretty close to the real one. Which is objectively terrible to scam people on their holiday, but also sort of hilarious that such a thing can exist. If not for how scummy it is, I'd almost like to see it. But to avoid any doubt we got our own car for the remaining 5km. The place was crowded, but honestly not bad. Everything moved pretty smoothly, and was no sweat. The compound has 3 pits, the first one being the super big, stadium sized place you see in all the photos. Another is about a quarter the size, and the final about the size of a house. We got a guide, which did help a little bit to appreciate some stuff I never knew. The first is that the site is very much a WIP. The statues they have are pieced together from fragments, which I imagine is quite a laborious process. Also, all the statues are (were) painted. Except that when they dig them up, the paint cracks and falls off a few moments later. To top it off, old writings say the crazy Emperor who organized this thing decided his tomb should have rivers of mercury, because of course it should. Turns out they might be right, because and they've used radar to find underground caverns with higher levels of mercury. So all together, they've kind of decided to just stop digging up new things, until they can figure out a way to safely preserve what's there. Which I do appreciate, but I also think they should be more up front with that, I guess? But my thoughts on the whole thing are pretty similar to The Great Wall - it's an amazingly impressive place. But more so than any one object, it's the scale of things that is noteworthy. Up close, the statues are fine, I guess. This madlad made so many of them though, it's hard to not appreciate them.

Also, as a sidenote, when learning about this place for the trip, I found out that 15 years ago, a German art student studying in China dressed up as one of the soldiers, jumped down in the pit, and played the most hilarious game of hide and seek ever. Turns out he was not deported or arrested, and only got a stern talking to.

Just thought you'd like to know.

The last bit of stuff to see in Xian was the Muslim district, walking streets more akin to something out of India than China. Crazy, hectic, noisy, and packed full of food and trinkets, it was a cool place to get lost in the various alleys. We ate a lot, walked a lot, and even climbed bell and clock towers. We topped it off with a walk along Xian's City Wall, which surrounds the center of the city. It's actually pretty cool they kept that wall there, because it and the area around it serves as a park and recreation area. And this is no small thing either, it's a square around the perimeter of the city, about 4km on each side. They do marathons on it, and you can even bike around the whole thing. At night it lights up, which is pretty, but in the end, it's just a park. And that, "It's okay, but..." kind of summarizes my opinion of Xian. True it was soured from the start, but I found it a bit less interesting than many other places in China. I'm glad to have seen it for myself to tick it off the list, but... meh. I'd rather be somewhere else.

But Xian had other plans.

As we've learned, me complaining = cats.

With an early train in the morning, we were just getting to sleep when we learned our train was cancelled due to the typhoon. We quickly tried to find another, but learned that wouldn't be an option as all train and plane service in Shanghai was cancelled. We thought about taking a train partway, and then spending a half day in some other, more interesting place. But everything was all booked up. With the following day also cancelled, we were stuck. We got a train 2 days later, which means 2 more days killing time in a city neither of us were really thrilled about.

But finally, our luck was to turn around. We found a hostel nearby which is one of those amazing hostels where you meet lots of interesting people and have a great time. Also it had Settlers of Catan and two cats for Ella. To top it off, some friends of ours were going back to Shanghai the same day we were. But they got diverted for two days to... yup, Xian. So we had some company to sit around and wait with, and honestly the two days flew by. Hilariously, the curse of Xian wasn't done with them, as right around bedtime the night before leaving, their train about an hour before ours was cancelled. Who knows why, but they managed to get a flight. Now that our train is moving and I'm writing this, I finally feel at ease that I escaped Xian. I'm definitely ready to go home.