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.