Happy New Year! It feels weird to know another decade has passed, but I think it's safe to say this decade has been by far the most momentous of my life, and it's hard to imagine one is going to surpass it. 10 years ago, I had a comfortably routine life back in Cincinnati, working in tech support. Pretty much every weekend was dinner and OTR, or a house party at Camp Nerd, The Jacobs' Place, or Ryan's Condo. I really like those times, and the people I met during then will continue to be among my best friends. But after doing it for years... I just felt tired of working for the weekend, to get only a few weeks at most off per year, doing something I didn't really enjoy. And so, after a fateful trip to Korea and learning that ESL was a thing, I started doing research. 10 years ago I hadn't yet started down the road that would lead me to Hangzhou, that anniversary is another 8 or 9 months away. Shortly after that, I started this blog in November 2011, and the rest is history.

Forgot about this - school field trip to a petting zoo. With foam for some reason.

But zooming into just 2019, it has overall been pretty momentous. To start, I finished my contract in Guangzhou, which I've already reflected on here.  This was followed by a trip to New York, Cincinnati, and back, which has just solidified that I think New York is probably the only city in the US I could really see myself living in. Most of my development has been professional, picking up about 5 teaching certifications in that time - and of course, Ella and I publishing our book. We moved to Shanghai to start my new job, while Ella has and continues to throw herself full time into professional development herself. My new job is overall pretty nice, and while the new style of teaching isn't "blowing my mind" like I had hoped, it is one of the better jobs I've had, and it will look really good on the resume whenever I move on. The last month has actually been quite stressful for us, but mostly Ella - with her DELTA exam in early December, and preparing for our Chinese New Year holiday next month. We're taking Ella's folks around Cambodia and Thailand, which has been quite a chore to get everything set for. While we'd be fine roughing it as we go, her parents probably less so. We're still not done with those plans actually, because we're deciding where just Ella and I are going to go after that. But in the end, "deciding which beach in which country we want to spend our month long holiday on" is very much a problem I am privileged to have, and just reinforces the fact I made the right decision to leave the US 9ish years ago. And speaking of numbers, I've got some more: 4 down, 2 to go.

What am I talking about? Disney of course! I can check Anaheim, Orlando, Tokyo, and now Shanghai off the list - what a great way to end the New Year! I only have Hong Kong and Paris left. Which, how did I miss Hong Kong? Oh well.

Disney Shanghai is good, but left me somewhat wanting more. Maybe it was because I was a kid when I went to Orlando's, or it is objectively much better. But I still felt this was "Diet Disney". It's a fairly small park first of all, without any real roller-coasters. Tron is it's big thing, but it's pretty tame honestly. Space Mountain is a much bigger deal. We rode on The Seven Dwarves' Minecart, which is basically Big Thunder Mountain. It felt a lot like King's Island's Adventure Express, a nice warmup sort of coaster that had some cool parts, but didn't give me a rush something like The Beast or The Vortex (RIP) does.

But anyway, enough about coasters. We and two friends set out in the morning to ride Line 11 to the end, which was honestly only about an hour and some change door-to-door. This is definitely the closest I have ever lived to a Disney park, and it's probably the cheapest in the world to go to as well - about $50 for the day, with a free meal included. Funny story about that meal. When Disney opened, people got pretty angry about how much Disney charged for food. And to be honest it is a bit deserved. I know they make a lot of their money in concessions, but paying $12 for a bowl of noodles when they're $2 outside the park is a little ridiculous. So people started to bring in food. Then Disney is like "Nuh uh", then grandmas and grandpas are like "Uh huh", then fights started happening. Lest ye be warned, never try to come between older Chinese and their money. Anyway, all this daily arguing was ruining their reputation as "The Happiest Place on Earth", there was a lawsuit, and now Disney lets you bring in food. Which we were happy to do, minus the free meal. And the free meal is a bit of a trap, of course. It's only at a small number of locations, and you can buy the most basic thing with the coupon. And if you or your kid is like "I want ice cream!", or "I want the other thing!", they get money from you in the end. I pondered that I bet Disney will raise ticket prices because of this, and the day after we went, I saw on the news come June 2020 prices are going up.

The park itself is quite nice, and is mostly exactly what you expect from a Disney park. The main street is beautiful, and there are a lot of little touches that make it really special. Because we went in the winter, I was a little sad there weren't any characters walking around (that I saw at least), which somewhat subtracted from the overall experience. But it still had all that Disney charm that made it seem special, along with being probably the cleanest place in China. One of our first rides was the Discovery Adventure... climb... thing. I've not seen this at another Disney park, and it was pretty neat. You wear a safety harness attached to an overhead track. And it's sort of like an Indiana Jones, wilderness obstacle course. You swing across pits, shimmy behind a waterfall, and balance on rope bridges. I'm happy to say there was only one time that I relied on the harness, because one of the ledges behind the waterfall was quite tough - my legs weren't long enough. So that would be the end of my adventuring career.

Other highlights were Peter Pan (fun), Pirates of the Caribbean (Ella's favorite - pirates talking in Mandarin sounds funny), and Buzz Lightyear's Star Command. The last one was especially awesome, despite being a kids ride. You ride through a robot invasion, and you have a laser to zap the targets on the aliens. I'm happy to say I had 899,000 points, which is only a bit shy of the top rank of 1 million. Now that I know some tricks, I'm pretty confident I can break that next time. You can see from my picture, I have never been more serious in my life.

There was one more notable thing about SHD, The Pirates of the Caribbean show. This was a really cool performance, beginning in slapstick sort of style, before transitioning into a large theater. There was more nonsense, including a Jack Sparrow who came in flying over the audience. Suddenly, two cartoony style cannons "fired" at the stage, and the whole curtain came down to reveal a life-size pirate ship set. It was really impressive, and my favorite part. Lots of stunts, pyrotechnics, you get the idea. We ended the day by seeing the light and firework show, and man, seeing TIE Fighters and X-Wings projected on the castle is just so surreal. If you told teenage me Disney owns Star Wars now, there's 5 new Star Wars films and half of them suck, he never would have believed you. Back on the metro, we got to see the real China experience - people walking up and down the train selling knockoff or "acquired" from the factory Disney merch. What costs 200 yuan ($28) in the park costs 20 here, or even 10 once you get a few stops away and they get more desperate.

So yeah, Disney was overall quite good. I think if you go there on a cold and rainy day, you can probably finish the whole park in one go. But for us, it was a little crowded, and I think we have enough left that a 2nd day would be worth it. I'm sure we'll get a chance, because it's literally like RIGHT THERE.