I'm baaaaaaack!!!

Holy cow....

It's been way too long since I've touched this thing.

So many things in my life have changed since my last post.  Instead of writing about life, I've been living it.  I really wish I could write about all of it right now...sometimes it's much more interesting to do that.  But I find myself so busy these days...much busier than being back at Maple Leaf, that's for sure.

You're wondering where I am.  I'm back in my native Vancouver.  That's right...I'm no longer an expat.  All those times are just memories now.  It was an amazing three years abroad. I have no regrets in leaving Canada for that amount of time.  I traveled to some great places and have met some great friends that I'll never ever forget.

But my real struggles start now.  Expatriation was surprisingly easy for me. It might seem like a struggle for some.  I think it gets easier over time. Some even come to love it.  I suppose it all depends on how you go about living life and traveling out there.  Only now in retrospect, in the comfort of my home, do I have a deep appreciation of what has happened to me in the last 3 years.  I miss being abroad, and I realize now how brave expats really are.  Maybe one day, I'll go back out there...

I have found, and as many expats have found, repatriation is hard.  I'd go so far to say that it is the most difficult part of being an expat.  My first few months back home...well...let's just say I'll be writing about that later...a lot about that later...

And now for catch-up blogging!  I gotta finish off my stories from my final year abroad...

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I'm too lazy to actually put pictures up of Yangshuo, so I'll just make a bullet list of some interesting things that led up to Spring Festival 2013...I'll do Yangshuo later.

• Another Shanghai bachelor party.  Trained it to Nanjing then to Shanghai.  Highlights: a colleague throwing a large McDonald's drink at a taxi that almost ran us over, seeing Chinese youth dance to Indian beats in a Nanjing nightclub, eating a delicious Teppanyaki  feast, and then replacing beer with a bottle of scotch because I wasn't getting drunk fast enough.  Needless to say, that last one was foolish of me. I was the first one to drop that night.  Apparently, I did tough guy shots again, but I don't seem to remember.  My colleague Joe had to drag my sorry ass back to the hotel. What a great guy. The next day, I had lunch with Hedy near Hongqiao Airport. We had one of our shared favorites  - American BBQ ribs. Coming from Wuhan where that doesn't exist, it was pretty effing sweet.
• I "fought" a student during Sports Day.  Muay Thai Boran vs. North Korean Tae Kwon Do. Highlight (accident) of the fight: I took a full on flying kick to the face which stunned the crowd.  In the end, I was "killed."  Students loved seeing me dead, and my victorious opponent was deemed "the most dangerous student at Maple Leaf."
• Cathy left Maple Leaf in January for a seemingly better job.  Seemingly.  Yes it is a lot calmer and less bothersome than being a Maple Leaf counselor, but it is also quite isolated and the pay was initially not as much.  However, we think it was a good move and she's "moving up." Now she's getting better pay for a less stressful job.  Cathy also moved in with me just before the end of her time at Maple Leaf.
• A swanky bar at the Royal Grace Hotel opened up near Wanke Cheng Shi Hua Yuan (Wanke Garden City), an apartment complex where most of the teachers lived.  I'm not much of a mixed drink guy, but my new favorite mixed drink is hands down the Singapore Sling.

PVG to SHA and being a hater.

The day's traveling around made me how funny things are here in China.  In the morning, the hotel I was at in Wuhan didn't serve me breakfast, even though they gave me a food ticket.  Luckily, Cathy's mom packed me some extra apples that I ate.

Another funny thing happened.  In Pudong, I walked into a bathroom that was so clean you could eat off the ground.  It wasn't crowded, but a middle aged man who really needed to go pushed past me.  He looked into a stall and then ran out of the washroom.  I glanced in quickly. It was an empty, clean toilet.  But it was a Western sit down toilet. He did not approve.

Coming out of Pudong, I went to the Maglev, only to be told to not go on the Maglev.  Instead, it was suggested I went on the exchange bus, which had a maniacal driver who got us to Hongqiao in a bit under 30 minutes, despite traffic. I nearly crapped my pants in fear of a spectacular crash and painful death.

It reminded me of an increasingly concerning issue in China that Cathy told me about, which will unfortunately affect school on Friday and therefore Cathy's work schedule on Friday.  Around China, the school bus industry are notorious for unsafe practices.  Some schools load up the school buses with kids to max capacity and then  some.  Once said buses have a head-on collision, which has happened around China recently...well...you get the picture.

My school has cancelled Friday school buses for the kids to go back home.  I've been on the school buses before and I must say that whatever company we use do a pretty good job not overcrowding them.  Perhaps during next term, more students will opt to stay on campus for weekends.  Cathy will have to stay longer after school on Fridays, which sucks because that's our eating out day.

Bus safety for kids or better quality times being with Cathy?  I choose the latter.  Aren't I a terrible human being?

...

Now for something completely different, I'm in Seoul.  I love this city.  More posts to follow.

Wo jiao Li Bai!

Yesterday, I recited a memorized poem from the famous drunk-ass poet Li Bai in front of the school for the Mandarin language competition.  The student council set it up for the foreign teachers who were interested in presenting their skills in the Mandarin language.  The name of the poem was called Zeng Wang Lun. I think I did pretty well.  Cathy and her coworkers told me to speak slowly.  My gestures should be somewhere between being deep in thought and utterly tanked.

The competition was intended for groups.  After my group bailed on me, I went in solo with only a day's notice.  The students were going crazy, especially after the first group.  I realized the kids don't see us Canadian expats speak their language at all.  Actually, they probably don't see many foreigners speak putonghua in general, which is a shame because we are in their country. I also realized learning foreign languages is usually a one way street.  People learn English, and English speakers don't usually learn other languages.  When they do, it's a bloody miracle.  Must have been a novelty for the kids to see us foreigners speak Mandarin.

Anyways, I thought I did fairly well.  It definitely made me want to learn more Mandarin, that's for sure! The kids went berserk when I started talking. I even scored second place behind a group of colleagues who speak fluent Mandarin.

Here's the pinyin and rough translation for the poem:

Li Bai cheng zhou jiang yu xing
(Li Bai was about to disembark on a boat across a big pond)
Hu wen an shang ta ge sheng
(When he heard a ballad from the shore; it was his friend who came to see him off)
Tao hua tan shui shen qian chi
(The large pond is very very deep) 
Bu ji wang lun song wo xing
(But the friendship between us (Wang Lun and Li Bai) is much deeper)