Well, here we go - first post in the journal. A day-long discussion with my darling wife over what night we had what for dinner has finally driven home the point that I should be keeping a journal of this adventure that we find ourselves on. Friends have suggested that I keep such a thing, and in fact before we had even arrived here, I had grand plans to do just that. Once we got here however, the realities of jet-lag and the stimulus overload of each and every day made it seem like an overwhelming task.
Originally, I thought to keep this journal as a document of the bizarre, the kooky, the frustrating, and often times hilarious things we experience here everyday. As experience accumulates during the day, the list of things that I want to share with people becomes a nearly unbearable burden, and sometimes things get trumped.
For example, today was a day fraught with typhoon warnings, long walks in the wind and rain, dodging traffic, struggling to find things we were shopping for, and a food court with food of questionable hygiene... and the thing I really want to talk about? We saw a chow-chow walking on the sidewalk today, wearing a raincoat! It was a hoodie, and he wore it as casually as any person would would wear a yellow hoodie. With no pants.
Oh hey, Shan-Shan just remembered the mysterious meal in question. Thank God, because this has been plaguing her (and, as a result, me) all day long. Apparently we could not remember where we had eaten last Friday night, because we had not actually gone out to eat. We had woken up at 2am in our hotel room, and feasted on the day's lunch leftovers from Zhang Shen Ji (a fantastic restaurant near to where we now live). Blame it on the jet-lag, that our first few days here were a waking dream, all days and nights melting into one another.
Okay, so for a blog that is supposed to be all about our time in China - our adventures and observations - I am off to a rambling, largely irrelevant start... but you gotta start somewhere and we are already more than a week into this thing. I could have started with how it all came about and our first trip out to scope out the area, the work, the very concept of moving to China. Then there was the back-and-forth deciding, the decision to do it, and the careful packaging of our previous life in the States. And maybe I should, on some way, start there - so I will address it all with this next little bit of text.
Our life in Orange County was good. Really good. I had a great job, we had a brand-new home, and we very comfortable. No debts at all, and we could even afford for Shan-Shan not to work, be caretaker of the home and even cook dinners nearly every night. And then... THIS happened. The job offer, the trip, the whole unique opportunity suddenly fell in to our laps it was go/no-go time almost from the start.
On the one hand it was crazy to go. Why go? I had a great job, we had a new home we had worked so very hard to get, our life was perfectly comfortable... why complicate things? And on the other hand, it was crazy NOT to go. Why not? We had no debts, no kids, no pets... nothing really tying us down. It was a great opportunity, life giving us a perfect chance to do something different... why not go for it?
Like the man says, "It's better to regret something you have done, than to regret something you haven't done." So we left. Took what we could carry on the plane, arranged for a friend and a neighbor to watch over our place while we're gone, set all our bills to be paid online, and told our banks to not be concerned if they suddenly see a transaction coming from China.
Once we made the decision to go, part of the agony was deciding what to pack. It's like your house is on fire and you can only save what you take with you, while you leave the rest to fate. Only, in this case, the house takes two weeks to burn and you have two large and two small suitcases to fit everything into.
Okay, well I am going to take these alerts of a dying laptop battery that I am getting as my computer's way of telling me "Shut up, already." and I agree... that's enough for now. I should have a lot more to say soon, though, because every day here is an adventure. Every simple little thing has been a complicated undertaking. Every little bit of frustration has, in its way, been bearable either because it's new and exciting, or because it's stupid and hilarious. We'll see how we feel in another month or three once the shimmering new-ness has worn off of every little thing. But for now, I'm merely soaking in every moment like it's some kind of crazy lucid dream.
I can't believe I moved to fucking China.
-jps
