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Annual Surgery in China – 2023 Edition
A trip to Thailand and then to the Hospital. The Year of the Rabbit has the good and the bad.
The year of the Tiger, 2022, came and went.
Cue the Year of the Rabbit – 2023.
This is my year, at least according the Chinese Zodiac thing. So that means 2023 was going to be great, right? It certainly started off that way, for sure! Covid-19 slowly began to not be a problem as China finally started opening back up to the world. We celebrated the start of his new year by taking a two-week family vacation to the absolutely amazing country of Thailand.
We split the time between Krabi and Phuket, doing really cool stuff like this:
Seriously, we had a blast after basically being stuck in China for vacations since 2019. Don’t get me wrong, our vacations in China kicked big ol’ booty, but we moved to this part of the world to also visit other amazing places like – Thailand. As you can see, we did everything. We hung out and relaxed at resorts, took longboat trips to tropical islands, swim with the fishies in crystal clear ocean water, ate scrumptious island food, got stung by jellyfish, watched a family do a fire show on the beach, visited Hard Rock Cafe, got our hair “did”, received 30 minute leg massages for 6 USD, spent time at an elephant sanctuary, saw a dude who was missing fingers kiss king cobras, visited the Big Buddha, hung out with monks, got sunburnt, went parasailing, not to mention of bunch of other things I’m already forgetting. It was exactly the type of trip we have dreamed about, and exactly what we needed in the moment. My better half is already wanting a return trip there and/or to just move to Thailand straight away.
We returned to China in mid-January totally relaxed. This winter was super mild. I’m a hairy beast, so I’m normally not cold, but even my family rarely even needed a light jacket to battle these “harsh” conditions. Before the kids headed back to school, we even spent another mini-vacation in Macau where we shopped and got fatter on American style food. My beautiful bride celebrated her birthday at a super cool French restaurant. The actual French chef came out from the back to wish her a happy birthday and treated us like VIPs. I even found a little barbershop in the historical Portuguese section of Macau where the owner gave me my first truly professional beard trim in four years.
Next up was Chinese New Year, the yearly celebration where China goes ALL OUT. It has been mostly subdued during the pandemic, but this year returned to all its previous glory. I kid you not, there were fireworks every night, hours long, for 3 weeks straight. And since we live right near the South China sea, these fireworks were as close to us as your standard July 4th celebration. We may have gotten a bit tired of them after, oh I dunno, day 2. After the annual festivities, the kids went back to school, and we went back to work. February came and went. That mild winter turned into an early spring. China officially cancelled all Covid policies in March, heralding in my wife immediate booking a trip back to the homeland this summer. They even told us to stop wearing masks (in most places). It was truly a excellent start to 2023.
Aaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnddd….. then it happened. Come on, we all knew it was too good to be true. Look, I’m generally a very positive person, but after 3 surgeries since coming to China, I’m always looking over my shoulder. Not the bad shoulder though. That’s the right one that I completely shattered in 2019. No no, I look over my left shoulder, cause I’m a Southpaw. Anyway, back to “it”. In the middle of March, I felt a sharp pain in my abdomen and then eventually that pain moved slowly around to the lower left side of my back. I immediately knew what it was, as way back in 1997, during my senior year of university, I had the exact same issue. A kidney stone. In 1997, I freaked out about it and spent the night in the hospital because I didn’t know what it was. This time period was where my phobia of hospitals comes from. I think I’ve mentioned that issue before, so here’s the background story. Back then, my parents drove up to hang out with me in the hospital. The next morning, they wheeled me down to radiology for an x-ray. While I was waiting, I was placed beside this elderly lady who was lying on a gurney. This lady proceeded to scream the entire time I was there, yelling literally right beside me how she was in so much pain and wanted nothing more to die. My Dad was with me, and felt so bad for me that he tried to stand in between me and the screaming woman. I “felt” her pain. There was no exaggeration in her voice. She was 100% real. It scarred me. Since that moment, I’ve always been super scared of hospitals. I HATE going to them. They make my blood pressure rise through the roof. Jumping out of airplanes, bungeying off towers, bugs, horror movies, American politics, none of that bothers me as much as a trip to the local hospital.
Let’s return to present day – March of 2023. So, I felt that same stabbing pain in my left kidney area. Now, I won’t be getting into a pissing match about whose pain is worst, which disease hurts more or any of that jazz. But for me, kidney stones are absolutely horrible. My Dad had at least 7 of them that I know of. My Dad is my hero. My Dad never showed pain. But I knew when he had the stones. I started feeling this pain and my first thought was to be a typical man. I’ll wait it out. I’ll pass it. Everything will be fine. So that’s what I did. I started feeling the pain on a Sunday, went to work all the next week, soldiered through like a real champ, not even telling a soul about the issue other than my rock, my wife. She’s the good type of rock, not like a kidney stone. But, by the end of the week, the pain was worse, much worse and I was having trouble doing the one thing you should do the most when you have a kidney stone – urinating. So, with the pain through the roof and my blood pressure looking like two numbers that were surface temperatures on the Sun, I headed up late one evening to Guangzhou, to the hospital that really caters to expats. They all know me and my family there. We have issues, okay? We go there. A LOT. By the time I got the hospital, I was in so much pain that I rushed out of the car and straight to the bathroom. I figured that they would need a urine sample, so I just did my business in a water bottle. The nurse told me later that I contaminated it and it couldn’t be used, but thankfully I had another gallon of urine in me to force out for her. They checked me into the ER at that time of night, stuffed an IV in me, ran some x-rays and a very nice doctor eventually told me the news. I had kidney stones. In fact, I had not 1 but 3 KIDNEY STONES. One was in my left ureter, one was in my left kidney, and one was in my right kidney.
The ER doctor recommended I see the urologist first thing the next morning. So that’s what I did. And of course they ran some more scans of me. Through an MRI, or Cat Scan, CT Scan (I obviously have limited knowledge of medical terminology), it was determined that the stone in my ureter was 3mm and “may” pass on its own. But the two stones in my kidneys were 5mm each and would require immediate surgery to remove because they were basically blocking the flow of urine from my kidneys to my bladder. My urologist explained it like this: Robert… you have 3 stones. 1 small, 2 big. Robert, you are too fat to do laser surgery, so we’re gonna go up your hoo-ha, break the stones apart with magical soundwaves, pull those broken apart stones out your hoo-ha, then put 2 stents in your ureters for two weeks so that any parts of the stones left can better flow out of your body. Side note – I may have slightly exaggerated the way my urologist spoke to me, but most of it is true and he did say I was too fat.
After going back and forth with the hospital and my insurance company to make sure everything would be covered, I was scheduled for surgery two days later. The family came up to be with me then, as they love any excuse to stay in a hotel. Although, with as many times we’ve stayed in hotels for medical trips, they have started to tire of the experience. So, my surgery was scheduled for April Fools Day. Yes, yes, I know… very apropos isn’t it? I was prepped for surgery early that morning, then wheeled down to the surgical ward. Everything is always a little weird in China. They speak a lot of Chinese to each other, then a little bit of English to me now and then. They are really concerned about contamination, so of course they put a shower cap on my head, then they put not one but two surgical masks around my face, chin and neck to cover up my ginormous beard. My doctor was a little late to the surgery, so I was waiting there patiently on the operating table, IV in, anesthesia ready to go. Did I mention my doctor is about 4’11’, 95 lbs and has bright yellow/orange hair? He also looked like he was 14 years old. Anyway, he finally made his grandiose appearance, I feel asleep and surgery got underway.
The surgery was successful, I guess. At least that’s what the doctor said. He got most of the stone fragments out, and inserted two ureteral stents inside me that would remain in there for two weeks, at which time I would come back for another quick surgery to remove them.
Here are some lovely medical pictures of my stones and the stents. If you don’t like medical stuff, please skip ahead.
So, while the surgery was successful, my diminutive doctor friend told me the stents would have to stay in for two weeks, they might be quite painful, and I could expect to regularly urinate blood for a fortnight. Good times. I was discharged the next day and sent home to recover. The first few days went well. I had some pain medication, and that seemed to work for the time being. I did indeed pee a lot of blood though. Then day three came and the pain returned, tenfold. I suffered through as best I could, but by the fifth day, the second in a row that I hadn’t gotten sleep, we were starting to get worried. I was in a ton of pain. I had a fever. I was nauseous. The left side of my chest was tight and hurting. My blood pressure was through the roof again. I was finding it hard to get a full breath. I know what you’re thinking. We were thinking the same thing. My better half rushed me back to the hospital, first up to see the urologist. Once my wife basically verbally assaulted them (in a nice way) because I wouldn’t advocate for myself, they immediately transferred me over to the ER just in case my heart was going to give out. I had a different ER doctor this time, but even better than the first. He ran me through all the battery of tests, and then asked a question we hadn’t even considered – “have you been coughing this week? Do you feel sick?” Why yes, I had been coughing at the beginning of the week, and I did feel like I had a cold. But I figured that was just me feeling icky after surgery. This good doctor then rammed a tester thingy up my nose and I’m pretty sure touched my brain. Sometime later, he comes back to inform me that I had H1N1 Flu. That explained all the sick symptoms and the tightness in my chest. All the cardio results were normal. As was a test for pneumonia. But, on top of the flu, I also had a kidney infection from the surgery. The stents themselves were fine, but as my urologist explained a little later when he dropped by, “Robert… you are too fat. The surgery was difficult. It probably caused the infection.” Thanks, you tiny person. They pumped my arm full of painkillers, which thankfully helped. We begged them to take the stents out, but they insisted that they needed to remain in for one more week. So once again, we headed back home, this time with antibiotics, Tamiflu and super duper strong pain pills.
The next week was rough. I’m not one to take pain medication, but I needed it about every 8 hours just to make it through each day. By the end of that second week though, I was ready to get those stents the heck out of dodge. Dodge, being my ureters of course. Thankfully, they put me back asleep again, as I did not want to be awake for anything hoo-ha related. When I woke up, once again I was told everything went well. I even got to go home a couple hours later. I was told to take it easy for four weeks. Not to do any lifting, exercise, drive a car, even go to work. That was on Sunday. Last Monday, I drove to work. And then I did it again on Wednesday. I avoided the 5 flights of stairs though and settled for the elevator. Thankfully I haven’t gotten any worse this past week. I still feel lousy though. And just plain tired. Like I need a nap after putting a bag of groceries away tired. As I’m writing this on Sunday night, April 23rd, I’m just starting to feel a little better, minus what feels like a UTI and still dog tired. But hey, I think I got my annual surgery out of the way! In 62 days, we’ll be in the good old US of A for summer vacation, a 30 year high school reunion, and much needed time with both sides of the family and dear friends. We’ll then be coming back to China for at least one more year.
Why?
Tiny doctors.
Here’s to the Year of the Rabbit.
How 2022 Quickly Became the Year of the Sheep (Guest Blog by Alanna)
It’s official. I’m adding a 13th animal to the Chinese zodiac calendar. Instead of the tiger, I say we change 2022 to the year of the sheep. Let me explain.
Less than a month ago, our daily lives here changed overnight. Prior to the announcement in early December that zero-Covid was changing to a more scientific and dynamic policy, we lived a life that ensured we would be safe from the virus. For years, we’ve stood in lines in all kinds of weather to get our daily COVID test. The results of which were bound to our QR code.
This code is something needed for everyday life; from entering the grocery store, to crossing the bridge on my commute to work at a checkpoint, to entering our home. The code would remain green if you were negative, yellow if you had crossed paths with someone who might have also crossed paths with a COVID positive person, and red if you were positive.
Close contacts would be sent to a quarantine facility for up to 14 days, and secondary close contacts would have their entire building locked down. We were only in this situation one time in three years when there was a secondary close contact in our high rise. Around midnight that night we had a team of hazmat workers knock on our door, asking us to all come downstairs for a COVID test. The next morning when I took our dog down the elevator to go outside to pee, the building was locked. I went to the basement. The door to the garage was locked. I tried the back. It was locked. I saw someone in a hazmat suit outside the window and typed into my Google Translate app: “My dog needs to pee. Can you please unlock the door? My test came back negative.” I then held the translated message on my phone up to the window. Mr. Hazmat just shook his head no and walked back to guarding his post. I had a Chinese friend call the apartment complex for advice. They apologized, but said due to safety, they could not unlock the door until they were sure everyone in the building was COVID free. Perhaps he could pee in the lobby? My friend suggested the roof. The roof it was. And thankfully, 12 hours later we were free. Not too bad, but it was the day that started my anxiety. Okay, I wish I could blame all my anxiety on that day. I’m just an anxious person in general, but I started becoming a Doomsday Prepper. I had a suitcase packed by the door with 12 cans of spaghetti, powdered milk, a box of cereal, a box of Pop Tarts, paper bowls, 4 spoons, eye masks, ear plugs, a first aid kit, a bivvy, books, and an emergency packing list for each person in the family. I also had a Doomsday thumb drive with at least 40 hours of movies on it for me and the kids. Why? Well, if we were to one day be sent to a quarantine facility, I would be prepared. I would ensure my kids would have food and entertainment. It sometimes took over 12 hours for our PCR results to come back after our daily tests, and I would obsessively check the results before being able to fall asleep each night. I’m not ashamed to admit I sought medical help and started some anti-anxiety medications and more regular therapy during this time.
Why didn’t you just leave? (You might be wondering). Other than the fact that we couldn’t due to closed borders… We love it here! We really do. Did I mention we have a sea front apartment with phenomenal sunrise and sunset views every day, in a tropical weather environment? Did I mention Rob and I love our jobs and our kids are getting an excellent education? That we’ve had the opportunity to walk along the Great Wall with a dusting of snow coming down, or that we were face to face with the Terracotta Warriors, or that we were never able to afford a trip to Disney before moving here, but now we’ve been to Disney Shanghai and Hong Kong? And as much as the zero-COVID policy gave me anxiety, it worked. So we went with it. It’s a wonderful life here after all.
So imagine living in a way that involves scanning a code multiple times a day everyday, standing in line for daily PCR tests, and constantly wondering if today would be the day you would need to use your Doomsday suitcase; and then overnight you find out the policy is gone. The first few days were surreal. Everyone was walking around in a bit of disbelief. Was this real? But that afternoon when we didn’t get our temperature taken to enter our apartment, and the next day when I didn’t have to drive through a QR checkpoint on the way to work… It definitely became more real. It was as if the past three years were all fading away. And then it hit. The wave of sheep. Within one week I started noticing sheep emojis popping up on Chinese social media. I found out the Chinese word for ‘positive’ (yáng 阳) has the same pronunciation as the word for ‘sheep’ (yáng 羊). So people were indicating they were now COVID positive with the use of a sheep emoji. Within 2 weeks, several people at my school were sheep. The next week, so many people were sheep that we had to move to online learning again. And just a few days later my family also became sheep. On Christmas. I was a bit surprised by how quickly we became infected once the floodgates opened, but I’m glad to get it out of the way.
Because I know that most of you have already been sheep, I won’t go into detail about how awful this virus makes us feel. It has not been fun. We also had to cancel our anniversary/New Year’s Eve trip to Macau. So I get why we were shielded from it for so long. But soon this will all be a distant memory and we will be able to travel again! Quarantine for international arrivals is ending on January 8, and the world will once again be our oyster. We may plan a trip next month to Thailand or the Philippines. We even have a flight booked to come home this summer for the first time in four years.
This experience, living here during such an interesting and sometimes scary time, has changed me and my children for the better. I truly believe it’s made us more resilient. I love the quote from Mr. Rogers: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.‘” This was true in every single instance of scary times here. China possess a unique strength in the fact that there are helpers everywhere. So many willing to help when needed. I took this photo below on one of the days when we were stuck in a COVID testing line during a sudden downpour with no umbrella. I wanted to remember the moment because in the midst of being upset about yet another frustrating COVID moment, a very kind Chinese gentleman behind us in line simply extended his umbrella over our heads and walked that way with us until we reached the testing tent. He spoke no English and we only spoke enough Chinese to express our gratitude. He got soaked, I’m sure. But he was a helper. And I’m happy to join that flock of sheep.
Yours truly,
Baa Baa 🐑
How to Become a Zombie Cyborg
“Hey… wanna have a catch?”
A great line from a great movie. But no, I won’t be talking about cornfields or baseball this time. Rather, I’m talking about catch as in catching up – you know, what the heck we’ve been up to lately.
Another quote, err, this time lyric just popped in my head – “Wake me up when September Ends.” Let’s change it up a bit and make it more personal, shall we? Wake me up, when NOVEMBER ends. For the most part, I have an amazing life. But for the past 3 Novembers, unfortunate circumstances have reared their heads.
Case(s) in point:
November 2019 – Grade 5 separated shoulder and my father’s passing
November 2020 – Blood clot in my sinus
Both of these events required surgery, in a hospital, with doctors, and drugs and in general things that make me very nervous.
I did say the past 3 Novembers didn’t I? We of course can’t forget about this last November. It was a lovely day. Actually, I have no idea if it was a lovely day, because I have no idea when this happened. I woke up one morning in November with shoulder pain. The same shoulder that I surgery on in 2019. I thought it was probably just soreness from working out. I’d been doing a lot of that recently. A lot of pushups and pullups to be exact. Let’s throw in some dumbbell work and kettlebells swings for good measure as well. The soreness didn’t go away though, and after a few days, I couldn’t sleep on the shoulder and could barely get out of bed in the morning. I talked it over with my better half, and she suggested in a calm and polite way for me to, “GO TO THE HOSPITAL RIGHT NOW YOU BIG STUPID PERSON.” I may have left out some adjectives there. Or added a few. Who knows, I had shoulder pain.
I had no intention of going back to the dreaded Hospital Number 5. Too many bad memories in that place. I had been told by a few of my colleagues at work that there was more of an expat hospital in Guangzhou. Guangzhou is about an hour and a half away from us. So… like Charlotte to Hickory. Or 5 blocks in NYC. You get the picture. Anyway, this hospital was supposed to be really nice. Mostly everyone spoke English, and they even took my insurance. That was a big deal. Hospital Number 5 did NOT take my insurance. So anytime I went there, I’d had to pay up front, and then get reimbursed by my insurance company whenever they got around to it.
I gave the hospital a call, and a pleasant lady who spoke perfect English walked me through making an appointment. I was immediately sent a text confirming my appointment. Off to a good start. Because my wife enjoys any chance to get away, we made an appointment at the hospital on a Saturday. That way, we could head to Guangzhou on a Friday and stay in a hotel, then do the doctor stuff the next day. She of course booked us some boujee hotel that my children will never fully appreciate. We may or may not have told one of our children to hide in the hotel lobby bathroom while we checked in so we wouldn’t be charged for a second child.
I prefer to bring my better half with me to all doctor visits. Why? Because I’m a stupid man who will not ask the right questions and most of the time completely forget whatever the doctor tells me to do. So having the smarter gender beside me is beneficial in such situations. After showing 2 different QR Green Codes just to get into the hospital, we wandered around just a bit before we found where I needed to go. The nurses were great. They all spoke English and had super-duper customer service. This hospital was also super-duper clean and NOT super-duper crowded. We met with an orthopedic surgeon. He was the head of the department and has performed over 10,000 surgeries. He was a very nice dude. Once he examined my shoulder, he ordered a x-ray. So some security dude came and got me, then took me town to get that done. There was no wait, and even the people in that room spoke English and had amazing customer service. That whole process took 10 minutes from leaving the doctor’s office to getting back to him. By the time I had returned, my doctor already had the x-ray up on his computer and… didn’t look happy.
The good news? It was not a grade 5 shoulder separation like 2 years ago. The bad news? It was a grade 3 shoulder separation. He said something else looked a little funny and wanted me to get an MRI. Now this is where I got worried. Not about the shoulder, but the MRI. I’ve avoided getting one for 46 years. My Dad told me horror stories about freaking out inside the MRI machine. So yeah, I wasn’t excited about the process. The security guard took me back down and they made sure I was metal free before plunging me, as nice as possible I might add, inside the MRI machine. They gave me some headphones, which I assumed would have some music, but no, there was only silence. The headphones just slightly muffled the banging and clicking sound the machine made for the next 30 minutes. Honestly, it wasn’t that bad. At most, I was bored and a little hot. I’m pretty sure I fell asleep for a bit during the process.
Right back to the doctor, who once again was already looking at the results when I got back to him. Diagnosis? A complete tear of my rotator cuff. So yeah, I had re-separated my shoulder and torn a tendon. Good times. I asked the doctor if this would require surgery. He laughed and said of course it would. My better half wanted me to have the surgery immediately. By immediately, I think she meant that very same day. Or maybe as soon as possible. You’ll have to ask her. I, however, wanted to wait. I didn’t want to take time off work. I’ve had to do that for the past 2 Novembers, and I didn’t want to have to do it again. So it was agreed between the doctor and I, and begrudgingly by my lady, that we would wait until the end of the year to do the surgery. We set the date for December 28th, which yes, was over a month away. I asked the doctor if I needed some kind of cast or sling. He laughed and said no. My wife was able to force some medication out of the man, but that did very little to help with the pain. So yes, I spent the rest of the month and basically all of December walking around with a broken shoulder.
I was able to manage the pain, for the most part, though sleeping was a major issue. The bed wasn’t working, so I moved to the couch where I could prop myself up. That worked okay, with me getting 4 to 5 hours of restless sleep most nights. My wife suggested we order some kind of recliner. I used one in the States when I was recovering from the first surgery, and it helped me sleep better. I bought a recliner off the internet the next day. And yes, you get what you pay for. I bought a super cheap recliner that, while it feels perfectly fine to sit in, is in no way made for sleeping in. Even my daughter tried to sleep in it recently and ended in bed beside her mother.
Let’s pump the breaks before we get to the gory surgery details. Other things happened in my life, our lives. There was a gala, Thanksgiving, Christmas, a new mall, Outback, a speech competition, oh… Halloween, a puppy. Dammit, sad news there. I won’t even rehash that one. And yes, it happened in November.
Halloween went well here, as we did some more adult oriented things. The kids still had their fun, mostly at school, as well. We decided to do a family Marvel theme this year. Me as Fat Thor, the wifey as Scarlett Witch, my son as Loki and my daughter as… well… she said no to marvel and instead was a zombie skater girl. Which technically still counts if you include her in the Marvel “What If?” zombie episode. The adulting came in the form of a costumed trivia night at the local pub, and then another mostly Squid Game themed party the next night. I still went as Fat Thor to the Squid Game party though, because I’m a man of simple pleasures.
We once again attended a special Gala in town that helped raise money for local Autistic Children. The event was at a super nice hotel, and the wifey and I even booked a room to stay over for the night. I’m pretty sure it’s the best hotel room we’ve ever stayed in, and that’s saying a LOT, but we’ve stayed in a BUNCH of hotel rooms throughout our adventures.
We celebrated Thanksgiving with my colleagues, as the college hosted a small Thanksgiving dinner for us, plus bring your own potluck type of deal. We brought deviled eggs, which many of our of Chinese friends thought were a dessert. I mean, what are they, exactly? I could eat them as an appetizer, during the main course, as a dessert, a midnight snack. I submit to you that there is no wrong time to eat deviled eggs. They’re really high up on my list of favorite foods. Anyway, the turkey was decent, the desserts were amazing and my son… mostly ate pizza. And some brownies!
December was a blur. The family was winding down the end of the semester, both at the school and the university. There were Christmas carnivals, final exams, final papers, presentations, all the normal schooly stuff. I even took my history students on a field trip to a local history museum. It was a fun trip! The museum is relatively new and super nice. I even brought the family along and my kids (my real ones and my students) didn’t hate it. Success! Christmas also went all. The elf on the shelf only forgot to move one time during the month and Santa showed up and did his thing. We even did a gift exchange with our awesome neighbors/friends on Christmas Eve. We also had Christmas day dinner at a Thai restaurant with friends. Great food! The restaurant is in a brand-new mall that’s pretty close to us. It even has an indoor go-kart track so of course the kiddos were happy. The holiday was magical was usual.
Annnnnnd…. now back to my shoulder. We decided to spend the week after Christmas in Guangzhou, for both my surgery and a vacation for the family. We headed up to GZ on the 26th. I did a pre-op visit with the doc, where he fully explained the procedure – he was going to put some metal buttons on either side of my bones and splice them together with human cadaver tissue. They may be one of the strangest sentences I’ve ever typed. Yes, to small metal plates to hold the bone in place, and human skin to tie it all down. And then he’d go over and fix up my torn tendon as well. Essentially, I’d walk out of the hospital as a Zombie (human cadaver tissue) Cyborg (metal implant). I know what you’re thinking: Yes, it would be neat to see a Zombie Cyborg movie. No, you cannot steal this idea for your book and/or screenplay.
We did get to do some needed vacation stuff while in Guangzhou. We found out there was an Outback in a mall there and went multiple times. It’s not as good at the Outback in the States, but it’s a little taste of home – as little of a taste as an Australian-themed, US based restaurant located in China can be. We also hit up a really cool aquarium and zoo… both of which were… in a mall. China is a little… err… different about their animals. So yes, we were able to see beluga whales, artic foxes, wolves, sea turtles, and walruses at an aquarium in a mall, and then also saw a sloth, prairie dogs and pigs… at a zoo… in a mall.
Sea Turtles 
Wolf 
Seal 
Artic Fox 
Whatever this is 
Sloth 
Hottie McHotterson
And now… finally to the main event of the evening – surgery. I checked in to my super nice private hotel room late in the day and then signed my life away on a bunch of forms. They made me do quite a bit of manscaping on my chest and arms, then told me I had to take a shower. I dunno, I just do what they tell me. They finally whisked me away to surgery, knocked me out and the doctor did what he’s paid to do. I woke up feeling hunky dory, and was wheeled back to my room where my family awaited my triumphant return. It was a little weird that they had some kind of bleeding tube connected to my chest, but I guess that’s how the Chinese do it. I spent an extra day in the hospital to recover and be monitored, then spent one more night in the hotel before we headed home. We had a driver pick us up and take us home, and of course got in a car accident 30 minutes from making it to our place. Rear ended, everyone was okay, but pretty shaken up, and all of us were sore the next day. But we’re alive and look better than either one of the cars. New Years? I went to bed at 9:30. I think my son made it to midnight.
Okay, let’s wrap this up. We’re into 2022 now. The wife and kids are back in school and I’m at home recovering nicely. I had my first follow up appointment yesterday and the doctor says everything looks good. I am currently planning on taking over the world, or killing everyone. It depends on which part of my Zombie Cyborg body decides to be more dominant. Only time will tell.
More photos!
Men Should Cry More
I cried today. I was from working home and listening to music on YouTube, when My Old Man by the Zac Brown Band came on my TV. I cried. Buckets. I’ve heard this song before. I’ve cried listening to this song before. Heck, I cry every single time I hear this song.
Crying isn’t natural for me though. I’m a man after all. I won’t bad mouth my folks and tell you that they forbid me to cry, but growing up, whether it was family, teachers, friends or just society, I was told… as a boy… as I man… I shouldn’t cry. Maybe not even told, but I knew what was expected of me. Now, as a man, I should be strong. I should be Vulcan-like, and keep my emotions, especially crying, in check. You know something? That’s bullshit. Men can and should be as emotional and cry just like women and children.
I cried when that (SPOILER) old man died in Squid Game (Or… did he? Sorry, SPOILER). I randomly cry sometimes when I’m watching America’s Got Talent auditions and some emotional story moment pops up. I cry thinking about just how much I love my wife. I cry when I talk about my children. Tears of joy, tears of sadness, tears of utter despair. I cry them all. But, for the most part, I feel pretty guilty about it. I shouldn’t. And I’m gonna try to stop feeling guilty.
I did some quick research. By quick, I mean Google. I ran across an article by Michael Murphy. It helped me a little. The article says what I was thinking, but in a better way than I can put down in words. So here it is for you, gentleman, and for the women who support you:
5 Reasons Why Men Need To Learn How To Cry
Men are expected to be very strong creatures who shouldn’t cry but are expected to just “man up” and deal with whatever comes their way. However, there is no law or written rule that says men aren’t supposed to cry, especially when dealing with some of life’s most challenging obstacles.
Crying is often associated with weakness, but that is not the truth — crying shows humanity and passion. It is seen as the norm for women and children to cry, but even at a young age men have been taught that crying is for women or that it makes them less of a man if they cry. This is untrue — if anything, crying truly shows the ability to deal with problems.
Here are a few of the reasons why learning to cry is an important thing for all men.
1. They Can Relieve Stress
Each day of our lives we are faced with something that isn’t ideal, a circumstance that could break us or make us. Sometimes these situations seem as if they are too much, but even when faced with these things, crying can act as a stress reliever and allow for built-up emotions to be released.
Stress is something that we all have to struggle with — from our daily tasks and duties at our jobs to having to afford rent and bills and car notes. It’s all too much sometimes and the best way that you can respond to it is through a healthy manner, such as exercise, crying, or meditation.
2. They Can Prevent The Need To Swear To Express Anger
When faced with adversity, many of us yell out an expletive or resort to anger as a resolution. It’s important to learn that cursing and getting angry or even violent doesn’t solve anything.
Crying is a healthy outlet for those frustrations. No one likes someone with a dirty “sailor’s mouth,” and sometimes crying is the best way, and the healthier way, to release that anger. We are all guilty of using profanity, especially when angry, but if we would only decide to cry instead, perhaps we could prevent that next ?#*@%!
3. They Can Show A Softer Side
Many men put up a tough exterior in order to prove that they are a man, or at least what society has created as the idea of a man. A man can show strength and vulnerability at the same time and crying can link him to his significant other and show that he cares. Crying reflects truly caring about the situation at hand as well as showing care for the person you love.
4. They Can Show Their Children That It’s Okay To Cry
Children look up to their fathers and many boys mirror their father depending on how relevant he was in their life growing up. Men are strong figures in their children’s lives and have to deal with a lot in life — raising and providing for the child, paying a mortgage, etc. This all must be done under the facade of a never-wavering figure who doesn’t cry and just deals with things. However, this is not true — sometimes men have to cry to show their children that it’s okay for them to cry. This shows their children that their father cares, and also shows that their father is human.
5. They Can Show Joy
Crying isn’t always a bad thing, crying can sometimes display joy or happiness. For instance, crying when a child is born or when graduating school. Crying is a healthy and necessary thing for all people — including men. Crying can help to release stress hormones and toxins from the body and aid in soothing certain emotions. So many associate crying with pain or hurt and sometimes crying is not to show those emotions at all but to show sincerity and honesty.
A historical record of the lost city of Atlantis (The one in China)
The hot and humid season of summer is almost over here in China. What does that mean you say? Nothing. It means nothing. The area we live in here in China will be sweltering until Christmas. Many folks in this region tend to get away from the heat by heading to the northern or western regions of China where the temps can be slightly cooler and the humidity isn’t constantly bashing you over your sweaty head. So, for our vacation this summer we… well we just went somewhere even hotter. But there were pools. And waterslides. And beaches. And Cronuts. So there’s that.
According to Wikipedia, which I quote here because my history students seem to think it’s the best source for factual information says that Atlantis ” is a fictional island mentioned in an allegory on the hubris of nations in Plato‘s works Timaeus and Critias, wherein it represents the antagonist naval power that besieges “Ancient Athens”, the pseudo-historic embodiment of Plato’s ideal state in The Republic.[1] In the story, Athens repels the Atlantean attack unlike any other nation of the known world,[2] supposedly bearing witness to the superiority of Plato’s concept of a state.[3][4] The story concludes with Atlantis falling out of favor with the deities and submerging into the Atlantic Ocean.”
I’m going to leave all those links in there in case you, like me, sometimes like to slip down the rabbit hole of often unverified information that is Wikipedia. Anyway, yes, we went to Atlantis. No, not the Bahamas. No, no, not the one in the UAE. No, my good friend, the lost city of Atlantis is actually in China. I mean yes, the Atlantis resorts have locations in Nassau and Dubai, but we choose the one in China for obvious reasons that are mostly due to an ongoing pandemic. We didn’t even know such a thing existed. It’s a little different to just search the web for things to do here in China because of many factors, but as I was randomly net surfing last fall, I stumbled upon Atlantis here in China that’s only an hour flight away. Plan A for this summer was to go back to the States, but that didn’t happen so we switched to plan B: spend too much money at an amazing resort and have a kick ass time in the process all while not strangling each other.
My better half made all the plans, as is her way. She loves planning and is really good at it, which of course frees me up to be lazy, so its a win/win all around. We planned to stay for a week in the area total, spending a few days in the tourist beach town of Sanya for a few days before heading further up the coast to Atlantis. We hit up Sanya last summer as well, so plans were a little easier this time. I’m not sure if my wife would agree with that though so you better ask her. But at least we were better prepared this time. We had our little green codes on our phones up and ready to show anywhere that was needed – the departing airport, the arrival airport, checking into hotels, going to some restaurants and wherever else anyone is worried about Covid-19. I think many in the US would freak out with these type of regulations, but honestly to me I feel safer and it gives me more freedom to easily go and do what I want. We also have our vaccines. We got the Chinese one of course. Don’t ask me what it’s called, or how effective it is, I just got stabbed in the arm twice so I could travel easier. Side note – I’m not sure, other than saving lives (obviously), what good the vaccine is for. I thought it would somehow make it easier to travel. I had this idea I could just show them my vaccination record and they’d be like, “Cool.. you got the shot. Have at it. Go crazy.” This didn’t happen though. Maybe it will in the future, but right now we’re smackdab in the middle of wherever this pandemic is going to take all of us, so everyone buckle up. And by buckle up, I mean get the damn vaccine.
Okay, back to the vacay. We spent the first few nights in Sanya at a lovely hotel that had a pool directly off our balcony. We booked a family room, because we just wanted two beds instead of one. What family meant at this hotel, was a room that our children would love – aqua-themed pandas on the wall, a tent, lot’s of color, a starry ceiling light thingamajig and numerous stuffed animals. The beds were moderately comfortable, the pool was fantastic and the breakfast buffet had enough western options so my super picky son could get enough calories. We did very little at this hotel other than swim and eat. We did head into town a few times. One trip was to an outlet mall. Yes, they have those here in China. It was kind like Tanger Outlets (for my NC and SC peeps) but much more upscale with a Prada store thrown into boot. On a second trip in town, we went back to the same little entertainment/shopping/restaurant area we visited last summer. On the previous trip, the place was a ghost town as the pandemic was just getting into full swing, but this time the joint was hopping. We went at my son’s favorite restaurant in all the land – Pizza Hut, explored the numerous shops and then, for no particular reason at all, I decided I’d bungee jump off a tall tower. My family was genuinely concerned for my life, but those things are totally safe right? What’s more, it was super cheap. That inspired confidence. Oh yeah – the guy at the top strapping me in and giving me all the safety instructions? He only spoke Chinese. So we communicated through a series of hand gestures and grunts, but by the end of my briefing I was pretty much sure I would jump successfully… to my death. Just kidding, more like only serious injuries. In the end though, I closed my eyes, did a backflip off the tower and bungeed safely down and back up without so much as a stain of pee pee on my shorts.
I have teased Atlantis thus far, but fear not, we are finally getting to the meat and potatoes of this blog post. We got ourselves a DiDi (the Uber of China) and headed up the coast from Sanya proper to the lost city of Atlantis. I keep calling it that because it sounds cooler. I mean, the DiDi driver just used his phone’s map to get us there, so obviously this place isn’t as lost as it seems. We got there way too early to check in, but we were allowed free entrance into their waterpark. So we dropped off our luggage, took some quick pics and then headed on to every waterslide Atlantis had to offer. Ok, I… me… just Dad, Rob… did all the waterslides. My wife doesn’t really like spinning around in circles while getting water up your nose. My daughter also doesn’t enjoy even the casual trip down a lazy river. My son, the champion that he is, did only a few of the slides with me, and then made his way back to the wave pool. So, that left me to do the more crazy stuff, like plunging through a see through tunnel surrounded by sharks (which were hard to see because there was so much water up my nose and in my eyes) all by myself – cue Celine Dion music here. The waterpark itself is pretty amazing though. Instead of actual tickets, or scanning something on our phone, the resort just took pictures of our faces and used facial recognition to let us inside the place quickly and efficiently. They have all the typical waterparky things – the slide that drops you down a pyramid at a mostly vertical angle. It reminded me of my days at the PTL waterpark. Ah, Jim and Tammy Fay. There were a number of other waterslides, the lazy river (that had tiny rapids), a wave pool with a full concert stage in the middle of it, a good selection of western food options, a kiddie section with surprisingly fast waterslides that I couldn’t ride because I’m an adult whatever dumb rule anyway, a dolphin show, a sea lion show, and a Cirque du Soleil type show in the water complete with some extremely attractive Russian performers.
Even with all the offering of the actual waterpark, I was a little worried we would get bored after numerous days we’d be spending there. Thankfully, Atlantis is a full resort with much more to offer than just a waterpark. They have an aquarium, 3 different large hotel pools, the BEACH of course, a train, helicopter rides, a small mall, a Gordan Ramsey restaurant and a bunch of other stuff I can’t remember because I’m old and forget things. We even forgoed the waterpark on a few occasions just to fit in as much as the rest of the resort had to offer.
Here are some highlights:
- The Train Ride around the resort – It’s like a backstage pass to all the inner workings. We even got the see the dolphins lazily swimming in a behind-the-scenes area.
- Gordan Ramsey Restaurant – This was a date night for the Mr. and Mrs. The food was excellent, but overpriced and there wasn’t nearly enough of it.
- The Beach – China doesn’t have a lot of nice beaches. But this one is amazing. You snake through a lovely little path of trees and then the beach just is there, looking lovely both day and night. But they still won’t let me ride a jet ski without some dude attached to my back. Mobius would be so disappointed.
- The Aquarium – Lost city themed, so the design is very cool. Most of your typical aquatic life, but they also had Belugas. One of them was being very inappropriate while we were there. I feel like he is my Patronus.
- The Cirque du Soleil Show with Hot Russians – Surprisingly good water show with high dives, one of those ring of death things, hot Russians (Did I mention them?), a sea lion and a plot that make no sense whatsoever.
- Cronuts – The waterpark had a shop that sold these delectable treats. We missed the craze in the States so it was nice to have them here. VERY good, and even my son craved them.
- A full on Water Concert/Laser/Fire Show every night – Remember that stage at the wave pool? We saw a magic show, the hot Russian performers and then a wild DJ dance party where my kids proudly displayed how white we all are.
- The Hotel Pool in the evening – a nice way to wind down with kids activities, a band playing Richard Marx tunes, and an excellent place to smash your forehead on the bottom of a pool.
I am the type of guy who usually wants to do something different every time we go somewhere. But I’d be more than happy to go back to Atlantis again anytime. All in all, we had an amazing vacation. The family is now gearing up for school starting in a few short weeks. Both me and my love are transitioning into new (better) roles with our companies and are excited to continue this phase of life. We continue to miss our friends and families in the States and around the world. I hope you stay healthy and happy and you too can one day have the privilege of seeing beautiful Russians swimming in a pool for your personal entertainment.
1.4 Billion
1.4 billion people. That’s roughly the population of China. By comparison, the United States has about 330 million people. That’s a rather wide margin for the 1st and 3rd most populated countries in the world. Of those 1.4 billion that live in China, I believe we saw all of them this weekend in Guangzhou. More on that later though. Let’s give you a solid update first, mmkay?
It already feels like summer here in southeastern China. We really didn’t have much of a winter anyway. I believe there were a few weeks when it got… err… autumn cold. You had to layer yourself to make it through the day – that kind of winter. But by the end of February, the heat and the humidity started to climb right back into existence.
Perhaps the easiest way to recap life these past few months is through a series of photos and captions that I’ll let my wife, Alanna write.
Wife here. Hi everyone. Rob got tired, so I’ll take over. 🙂
We started March by trying to purchase another car. I’m going through the process to get my Chinese driver’s license, so we decided to look for a second car. It turns out, you can get a Chinese knock off of a BMW for pretty cheap here! After we signed the promise to buy in “blood,” (aka red ink thumbprint), we patiently waited for the paperwork to go through. One month later, we finally brought the car home. During our first car purchase, we were offered cigarettes and kittens. If you recall, we turned both of those offers down. This time, we were offered cigarettes and milk. We tried turning both down again, but they insisted I drink the milk. I politely took the boxed milk. Here’s a few pics of the signing process, and all of us enjoying our new ride.
Signing the contract with our fingerprints.
Our next big purchase recently was a Chinese knock off of a Peloton. Let me just say that this has been one of my favorite purchases in China. Initially, they mailed us the Chinese version of the tablet, which came with several live classes, but they were all in Chinese. After realizing their mistake, customer service sent us the international tablet. Unfortunately, it stopped working after a couple weeks. However, we can still free ride with the bike while watching Peloton classes, or just listening to our favorite tunes.
Our Chinese Peloton
Other purchases included two dental visits (with more to come) and from what I hear, an epic pub crawl evening.
Non-purchases included Abby learning to ride a bike, Abby’s first sleepover, Logan’s new superhero design, posing with the Burger King star, Abby’s first time performing on stage (as a puppy), and Rob making our kids fill out their first March Madness brackets.
Abby learned to ride a bike!
Spring break started last week for me and the kids, but Rob only had Monday off. We decided to visit the neighboring city of Guangzhou, mostly because it was close enough for a long weekend, but far enough away to feel like a mini vacation. We took the bullet train to get there. Other than the sheer number of people in the train stations, the ride itself was really quite nice. A nice lady came around asking if anyone wanted to buy a snack, and for those of you who know my daughter, she can never turn down a snack. Even if it is chicken in a box for breakfast.
When we arrived in Guangzhou, we had a few hours to kill before we could check into the hotel, so we took the kids to a mall for lunch. They give you plastic gloves to eat with in nearly every restaurant in China in order to avoid using multiple napkins while eating messy meals. Abby seems to enjoy that process.
Rob hopped into this fun car and made the kids pose in front of it.
Night number one we planned to go visit Canton Tower. If you’re not familiar with Canton Tower, it’s a 1,968 ft tall tower in Guangzhou. It’s the highest TV tower in China, and the third highest in the world. Because it’s one of the ‘must-see’ places to visit in China, we thought “why not?”
Here’s “why not” summed up in one photo from that evening:
We should have known as soon as we arrived, but we didn’t read reviews. It turns out that visiting a touristy spot on the weekend of a public holiday is a really bad idea. We stood in line for a total of 180 minutes before reaching the top. Due to the nature of the line itself, one had no way of knowing just how long the line was. We thought because we purchased tickets online in advance that would help speed things along. We were wrong. The first line was 72 minutes, and that was just the line to get into the office to print out the tickets we purchased online. Little did we know there was a second line, and then a third line, and then a fourth line. Oh, and then a line at the top to go back down. There is absolutely no way to describe the intensity of these lines. It just kept growing and growing. There was no social distancing involved either. I was jammed in the back quite a few times. We didn’t bring snacks or water with us, because we thought it would be a quick ride to the top then back to the hotel. Abby started getting hangry pretty early on. If there had perhaps been signs to let us know how long we’d be standing there, I guarantee you we would not have gone. The one highlight was watching Rob and Logan as they rode the Sky Drop at the top. According to Travel China, the Sky Drop is a 100-foot free fall, starting at 485 meters (1,591 feet), and it is the highest heart-stopping vertical free fall in the world. The other photos of the view from the top were taken in a hurry, because we were so ready to be done for the night. As you can see, Abby was not going to turn on a fake smile for us.
After the should-have-been-one-hour-journey-turned-four-hour-journey, we thought we’d catch the subway back to the hotel. Our subway ride going to Canton Tower should have been an indication of how the rest of the evening would unfold. Picture one below is me on the subway headed to the tower (more people continued to get on after this photo was taken). Picture two is a stock photo we found online of the same stop on the same subway line from a different day, but it captures what we maybe couldn’t capture in our photos. This is exactly what it looked like though. So.many.people. The problem was, there were so many people that the police shut down the subway entrance, and tried diverting people to a different entrance where there was at least another hour long line to get on the subway. After already standing in lines all evening, we decided to attempt fate and walk 45 minutes in the heat at 10:00 at night back to our hotel with two sleepy, thirsty, hungry, and tired children, as there were also no taxis available.
Turns out, the view of the tower was really nice on our way back to the hotel, even though we had to stop many times along the route to catch our breath.
This was taken before we entered the never ending line.
The good news is, once we finally got back to the hotel, we got to experience a robot butler. It’s apparently a new trend some hotels are adopting as a way to cut down on housekeeping staff needing to deliver items to the rooms. We needed 2 extra toothbrushes, and this friendly little guy came by to say hello.
Robot butler
The rest of our short vacation was spent relaxing. We tried some awesome Canton style food, including chicken feet and a fried shrimp roll with a peanut sauce.
Rob and I got to sneak out for a date night at Morton’s Grille. It was the best “American” style food we’ve had since moving here. We also played some mini golf with a view. Overall, not a bad trip. We will definitely go back to GZ sometime, just not on a holiday weekend. We have a little less than 3 months left until our next holiday (summer break), and it looks like the borders will still not be open. That means we’ll have 7 weeks to travel around China again this summer since we won’t be allowed to travel back home. At least there’s plenty to see and do here.
Resolute in the New Year
Greetings from 2021. The holidays have come and gone for most of the world, but here in China we’re still in the middle of them. This includes Chinese New Year, which just ended with the Lantern festival. You eat rice balls, hang out with extended family, and apparently set off a bagillion fireworks. My son recently reminded me more than once that I haven’t updated ye ole blog in awhile so here we are. For those of you wanting a preview – we’ll deal with Christmas, a trip to Beijing, and then the first two months of the year. And probably some other random stuff that may not fit into the chronological nature of this post.
Let’s start with Christmas. The wife and kids got out of school a few days before, but my place of employment doesn’t really do Christmas, so I was scheduled to work through Friday, Dec 25th. I mean, I didn’t. But that was the schedule. I finished up early on Christmas Eve, then joined my family at Zhongshan Hot Spring Resort. This was the place I wanted to bring the family since I visited there with my co-workers back in the fall for a dinner. So, the resort is a big hotel/hot springs/restaurant thingamabogger. Yes, we checked into a hotel on Christmas Eve. Yes, we had a Christmas Tree and presents under it at home. As well as that annoying Elf on a Shelf. But I drove separate from the kids and wifey, toting all stuff, sans Christmas tree, in the trunk of my car. It was a lovely quick stay-cation as it was only about 20 minutes from the house. The place was a little old, but our room was great and it even had a hot tub on the balcony that overlooked a koi pond.
My work hosted our Christmas Eve dinner at the resort’s restaurant (Its why we chose to stay the night in the first place). This was the same type of setup I’d had a few months earlier where I was forced to down a lot of Chinese alcohol, though this time, as an upstanding husband and father, I was able to just eat the food there and relax. They did make us all randomly sing Christmas songs. I went with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer when they handed me the mic since its basically a sing-a-long and my kids could get into it. The food, as always, is delicious at these types of shindigs. Though I don’t think my son was all too thrilled with this type of food. It also doesn’t help when they bring a chicken or duck out, the head comes right with it. Yes, I put a chicken head on my son’s plate and took pictures of it.
We wrapped up dinner and then headed back to our room, the kids getting to sleep early since Santa would be arriving. I believe we had a conversation about our hotel room not having a chimney, but our house doesn’t have one either… so… there. Once the children were nestled all snug in their beds, I…. went back out to the car to silently haul in all the presents, and that Elf. I arranged them as I surmised the Big Red Guy would have, then climbed into bed, thankful I did not have to continue handing out presents to the rest of the world. Christmas morning went smoothly. The kids got mostly what they wanted, and we were able to reach out virtually to friends and family to celebrate a bit with them. We had breakfast at the resort’s “western restaurant”. It was not very western, let me tell you, but I think we found enough for the kids to eat. Abby just kept feeding her scraps to the cats the were roaming around. FYI – China has a lot of cats. No, I have no idea if people eat them. Dogs on the other hand…. no I don’t know about that either. Anyway, we had free passes to tour the hot springs. They have a bunch of them there. Even one where you stick your feet in the water and fish nibble off your dead skin. In the end, we were tired. So we totally just skipped going to ANY of the hot springs. We can come back again sometime. We needed rest anyway, as we were scheduled to fly to Beijing the next day to finally visit… The Great Wall of China.
Alanna makes our travel plans. I don’t enjoy doing it, and she could spend hours just mock-planning random things if it were up to her, so yeah… go Alanna. We were originally going to do this trip last summer, but were told the area was a no-go because of the pandemic. This time around, we were OKed to give it go. Alanna, through her extensive travel research, found a spot on the Great Wall that would not be crowded with tourists. One of the reasons was that it was winter and super cold. But hey, I’ve lived in cold weather, right? Montana, Chicago, Iowa, New Jersey. We should be used to it? Ummm… no. It wasn’t any colder in Beijing than than those US States I mentioned, but I guess we’ll never get used to the shock. It was mostly single digit temperatures when we were there, and the highs didn’t get much out of the teens. We’d also been living in a tropical region for over a year, so our bodies, and clothing attire, just weren’t prepared. We rustled up some winter gear before we left our hometown, as we knew it would be cold up on the wall, but that still didn’t protect us. We left our hotel in Beijing at the crack of dawn and had a taxi service drive us the two hours up to that particular spot on the great wall. This area was up the mountains a bit, so it was even colder. As we arrived and then got out of the van, I wasn’t sure how we would be able to make it. We were all freezing our butts off. Walking helped though, and by the time we’d bought our (cheap) tickets, walked through the village, hiked up a steep hill, rode a gondola up a mountain until we finally made it TO the Great Wall, we were warmed up enough and plainly too excited to be cold.
I’m gonna go ahead an drop this truth bomb on you right now – being up on the Great Wall of China, with a very light snow falling, with no one around us at all, was… one of the most amazing experiences we’ve ever had. And we’ve had quite a lot of these types of moments. As we got to the top, we waded through more cats, climbed the stairs and slipped onto the walking path that is the Great Wall of China. To our left, the wall steadily climbed for miles up into the mountains of China and disappeared to the west. To our right, the wall continued on as well, but that was the direction we were heading, as this section of the all provided me with some thrill-seeking entertainment at the finish. More on that later. As a family, we spent a good hour on the wall, walking along, taking pictures, stopping at each guard tower, taking more pictures, stopping to rest, stopping to let Alanna cry because all of this was “overwhelmingly beautiful.” And it really was, but I can’t pass the chance to make fun of my wife. Logan also had a massive nosebleed half way through the trek, as well.. what would a Staton family outing be without some kind of misfortunate incident? My youngest child soon became tuckered out though, so her mother took her back the way we came, as Logan and I continued on to our final destination. Now there are a few ways up and down the wall. You can take the gondola either way, you can take ski lifts, you can even walk up some trails to get there. But there is one special way down that we wanted to try – and that was the toboggan. Yes, they built what looked like a mini-bobsled course off the side of the Great Wall that would eventually feed you out at the bottom area again. It was one of the main reasons Alanna picked this part of the wall, just so I could do this. In the end, it wasn’t too wild or crazy, and felt mostly safe. Logan and I both had a great time on the way down, and even got a souvenir picture of our experience. We met the ladies at the bottom of the mountain for a quick coffee, then Alanna and I had a fabulous Chinese lunch at a local place in among the shops. We then went to… Burger King. Yes, all the way up here, in the mountains next to the Great Wall of China… is a Burger King. Oh, and more cats. Which Abby once again fed her scraps to once we went back outside.
We spent the next few days in Beijing, planning and scheming. Covid was rearing its ugly head again. They were slowly shutting down districts in the city, meaning, if we wanted to safely travel back home, would couldn’t go there. We have these QR code things on our phones as a Covid procedure. To get into places like malls, or tourist places, or on planes, or go to back or or school, you need to be negative for Covid. One way they work this out is through this QR code thing. Basically, it spot checks where you go. If you stay in the areas where there is little to no Covid cases, your QR code turns green. You just show that to whoever needs to see it and you’re good to go. There’s also a Yellow level and then a Red Level, depending on which places you been that have have a current outbreak. We’ve never had anything other than Green on our QR codes, but we were worried that if we went to one of “those” districts in Beijing, we’d get a bad color. So, we cut out some of our tourist destinations while in Beijing. Honestly, it was too cold to be hanging outside at most of them anyway. We did make it to Tiananmen Square, which is in Central Beijing, just across from the Forbidden Palace. I won’t get into the history here, you can look it up yourself. But security was super tight here. Metal detectors, automatic weapons, dogs, the works. We made it through unscathed, though I’m pretty sure we were the only white people in Beijing that day. Seriously. It’s the dead of winter. It’s the pandemic. No one outside the country is really travelling here. We got into the large square, found a virtual Geocache (yes, I’m a geek), took loads of pictures, then stood in front of the Forbidden Palace to take pictures there as well. We had some of Alanna’s teacher’s friends tell us that they had to wait in line for over an hour to get into the palace, so it was cold, we don’t like lines, we skipped it. There’s so much to do in Beijing. We missed 95% of it and still had a great time. We also spent quality time at our hotel – ordering American fast food delivery, and swimming in their indoor pool. We did a little shopping here and there, and Alanna and I even snuck out for a little date for our anniversary. It wasn’t anything fancy, as literally this whole trip was our anniversary. Alanna was also deathly sick the whole time. Did I mention that? Yeah, she was. Not Covid sick. Just… nasty flu/I’m gonna die sick. I think we all passed it around a little those weeks around Christmas, but my better half got the worst of it by far. But she was a trooper and still managed to make her family have an awesome Christmas vacation.
We flew back into town right before New Years, and even with a green QR code, somehow they made Alanna and I go to Hospital Number 5 (I’m a VIP there by now) to get Covid Tests. Thankfully, they only did the throat swab. I’ve avoided the throat swab test somehow every time. The test here cost like 20 bucks or something and you get the results back in a few hours. Like I always say, China’s medical system isn’t warm and fuzzy, but it is damn sure efficient. We celebrated New Years like true champs – our kids falling asleep before the ball dropped and us two not really caring about it much either. China has a muted New Year celebration, as their big holiday is the Lunar New Year that happens sometime in early February.
I went back to work for 3 weeks in January, teaching some English workshops at the university and volunteering to sing in some kind of Chinese New Year’s talent group… thing. I dunno. We sang Auld Lang Syne to an acoustic guitar, then sang some quite catchy Chinese song that I have no idea what the lyrics meant. We looked good doing it though. Alanna and the kids were back in school for about month as well before we all stopped what we were doing again for the Chinese New Year. Alanna and the kids got a two week vacation. I was off… well… I got about a month and a half. I ain’t complaining.
Let’s talk about New Years resolutions, kay? Mine was the same – lose some more weight. I’d lost a good bit of it in 2019, then had the shoulder injury. 2020 was a wash, so with 2021 I kicked it back into high gear again. I’m smashing my goals so far and haven’t stopped with either the workouts or the eating healthy habits. Alanna wanted to learn to play the guitar. I’m not sure if that was her New Years resolution or not, but her birthday is mid- January so I bought her a guitar anyway. She’s doing well with that too – she can decently strum “Free Fallin’ ” and “Sweet Home Alabama”. She is talented that one. The kids have done well with the break too. My youngest has learned to ride her bike and is now becoming Ms. Independent. My son? Well… he’s gotten even better at video games, taken up photography and is even getting in some physical exercise in the form of jogging at school.
What else? Here are random things we’ve been up to:
In no particular order –
Online Shopping, Trivia Nights at the Bar (we either win or crash hard), A quick one night stay-cation at another hotel we like, hiking in a few different trails around town, professional development for me, Alanna’s family celebrating Christmas two weeks too late, a new Pizza Hut opened very close to us (Logan is happy), Wandavision, Watching the Superbowl at a bar at 7:00AM, failing to complete a 6 ghost pepper wings, 6 beers, in 6 minutes challenge, ripping my left big toenail off, we got a pet hamster named Ashley, rollerblading at the coast, playing Dungeons & Dragons, playing Scrabble, playing chess, playing Go Fish, getting bruises from a massage, ordering a LOAD of wings as often as possible, Alanna dancing with dragons, quite a few dinner parties, lunch parties, still wearing a mask when we need to, watching America be…. America, VISITING ANOTHER CAT CAFE. TOO MANY CATS IN CHINA, V-Day Flowers, watching the Rumble in the Jungle in a hotel, enjoying the once every few months rainstorm, and literally freaking loving our crazy nomadic life one day at a time.
If you need clarification on any of that lightning round stuff I just spewed forth up there, hit me up on social media, email, or just comment here. Hey… Happy New Year.
A Guest Blog Post
Rob’s been asking me for awhile now to be a guest blogger on his site. I feel that he always has the best words, and is certainly far more entertaining than I am, so I’ve yet to take him up on this offer. Until now, because this post is about him.
You see, it seems that we now have an annual tradition for each November to bring forth turkey, stuffing, and major surgery. Last Thanksgiving he was recovering from reconstructive shoulder surgery after his scooter accident.
On Thanksgiving Day this year, Rob had part 3 of a root canal procedure. He called me from the dentist’s office because the dentist found something on his X-ray that they felt needed to be addressed at the hospital. Of course this worried me because it accompanied bad translations like “blood clot,” and “hospital, now.” It wasn’t a blood clot, but it wasn’t just a cloudy tooth either. A full day and a CT scan later, I get this text:
Okay, so yes I worry a lot. My mind immediately went to cancer. Because large grey growth that isn’t supposed to be there is scary. See that large grey circle where the arrow is? Yup. See why I was worried?
I’ll go ahead and get to the good ending now. it wasn’t cancer. But it was a full week of worry and recovering from surgery before we found that out. He was admitted to the hospital the next day, and they ran all sorts of tests on him for two days prior to his surgery date: more CTs of his heart, lungs, other organs, etc., more bloodwork, an EKG in which they had to shave his chest and wrists, endoscopies, of course COVID, etc. … all to rule out “other possibilities.” Oh, and because surgery was to be in the facial area he had to shave most of his beard. While doing that, I also had a COVID test done so I could get permission to visit him in the hospital. Thankfully, it only takes one day for results to come back here, so I got to visit on day 2. I was quickly greeted by a nurse upon my arrival who was eager to tell me to go buy him a proper nose hair remover because his nose hair was not up to surgical standards. I looked at her like, ‘say what now?’ Yes, she gave me a piece of paper with “nose hair remover” written in Chinese and told me to go find the store near another little store where they could give me one. I did not walk in to the right store at first, but a kind man directed me to the nose hair remover store, and Rob successfully got his nose hair to appropriate surgical length.
In order to have that thing removed they had to put him under general anesthesia and take it out through his nose. They also sent some of it out for a biopsy. Here he is right after:
When we did a video call with him the day after surgery Abby started crying because she was shocked by his black eye and bloody nose. His nose continued to bleed non-stop all week.
Throughout the rest of the week Rob endured a few more painful sinus endoscopies to remove surgery padding, clean out the surgical site, and put fresh dissolvable padding inside his face- wondering each day when he would be released from the hospital.
Meanwhile, I was only able to visit him twice this week because I got so incredibly sick with flu-like symptoms and was down for the count at home. I’m sure it was from the stress of it all. So I won’t be able to tell you all of the fun details of being in a Chinese hospital for a week. I’ll leave that up to him. I know it wasn’t fun. Finally, he was cleared to come home today! Although we don’t have official biopsy results yet, the doctors have told him from all the other tests and from everything they see, the growth looks to be benign.
So as usual, the Statons come out of situations like this on top. I feel like we’ve been able to prove time and time again we are resilient, so I’m not sure why these reminders need to keep popping up. Nonetheless, we endure. And this Thanksgiving, even though we had to cancel our little dinner, and postpone putting up the Christmas tree, it kicks off the Christmas season with an extra sprinkle of thankfulness for each other. I have a poster in my office that says “Nothing is worth more than this day.” It’s true friends. Now go hug your loved one.
