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.
Getting our COVID tests in all kinds of weather
I didn’t take this photo, but it circulated in our chat groups on a typhoon day here in Zhuhai when the brave weathered to storm to get their daily COVID tests.
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.
My green code
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.
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
The Shoulder
November 2020 – Blood clot in my sinus
The Blood Clot
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.
Hotel Hot tub with a view
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.
AMAZING CT Scan (Yes, that’s really my skeleton)
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.
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.
