Post 2; Getting Settled, 16-August-2017

Moving stinks. Period. Most think that it is cool to do something new, and it is. And, most see only the fun stuff that you get to do… and there is a lot. But almost everyone, every time, underestimates the amount of work that has to happen to just get the bus moving. Problems, decisions, new situations, emotions, unexpected challenges, and fear of the unknown or threatened (thanks Trump and Un!) get raised and resolved so quickly that you can’t remember a single thing that was accomplished throughout the day.

That was this week. It is a mystery to look back just 7 days ago and marvel at what our family accomplished. Quite frankly, I can’t believe it. Here is a small list of minor life accomplishments that we took for granted a week ago in the US, but had to learn over again in China…

Pre-arrival: On my last trip to Shanghai I made a major effort to purchase items from people that were moving back so that we had the stuff when we arrived. I assumed it would be cheaper and would be cool to have immediately. These items included: 9 air purifiers, 4 dehumidifiers, 5 space heaters, 1 trampoline, 1 soccer goal, 1 loft bed, and 1 bunk bed. I also brought 3 full suitcases of stuff from the US; things like toiletries, bug spray, clothes, and magnatiles (a pricey, but priceless gift for the kids). I also stopped at IKEA and bought a bunch of stuff to get the beds made. This was time very well spent; the kids love it all!

The house: Everything was in pretty good shape; clean, rental furniture was delivered, bunk beds were installed, and most of the lights worked. We are very happy with our house… this turned out to be a great decision. There are a few minor maintenance items that have been worked, but one call to the management company and they normally fix it within 2hrs. We do have to get used to random people coming to and walking around the house. Normally its the yard guys, but not always. This is going to take a while to get used to.

Food: We arrived at 10pm Monday night hungry… and just had to go to bed. Early the next morning Jacob and I ventured to the local market and bought food from 4 different stores: donuts, milk, bagels, bread, peanut butter, and jelly. We were proud of ourselves. Since then, Amanda and I have learned how to buy groceries online and have them delivered to our home. AWESOME perk! Food is expensive, though, which is tough for me: milk (16usd/gal), meat (2x’s the US price), Lays BBQ potato chips (6 usd / small bag), Ice Cream (12 usd / pint).

Jet Lag: We each slept ~4-5 hrs on the flight; so, that is a pretty short night. Everyone also stayed up until 10-11pm the first night. So, in theory, we should sleep fine the first night… We didn’t do badly, but jet lag is just hard to break between the US and Asia. We slept until 5am the first morning, 3am the second, and then 5am, 6am, 6:30am… It really wasn’t bad, you just have an early start to each day. Amanda and I kept remarking about how much work we were accomplishing before 8am!

Money: This one is complicated. We wired a pile of money over initially and it was lost in cyberspace. We eventually retrieved it, but it took 5 weeks. Then we wired smaller amounts over, in 1k increments. That worked, but we got slaughtered on the exchange rate and it was deposited as USD in our China bank (useless to us, go figure). We finally converted it and were good to go. You never know which payment mechanism businesses will accept over here. And, there doesn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason to what works… Some businesses only accept WeChat, or the Company credit card, or the Bank of China Card, or the US Bank Card, or AliPay… The first few days we just scratched it together the best we could. By the end of Tuesday we were nearly broke, but by Wednesday, we had enough money and knowledge to get around w/o problems.

Exchange Rate: I won’t bore you with the details as we are still figuring this one out. We’ve transferred money anywhere from 6.2 rmb / 1 usd all they way to 6.7…. and that normally excludes fees. This has been really frustrating since we planned on 6.82. Oh well, we are still working on this one - live and learn.

Internet and Apps: I can now tell you from experience that life changes quickly when you lose your internet or phone… it was only 2 days, but we felt it and it was tough. But then we got the phones to work, we learned about WeChat (aMAZing), and we eventually got a US VPN. WeChat is China’s answer to Facebook, and it is great. You can do everything with it; pay for stuff, use it like “Amazon”, chat endlessly with your friends, share your life with a “Facebook-like” app, order groceries, order taxi’s, pay your bills, etc. We are fully integrated on WeChat, love it, and only use 10% of it so far. Getting VPN was like Christmas. After 4 months of research, 3 days trying to get the first one to work, and then 5hrs of set up, we got VPN… and, everything started to work; gmail, Facebook, YouTube, Google, Apple TV, Game of Thrones, Texans Football… you name it, we’re in business now.

Transportation: This one is changing. Normally everyone gets their own driver, but I think that system is “sooo” 2yrs ago… Today, there is a more efficient way through DiDi (i.e. UBER for China). We live close enough to walk to everything that Amanda and the kids will need, but work is about 35km / 20miles away (30-120min). If we get a driver, then they will take me to work, then return and sit in our driveway for 5hrs, and then come back to pick me up… A huge waste of money. DiDi, however, may offer a better solution… Or, it will be a complete waste of time and a failure. Time will tell.

Church: I don’t know for certain, but I think there are only 3 Christian churches in Shanghai… for a city of 25mm people? WOW! It requires special government approval to organize within a Christian Church… We found a good church that offers a shuttle service from our compound; very rustic, old school, and small… We noticed at the bottom of the bulletin that the service was only for “foreign passport” holders. This was the first time that we felt freedom restrictions. They didn’t apply to us, but it was very evident. Very, very weird. It wasn’t home, but it was good. We did, however, also manage to live-stream the Saturday service from our church in Houston. That was cool.

School: It is perfect. Feels like a college setting. Lots of very positive people. Very well organized and high performing. I think the kids will do very well there and I think Amanda will get over-committed and too busy within days. Right now Jacob is playing it cool, Caroline has jumped in with both feet, and Emily is still crazy.

As I reread what I just wrote, it seems incomplete… It just doesn’t quite capture the chaos of the first 7 days. During these 7 days, we never stopped moving, thinking, solving, or working. Everything took so much more effort than we expected it to. We didn’t know how anything would work on step one, but we knew we would figure it out if we walked together.

It is just week one… but, I can tell you that Amanda and I feel much more relaxed now. At peace with where we are, what we’ve done, and what we are doing.

Ask me again in 7 days!!! 😊

A picture just before Jacob and I ventured out on our first morning breakfast-seeking adventure.

Emily and Caroline's new bunk bed. They love sharing a room together... but, it's only been a week. Caroline told us yesterday that she and Emily were getting along much better now. I asked why. She said, "because we share a room and have to".

Contrary to our original thought, there were plenty of houses with yards inside the "Shanghai American School Western
bubble". Jacob loves to play soccer on his new goal and the girls live on the trampoline.

Just a few random pictures from our neighborhood.

Nice welcome basket from the online grocery shopping service that we purchased. AWESOME!

Our new favorite restaurant near the house... Amanda loves the food and I love the 50% discount on Mondays.

Sometimes the internet stuff drives you crazy... slingbox doesn't work and 0.01 upload speed is crazy horrible...

But, WeChat makes up for it... It is great. you don't need to carry a wallet. You can do everything through this app.

So, my transportation plans took a right turn last night. about 6000 people in front of me in the subway line. no personal space on the train and a 2hr ride home from work... so much for the subway being faster.

someday we will put together a every morning before school picture collage for the kids... this one is unique, but also very similar. Jacob made the TV on day 1 and Caroline has a paralyzed bearded dragon in her classroom, named "walk this way". She also has a deaf rabbit named "read to me". I like her teacher.

Getting the most out of these experiences requires work. We pushed ourselves to get out of the house on Saturday night. Dinner at the Park Hyatt is awesome. And, riding the subway was fun for everyone until Emily declared she had to pee 2 stops into a 12 stop ride. She made it, but danced a lot on the final 3 stops.