Just Another 美国 Au Pair in Hangzhou

I hope you all realize that Chinese tourists are just as touristy in their own country as they are anywhere else. Not that there is an issue with that; I mean, who wouldn’t be? This place is incredible! So incredible, in fact, that it’s made me lose all concept of time, and this post is going to be very scatterbrained. Hank has been out of school this week so the parents suggested we go out traveling around the city for a couple days. Thursday we went to SongCheng, a Chinese history themed park with an array of shows, architecture, and activities to behold. It also had an assortment of food available, but Hank insisted we have the most popular, authentic item there: Instant Cup Noodles. They had a pretty cool ninja warrior themed obstacle course, with floating platforms to run across and all sorts of balancing beams and chains. I tried them out much to the amusement of everyone there, and took a few selfies with random teenage girls who were amazed at the sight of a living, breathing ...

Unsurprisingly, this week started with me being moved to genuine tears on the bus by Paul McCartney’s sweet and simple words from The End of Abbey Road: “And in the end, The love you take Is equal to the love you make” The words have become poignantly applicable to my life. Past romantic relationships that have faded away, family relationships straining and growing through time and change, new relationships with my host kids and the emotional tole my responsibilities can sometimes take… Through all of this, much is given and much is taken. And though it is hard, I try to give more than I feel I’m capable of on my own, in the hopes that it is returned somehow. Well, slowly but surely, it indeed comes back. And I’ve felt it. After a conversation with my host Mom, I decided to spend as much time as possible with the kids this week. Thursday and Friday were full of robot battles, chess games, dog-walking, and homework, before our host Dad finally came home from his business trip in Guangdo...

Can I just say something? CAN👏I👏JUST👏SAY👏SOMETHING👏 One of my greatest joys in life is meeting new friends around the world, and finding something in common that binds you together despite vast cultural differences. This week was full of that. Thursday and Friday went by quickly, packed with lots of time with the kids. The host Dad has been out of town on business, and the Grandma left for a few days to her hometown of Ningbo, so it’s been especially busy around here. Saturday morning I left very early (too early, it turns out) to the Hangzhou Zoo. I had invited a few people to join but the only one that ended up getting time off Saturday morning was Jasmin, a German Au Pair. We met up at the gate (about an hour after I’d gotten there (my fault)) and beheld the marvels of wildlife, the likes of elephants, giraffes, zebras, various monkeys and chimpanzees, highly-trained flipping seals, lions, tigers, bears (DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT SAYING IT), and of course, pandas. The zoo hosts ...

So I have a deal with Oscar that while he’s working on his homework, I reserve my time to strictly studying Chinese; That way, we can do our homework together. This works out great, except that he has a LOT OF HOMEWORK. I mean, A LOT (Props to him for only having a few minor meltdowns a day, all things considered). And though it can get quite exhausting studying 3+ hours of Chinese a day, I feel as if it pays off very slowly. Like, I end up remembering something I studied a week ago as opposed to something I studied that day. So hopefully that means, in a month or two, my Chinese will be ballin’. This week felt like the prelude to an exciting month ahead. Not to say that this week wasn’t exciting, just that it’s about to get a lot more happenin’ than the current day to day. Thursday I went on a small venture back to West Lake, this time to the lake itself. I took some pictures of the gorgeous scenery, happily accompanied by unintentionally deft candid models. I walked down the shore ...

I was just running around the house with the Grandmother hunting down a house fly to no avail. So my time may be limited for this one. Nevertheless, here we go. Friday the Au Pair representatives came up to Hangzhou for a series of meetings so they dropped by the house. We had a very long conversation about religion and politics over some delicious chicken and crab. It mostly involved explaining the origins of Judaism and why they are different from Christians, and how Chinese communism is drastically different than Karl Marx communism. All parties involved left informed, educated, and full of crab. Saturday morning we all went down to the school for their annual 5k fun-run fundraiser event. We got their just in time for me to be thrown into the 5k starting line and start running without stretching. I definitely regretted this afterwards. But hey, between waiting for the kids to come within eyesight and the traffic stops, I still ran a 30:00 flat. After that the kids went ...

I love the feeling of being a regular traversing the Pacific Ocean. This was my 7th transpacific flight within a 1 year span and I felt well accustomed as the hours flew by. A couple of new mothers sat in front of me, so I had brightly smiling Chinese baby faces to entertain me for 12 hours. Also finished the whole 1st season of This Is Us and I’ll definitely need to continue that in the near future. Upon landing in Shenzhen I was immediately reminded of the fact that I don’t speak or understand anything resembling Chinese despite my desperate efforts to study on my HelloChinese language app (which its voice recognition software can be more than sketchy on many occasions). In broken Chinese I wandered around the terminal to try and find a place to check in for my final connecting flight. Finally, a kind woman in red came up to me with a cell phone and used a translation app she had to help me out. I took off for Hangzhou shortly after. In the long-awaited 80 degree fahrenheit he...

Literally me this entire week, when I finally understand a single word anyone says: Okay, so maybe there was a little dash of sarcasm and/or click-bait-ery in my title. But really, though. Mandarin is probably the easiest -- nay, the simplest -- language out there. “What? But everyone says that Mandarin is the hardest language in the world and you have to have perfect pitch to learn it and and and…” So why would I argue otherwise? Well, here’s some quick examples. Mandarin Chinese has a total of 3 pronouns. That’s right. JUST 3. 我 (Wo, I), 你 (Ni, You), and 他 (Ta, He/She). Now, there are a handful of articles that can be suffixed to these 3 in order to imply plurality or possession (们, 的, etc.), but at the basis, you’ve only got 3 pronouns to worry about. Wow. So hard. English, on the other hand, has at least 15 pronouns I can count off the top of my head. We conveniently mixed plurality and possession into the words themselves just to complicate things. Plus, we have t...