For those who were unaware, the past six months or so have been a bit of a challenge.  Work has been hard to come by, especially as someone looking for entry-level type work without the benefit of experience.  My savings have been steadily depleted, leaving me with stress and worries.  It seemed that ever since leaving China, no matter where I have tried to get work or what sort of jobs I went after, there was just no luck out there.  So, in my rational mind, thought, when were things good last?  Shenzhen, of course, when I was a teacher there.  The next logical step was to go back, and now I sit on the couch in my living room, typing away with the ongoing percussion of construction in the background.

The past few days since arriving have been largely uneventful, consisting mostly of exploring the new surroundings.  I am near the DaFen Oil Painting Village, a major producer of reproduction oil paintings the world over, and increasingly it seems to be a place for genuine artists making new stuff, some of which is quite cool.  Also, there is a Walmart, the source of my brand-new shower supplies and towel, all of which were sorely needed.  I’ve been down to the center of Luohu, exploring my old haunts and have already found a few pirated DVDs to enjoy from our favorite store from the last year.

To offer some background on what exactly I’m doing, I’ll try to elaborate, however in true Chinese fashion, much of what is happening I don’t yet know, despite work starting next Monday.  The word ‘work’ here is used loosely, as it seems odds-on that I will teach no more than 10 classes a week, at the Senior 1 or 2 level.  Those are sophomores or juniors.  If my schedule is anything like my roommate’s from last term, it seems I’ll have Fridays off.  So I am hopeful in that regard.  My roommate is Nick, though I’ve yet to meet him in any medium aside from email as he is off traveling.  It should make the transition easier having another foreign teacher here.

One fun twist to this whole excursion has been finding out that my friend Susanna and her family would be traveling over on the same flight as I to Hong Kong, where she has family.  My flight over was quite long, as I was some 30 rows up from her family, in the middle of a row with no working video monitors.  So I got to see other people watch movies while I was bored.  And its worse when you know people on the plane whose systems work.  Bummer.  Getting to Hong Kong however helped make up for that arduous trek.

On the ground, I was treated wonderfully by the whole family, and especially the aunts seemed to take a liking to me.  One of Susanna’s cousins is a really cute little kid, maybe a year or so old who was a lot of fun at dinner.  They all used their best English on me and I did what I could to converse in Mandarin, but sure felt a little bad since Cantonese was the dominant language, of which I know perhaps 5 words.   The next morning I was treated to breakfast with the whole family and at my casual mention of liking egg tarts, we embarked on a search through the neighborhood for the baked delicacy.  Overall the hospitality was amazing and for being there only a night and a morning, the whole family made me feel very welcome and I had a lot of fun.

I crossed over the border to the mainland with no trouble, gazing at Wutongshan, the mountain in my old neighborhood, as I walked between passport checks, feeling nostalgic.  The nagging doubts that I had arriving in Taiwan were not present here.  I met up with James, my old program director from last year, and he got me squared away with my school.  In taking the bus to and from the city center, the entire route follows the new Shenzhen Metro Line 3 which will open in a little past a year.  Sadly, I am left to contemplate how wonderful that would be to fly above the congestion quickly.  Alas  Tomorrow: early morning hospital physical!  I hope to go back to my old hood, Lian Tang, and see some of my friends (and possibly students) from last year in the next few days.  Until then, I am trying to establish ‘my places’ in my new area such as a fruit stand, baozi shop, dvd guy, bbq place, and muslim restaurant and figure out what my routine will be.