It’s been such a long time since I’ve blogged, that I actually thought that maybe I might just quit. To be honest, after ten years here, nothing really seems new. It’s all pretty normal –for us.
I realized that when I was seven, my parents moved us to the suburbs (of Cleveland). I spent my whole childhood there all the way until college. In fact, it was “home base” until they moved when I was in my 30s. What I realized is that Shanghai will always be my girls’ hometown. It is where they grew up from toddlers to teenagers. When we leave, it will still always be that for them.
This summer might have been one of my best summers EVER. First, because after more than three years of lockdown, we could finally leave the city. Second, because we took six whole weeks, my longest (away) vacation ever. And third, we saw our family and friends. Some we haven’t seen for four, seven, or even twelve years, and some new ones we got to meet.
I drew out a calendar, so that I could make sure to fit everything in and to not let anything overlap or be forgotten. On the last day, every box was filled with activities and memories. We had three down days, but for the introverted homebodies we are, it was a crazy stretch. The funny thing is, I think my 81-year-old dad expected us to do even more!
Some highlights are: meeting my brother’s new awesome wife, road trips around Ohio with my dad, hanging out with my college roommate and her whole family in Columbus, hanging out with my good friend at all the cool hot spots in Cleveland like the Rock Hall, The Art Museum, and the beach, but also just driving around to old haunts. We did that with my little brother too. Our haunts were different. We flew over to New York to see my step-daughter, and meet my grandson. Spent a week there, with the girls all being sisters, sharing clothes, doing hair and make-up, and she even let Rumi practice driving three times. That weekend, she took us to the girls’ other grandparents. Wow! That was such a shock, I thought they might have a heart attack.
There were a few SNAFUs. Like I wanted to renew my expired driver’s license, but I didn’t bring my social security card. I had a scan of it, but it didn’t matter. Also, for the first time in my life, we missed a flight (home from New York), but they got us on the very next flight an hour later. They couldn’t have been nicer! –Shout out to United. We missed our shot at going camping (twice) because my poor brother got pneumonia! We ended up visiting him in the hospital instead. Oh, and spending time with his lovely dogs. A funny problem was that both my dad and my brother got me a birthday cake for my birthday. We were eating cake for weeks!
Leaving Shanghai was way harder than coming back. The airport process took no less than four hours. Getting through TSA and all that was ok, but figuring out how to get my new Covid-free health code was almost impossible because the instructions were all in Chinese and the questions didn’t make sense. For example. What country have you visited in the last two weeks? None. I haven’t left Shanghai, China in four years, but I needed to write my home address with a date exactly two weeks before. It took me more than thirty minutes to figure that out, because absolutely no one would help. The lines in Shanghai were crazy long, because EVERYONE was leaving. We were finally free to come and go, and everyone was going. I imagine Shanghai was very quiet this summer. I can’t ask anyone I know because they were all gone too.
We flew from Shanghai to Munich to Newark to Cleveland. My doctor gave me sleeping pills, because I’ve never actually slept on a plane in my life. This time, I slept on both long flights. Munich airport was so weird! It was stark white everywhere. No decorations, no colors, no curves. Like dystopic minimalism, or retro insane asylum. Also, it was 5am and nothing was open, not even our gate. We had to stand at a rope and wait about an hour for someone to open the gate up. I’d heard good things about Luftensa Airline, but I wasn’t impressed at all.
We flew Swiss Air back, with a layover in Zurich and it was all so noticeably better. Add to that, a minor error with United and we got to stay in an airport lounge for free. We chose Zurich and felt special and awesome. It was Cleveland to Chicago to Zurich to Shanghai, and it really was just easier and better.
Another SNAFU, though, was this. When we got back to China we had to get our finger prints scanned in machines. I tried 10 times on 7 different machines and none of them registered me. The girls, on the other hand, had no problem the first time. I remembered when I used to have to clock in at one job with our fingerprint, mine didn’t work then either, and I always had to sign a piece of paper. Anyway, we get to emigration, and I tell them the machines couldn’t read my hands. She tried three times with her scanner, and finally just let me go. I have no idea why my finger prints are so faint.
The three of us have done some soul searching. We really loved being around family. I loved not sweating. Rumi loved the air. Raine loved all the babies and animals.
Some things were weird, like SO MANY advertisements and commercials! For example, my Spotify in China has no commercials, but the same Spotify in America had a commercial after every single song. And China is so much more convenient. Anything you could possibly want is either downstairs in front of our building or can be delivered in record time. And the sticker shock! We went to a convenience store in Ohio and spent $18 on three Gatorades and one candy bar. The same things would be $3 here.
But still, hanging out with family weighed heavily against the conveniences and economic benefits. So we’re trying to decide about leaving China after this year or next, and should we go to America instead of Germany as planned. I didn’t plan on ever going back to America, but this time felt really different.
Smiling in Shanghai 