So I got married

You may be aware that I recently got married.
Sorry, let me rephrase that: I GOT MARRIED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I haven't done an entry in awhile so there's a bit to cover but I'll keep it fairly short and let the captions in the pictures explain more if you're interested.

I uploaded an album of things going on during the fall.  That includes my trip to Nicole's hometown of YongDing to meet a lot of relatives.  That album can be found here.

In mid January, my parents, Jonathan and LJ Brubacher, and my cousins Derek and David Alton all flew over for the wedding.
It's been a quite crazy 3 weeks but we were able to see and do so much.  The wedding day itself was phenomenal.  Despite some early hiccups (her family and maid of honour didn't show up for what felt like a long time and she had to keep calling), the afternoon ceremony and reception in the evening were so much fun.  Had many comments from my guests that they had a great time.
I'm waiting on my photographer to finish some of the pictures he took.  When he does so I'll upload them and let you know.
After the wedding all 8 of us piled into a minivan and went to YongDing.  I think for many of the visitors, this was the highlight, especially visiting Nicole's aunt and uncle's fruit farm.  We stayed there 2 nights.
When we got back to Xiamen, Jon and LJ flew out on their own to another part of China while the rest of us went to Shenzhen and then Hong Kong.  Shenzhen is one of the most ridiculous cities I've ever been to.  It's so close to Hong Kong (you can ride a subway between them) so it's become a huge hub for shipments.  If you've ever bought something on ebay that says it's from HK, it's most likely come from Shenzhen.  The city is just an endless market of boxes getting ready to be shipped for individual orders.
Hong Kong is full of people.  With my parents and Derek and David along, I knew they'd enjoy it but there are definitely some people reading this that, if they visited me, I would not take there.  I'm pretty good (I think) at tailoring trips to what people would find interesting, so come visit regardless of what you enjoy!
Those 4 all flew home from HK and then I flew to Chongqing to meet Jon/LJ for another week.  We wandered around a lot but the absolute highlight had to be the monkeys.  I've seen monkeys quite a few times in my life and, well, there's no nice way to put this: they're absolute assholes.  They're funny but they steal absolutely everything and they can be quite violent if you don't give them anything.  That's what I was anticipating when me made the long mountain trek in Emeishan.
Instead, what we got, was incredibly friendly monkeys that just seemed to want to play.  They'd jump all over us.  Unfortunately one of them DID steal my glasses but it seemed like more of an accident.  He was trying to stand on my head and seemed to grab them to sturdy himself.  Then he jumped off of me and let them go, but we were standing on a bridge and they fell into the water.  Fortunately glasses here are really cheap and I don't need them to survive.

Honestly, the whole experience is probably a top 10 moment of my life.  It only lasted 10 minutes or so until we were overwhelmed but we were all laughing throughout the entire thing.  I think Jon/LJ would agree about this.
I just got back home on Monday.  It was great to travel with the others but I really missed Nicole through the whole thing. She's just so much fun to do things with and I look forward to our honeymoon that we leave for on Saturday.
Pictures from the travels with the visitors from Canada can be found here.
Thanks to all who wished us well, we're both excited for getting married a second time in Canada where things will probably be a bit more predictable and smooth!
Josh (and Nicole who's at work but I'm sure says hi)

Amazing time in Canada

Hi all,
Thanks to everyone who was part of a simply fantastic summer for Nicole and I.
I don't have a whole lot to write here as many of you know about it already. If you don't, take a look at the pictures I've uploaded.  I tried to add captions to a lot to explain what's going on.  There are a lot there (about 600) but you can go through quite quickly.  I left a lot in as I thought different people might be interested in different things.
As always, I do read comments if you leave them. Enjoy!
Pictures can be found here  https://goo.gl/photos/73BW8avK92VCY8eSA
Oh ya, I'm getting married!!

33 days to go!

Nicole and I are both getting super excited about coming to Canada this summer.  She told me yesterday that she hopes she'll be able to sleep in the week leading up to it so I take that to be a pretty great sign.  I can't wait for people to meet her and both of us are also excited to meet the baby monkey that my sister now has.
I'm nearly done classes for the semester. I just have 4 days of class left so I'll be done in about a week, then some paperwork, then I'll be free.
Things here have mostly continued on normally.  One bizarre thing is that my college randomly decided to start blocking motorcycles from entering campus.  There didn't seem to be any reason for this and I saw some inside anyway and was told there's a permit to get so I asked my boss to help me to go the security to get one.  What follows is the general conversation. It was basically a whole exercise in who can play the "just following orders" defense the best.

It basically went something like this:
Me: I want a pass so I can come into the school.
Them: Only 3 passes were given and that was just for security people.
me: Fine, then add one more, I need a pass.
Them: We can't give you one.
Me: Why?
Them (seeming stunned at this question): because motorcycles aren't allowed.
M: why not?
T: Because it's the rule
M: why is it a rule? Cars are allowed, why not bikes?
T: motorcycles are more dangerous
M: was there an accident here? How many accidents have there been on campus in the past 5 years with motorcycles vs cars?
T: we have no idea
M: then how can you say there's a difference?
T: Well, we don't make this rule, it's from the board
M: OK, I want to meet the board
T: well, there are a lot of people
M: I don't care, tell me when there's a meeting next time and I'll talk to them.
T (pausing): well, it's the rule everywhere in Xiamen.
M: We're not in Xiamen
T: well, we're still a part of Xiamen
M: Motorcycles are allowed here, fireworks are allowed here. You're randomly applying rules.
T: Well, there's nothing we can do, it's the regulation.
M: In Xiamen there are buses that go everywhere, when I need things for class will you send a car to pick me up and carry it? (this is obviously not something I need but something I thought they might understand, surprisingly I was right)
T (after calling around for awhile): ok, we'll start a shuttlebus going to south gate.
M: (dammit, not really something I cared about) and to English corner also?
T: no, it's too late. You have to walk in.
M: You still haven't explained the reason for this rule.
T: there was a really bad accident with a motorcycle in the past. 3 years ago.
M: OK, so if there's a bad accident with a car then all cars will be banned right? if we can agree to that I'll leave right now
T: (long pause) this is just the rule.
M: Do any people who made this decision have a motorcycle or do they all have cars?
T: .....
M: OK, if ligong buys me a car I will stop complaining
T: you know, in China we're taught not to question why. So we don't know how to answer your questions.
M: can you all just admit that this rule has zero reasons for being in existence except that rich people don't like motorcycles?
T: But there are lots of unlicensed motorcycles.
M: Mine isn't, let me prove it and you give me a pass just like the cars have
T: (long pause) It's because of BRICS (a big summit meeting happening in Xiamen in September causing heightened security.

it went on a bit longer than that with me offering to put comedy training wheels on it so that I'd have 4 wheels just like a car but basically they just said there is nothing they can do and that maybe it'll go away after BRICS (it won't).

There was a holiday here over the weekend which means I had to work Saturday but had Monday and Tuesday off because that's how holidays work here.  On Monday I planned a beach day and managed to get about 20 people out.  It was a nice day swimming in warm water.

On tuesday we went to one of the nearby mountains.  It's a gorgeous area to ride.  I even found a mountain pool and went swimming.  If it had been a bit deeper it would've been just about perfect.

Next month I have 3 friends visiting me and I'm looking forward to showing them around a bit.

See you all in July!

I've added more pictures to the Spring 2017 album, so if you've seen some just scroll down further.  They are here: https://goo.gl/photos/LYwvzjeJYeENUrnV8

I've also been having fun taking pictures of funny English shirts.  They can be found here  https://goo.gl/photos/m75zaiAbsbdia38P9

Leave some comments or send me an email if you life them.  I always like hearing from you.

Also, if you'd like to see Nicole and I sometime this summer send me a message and we can pick a time to do something.  We're home most of July and August but time is starting to fill up.

Spring 2017

Good morning/afternoon/evening internetland.

As is usual with my blogging, it's been awhile since I wrote an entry so let me fill you in on the happenings of my life in China.

The biggest event this spring is one you undoubtedly heard about as I was constantly emailing updates: Nicole is coming to Canada! Yay!
We're planning a really extended stay landing early July and not leaving again until the very end of August. We hope to see lots of you during that time.  I've already got a calendar that's filling up so if you'd like to meet up with us in Ontario please let me know!
My classes have, generally, been going about the same.  There's been more frustration in this job
compared to my last as students at this school may be approximately the same level as my last school but their motivation is near zero.  It's not just me having this problem.  Actually, from what I've seen, I've been able to manage it better than some but it's still incredibly disheartening to try to teach to a room full of students who have zero interest.  I'm used to this on some level but I've had really good success of bringing students around.  The main difference at this school is that the school management actually tells the students that the foreign classes aren't really important.  This means we can't really encourage them since they don't care and they also have no fear of failing since it doesn't matter.  The teachers had a meeting and basically told this school this system is awful.  Either make the class mandatory and important or not important but optional.  This thing where they MUST go to class but it doesn't matter if they do anything once there is just idiotic.
To make matters worse, they had an English test... a chinese English test (meaning memorizing words and grammar with no actual application) and if they got a high enough mark on it they were allowed to stop going to our classes so we lost our best students in each class.  Management claimed that these students were supposed to then go to a higher level English class... except no such class actually existed.
I still have reasonable success with getting students to want to come to class but all these needless obstacles are really frustrating.  I seriously considered switching schools next year but the other benefits of this job are just too hard to give up at this time.  Therefor a signed for another year.  It means I keep living close to Nicole, I have a good apartment, and I have an insane number of holidays.
I've started teaching some kids on the weekend.  They are incredibly high level students around 12 years old.  They are all essentially fluent.  It's a big challenge as I've never taught anything like it before. It's basically just teaching like you'd do in Canada.  But I've enjoyed being able to actually do creative projects with them.  I've brought out activities that I had tried years ago with college students but realized it was way too hard for them.  The kids have loved these things.
I see Nicole fairly often however it's usually just in evenings.  When we do get a whole day free we often go out exploring, usually on the motorcycle.  One day a few weeks ago we set out to go up some of the mountains near here and had... a less than successful day.

We went to a mountain we've been to before but it had a big gate across the road and no one was allowed in. Many cars were being turned around. Then we went on another road for a long while until we hit another gate with a guard who wouldn't let anyone with wheels through. Even a guy on a bicycle was refused. Finally we said screw it and went to the reservoir... Which had a gate and guards turning everyone away because "a man is killing people in the mountains". Turns out some guy murdered an acquaintance two days ago and they think he's hiding there so "200 police" are there hunting him. We were allowed in anyway once my gf signed her name. We saw five police napping and nothing else. 

This is how China is.  Sometimes things are great and you can explore places easily and then suddenly you just can't because... well, no one ever has a good reason.  There's going to be a BRICS summit (look it up if you're interested) here in September which has caused a massive headache for everyone living in the city.  Pretty much everything is under construction.  Many of the trees near where I live have been uprooted and SLIGHTLY bigger trees planted in their place.  This combined with the subway construction has pretty much brought the city to a standstill.  After September is should be quite nice but for now it's awful.  People who live anywhere near the main buildings for the event will have to move out for that week or so.  I've already had police come by my place twice to register me even though they all of us on file anyway.  Suffice to say I'm happy I won't be here in the summer.

One, more successful, day of exploring we came by a strawberry field.  You could pay more to pick your own or just buy already picked ones.  Yes, you read that right.  Picking your own actually cost more.  This seemed bizarre but Nicole guessed it's because "people will pick everything and destroy the plants, they'll also eat many while they pick".  OK, makes sense I guess.  So I bought a large basket.  This inspired me to make smoothies which meant I needed a freezer.  I then also ordered 25kg of strawberries. My freezer is now completely full although I'm going through them fairly quickly.

This upcoming weekend is a holiday.  It's been quite hot here for the past while now so Nicole and I are hoping to go on a longer motorcycle trip to some of the surrounding areas.  Hopefully weather, and traffic, permit it.
I'll leave it at that for now.  I've included captions in pictures for more ideas of what I've been up to.
They can be found here
https://goo.gl/photos/LYwvzjeJYeENUrnV8

As always please keep in touch! See you all soon, can't wait for you to meet Nicole.
Josh

Chinese New Year

Year of the fire rooster! Well... year of the rooster. The Chinese translation of rooster is "fire chicken" so anywhere that says "fire rooster" is translating literally.  Anyway, how have you all been? I feel like I've written more recently than after the typhoon but evidence would contradict that assumption.
So, what have I been up to? I'll start with the fall.
The first, and by far the most important, thing that happened was meeting this girl:


This one right here ---->

Isn't she awesome? Yes, she's awesome.  Any of you who have talked to me at all in the past few months know that.  She'll feature heavily in this blog post, and rightly so.
Some of you already know, but I'll say it anyway.  Her name is Nicole.  I went to a toastmasters meeting here in Xiamen as I was bored and didn't know many people yet so it seemed like a good idea.  I enjoyed it and I was added to their social media group.  Once I was in that group several people added me on the platform.  This was nothing new.  Chinese people, especially those learning English, jump at every chance they have to connect with an English speaker.  Many of these conversations are incredibly dull as they're all the same.  "Where are you from?" "Do you like Chinese food?" "Why did you come to China?" etc.  I talk to them anyway but the conversations usually die within a day or two.
However one of the people who added me was not like this at all.  One of the first things she said was that she likes games and lord of the rings.  We talked for a bit then decided to meet.  Then we decided to meet again... and again.  Well, you get the idea.  Anyway, we've been dating now for four months and I am beyond happy with her.  There is just so much to love about her. I can't wait for everyone to meet her, I'm hoping to bring her to Canada this summer.  But, rather than fill this ENTIRE space about how great she is, I guess I better move on.
Classes at my new school here are tough.  It's still a college and the school itself is significantly better than my last school however at my last job I taught English majors with class sizes of about 30.  Now I teach a variety of majors with about 50 students in a class.  Many of these students feel that English class is a waste of time and their Chinese teachers reinforce that by telling them my class isn't really that important for them academically.  This makes my job difficult as many of them will refuse to use English at all if I'm not directly standing there, but I also cannot supervise 50 students at a time.  I manage, and the majority of students really seem to like my class, even the ones who think English is dumb.  I'm trying now to figure out what to teach next semester as my normal curriculum I've developed would not work in these conditions.

She's going to be in most of my pictures. Get used to it.

Outside of work I've had a lot of fun exploring Xiamen and its surrounding area.  There are lots of gorgeous mountains and mountain villages.  I bought a Yamaha YBR250 motorcycle and it's been great for taking Nicole and I around to lots of interesting hideaways.
On the main island of Xiamen motorcycles are not allowed.  It's annoying as I have to take a bus to get there when I could drive but not living on the island means I can own my own bike and go to all these cool places on the mainland.
Once a week I also had people over to my place to play Dungeons and Dragons.  It was all people new to it except me so I ended up leading it.  There was definitely a learning curve but people seemed to have fun and we're planning to continue this year.

On November 6 I turned 30 and I had a big party at my place.  We went to a restaurant then back to my place where I told people to bring their favourite desserts.  I made several non-bake (I have no oven) cakes as well as chocolate-covered peanut butter balls and they were a massive hit.  I even had a friend fly in all the way from Qingdao just for one night for my birthday, it was really special.
Nicole's birthday is exactly a week after mine but, after the craziness of my party, we kept it low key. I made her a few gifts which she loved. Like really, loved. It's so much fun to give her things and see her eyes light up.
I always like Christmas.  Especially in China, it's a chance to make my home feel like home.  In Dongying I used to decorate my place and my patio and last year I even decorated an area outside for students to see.  This year I had Nicole to help me set up.  It was a fun experience to teach her about Christmas traditions.  I was pretty happy with the end result and figured it should be shared, so I asked around and, when it became apparent that no one else was doing it, I planned a Christmas potluck for my place.
I was done teaching just before Christmas, but Nicole and I had planned to go to Philippines together in mid-January so I had a few weeks to relax, explore, and play some PS4 but the whole time I was really looking forward to my upcoming trip with Nicole.  It would be our first time away together.  I had zero doubt it would be awesome.
I was right.
We flew to Manila Jan 14.  We only stayed one night as Manila isn't really an especially interesting city and I wanted to get to our next destination.  I realize now that was a mistake, next time I want to stay a few days more for her.  We arrived and found our hotel then we went walking around the city for awhile.  Manila has A LOT of street kids.  Nicole had never seen anything like it before and she was definitely fascinated/moved by it.  Next time I want to take her to visit my friend who runs a school there for kids like that.  He's told me he'd love to have us there and I know she'd really find it eye-opening.
The next morning we flew to Coron.  I had always wanted to go here as I was told it has really good diving so I figured that would mean snorkeling as well.  While there wasn't snorkeling immediately off-shore, it wasn't hard to get there by boat.
During out time in Coron we did a lot of snorkeling.  Nicole isn't a great swimmer and wore a life jacket but she got better quickly and by the end she was trying some on her own.  I also did a day of diving.  Nicole came along as a snorkeler but has decided that "next time we go" she wants to try diving.
We stayed at quite a few different places but everywhere we went Nicole seemed to make friends with whoever was there.  There's just no danger with her that she'll sit in a corner and feel sorry for herself if I'm not right there at the moment.
The older girl in this picture worked at a travel agency.  We went in looking for snorkeling information.  We didn't want to do island hopping at this time as it only gives you about 30 minutes at each spot and I wanted to be able to relax and help Nicole as this would be her first time snorkeling.  The girl working there said she didn't have anything like that but her dad had a boat.  If we met her the next morning she'd take us to her town and her dad would take us to a nearby snorkeling spot.  So that's what we did.  In this picture we're riding in a tricycle along with the girl's friends/sisters.
I had booked hotels for everywhere except 2 nights of the trip.  Those 2 nights I figured that we would figure out when we arrived.  We decided to do a 2 night camping trip around some of the islands.  The company would give us a boat with 2 people to be guides/run the boat and they'd take us to lots of interesting places for a few days and we'd sleep on some private beaches.  Sounded cool so we went for it and it was awesome.
We saw some great coral spots with lots of fish.  I had brought a loaf of bread along. Most of the fish would come up close if there was food but they were skittish, however one area I could tell they were more aggressive and they ate right out of your hand.  Here's a video of Nicole trying what I showed her:

After 2 weeks Nicole headed home for Chinese New Year and I went to an island called Siargao for 2 weeks.  It's a surfer's paradise.  I'm not a surfer and have no interest in it as they seem to float out there for an hour before finally choosing a wave that they like but the waves there were massive.  It was fun to just watch them.  I love playing in waves but couldn't here as the rip tide was insane and the rocks were a little bit too intimidating.  I basically just relaxed and read books during this time.
On my way back I stopped in Manila for 3 nights and met a few friends.  I also did some shopping, loading up on things that are made in China but not sold in China.
I'm back in China now. Everyone told me that it's "so cold" here right now... well it was 10C last night which is a bit cold since houses only have space heaters but today it's already almost 20 so I think I'll be ok.  I'm getting ready for the next semester now and soon I'll start the visa process to bring Nicole to Canada this summer.  It's a really long, annoying process.  You're prayers are appreciated for this as I really want to bring her home.
I've put lots of pictures.  There's no way for me to share all at once anymore so each album needs a link. So here they are:

Pictures from October to December 2017 (I've added new pictures here since last posted)
Pictures taken on my phone from the new year's trip
Pictures taken with my underwater camera from new year's trip

I've captioned a lot of my pictures that I've uploaded, if you'd like more stories from my trip, feel free to look there.  I don't know why the captions are so tiny at the bottom but I've looked everywhere and that's just how it is on this site, sorry.

Hope you're all having a great 2017 despite the current insanity in the world.  I always love to hear from you.  Drop my an email if you think of it!
Josh

Getting settled into Xiamen a rather unfriendly typhoon came to say hi

Hi all! Thanks for your concern over the past week of typhoon-related shenanigans. I'll share with you here what my first month has been like.
So when I arrived in Xiamen they told me I'd have to switch apartments from the one they had given me in June.  Fortunately it was just one floor above my old one.  The reason given was "the internet doesn't work so you need to move".  I have no idea why they couldn't just fix the internet.  Also, in my new apartment the internet didn't work anyway because of course it didn't.
The old washing machine was better than the new one so I decided to switch them. Seemed easy enough.  However when I went to snap the water hose onto the tap the whole tap snapped in half.  That's right.  I was able to snap a metal tap with my bare hands.  Either Chinese food has made me immensely strong or the candy metal they use here simply gave up on life.
Water was flying everywhere.  Fortunately I knew where the master valve was to turn it off for the whole apartment. But now I had a tap broken off inside the wall with no way to get it out.
I went downstairs and managed to convey my problem to a guard.  He said someone would come by
in the afternoon.  Amazingly he came by quite soon after. He looked at it said "30 kuai" (about $6) then pointed to a shop right downstairs and told me to get a new tap.  I got one for 20 kuai and when I came back up he had it fixed.  This is a major success story for me!
In my first month here I've managed to meet a lot of people.  It's been really fun.
Then Meranti decided to come.  Everyone who had been here for a long time laughed and said that every year a typhoon comes and there are warnings saying that it will be awful and then they kept a bit of wind and rain it's it's done.  They all said not to worry.  They were wrong.  Meranti hit with winds around 200kpm after it annoyingly missed Taiwan so it didn't lose any force.  It also hit Xiamen dead-center.  They say it was the biggest storm to hit the area since 1959 however the wording says it was the biggest "since records started being kept in 1959" which makes me believe it's the biggest one they've every recorded.
 90% of the street trees were uprooted.  I'm not going to write out the whole experience here, rather I added captions in most of the pictures I put up.  If you want to know, please check out the gallery.

Most people were without power the next morning but it was quickly restored to some (read: upper class) areas.  The school had power the next day and the area where most of the other teachers live had power about 4 days later.  I stayed a night at a friend's house at that time.
Fortunately my complex had a generator which would run occasionally and give us water as well as power one elevator which was a welcome reprieve.  This, combined with my huge power bank, let me get through it but by day 7 I was tired of not being able to sleep anywhere except on my balcony hammock so I packed a suitcase.
I went out to get a few things done and I timed it to be back when I believed the generator would be running.  When I got back it was off.  I asked when it would start and they told me it "didn't have" something.  I assumed they meant it had no more gas so I climbed the 18 floors carrying to large pictures I had just gotten framed.  I got to the top exhausted, just in time to hear the generator start up.
I figured I'd take advantage so I grabbed my suitcase and headed for the elevator. I told my boss I was going to come to the school and stay in one of the empty dorms until the power was back.  On the way down the elevator stopped and the fix-it guy got in.  He said he thought the power would be back that afternoon.  It left me with a tough decision of what to do.  I decided to go back up and wait.  About 10 minutes later the power came back. So I was quite glad I didn't leave.
I started classes this week.  The class sizes are massive to be teaching spoken English.  Ideally a class would have about 8 students.  All mine have 45-60.  Their levels are also all over the place so it's going to be an interesting challenge.
The typhoon has also messed up the holidays.  I was supposed to get 3 weeks off in October while the freshmen did military drills but now the military is busy cleaning up so they're too busy so now I just get the standard one week.  I know most of you won't really feel pity for me in that.  However that one week is insane to go anywhere as the entire country travels so you pretty much have to stay home.  I was going to use the subsequent weeks to go somewhere cool.  Oh well, guess I'll have to wait until January.
Thank you all for your concern! Please look through the pictures and comment if you're interested.
Josh

Note: Google has annoyingly gotten rid of Picasa which was an excellent way for me to upload and share pictures.  If you click the pictures link on the right it will show you all my old albums but it will not include anything after that cut-off date.  Now the only way to share is to link each new album.  There's no way to give you a link where you can see all the albums.  This is frustrating for anyone who wants to go back through albums.    I guess the only real option is to create a link on each post to each album created after July 2016.  For now it's just the one.

Meranti typhoon album

Also note, I've added a lot of captions to the pictures but the writing is quite small at the bottom of the screen so I hope you don't miss it.

To Xiamen! (part 2)

So I spent the past week in Xiamen exploring, getting my new apartment and doing visa paperwork.
So I sent some boxes ahead (see my previous post) and then followed by train.  I needed to take a slow train to a nearby city and then a fast (but still 11 hour) one south to Xiamen.  The first leg went off without a hitch.  However when I arrived at the next city and attempted to pick up my train ticket I had some problems.  I had bought my tickets online but I still had to pick them up at the station. The lady at the window took my document and everything came up right away and she printed a ticket. However the machine was nearly out of ink and she claimed it couldn't be read. This sounds like the easiest problem in the world to solve right? Wrong! I was told that she couldn't reprint it and would have to cancel the whole ticket and reissue a new one. This seemed absolutely insane since the problem was entirely on their end.  However (as usual) arguing that this made no sense didn't work.  Eventually I had to agree, however they couldn't actually just transfer the money and give me a new ticket.  No, they had to refund the original one which I had used a card to buy so it would go on the card I was told, but I couldn't use that card to buy a new ticket, I had to pay cash.  So suddenly I had

A city that nerds to specify "aquatic" seafood
understandably can't figure out how to reprint a ticket.

to have a large amount of cash on me to pay for this ticket.  Perfect.  Fortunately I had enough on me but the whole thing took way too long.
The next day I made the 1,800km trip on a fast train which took just under 11 hours.  Those trains are really nice as they are on time, move fast, and are clean.  The slower trains here are... not those things.  I managed to watch nearly the entire first season of Homeland.

first view from my apartment

I arrived in Xiamen around 9pm and was met by a lady from the university who took explained that the apartment I was supposed to go to wasn't ready but I'd be staying in a different one.  The apartment she took me to was quite barren but is on the 17th floor and has a great view over the city and the bay.  The view was awesome but the apartment was so barren that I wasn't sure what to think.  She told me I could keep that one or she'd show me others the next day.
The university and apartment are not in Xiamen proper, but rather in an area called Jimei. Xiamen proper is an island.  It's where most of the tourist stuff is as well as the beaches however it's also very expensive and there are strict rules (absolutely no motorcycles on the island). Jimei is right across the water, much cheaper and easier to get out of town.  It's also really easy to get onto the island but transit during the day. The only annoying part is trying to get home at night which means a $20 cab ride but I likely won't do this too often and living in Jimei looks to be pretty cool.
The next morning I had to go do my medical required to get my visa.  It went pretty smoothly as this facility was set up especially for people who need their visa. Compared to Dongying where no one knew what was going on, it was great.  Of course they did make me take my shirt off to do an x-ray which I thought was weird.

The XMUT (Xiamen University of Technology) campus

In the afternoon I was shown the campus and met a few of the people I'd be dealing with at the new job.  The campus is gorgeous with lots of trees, grass, and mountains in the background.  I also looked at some other apartments including one that clearly used to be a store but was converted into an apartment.  They were nice places and the location was much closer to the school that mine, however I loved the view from mine too much so I stuck with the one they gave me originally.
I met up with my friend Matthew who I met 1.5 years ago when doing the CELTA.  He's the one who happened to be in the room while I was doing the interview in the spring.  Over the next few days he showed me around a lot.  We went to the beach on the island and the water was almost HOT, not just warm, but hot.  It was glorious.

The Wise Bar is open!

We also went to a furniture market and I got some bar stools and a table to set up the Wise Bar on my balcony.
Eventually I went to get my visa.  They say it takes 3 weeks so I'm without a passport for that duration.  I was given a receipt certifying that the local police have my passport and I was told I could use the paper to fly.  I was hesitant but it worked fine to fly back to Dongying. The annoying thing is that the paper is needed to get my passport back so I need to mail it back to Xiamen to my boss who will use it to get my passport then mail my passport to me.  Should be fine but is a little ridiculous.  I'm supposed to get my passport back July 18, then it needs to be mailed here which may take 3ish days.  I'll probably book a July 23 flight just to be safe.  I fly back to Xiamen Aug 16.  I'm looking forward to seeing everyone, especially Hannah and Daniel who I haven't seen since they were in China!
My current school has thrown a small wrinkle at me.  They want to "redecorate" this apartment so they want me out by the end of my contract (July 15).  Normally I could stay here and no one would even notice.  This means I'll need to find a place for a week or so but that shouldn't be too difficult and I've already been given several options. It's just a bit of an annoyance.
I'm really excited about Xiamen and was sad to leave.  It's a great city with lots to do and see.  I'll need to make new friends but I've already been added to a chat group called "Xiamen nerds" so things seem to be going well.  Dongying has been a lot of fun and I've met some great people and learned a lot but it's definitely time for me to be leaving and moving to this job in Xiamen seems to be about the perfect place for me to go.  A few people in Xiamen warned me that Xiamen gets "really cold" in the winter because there will be 2 or 3 nights in January when it gets down to 5C.  I laughed, that isn't cold at all and that sounds great to me!
My apartment has a king size bed in the spare room so come on over and visit next year! Hong Kong and Taiwan are easily accessible from Xiamen too.  I've loved it so much when people have come over to visit.  I realize that not everyone can do so but know that every one of you is welcome and I'd be thrilled to see you!
Josh
PS I just uploaded a tonne of pictures from March to present including some of Xiamen and what I've been doing in Dongying.  They can be found at the link on the right or here.