East is Relative

Home again

I arrived safely in Chicago yesterday and had some good deep-dish Chicago-style pizza with my dad, stepmom and brothers. Pretty awesome way to arrive in America, I’d say.

I’m still processing about everything. It was weird to get dimes back as change in the Seattle airport (the common Y1 coins in China are a lot heavier). It was weird to see people waiting to get on the airport tram until after everyone else had gotten off. It was weird to see people driving in the lines on the streets (when I picked up my car, I was worried I’d forget the rules of the road; I didn’t). Things are just…weird right now. As is to be expected. I’m going to go into full-on job hunt in the next few days. I need some serious cash to pay my credit card bill, student loan payment, car insurance, and cell phone bill. I’ll also be applying for teaching jobs for the 2010-2011 school year. Wish me luck on that. More news as I really start to interact with America again.

Also, Chengdu pictures have actually been added to the photos page; I had uploaded them to flickr, but didn’t put them in a set, so they weren’t showing up. Sorry for that. Also, all the videos I’ve taken (8 total) have been added to the “China Videos” set, as well as the set for the location where they were taken, so if you want to look at those, you can find them both places now. There are videos from Chengdu, Lhasa, Hanzhong, Yangshuo (the Return of the Laowai set), Changsha (the Round 2 set), and Shimen No. 1 Middle School. enjoy!