The End of Craziness (Hopefully....)

So things have been a little crazy here for the last few weeks. Changing jobs was much more difficult then I imagined. My boss at Shane (the job I left) has refused to hand over some important papers that my new job needs in order for me to legally work there. I've been told it is illegal for my boss at Shane to not give me these papers, but he apparently does not care. We joke that he must be some kind of mental case because he is acting highly irrational and although he has a right to be angry at my leaving, refusing to give me my documents, especially when I gave him notice before quitting, is a little extreme. We've definitely been having a little bit of a rough start here in China! But we're learning as we go along. Fortunately, I was paid for my last month of work. I was concerned that he would try to not pay me, but he did. So the worst thing that could happen now is that I would have to retake my health exam (which is unhealthy to redo so soon and would cost me nearly 100 USD, but whatever I guess). I took one before, but he won't give me my results, so I'll probably have to get another one. So frustrating!

On the positive side, I'm enjoying my job at Kid Castle very much. I love the people I work with and I've made some good friends. The kids are a challenge to teach, but I feel I'm adjusting. Thankfully, there are some wonderful people there who are helping me work out this mess with my previous job and have even helped Erik and me with our apartment issues.

Like Erik said, we’ve decided to hold off on getting a new apartment for now. Although we would like to get a nicer place, this one is extremely cheap and we're able to save a lot of money. Mostly, neither of us wants to deal with any more stress or making new adjustments.

Though, we've been busy, we've still managed to have some fun. On Monday, I went to Suzhou, a city about an hour away from Shanghai, with the staff at Kid Castle. They treated us to it because the school met the recruitment goal for this year. Since I've only just started work there, I was not really apart of it, but got to go anyway. It was a very fun day. Suzhou is a beautiful city that is called "the Venice of Shanghai" because of the many rivers that flow through it. There are many beautiful gardens there. We toured one of them and also went to the Suzhou Museum which I found to be a little boring, but I enjoyed feeding the fish in the pond. They were so huge! And they would jump out of the water and fight for the cookies. We also did a little shopping, of course which was also enjoyable.

Today we hung out with one of our friends from the U.S. who's here for a little while. Always good to do that. And to get an American breakfast of pancakes and a chocolate shake. (I guess a chocolate shake isn't really breakfast, but it’s so hard to find good ones here!)

Erik and I are looking forward to our trip to South Korea next month. We'll be staying there for 8 days and hopefully will be doing a little traveling around the country. Erik is looking forward to seeing one of his friends who has been teaching English there for the past year. Should be fun!

Not too much else going on, hopefully I'll get all my stuff sorted out soon.