November 26, 2008

Thanks!!

2008 has been, beyond all measures, the most eventful year of my life. So what am I thankful for?
  • Seeing lots of incredible places in China, including (but not limited to) the Great Wall and Mt. Everest
  • Experiencing not only a different culture, but that culture's take on my culture
  • Experiencing everyday/non-tourist life here -- waking up, getting to work, paying bills, eating dinner, buying clothes, going grocery shopping, walking in the rain, learning the layout of the city, etc.
  • Learning a bit of Chinese
  • Phreaktion and Void
  • 2 kuai zhu rou baozi on the street
  • The chance to do something completely different at work
  • Staying in touch with friends & family back home
  • Sichuan food
  • Fried bees, fried scorpions, yak's eyeballs, rabbit, pigeon, duck's blood, spicy duck neck, etc.
  • Baseball (the O's notwithstanding)
  • The Shelter, Garden Books, LoGo, Thumb Plaza, Taikang Lu, Moganshan Lu, Fuzhou Lu, People's Square, Bonbon, Zhongshan Park, and all the other places in Shanghai that help keep me sane
  • Same goes for Big Bamboo in Jing'an
  • All the restaurants and their yummy food
  • Liang Jian
  • My Sony DSC H50 and flickr
  • My Lenovo T61, wireless router, and Google (Blogger, Gmail, GCal, and most importantly, Reader)
  • Facebook, last.fm, and Friendfeed
  • My iPod Classic, decent headphones, and iTunes
  • HandBrake
  • My China co-workers and friends and all the help they've been in making sense of this crazy city
  • All the cabbies, barbers, retail workers, watch/bag/DVD salesmen, and others who've complimented my Chinese in one way or another
  • Wii!
  • The Shanghai transportation system -- seriously, it's really really nice
  • Books and movies
  • Music! Oh wait, I already said iTunes.
  • Xiao Xu
  • My immune system -- it's help up amazingly well over here
  • My fleece jacket and scarf (it's cold over here now ...)
There's a lot more that I can't think of at the moment, but this is a pretty good list, I think.

So kids: what are you thankful for?

2 comments:

Bob London is... said...

I am thankful for your blog!

Spirit FF said...

a lot of list to thank to but for sure Sweet P is in it;) I am happy for you that you had a great year!