- 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?
