Reasons to not go home

• Everything is cheap; 3-4 kuai to travel across shanghai on the metro, you can easily get a drink for 20 kuai, or 10, or for free (if you're female) and eating til your stuffed for 12 kuai is a perfectly feasable thing.

• A (small) part of me never wants to ever go back to the gym. But then again, when you wear 3 layers everyday against the cold there's nothing to scrutinise.

• The lazy me can temporarily avoid responsibility, like going to uni and working and eating healthy and exercising regularly.

• European boys. Shanghai is an expats paradise, and oh! the variety!

• I haven't personally experienced racism over the past three months. And I know it's China, but it's the same in Europe. It's sad but there is an overwhelming number of Australians around where I live who are just completely intolerant. 

After nearly five months overseas, within a mere couple of days of being home, a friend of some friends, who I didn't even know, made a snide comment while standing directly behind me to some other person I didn't know about how Gangnam style (that had just come on in the pub) was my song. Firstly, I am not Korean. Secondly, who are you? And thirdly, why do I even care? I turned around, laughed at his ignorance and left.

Don't get me wrong, I love my country, and it's always great to hear an Aussie accent while I'm travelling. In fact, every Australian I've stumbled upon while overseas has been awesome, does that just mean that all the ones that suck don't travel? Because it can't just be Sydney.

• FRUNDS. Yes, Shel actually has friends now, friends that she doesn't want to part with :'( Friends that I have to thank for the past month and a half, the reasons I have finally fallen for Shanghai!

Reasons to go home

• The weather. Warmth. The sun. Mild winters.
• Friends that I miss like HELL.
• Family.
• Drinkable tap water.
• Easily accesible healthy fresh food.
• A good gym.
• Uni - I'm actually really looking forward to learning again. I missed it while in Europe, and learning Mandarin for the past month has reminded me how much I actually enjoy learning about things I'm interested in.
• Shitty clubs = less drinking - Shanghai has been spoiling me, I've been overdoing it a bit here.

Happy New Year! (Again)

On Chinese New Year Eve Eve it snowed and resulted in me running around my complex like a little kid enthusastically stomping the ground and shaking every branch I could reach and losing all feeling in my hands. Oh and taking a million photos. That night people thought I was crazy because I was so over the moon about it, but the thing that all these Europeans don't understand is that in Australia it doesn't really snow, ever. And I was never a kid that got to go to the perisher or thredbo every year like everyone else and learn a snowsport, like I didn't grow up with nippers and surfing, bar one week at Let's Go Surfing in Bondi when I was like 12.

From the moment I woke up on New Years Eve, there was not one five minute period during which I did not hear fireworks. For dinner we had enough food to feed at least 50 people and then we set off our own fireworks like the rest of China while I squealed with uncontrollable joy.

At midnight I experienced a little deja vu while watching the fireworks on the bund because I'd been there a month and a half before for a different new years. Trippy as.

Chinese New Year is about 50 billion times more epic than western New Year because it lasts for 15 days and the whole country stops. For me, it has thus far involved a lot of eating and little red envelopes which, I mean, is fine by me.

So, Xin nian kuai le! Gong xi fa cai! Shen ti jian kang! Wan xi ru yi!

Note:

A friend has been lovely enough to let me use her VPN and I think I just sucked up a lot of her usage uploading these photos so these will probably be the last photos you'll see until I can put more up when I get home! Sorry Myrna!