Hiatus

I know, I know - I've been gone. I know I always say this, whether or not it's true, but I've been busy. No, really, I have. No sooner had Socrates left than I set off on an adventure in illustrating with my good buddy, Ger. Ger was also interested in starting a writing club, and since I've been trying to find the discipline to get my own children's book written and illustrated (not necessarily in that order), so on alternating weeks I'm either having a brainstorming "coffee" on Pluto, or meeting with the writers. I want to keep pretty tight-lipped about my own book, but Ger's got a website if you want to read the story we've been working on - it's Plip and the Purple Princess, which you can find here: http://www.ebookswithger.com

This has been really challenging for me. My drawings have a definite style to them, and I wouldn't describe it as "sci-fi picture book," but that's exactly what I'm doing. Plip is a little Plutonian boy who dreams of having ten arms with ten fingers on each and very long ears like his Grandpa Zoop. Yep. Ten arms. Ten fingers. How do you even illustrate such a thing? Well, something like this:

I stole from Hindu sculpture in order to manage this one. Shiva's only got four arms, but I knew other deities had more, and Kali, as it turns out, has ten. She was the inspiration for the arms.

I couldn't for the life of me think of anywhere I'd seen anyone or anything with ten fingers on one hand, but I laid my two hands on top of each other, and came up with this. I was pretty pleased with it - if we're so advanced (as opposed to animals) because we have a thumb on each hand, how much more advanced would a species with TWO thumbs be???

This is a scene I drew of Plip leaving for his first day of school. On Pluto, you have to learn to count BEFORE you have fingers, so Plip only has one finger on each hand. If Plip can learn to count to ten, he'll have ten fingers on each hand... The educational bits about counting and colors will make some nice graphic layouts, I think, and the colors should be out of this world (pun totally intended there, people).

I'm also trying to get back to the belly. I've been taking lessons almost since I got into Shanghai, but I haven't been an especially diligent student. Sometimes I think this is because there's not a whole lot of review from one lesson to the next, but I know (duh duh duh-duh duh) it's my own damn fault. I need to practice on my own to make progress, and I'm not doing it. I still love the dance as much as ever, but life gets busy and I'm a lot fatter than I was in my "glory days," which might explain why I still haven't bought a mirror to practice in front of. What I lack in quality I'm trying to make up for with quantity - my gym offers a class on Tuesday night, and I'm very likely going to start taking classes across the street, as I've discovered the yoga studio there offers them, and after a tip from the Evil One I've downloaded Kim Pechet's "Shimmy" workout show, which makes a nice (if cheesy) way to start the day...

...but really? What I really need is to perform. I'm doing this in May - I'm going to Azhaar's World Belly Dance Day extravaganza, and she's invited me to dance in her show - but although there are lots and lots of dancers here, I have yet to hear of any haflas or shows, nevermind be given a chance to perform. I have dreams of setting up a group like Azhaar's MECDACK, but I'm not the organizer she is, and I don't have a faithful sidekick like Kim to help me BECOME one, so right now it's just in the research stage. Someday, though...

A-boom, boom, boom, BOOM!

And...it begins again.

So last night was New Year's Eve here in China, the one that really counts - Lunar New Year, or Chinese New Year to most of the world, even though, in fact, it is celebrated at about this time all over Asia and is known by a different name in pretty much each country (for instance, Seol-Nal in Korea, or Osho-gatsu in Japan). People have been intermittently shooting off fireworks essentially since I got here, but the frequency with which your ears are assaulted by their reports has steadily increased over the last few weeks to a fever pitch last night.

Damn, I feel sorry for kids who only get to blow things up once a year.

Being an open-minded sort of person, I decided I would join in the fun - I bought a pack of sparklers and the smallest amount of firecrackers I could (1000) at the stand I came across on Tuesday afternoon. There was one on my street corner, but I passed it by, and never came back to it. Oops. I burned all the sparklers standing on my balcony around 9 last night then went down to set off my 1000 firecrackers in the parking lot...see, I'm catsitting, and I didn't think Puddin would have been too happy with me if I set 1000 firecrackers off on the balcony. I figured it would take a while for them all to go off, and I didn't want her having a heart attack or, worse, diarrhea from the scare, but as it turns out, a thousand firecrackers only FEELS like it should take a long time exploding. In actual fact, that 4-foot string of firecrackers which feels like Rambo ought to be feeding it into his machine gun, when lit, is over in about 30 seconds. Not even a minute. Who knew?


I felt like I'd done my part to ring in the year of the rabbit. I got settled into my apartment and started watching Glee again, but just past 11 it became impossible to continue - there were just too many flashes of light distracting me. I went to my room and tried to read, but this was even more distracting, because I could see them out my window, in the distance. As midnight approached, it became RIDICULOUS how many bursts of light there were going off, some of them directly outside my window. Frickin cool is all I can say. Sometimes I'm thankful for China's lack of public safety laws.

Well, after opening the window long enough to realize how much sound two panes of glass actually DOES kill, get high on the smell of gunpowder, and get these pictures, I managed to fall asleep. I woke randomly four hours later to bug Socrates on Skype, and it was eerily quiet...for about five minutes, and then I heard the reassuring sound, in the distance, of small explosives going off. Yes, even at 4:30 in the morning, somebody in Shanghai was still lighting fireworks. Naively, I thought that perhaps it was going to quiet down after last night, while hoping otherwise, but no - it's 8:30 at night and already the artillery brigade is going. Most excellent! From the window last night I could see the parking lots accumulating a covering of shredded red paper, and although the groundskeepers of our complex had cleaned pretty much all of it up by this morning, it looked something like this:

It's a good thing the Chinese parents don't have the same kind of work ethic mine did growing up, because those kids would have been out there trying to clean up the mess all day.

Cycling Shanghai

Due to a lack of funding*, I am spending my first vacation in a VERY long time in my own apartment. This is fine. I have lots of things I need to do. Hell, I joined the gym for this specific reason. Of course, the gym won't reopen for another day or two, due to the holidays, and I can't find the motivation to work on things like my illustrations or unit planners, so instead I've been reading Sharon Shinn's Twelve Houses series and watching Glee, and once a day going out for a bike ride. Shanghai is a little bit soulless - what can you expect from a city built on the opium trade? But it does have its moments. These are a few of the ones I've found while I've been tearing up the streets on my bike the last few days...


The thing I've really loved about biking all over the city is the fact that you get a much wider-angle view of it. Riding the subway you see nothing. Riding in a taxi everything goes by much quicker. But down on the ground, pedaling, you see everything as it goes by. You realize how huge and high those elevated roads are. I still haven't begun to feel for Shanghai what I felt in Seoul, but on the other hand, I never could have cycled across Seoul. Hell, don't know if I even WOULD have. It's a much bigger city and with Namsan being smack dab in the middle it's harder to navigate, and much less bicycle friendly. Some people thought I was crazy for getting a bike here, but I stand by my assertion that it's a pretty great place to ride.


Just when I thought I had left the last year of my life behind, I pedal down Yishan Lu, cross under the middle ring road, and get smacked in the face with THIS. RAK Ceramics was the parent company of RAKESS, and thus the sponsor of my UAE visa. It brought chills to see it again...and not the nice kind.


So, today I finally got to visit Jing'An Temple. The smell of incense wafting out the gate literally stopped me in my tracks. I can't really explain why, but I love Buddhist temples. There's the smell of the incense, and the architecture, and that feeling of being somewhere so completely foreign. I find them incredibly peaceful. And Jing'An is a pretty good one.


And finally...red underpants, hanging out to dry over the sidewalk. Found this little gem in the French Concession. But there is a reason WHY there are so many pairs of red underwear - apparently wearing red knickers is some kind of good luck at Chinese new year. APPARENTLY they have the power to scare tigers and an evil monster called Nian Shou. I say, any excuse for red underwear is a good excuse.


*if anyone out there wants to donate to the "Send Mutrux to yet another fabulous destination you're too lame to visit" fund, email me and I'll send you my paypal info :-D

Coups, and Hips, and Healing Facts

The problem with having a really lovely, warm apartment is the fact that it's hard to find the motivation to go anywhere else, knowing it's going to be colder there than at home. I haven't been to the gym since last Friday. So far I have not made the membership worth my money. Oh well, I've got 50 more weeks to do that.

One of my thoughts from the gym last week focused on what might have been if I hadn't come to China. If it hadn't been for Socrates, I wouldn't have applied to my school. Well, now he is gone - really gone - and I've been in a funk, and I ask myself whether it wouldn't have been easier if I'd only had to live through his leaving once. And I thought of the fact that if I'd stayed at RAKESS, I would have ended with two years under my belt, and right now would have been looking for jobs in Lima, where Evil will be moving this year. But then I realized that if I'd stayed in the UAE, I probably would have found myself working as a classroom teacher, or an ESL teacher, when the Trunchbull cut RAKESS' art program. Seeing as my current school was more interested in using me as a kindergarten teacher than an art teacher as it was, I think another year outside the art room might have ruined my career prospects. Thus, as hard as the last month has been, I've come to the conclusion that I'm ahead of the game.

Speaking of ESL, I managed my own personal coup at school this week. For the last semester I've been carrying the heaviest class load of any teacher there, and two hours of it have been ESL. This has not sat particularly well with me, and I've tried to make strategic battles against the situation, but a true opportunity to amend the situation didn't come until Wednesday. After our student-led conference day, I was pulled into a meeting with three of our powers that be, and had it explained to me that there was a problem with my schedule. The Chinese teacher who has been taking one of the grades for art was needed to teach more Chinese, due to an influx of second semester students. Their solution was to split his grade and give me two of the classes, give him my fourth graders, and thus fix the problem. They still wanted to keep me in ESL because the kindergarten classes were filling up and they were going to need the help. But there were some other issues brought up by this, and far be it from me not to press them to my advantage. Namely:
1. I knew at least one fourth grade parent was going to have a problem with Dingleberry taking those classes.
2. I didn't particularly want to have to plan units/lessons that he was going to have to teach, because he doesn't actually KNOW how to teach.
3. I was adamant that if I was continuing the ESL, that it would be in-class support only, that it was not fair to me or the kids to make me sacrifice art prep so that I could do a pull-out ESL class, which would take much more time.
Then as we were discussing this, I pointed out the fact that, at the beginning of the year, PE, Music, and myself were all told we would have to teach some ESL, but only I had been made to do so. PYP said, "Oh, I think PE is free during first period...I wonder how full his schedule is..." I had to work hard not to grin, as I knew for a FACT that PE was only teaching 12 hours, and he was about to get busted!

So that took care of my ESL problem. I suggested that if my kindergarteners only had one art class a week, that I would then be able to take ALL of the classes in ALL year groups. This would make one of the kindergarten teachers pretty happy, and create a solution to Dingleberry's obstinance regarding criticism of his art teaching methods. PYP did a little schedule juggling, and yours truly is now teaching each class in every grade once a week. This means a little more planning for me, but on the whole, I'm pretty pleased with myself.

I haven't been very good about my resolution to not eat out this week, either. I had good intentions when I cooked my sweet and sour chicken on Tuesday night, but the following two nights I had dinner dates with a couple of friends. One was a girl Azhaar introduced me to on facebook, who had taken belly dance lessons with her in Seoul. We agreed to meet at the stop where our subway lines meet, which just so happens to be Xujiahui, a pretty major shopping and eating area, and the place of December's MARVELOUS (that's only half sarcastic) staff dinner. So I looked up the Xinjiang restaurant in Lonely Planet, figuring a fellow belly dancer would enjoy the food and the dancing both, and she did...but it didn't actually turn out to be the same restaurant (I think the other place was actually better food, and the dancers did a few more diverse styles, but this place didn't cart the lamb around with its head still attached going, "Baaaa!") She and I were - enthusiastic - audience members, to say the least, a fact which the uyghur staff found pretty amusing. As if being tall and redheaded didn't make me enough of a target. So during the third or fourth song I found myself being led up on stage by the male dancer, and being a bit of an exhibitionist, I found the experience of having a little dance off with a good-looking Chinese Muslim delightful. And the new friend turned out to be pretty cool, too.

Lastly...it has been hard letting Socrates go, but I'm getting better at it. Sunday I spent a while comparing our friendship to my heyday with my Dark Lord and Master, and I realized that - for a number of reasons - this was a piece of cake compared to boarding that final plane out of Korea. I also found myself thinking of his assertion before he left that I would be fine without him. That's something I realized when I was back in Korea, before he'd even lost his job with Soul Sucking International School. What I finally figured out this week was almost poetic:
No matter how much I want him, I don't need him.
No matter how much he needs me, he doesn't want me.
I think that makes me pretty lucky. And if that thought fails to cheer me up, Bohemian Rhapsody sung with vigor during a school sponsored karaoke night ALWAYS does the trick.

Oh the Weather Outside is Frightful-

But here in O'hare International airport at least I'm not getting kicked out at 2 am.

I was supposed to get into Omaha three hours ago. Unfortunately it started snowing big American-sizey snowflakes around the time we touched down, and an hour after I was supposed to leave, my flight got cancelled.

Dude, I kid you not. At one time I had really good travel karma. No idea what's become of it.

So I was forced to buy Oingo-Boingo credit, forced to scour the airport for tampons and a USB plug (uhhhh, for two completely different reasons, and am now about to go see if macca's here has Reese's McFlurries on offer at 1:30 in the a.m. Because, you know, when in Rome, right?

Remember a few weeks back, that comment I made about quaint little places? >sigh< Yep.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Oh. Boy. Where do I even start with this? This is what happens when time picks up.

So about a month ago our Chinese principal tells me I have to make Christmas crafts for the charity bazaar that takes place during the school's pre-holiday extravaganza, and that I have to decorate the stage for the Christmas program. I - calmly and politely - protested that a month wasn't enough time for me. She - calmly and politely - informed me that the old art teacher didn't find this to be a problem so maybe I had been a poor choice for the position. I said that I'd get it all done, but that I didn't appreciate being told things at the last moment.

Yes. One month's warning is the last moment when it involves small children you see once a week making cutesy crafts.

Two weeks later, the coordinator in charge of the dog and pony show...errr...the extravaganza...comes and tells me I'm supposed to head up the parents' committee for decorating the whole school, as well. I - somewhat more forcefully than with the principal - inform her that I had more than enough to be getting on with at the moment. She once again lobbed back, "Well, the OLD art teacher didn't have a problem with it." My friendly neighborhood music teacher was standing by when this conversation took place, and she held me back from throttling said coordinator with the promise of talking to the Western principal about it. I went up to my classroom with steam streaming out my ears, and decided that I'd better have a look at my predecessor's schedule. And what I found was that SHE had been given four hours a week in her timetable dedicated to putting up displays. Yup. So I emailed a copy of this very enlightening document to the Western head and said, "Look, I know Music is talking to you - just so's you know, this was the schedule for last year, and I'll be more than happy to do whatever you want as long as it's not more than fair." And that is how Jo-Jo the Chinese/Art teacher got landed with it. And why the stage looks nice and the school looks like crap. Maybe next year I won't have to teach ESL and the school can look nice, too.

Two weeks later now, the stage is decorated, the crafts are as done as they can be, the art display (the only bit I knew I was responsible for a month ago) is up, my belly dancers have done their bit at the after-school concert (and they were SO good, I was really proud of them), and I've attended the bloody staff dinner.

Oh yes, the staff dinner. Pain. So much pain.

Don't get me wrong. I like my coworkers. Mostly. On the other hand, I don't go looking to spend time with most of them, most of the time. But we were basically told that it wasn't exactly optional, and I ditched the last one, so I cowgirled up and waited the half hour for the bus to come and take us into Xujiahui where we had a reservation at a Xinjiang-style restaurant. I wasn't exactly looking forward to it, but on the other hand, some of them WERE, in fact, the people I DO spend non-paid time with, and Xinjiang is the Muslim quarter of China, and I was curious what the food would be like. So it couldn't be too bad, right?

Yeah, actually, it could. Cause as we're pulling up to the restaurant someone mentions that our secondary campus was there, too - and this place doesn't look that big. We go downstairs and there are a few seats randomly scattered around the room - and the people I was hoping to sit with ended up scattered at different tables, while I was given the choice between sitting with two of my colleagues that I don't dislike but would rather poke out my eyes than make small talk with...or a table of secondary people that I've never met...Oh, no - wait! It turns out I HAD actually met one of them before. I thought at the time he looked familiar but for the life of me I couldn't figure out where I'd met him. Well, when I talked to Socrates, he tells me that his friend mentioned he'd sat next to me (I met this friend all of once, on a night when I was in just about as good a mood).

At any rate, I chose to sit with the people I didn't know. Yeah, awkward, right? My reasoning was that if I sat with my colleagues, I would have to make small talk and pretend to listen while my mind engaged in other business. With the total strangers, I could get out my iPod and read, and hopefully come down out of my temper. Or I could if people would quit trying to convince me to go sit with people I don't care for (which they did....eventually). So I sat down, said hi, and indicated that I would be playing the part of antisocial bitch for the evening, nothing personal.

Dad, if you're reading this one...try not to worry. I've managed to mostly succeed in life, in spite of my abrasive tendencies.

So - by this time it is around 5:45, and having had nothing more for lunch than cookies, I am getting pretty hungry. It was a half-hour before any food finds its way to the table, although there was a liter bottle of coke on the table which I proceeded to empty over the next hour and a half. Finally, the food began to come, and it was actually really good. Well, most of it - I don't eat seafood no matter what cuisine cooks it. And, as I've been told, it has a lot of similarities with Arabic cooking - although I think this was MUCH more flavorful - including the prolific use of lamb. Lamb's not my favorite meat, but I'm down with it...or at least, I am until they cart it out, roasted and whole, up to and including eyeballs and teeth, making a "Baaaaa!" noise. Eurgh! I mean. EURGH! I'm-not-a-child-I-grew-up-on-a-farm-I-know-perfectly-well-where-meat-comes-from-and-I-believe-if-God-hadn't-meant-for-us-to-eat-animals-he-wouldn't-have-made-them-so-delicious-but-I'm-sorry-I-do-NOT-want-to-see-the-face-of-my-murder-tasty-tasty-murder-victim-thank-you-very-much!!!!!!!

>gasp<

Yeah. So. Food good. I also noted, on my way in, that the wall had an image of a woman wrapped up in Isis wings, and the possibility that this restaurant might have a dancer was one of the reasons that I didn't leave when things started looking tedious (also, as I said, I was hungry, and figured if I had to cab home I might as well get something for my money). When the "stage" lighting came on, I found Giancarlo was back in my pocket and I was looking up before I became aware of what I'd just done. Two ladies and a man, all three of whom looked Persian to me (possibly because they were dressed in the costume that I've come to associate with Persian folk dance, although I don't know the style well enough to be sure), came out and started to dance, and I found that I was happy to be there. Even more so when the girls came back separately to "belly dance" for us. They were pretty okay - I've seen excellent dancers...hell, I've LEARNED from excellent dancers...and excellence is great, but the real show-stopper was when one went dancing up to our wee Irish principal, and dragged him out onto the floor. He's a great sport, and a fine comedian; I thought I'd bust a rib when she dropped to the floor and he kinda wobbled his way down to one knee! The next set saw her pulling -

Oh, I don't have a nickname for this guy! I'll call him Bilbo, cause he's about as tall as a hobbit, but isn't cool enough to be Frodo. A guy as short as Bilbo has only two options in how to live his life, and he chose the enlightened path. This guy does yoga and reads books on how to be a better man while cooking gourmet food for his Chinese girlfriend (cliche, he knows, but when you're that short, you have limited options and a Filipina would make him feel cheap and uneducated!) He's just so bloody earnest in all that he does, it's fricking annoying! Anyways, he was standing on the sidelines aching to bust a move when she pulled him out. Enlightened as he may be, he has no CLUE that when a belly dancer takes you out on the floor, the only expectation we have of you is that you bop along idiotically beside her for a couple moments - possibly mimicking some of her moves with nowhere NEAR her grace - before slinking back to your seat as soon as you can manage (embarassed and yet secretly pleased because YOU danced with a belly dancer). Oh no. He actually danced with her - twirling her over and over, or trying, because with her heels she was about four inches taller than him. And after his fifteen seconds of fame were over, he didn't slink back to his seat, but stood on the sidelines, so she pulled him back out, not once, but twice. It was so awkward to watch that it was painful.

Anyways, that was the staff dinner, and now it's over, and tomorrow, so will this week and school, too, at least until January. Shanghai is freezing, finally, I guess. Yesterday just past noon it started snowing. The kids went wild. I even got a little excited, until I realized that if it REALLY got going Socrates might not be the only one spending the holidays in Shanghai. I finally worked up some enthusiasm for the whole "home for the holidays" thing, as my darling Glamwhore will be in town, hopefully so will my niece, and Babysis invited me to go to the movies with her and a friend next Tuesday. Also - deodorant. I ran out last week, and rather than buying whatever I can get my hands on here, I'm just going without until I get back to the states. It really isn't as disgusting as it seems...well, not if you have good hygiene and don't eat too much garlic...

Half the Fun???

Whoever said getting there is half the fun needs to be drug out into the street and shot. Seriously.

Socrates, having been unceremoniously given the boot by the bastards at his school, managed to procure work temporarily at a school up the tracks in scenic Suzhou - VENICE OF THE EAST! I've been a bit miffed about it because it's left me largely without a walking buddy, but you gotta do what you gotta do. To make up for it, he invited me to come up and visit this weekend, so Friday I packed my stuff and headed up to the train station. I bought my tickets earlier in the week while my bike chain was being prepared. I didn't go to the station; it just so happens that there is a very handy little ticket office on Hongmei St. So I walked in, showed the lady a calendar, indicated the days that I wanted to go to Suzhou and come back, and what times, and she sold me my tickets. Easy cheesy.

On the other hand, I show up at the train station, and I look for the train number and time on my ticket, and it's not listed. I fight my way through the station, to information, and they inform me that the woman at the ticket office has sold me tickets for Shanghai station, rather than Hongqiao. My bad, I'm sure, for assuming that since I was physically IN Hongqiao at the ticket office that they would assume that was the station I wanted to begin and end at. Oh well, 20 minutes of my life later I had exchanged them for the correct tickets, texted Socrates to let him know I would be two hours later than originally anticipated, and found the Subway in the downstairs shopping area to kill some time (and 30 of my last yuan) in.

The train was fast, clean, and comfy. I have no complaints about the train. But when it pulled into Suzhou station, my life became complicated again. See, there's not a whole lot of guidance to get to the taxi stand, and once you do, you have the opportunity to be stared at and approached by beggars while you wait. Or at least I did. I'm sorry, little Chinese girl with the funny hands, but I teach your kind all week. Your adorableness has no effect on me. I was ready for the communication gap when I finally did get a taxi - I had the address Socrates gave me in Chinese up on my iPod's email - but the smell was none-too-pleasant, and when I texted Socrates to let him know I was on my way, my phone wouldn't send it. Crap. It also wouldn't let me call him. Double crap. But when we got to the business he told me to go to, I thought, "No worries, I'll pop in and use their phone"...only when I did, their landline wouldn't call his Shanghai mobile number. Triple crap. So what's a girl to do? Well, folks, this ain't my first rodeo. I pulled out my iTouch, found an unsecured wireless network, and emailed my partner in crime. For a lot of people, this might not work, but Socrates is the proud owner of an iPhone which (sometimes annoyingly) notifies him every time he gets an email. So two minutes later I got a reply that he was on his way. Problem solved.

Now, writing about all of this two days later, I have gained the proper perspective. I'm proud of my resourcefulness and can laugh at the comedy of errors that took place Friday night. However, when Socrates showed up at the rendezvous, he did not find a particularly happy camper. In fact, I had that feeling I always got when I went on one of my little adventures outside of Seoul, back in the days when I at least knew some of the language; ie, the feeling of WHY THE HELL DO I EVER LEAVE THE CITY?!?! I was also pissed off because people do this to me a lot. A LOT. "Right. When you get into the (airport, train station, bus station, etc) get the (taxi, train, bus, etc) until you get to (landmark) and give me a call." Being competent is a pain in the ass sometimes. On the other hand, if people coddled me the way I do anyone who comes to me, I'd probably get offended, so I guess there's no way to win.

Right.

Well, we went out for a few drinks once I'd finally calmed down, and had a reasonably early night. I went for a wander while he was doing job search stuff, and saw some of scenic Suzhou on foot by daylight, coming to the conclusion that it was not so bad, after all. That afternoon we saw Suzhou's Coiled Gate (which may be the last land and water city gate in all of China) and climbed up a pagoda (invoking fond memories of the Eiffel Tower and a reflection on the value for price of the two), and paid 15 kuai each to shoot crappy arrows with a crappy bow at targets that were way too close...which was enjoyable nonetheless. Later we met some of his colleagues and went to a rock (punk???) show at a youth hostel that involved a lot of screaming and a wee bit of talent, before hanging out at a place closer to home where I made a new friend. Suzhou touts itself as the Venice of the East - it is pretty enough, and full of beautiful places to see (more of which I will hopefully see next time I go, maybe I'll even rent a bike for the day), but comparing it to Venice it probably going a little far (as Socrates pointed out, "For starters, it's not sinking.")

Hmm. Shouldn't have mentioned Venice...now I'm wishing I was there. Oh well, two more weeks of playing Santa's workshop (actually, I might have misspelled something there...) and I'll be home for the holidays.