FRIDAY, MAY 8, 2009
Do you like it there?
"Do you like it there?"
We often get this question from people back in the States. This is a loaded question, especially because it's often asked by people who have a vested interest in our not liking Shanghai (no intention to offend there, it's just the way it is). I know that when people ask us this question, what they are really asking is, "Have you endured enough to come to your senses and finally come home to us?"
Well, here's the thing: We do like it here. And we don't. Look, it's hard to dislike a place where you can afford full-time domestic help, where you have no yardwork, cars to maintain or weekend "projects". And heck, they pay us extra for this. But it's not lack of domestic responsibilities that makes life here so nice. It's what we get to do with our time instead.
Before you had kids, didn't you have a romantic, idealized picture of what parenthood would be like? You would spend hours with your kids - reading to them, taking them to the park, playing with them, watching movies and cuddling with them. Ahhh...blissful parenthood. And then you actually hadkids, and you found out that parenthood is just an exhausted crazy dash from one disaster to another. Who spilled water? Who drew on the walls? Who hit whom? Who won't go to sleep? Who's been sleeping so long you think they might have died? AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!
And that's why we like it here - because when you don't have to spend time cleaning toilets or cooking dinner (unless you actually want to), or doing laundry or washing floors, you get to spend time being a parent (and a spouse) the way you imagined you would be, back when you had time to think about those sorts of things. And that is really nice. Here in Shanghai, I have time to be a Mom in the way I dreamed I would be a Mom. On the mornings when MJ goes to school, PW and I don't dash from Meijer's to the post office to the drugstore and then back to school - we play together. We read. We throw rocks in the river. We go to mom's group. And when MJ comes home, we eat lunch together. On days he doesn't go to school, we take a music class. We go for walks. We have play dates. It's hard to not like being this kind of parent.
However, that is not to say that there aren't lots of things we don't like about Shanghai. There are. For starters - it's filthy. The air is awful. We're always coughing, sneezing, wheezing, etc. There is a reason Chinese people hack and cough the way they do - you would too if you breathed this air your whole life. It's not just the air, though. Lily washes our floors every day and we still get black filth on our socks - even though everyone takes their shoes off as soon as they come in the door. I have no idea where this filth comes from, but it's disgusting.
There's also the staring, the "you're in a zoo" feeling, the people who give your kids food on the street without your knowledge, the horrible drivers and the general difficulty of living among 1.4 billion people every day.
Most of all, though, there's the distance. It's hard to be away from everyone. We know we're missing things that happen at home, and we know people we love are missing events in our children's lives. In case anyone was wondering, that point hadn't slipped our minds. We're very aware of it - everyone here is. It's something we discuss with friends. But it's not something we dwell on. If we want to be happy here, we can't dwell on that - it would drag us too far down. We've met people who focus on all that they're missing - and they're miserable. They're also not much fun to be around, which makes life more miserable for them because they have few friends. We've also met people who've taken their time in Shanghai and turned it into an amazing life experience. It may not be the one they planned on having, and it may not be with the loved ones they'd most like to share it with, but it's amazing nonetheless. Those are the people we want to emulate.
So if you've been wondering if we really, truly, deep down in our hearts like it here, yes, we do. But we still miss you terribly.
We often get this question from people back in the States. This is a loaded question, especially because it's often asked by people who have a vested interest in our not liking Shanghai (no intention to offend there, it's just the way it is). I know that when people ask us this question, what they are really asking is, "Have you endured enough to come to your senses and finally come home to us?"
Well, here's the thing: We do like it here. And we don't. Look, it's hard to dislike a place where you can afford full-time domestic help, where you have no yardwork, cars to maintain or weekend "projects". And heck, they pay us extra for this. But it's not lack of domestic responsibilities that makes life here so nice. It's what we get to do with our time instead.
Before you had kids, didn't you have a romantic, idealized picture of what parenthood would be like? You would spend hours with your kids - reading to them, taking them to the park, playing with them, watching movies and cuddling with them. Ahhh...blissful parenthood. And then you actually hadkids, and you found out that parenthood is just an exhausted crazy dash from one disaster to another. Who spilled water? Who drew on the walls? Who hit whom? Who won't go to sleep? Who's been sleeping so long you think they might have died? AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!
And that's why we like it here - because when you don't have to spend time cleaning toilets or cooking dinner (unless you actually want to), or doing laundry or washing floors, you get to spend time being a parent (and a spouse) the way you imagined you would be, back when you had time to think about those sorts of things. And that is really nice. Here in Shanghai, I have time to be a Mom in the way I dreamed I would be a Mom. On the mornings when MJ goes to school, PW and I don't dash from Meijer's to the post office to the drugstore and then back to school - we play together. We read. We throw rocks in the river. We go to mom's group. And when MJ comes home, we eat lunch together. On days he doesn't go to school, we take a music class. We go for walks. We have play dates. It's hard to not like being this kind of parent.
However, that is not to say that there aren't lots of things we don't like about Shanghai. There are. For starters - it's filthy. The air is awful. We're always coughing, sneezing, wheezing, etc. There is a reason Chinese people hack and cough the way they do - you would too if you breathed this air your whole life. It's not just the air, though. Lily washes our floors every day and we still get black filth on our socks - even though everyone takes their shoes off as soon as they come in the door. I have no idea where this filth comes from, but it's disgusting.
There's also the staring, the "you're in a zoo" feeling, the people who give your kids food on the street without your knowledge, the horrible drivers and the general difficulty of living among 1.4 billion people every day.
Most of all, though, there's the distance. It's hard to be away from everyone. We know we're missing things that happen at home, and we know people we love are missing events in our children's lives. In case anyone was wondering, that point hadn't slipped our minds. We're very aware of it - everyone here is. It's something we discuss with friends. But it's not something we dwell on. If we want to be happy here, we can't dwell on that - it would drag us too far down. We've met people who focus on all that they're missing - and they're miserable. They're also not much fun to be around, which makes life more miserable for them because they have few friends. We've also met people who've taken their time in Shanghai and turned it into an amazing life experience. It may not be the one they planned on having, and it may not be with the loved ones they'd most like to share it with, but it's amazing nonetheless. Those are the people we want to emulate.
So if you've been wondering if we really, truly, deep down in our hearts like it here, yes, we do. But we still miss you terribly.
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