Looks like I have fallen back into my pre-2014 habits in a bad way. It’s been two months since I’ve blogged about anything and there has been a whole lot that’s happened. As you know, I am currently in China working on a project and this has thrown most of my normal life in a loop. Similar to other times in my life where I’ve been mega-focused on work, the blog tends to get a bit thin. Thankfully, my Instagram photos are mirrored here so there is at least some semi-normal content that hints at what I have been up to lately.
In travel news, My mom and Gary visited China for my birthday back in October and we headed off to Xi’An, Beijing, and the Great Wall of China. It was so nice to have them in town and we had a great time seeing some great bucket list tourists sites. Unfortunately I did not take many notes like I did for Daniel’s trip in September, so I doubt a Trip Diary will ever be written. After their week visit, they headed back to the States and I only had to wait a few weeks for my latest visitor – Nathan.
Nathan came from the UK and we spent time in Shanghai and Hangzhou before headed off to someplace I never would have imagined I’d travel – Borneo! When Nathan said he would come visit, we scoured the region to come up with a list of places to visit and landed on Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. While there, we visited Brunei as well as Survivor Island (where the first season of Survivor was filmed), and the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Center. We had three amazing adventures in the 5 days we were there and I am glad that I was able to see him for the second time in less than a year (I think this is the first time since the 1990s Europe trips that this happened!).
We are hoping to be able to meet up sometime next year before I head back to the USA, but there is a lot still up in the air before we can make it happen. I did take some notes for the Borneo trip so perhaps one day I will post a diary.
Now that Nathan has been gone for a week it has really hit me that I have no one planning to visit me until the end of my assignment. Part of that is the uncertainty of when I will actually return to the US, so I am hoping it is just a few weeks before I can plan on being reunited with Daniel in Japan or Nathan somewhere else.
In the meantime, I will try and catch up on my movie reviews (San Andreas, Jurassic World, and Spectre – three movies I loved!) as well as some random thoughts on what’s happening here in Shanghai. It’s starting to get cold here, so I am thinking I might have some more time indoors with nothing to do so I am hoping to write more.