Don's ESL Adventure!
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Movie lover. Growing Capoeirista. Space enthusiast. Dedicated craftsman. And best of all, homegrown Los Angeles native. Wait, how in the hell did I end up in China!?
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 I don't know--it just happened. The moon was full, and the clouds had spread just enough to enjoy it's celestial beauty in whole. Suddenly, something hit me--I felt her. Her spirit. Her memory. Her energy. Our energy. And as I looked up into the starry night, gazed at a blinding moon that seemed to be staring right back down at me, a smile ran across my face--the first genuine smile I had in what seemed like an eternity. I realized, in that very moment, that somewhere across the far reaches of the globe, her eyes were glued to the sky just as I, and although we could not be together, I knew she was thinking about me too. And on this still night, in that same instant, I whispered into the universe, hoping the wind would carry my voice across the seven seas to soothe her soul: "Until we meet again, my love" ...  I knew an old man that used to garden. He started with a tiny plot of land and single seed, and overtime the entire space blossomed into a beautiful corner of the world, ripe with fresh fruits and vegetables, the most colorful variety of flowers you’d ever seen, and dozens of intoxicating aromas that no insect could resist.
 I remember it like it was yesterday—It was my 1st year in China and I was speaking to my Chinese colleague about the education system in the country.
![[STORY] Say Hello to Mr. Good Game | Don's ESL Adventure!](/uploads/1/0/9/3/10931435/img-20161015-012114_orig.jpg) EXT. SHANGHAI - MID-DAY. Upbeat hip hop music. A quick shot of the Lujiazui skyscrapers from the Bund. It’s busy, it’s beautiful, and it’s some of the best-looking weather you’ll ever catch in Shanghai.
 So, let’s say you’re stuck in Xi’an. You’ve missed your 7-hour train to Shanghai because you miscalculated just how much traffic there’d be on your way to the railway station in the morning, and every remaining train throughout the day is sold-out. Shit.
 I had just started a new ESL teaching job at an English training center in Shanghai and I felt on top of the world. Shanghai had always been a city I wanted to live and work in after 4 years of residing in Kunshan—a significantly smaller municipality of Jiangsu Province—and I couldn't believe that I was finally carrying out my dream.
 A guy once tried to stab me in China—Shanghai, to be specific. No kidding, he pulled out a pocketknife and made multiple swings towards my head. And in all honestly, it was partly my fault.
 I was working as an English teacher for a training center in China. On one particular day I had prepared my classroom half an hour before class and returned 10 minutes later as parents rolled in with their children—ages 4 to 6—as was the normal process.
 "Woop-Woop. That's the sound of the police!" A foreigner getting a traffic ticket in Shanghai, who'd a thought? Yep, it's happened to me just twice since moving to the big city at the start of 2016.
 How ironic: I got my e-bike stolen on my very last day of work, and to add icing on the cake, I found out just minutes before my colleagues would throw me a surprise party.
 It was October 3rd--Golden Week in China—and with my girlfriend having gone home for the holidays I decided to hop on my fully charged electric scooter bike and set off on a long adventure across Kunshan to explore Yangcheng Lake.
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8/18/2020
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