My husband Danny and I decided, after a lot of debate, to move to Shanghai for the next two years. In February he received an offer for a postdoctoral research position at Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SHAO) At first I didn’t want him to accept and I was really hoping he'd end up with something around the East Coast instead.
In the end, as the deadline to make a decision approached he convinced me it may be fun to go to Shanghai… it would be sort of a last big adventure before we settle down, buy a house and lose the flexibility to move somewhere random on a whim (which I have been known to do.) It will also be a good opportunity to travel all around Asia, which I have never done, and to learn Chinese so I can communicate better with Danny’s parents.
Once we made the decision, I wasn’t incredibly eager to begin planning our move. Danny immediately began researching life and jobs in Shanghai. He looked up every vegetarian restaurant within walking distance of our housing to make sure I’d be able to find food I like and began looking into job prospects for me. I have to admit, I sort of dragged my feet about looking into anything involving Shanghai and was preoccupied with things at home… mostly our wedding.
Since I have an art background I wanted to do a lot of decorations myself. It sort of turned into a full time job for the few months leading up to our wedding. I designed the invitations, programs, chuppah, ceremony decor bouquets and centerpieces, place cards, guestbook and menu cards. I admit I went a bit overboard with do it myself projects but you only get married once and I think it came out nice.
In the mean time, after Danny gave his many reminders I applied for a few teaching jobs in Shanghai. I ended up accepting a position teaching fifth grade at a private school with an English immersion curriculum.
Danny completed his thesis in astrophysics on large scale structure in the universe and earned his PhD from Drexel In June. There were a few weeks where we barely saw each other and he worked nonstop to get it finished. I was really happy when he finally graduated and became a Dr.
I got all of the wedding projects completed in spite of a major setback two weeks before the wedding. Our apartment got infested with bedbugs. It was a bit of a disaster. I needed to fumigate our whole place including some of the wedding decorations. Danny and I were forced to temporarily move in with my parents.
At any rate, it all worked out ok. We got married July 3rd at Loews Hotel in center city Philadelphia. Our wedding was awesome!
After our honeymoon at a resort in Mexico we started packing up our apartment immediately. Moving is always a pain but it was a bit more complex and tiring move than usual because we needed to sort everything we were bringing to Shanghai and store the rest. We also had to take some precautions because of the bug infestation which is fortunately now resolved.
At any rate, we finished it up and after a few final goodbyes we headed for Shanghai.
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