China: Being Miracled in Beijing

“So you must be Oracle then, right?” I asked, pointing my pen at the student in front of me. I had my pen poised and ready to mark a check mark next to his name on my clipboard attendance sheet.

“No teacher, I am Oracle,” a voice accompanying a raised hand said from across the room, nowhere near where I was.

“Oh, right. So is it Skipper then?” I scanned through my attendance sheet without any idea who this student was. 

“No teacher, that’s me,” another hand in another quadrant of the classroom.

I was five minutes into my first class. I had just spent the last 20 minutes before class looking over their ID card pictures to make a good impression with my class by putting faces to names. I was failing.

“Ok, we have a Jasmine, a Jamie, and a Jericho. Don’t tell me, don’t tell me, I got this,” I said almost pleading with them. I could sense them willing me to get it right, to ease the tension and end this torturous introduction.

I felt out of my element. I was off-kilter in a way I am not accustomed to in the classroom. I had no go-to shticks to break the ice like I did in Turkey and the culturally appropriate jokes and play-on-words I used in Turkey would be of no help to me here. I was floundering.

 I couldn’t really tell if I was thrown off by their ridiculous sounding names or the fact that I was staring at 25 bespectacled and attentive students. The students were poised and ready with open notebooks and sharpened pens watching me fumble through their names. I stood at the front of a classically arranged classroom with row after row of students and me at the pedestal in the front of the class. The classroom was pristine with nothing but notebook ands dictionaries on the desks.

 “Jasmine, Jamie, Jericho…hmmmm.”

 I had no idea. I thought I knew their names but they all look the…

 “I know!” I thought to myself, “A joke!”

“Has anyone every told you guys that Chinese people’s names all look and sound alike?”

So there we have it folks. The introduction to the first class I would have on the first day of my new job in China. A borderline racist joke told by a sweating, fumbling bald guy awkwardly wearing a tie he had just learned how to tie and belting out culturally insensitive jokes because he didn’t know who Skipper, Oracle, and Jericho were.

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Well guys, it has been about a month here so I wanted to give you all a recap on how it has been going. I meant to do this a lot sooner but to be honest, Becky and I have just recently come up for air. Getting used to our new jobs, new social life, and new schedules has been a bit of a chore but we are finding a rhythm, getting into a groove, and even have plans to have people over for “Necky Enchiladas.”

Our adventure, as some of you well know, started out front of our old apartment in Kadikoy, Istanbul with a somewhat teary and a tad bit emotional goodbye (seriously, who cries at goodbyes?) with some of our closest friends in Turkey. We made our way to the airport with less than adequate time to spare before we boarded our plane.

Becky, acting as if we were not uprooting ourselves and our entire lives, promptly fell asleep on my arm where I lay awake for the entire flight, experiencing all the stages of waking-drunkenness that are usually reserved for being sprawled out in a dreamless sleep.

We arrived and met our HR correspondent, Emma, whom we had been corresponding with on a daily basis before we left Turkey. Emma had us picked up and driven out to the campus where we would call home for the next couple of years.  We arrived bleary eyed and in dire need of a shower. We were taken to our room in the teacher’s building and given papers to read and sign. Up to this point, everything felt as unceremonious and drab as the account of the events I am writing now. Emma was going through the motions, obviously busy and probably needing to turn right around and go back to the city to get more new teachers.

Our apartment was surprisingly better than we had anticipated. We got two adjoining apartments but one would have been big enough for both of us (except the closet apparently-- Becky told me she would need the entire space for herself). The kitchen was nice, the bathroom was big, and the flat screen TV had HBO. Upon closer inspection, we would discover that the beds were without linen, the bathrooms  void of toilet paper, and the water cooler was bone dry. This was only discovered as Emma was closing the door behind her, silently taking her leave and scurrying down the hallway before we could volley anymore questions her way.   



Starfish Becky in our bedroom

Too tired to sleep and not awake enough to unpack, Becky and I wandered around the campus for a while. Neither one of us were talking much but I imagine Becky was thinking what I was thinking, which was what the hell had we gotten ourselves into?

The campus was nice enough; big buildings with grassy islands and clean walkways. The school was silent as the returning teachers had not yet returned  and all the new teachers (who had arrived a day before us) were off in the city running errands.  





Campus

 When I say city, I should explain. Although we technically live in Beijing, we are quite far away from the city center. Our campus is on the subway line but with the transfers it takes about an hour and  twenty minutes to get to the city center. We live in an area of Beijing called Chang Ping. Chang Ping is the nearest suburb so any shopping that needs to be done gets done in Chang Ping.

We walked around the empty campus until we saw someone coming our way. He stopped and introduced himself as Joe. It turned out that Joe was the teacher that I had been communicating with prior to our arrival and he had been incredibly helpful. It didn’t stop with emails.

“Are you guys hungry by any chance? I was just heading into the village,” Joe asked, pointing his thumb over his shoulder, approximating the direction of the village from our general location.

We both replied without needing to consult the other.

“This will be my eleventh year at Hui Jia,” Joe said in response to my question regarding his tenure at the international school.

We were walking through the neighboring village that sits between Hui Jia and Chang Ping. The village is a less-than-sanitary, semi-paved strip of underdeveloped land that inhabits around 500 people. Walking through the village reminded me a lot of Vietnam - eateries, food stalls, and shops lined both sides of the street and it was in constant and dusty motion. The people in the village were going this way and that, honking their horns, buying their produce, and riding their bikes. It was about a 10 minute walk from the campus and we had to walk through it to get to Chang Ping and the restaurant we were going to.

 “Wow, something must be keeping you around then,” Becky said, happy to know that this gig might not be as bad as she had thought.

 “Yeah, I have my reasons. I’m sure if you make it through your first month you will find yours as well,” he said with a shrug, implying that this place is not for everyone.

 Joe took us to his favorite restaurant in the village: a small place with cold beer and delicious food. We ate, got the run-down about the job, and got to know each other a bit more.





A rainy night out in the village

  

As I write this, I realize that I do not think Joe knows how important he was to Becky and I on our first day in this place. We were lost, had no toilet paper, and were sleeping bare-bed, using our clean t-shirts as blankets. He must have sensed that we needed a bit of reassuring because he took us out for dinner, paid for our bill, then woke up the next day to take us to Walmart for our essentials.



A Becky Mustache

 This was a theme that did not stop with Joe. Every day we met more and more people that welcomed us in so unbelievably warmly. People were there to answer any of our questions, invite us out for beers, tell us where the best markets were, and bring us into the fold of their community. Becky and I even coined a term for it: “being miracled”. And we weren’t only being miracle at Hui Jia. Everywhere we went, foreigners were going out of their way and above and beyond to help us, make us feel more comfortable, and make sure we got where we needed to go. We talked about this recently with some friends at the bar and someone summed it up like this:

“China is a fucked up shit show man. Without this (air motion of hand with palm down revolving in circular motion around table of people) we’d all be on the first plane back to wherever the fuck.”

She teaches elocution.

The school itself, on the other hand, has taken some getting used to. The Chinese system of doing things makes Turkey look like Scandinavia. Every little thing that happens around the school has us asking why they would think that is a good idea or how could they think we can teach like this.

In the high school, we are all putting money in squares of a pool to see when the school will fix the photocopier that has been broken since last spring. As it stands, we all have to go down to the middle school with several different signed pieces of paper acting as jumped-through hoops to get copies made for students. Only suckers are betting on squares for October.

The school is by no means poor by the way. They have an Olympic size swimming pool, a state-of-the-art gym, and an equestrian club with 50 horses on campus, and an inflatable dome to enclose all of these things to protect them in the winter. But I guess you do not have to be in China long to learn this valuable lesson: A picture of a photocopy machine on a brochure of a school does not help filling enrollment coffers.

Becky approached the shocking photocopy situation a bit differently. When she was first told about the photocopying protocol she went down to the middle school with her appropriate signatures and whatever document she needed to get copied. She arrived in the room to see stacks and stacks of paper on tables, a single photocopy machine being unused, and a Chinese attendant playing on her phone.

First day of school ceremony

“Hello, I’d like to get some copies, please,” Becky said, extending said copies in her general direction.

“Oh, very busy. Very busy. It will take one week,” she responded behind a stack of paper, not even moving from her chair to take the copies from Becky.

“What do you mean? No one is using the machine. I only need 20 copies.”

“Yes. One week. Very busy.”

Now I do not know exactly what happened next as Becky has been quite vague about it, but I do know this: Becky got her copies, the photocopy girl now gives Becky preferential treatment when she walks into the room, that same day a campus-wide change in policy occurred regarding teachers receiving codes to be able to use the photocopy machine themselves, and people whom Becky had yet to meet  were calling her “Becky the Bruiser”-- an aptly placed epithet I might say.

That was on day 1.

  

So as Becky and I kept reassuring ourselves in those first days, things are, in fact, getting better. Becky and I both got promotions. She is a PYP homeroom teacher in grade 1 and I am the head teacher of IB grade 11 in the Diploma Program of the high school. The students I am dealing with are so unbelievably talented that it has been a fun challenge to come up with tough lessons plans for them to complete to keep them engaged and attentive. I have spent a lot of time in the last few weeks getting accustomed to the IB curriculum and exam formats and I now have a pretty confident understanding of how the classes operate.

Lake district of Beijing

Every time Becky and I go into Chang Ping, we buy something for our kitchen and apartment, slowing transforming our place into a cozy home for us.  Becky even found a few western-style grocery stores that have pretty much anything you could get in America for comparable prices. I have joined a bunch of the teachers in a volleyball league, I am a part of a club that plays ultimate Frisbee with 12^th graders, and I even joined a hiking club in central Beijing that takes us out to different places along the unrestored sections of the wall.

Last weekend, I took the bus about 2 hours north of the city for a 6 hour hike along a section of the wall that hasn’t been restored and is well off of the tourist track. It was incredibly beautiful and unlike anything I have ever done. At times the wall less resembled a wall and more resembled a ladder, steeply climbing up the mountainside and extending into the distance out of eyesight. It is something that I have started to do regularly and hope to one day convince Becky to join me on J 

Beijing itself is a ridiculously cool city. Lots of awesome and old fashioned neighborhoods, beautifully ornate- styled Chinese houses, and delicious restaurants with any cuisine you could imagine. The city is speckled with lakes, temples, museums, cool cafes, and bars that sell things other than Efes and Tubourg and for half the price. Becky and I even found a micro-brewery that sells bacon cheeseburgers! Score!

Mexican for her and Vietnamese for me.

Since it is so far away (not that we have much energy after work anyways) we have been generally staying up in Chang Ping during the week and staying in hotels in Beijing on Friday and Saturday night. There is a  bar and a couple of restaurants in the village that we meet up with friends at during the week, but it’s generally on the weekend that we go out and do things in the city.

Johnathan's birthday

Just like Vietnam, the Chinese love their karaoke, so Becky and I have been belting out our ballads on a regular basis. Last week a bunch of us went to a puzzle palace where they lock you in a room which is connected to 3 other rooms but to pass through the first room to get to the next, you have to answer a series of questions. It was awesome, as long as you don’t have to use the facilities while you are in the room.

Another issue you might be wondering when I was going to get around to is the pollution. The pollution sucks. Let’s just get that out there. When we first went to Beijing and stepped out of the metro, Becky’s and my eyes and nose instantly started burning – apparently on a day that was not so bad as well. Sometimes it feels like we are enshrined in a cloudy mist but it’s really just the pollution enveloping the city center. Luckily, where we are in Chang Ping does not have the same problem (or as bad of a problem) as the city center. We get lots of blue skies and days that are good enough to bike around the city and the beautiful parks of Chang Ping. Regardless, it is something that we have had to get used to but getting out of the city and going hiking on the weekend has helped me immensely.



Our first day in Beijing's city center.

 

Although I have come a long way from my first day of class and Becky a long way from her threatening the Chinese staff, not a day goes by where we don’t somehow talk about Turkey or America in some capacity - the city, our apartment, our families, and all the friends that lie between. It has been hard going from what we had to Turkey to have to start over in a new place with new people, but having each other has made all the difference. We have been keeping busy with IB workshops, lesson planning, and Chinese lessons but we still have time to stop and think about the lives and friends we have left behind and hope that everyone is doing well and know that we miss the shit out of them.

And even though Becky and I are getting along fine in a new city, we are very happy to be seeing a couple of familiar faces next week!



Melis and Leedham in Beijing!

Look for more posts from our trip when we meet up with Melis and Leedham and head to ZhangJiajie National Park during the week long National holiday! 

 

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Greece: Stumbling Upon Legacies

Summer 2014

Every year, Becky and I promise ourselves that we won’t travel in Turkey during Bayram (the Muslim holidays), and every year we forget about that promise until we are securely fastened in deadlock traffic on a bus attempting to leave the city. A trip I took to Canakkale a few years ago was 4 hours longer than it should have been, our trip to Lesbos island last year was 5 hours longer, and now here we were, on the only road leaving south out of one of the biggest cities in the world, and everyone in the city had the week off.

Samos Island 

We were headed to the beach city of Kusadasi on an overnight bus from where we would then head to the Greek island of Samos. Samos would be the first of four stops that would eventually end in Santorini in time for our friends Melis and Leedham's wedding. After Samos, we would be heading to Syros and then a short stop in Mykonos before Santorini. A lot of our friends from Istanbul would be there and Becky and I saw this as a great way to see everyone before we left for Beijing.

Our friend Rachel was also heading to the wedding and also had the week before the wedding off,  so we decided to slow boat and island hop our way to Santorini together. Rachel met us in Kusadasi but was on a later ferry than us, so Becky and I took the ferry across and sorted out inter-island ferries, hotel rooms, and car rentals--  a forte of Becky's.

Traipsing about rivers and canyons on Samos

At first glance, Samos seemed no different from Turkey. Restaurants catering to Turkish day-trippers were advertising kebabs, menus were written in Turkish instead of Greek, horrible Turkish music was being blasted from competing speakers up and down the street, and packs of affluent Turkish tourists were moving about the town taking in all of these sights.

Sunset on Samos

Becky and I couldn't rent a car and get out of there fast enough. We had a few hours to kill as Rachel wasn't getting in until that evening, so we traveled over to a neighboring beach with some ruins on it that was pristine and beautiful in its water, sandy beaches, and Turklessness. So overjoyed with this discovery, I proceeded to firmly and tactfully place the rental car in a sandbar where any attempt to dislodge myself resulted in putting the rental car in a bigger and bigger predicament.

Waiting for our ferry

Being on holiday and all, we more or less walked away from this problem and headed to the beach where this problem would be out of sight for the time being. Our hopes were that it would miraculously fix itself. That usually happens right? It didn't, but the next best thing did happen. A tow truck came along and had a winch and by my overly pronounced gesticulations and the fox hole I had dug the car into, he was able to ascertain the root of my distress. Within minutes, we were pulled from the sandbar strangle hold and thanking the nice Greek man with universal signs of gratitude to which he responded with universal sings for being happy to help. We went back to the ferry, picked up Rachel and drove to our hotel clear on the other side of the island.

About an hour's car ride from the ferry port, the west side of the island was more or less deserted.  We had it more or less all to ourselves. The hotel was great, the seaside promenade was full of cafes, and the seafood was fresh. The beaches were not so great right at the hotel so we spent the next day beach hopping our way around our side of the island. The afternoon was getting late and we had aimlessly found ourselves at the very remote tip of the island in a village that doubled as a dead end to the highway we were driving on. We stopped to stretch our legs and grab some water at one of the only cafes there was. We sat down and were about to order some drinks when the nice old woman came saddling over to our table.

“Courgettes?” she asked with a big smile before we even had the chance to say what we wanted. She was a short, stout woman with a flour-caked apron and her hair haphazardly pulled back in a hair net.

“Just 3 waters and 3 cokes please, we're not hungry,” Rachel retorted.

“Yes, yes,” she wrote down our drink order on the old and thin pad of paper she had just dug out of her apron pocket. She feigned as if she was going to go back to the kitchen when she added, “three courgettes?”. With her thumb and pointer finger pinching her notepad, she complemented her question with her other three fingers pointed toward us.

If it hadn't been for her very friendly demeanor, her stout, grandmother-esque amiable personality, and her never-waivering smile, her courgette obstinacy may have been seen as an annoyingly over-stepped boundary. But since the sun was shining, we were on holiday, and we were currently overlooking the ocean  on a porch that offered panoramic views of the sea, we decided to humor her.

Rachel, Becky, and I looked at each other and acquiesced more because we had been worn down rather than being persuaded. “Ok, we'll try one order of courgettes.”

A view from the road to the cafe 

She smiled and quickly put pen to pad while saying, “Maybe one courgette, maybe later 3 courgette,” and scurried off to get our drinks.

She returned with our drinks, three empty plates, and one small platter of courgettes that she put down between us. We thanked her and she motioned for us to eat. The bite-sized courgettes did, admittedly, look appetizing. She continued to stand there with her hands behind her back, rocking from toe to heal, waiting for us to taste the recommendation that she had forced on us. We each grabbed one, roughly the size of a jalapeno popper, turned it over in our hands, and popped them in our mouths. Being very aware of her presence, we all barely had them in our mouths before we turned to her to blanketly express how good they were. It was awkward that she was standing there and we figured faking how much we liked them would get her to go away, but after a few more chews, we were dumbfounded at how amazingly tasty these things were.

In case you are like me, and are very unclear as to what a courgette actually is, it is a zucchini. But  these  were the zucchini flowers, and what made them special was that these bite-sized zucchini flowers had been stuffed with herbs and feta cheese, breaded, deep fried, and topped with olive oil and other local cheeses. It was so incredibly amazing that words here would not do it justice.

Rachel, Becky, and I barely looked at each other before we turned to the woman signaling for two more plates of her specialty. She let out an unguarded burst of laughter and skipped back in the kitchen to make the other two batches.

We stayed there well into the evening, munching on courgettes, resting out of the sun, and talking. We couldn't believe a) how good our appetizer turned full on meal was and b) that we had just merely stumbled upon such an amazing little facet of Samos.

These courgettes, we would find out, were her life's work. She was famous throughout Greece for them. We mentioned and recommended this place to several people after this and found out that this smiling old woman in this tiny village at the end of an old road, in a nearly deserted section of this island, had a very well-established reputation for these courgettes. We even had a friend in Istanbul who had heard about her from a different friend who had sought this lady out years before this.

These courgettes were her legacy. The thing she was known for. The lifeblood of this village that people came to for (making her pushy deliver of them a bit more understandable). It's a bit crazy to think that we were so close to not knowing about this. We chose to drive down this road for no reason really, just to see where it went until we ended up at a dead end and became thirsty.

Post courgette beers at sundown

Most of our time traveling to distant places is spent in search of things, areas, and activities that we had researched and known about. Things we had either learned about before we left for the trip or had found out somehow while we were on the trip. Going to Jordan to see Petra, Egypt to see the pyramids, Amsterdam for the canals, Sri Lanka for the ruins, Greece for the beaches – and I suppose for the courgettes as well. Some of these legacies are known to all, waiting for you to have time to seek them out, but others just have to be stumbled upon, making them all that more incredible.

Ferry from Samos to Syros

The ferries between the Greek islands are less like ferries and more like cruise ships. So when the three of us piled onto the ferry to Syros, we had to choose which floor, by which food court, and on which sun deck we wanted to sit. It was a view that never got old – endless expanses of blue in all directions with the cool wind on your face from the steaming ferry. The ride was less a tiresome transport and more an Aegean sea tour allowing us to see more of the sea was  speckled with islands throughout the ride.

We arrived in Syros late and barely made it to dinner before crashing at our apartment. The next day, Rachel, dead set on reading her book by the pool, did not want to join us on our trip around the island so Becky and I rented a motorbike and circumnavigated it, stopping off at any little secluded bay that might offer us some nice views and clear swimming. We made it all the way to the end of the island where the road stopped above the high cliffs allowing us to peer out into the distance of the horizon.

Hotel on Syros

Motorbike ride around Syros for the day

She drove, I took pictures

Views from the motorbike

City center before we boarded our ferry

Even though these islands were well connected with several different ferry companies that would take you where ever you wanted to go, standing on that cliff side still instilled a feeling of how isolated these islands were. How, throughout time, these different places have cultivated their own sub-culture that is only specific to the social and physical make up of that island, molded over time to both reflect a specific culture and be a reflection of the people who have influenced it. Each island was slightly different in its own special way, people going about their lives in a way that makes most sense to their island. Cultivating crops indigenous to only them, catering to different nationalities that visit, embracing lifestyles from circumstances dictated to them and making a life out of it.

From the wedding Villa

We spent the day on Mykonos before ferrying to our main event: Santorini. We arrived a day later than most of our friends and we found that they were already very entrenched in holiday mode. They had all but taken over our hotel, racked up substantial bar tabs, and donned goofy, pre-wedding attire that drew even more attention to the boisterous giddiness of a large group of friends on holiday.

Our hotel on Santorini

After dinner, girls peeled off and went back to the wedding villa with the bride-to-be and the boys headed into the city with the soon to be ex bachelor. Santorini, beautiful and bustling during the day, transformed into a gorgeous array of lights, sounds, and wind whirling around on the island's cliff edge at night 

(missing 8 hours of trip here – woke up back at hotel fully clothed)

The next day was the big day. Everyone seemed to wake up a bit late and groggily made their way to breakfast. While most of us muttered things about not being ready to face the day, Becky and I headed out to explore a bit of the island. We walked around the cliffs to the nearest beach and quickly realized that Santorini must not be known for their beaches as much as for their views. The beach was small, crowded, and surprisingly dirty. The red volcanic sand had turned the water an ugly brown and the longer we stayed there, the less we enjoyed it, so we opted for a lazy afternoon eating Greek salad and hanging out at the wedding villa with the wedding party.

The view from the wedding villa rated among some of the better ocean views I have ever seen and it was all done from the infinity pool that was on the main deck. We swam in the pool and sat on the deck staring at the caldera and the city on the far side of the island. I went to the bathroom and when I came back, it was as if a switch had been hit. The mood of the villa changed drastically. A huge stress cloud was now shrouding over us and the gravity of the day seemed to be setting in for the most important parties. Girls were running around with curling irons and make up bags, boys were grabbing tuxedos and freshly polished shoes, so Becky and I decided to make our leave until it was time to commence the wedding. We took a bus back to our hotel with the groom, best man, and anyone else who valued their lives and didn’t want to be at the mercy of the crazed bride’s maids.

Hours later, we made our way back to the site of the wedding-- Becky in a dress and me in marginally longer shorts than those which I had been wearing before. With the time of the wedding exponentially getting closer to us, so was the stress to get things done in time. Becky, Ben, Chad, Rachel and I stayed as far away as we could – knowing that any proffered contribution to help would only make things worse.

Trying our best to stay out of the way.

The wedding started a bit later than had been previously planned but it was all for the better. The sun had a chance to set a bit and was not directly in our eyes as it was moving below the horizon. The heat of the day had also subsided a bit to make the suits and dresses people were wearing a bit more tolerable. The ceremony was very special. Melis and Leedham were finally getting married. They had been together for years, long before Becky and I arrived on the scene in Kadikoy and I really got a kick out of how nervous they still were. I don’t know a couple as comfortable with each other as them and I found it incredibly endearing how nervous they were to do something that they had been planning to do for years. 

Becky and I hadn't known them as long as a lot of the people that were currently at the party, but we felt honored to sit among them and watch these awesome people, whom we have grown to love, declare their love for each other in one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen. Everything was perfect. Everything was playing out like a storybook. Everything was – wait, where was Pete?

I looked around the crowd and realized that Pete was nowhere to be found. Pete, having stayed up pretty late the night before, seemed to have lost track of time. As soon as the ceremony was over I jumped on the quad that someone had rented and drove down to Pete’s hotel to pick him up. I met him on the road walking up, looking as if he had just woken up. He had.

The rest of the night was a combination of fun, friends, several more courses of food than was completely necessary, and an indulgent amount of mojitos. I made it a point to pull Becky aside at some point just so she took in the grandeur of the night. This was one of the last outings with these people we were going to have. Everything would be changing soon. Regardless of for better or worse, everything would be changing.

Views from around Santorini

My thoughts brought me back to the smiling old woman in the village at the end of a highway we had just visited. There are an infinitesimal set of narratives where Becky, Rachel, and I never stumble upon her courgettes, just how there are an infinitesimal set of narratives where Becky and I never get the opportunity to stumble into the legacy that we were currently among at this party: the legacy of this circle of friends. The relationships that we forged, memories made, and stories we shared over the past 5 years could have very easily have never been. That is a sad thought to me. Everything about life is fragile-- our literal lives and how we navigate them, the relationships we encounter, and the impact of the choices we make. Maybe that is something Melis and Leedham figured out when their nerves were getting the best of them on the altar; the fragility of their lives and how precious that makes it. Precious because it could have just as well have never been, it could have been something else entirely. Not to say that whatever that was wouldn’t also be great, but it would not be great like this. So whether you seek legacies out or stumble upon them, appreciate them for what they are: a gift. A gift that could have just as easily have never been, a gift that could turn into something great, and a gift that should be celebrated.      

Books read: 

I am Pilgrim - Terry Hayes

The She-Wolf of France - Maurice Druon (Accursed King Series #5)

The Lily and the Lion - Maurice Druon (Accursed King Series #6)

The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss (Kingkiller Chronicles Series #1)

  
 

 

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