I’m currently living the good-life. I’m doing substitute teaching work, so I have quite a bit of spare time to spend with the kids and catch up on lots of stuff around the house. I’m also trying to spend more time with friends here in beijing and keep in touch with friends all over the world.

That’s the problem! In order to spend time with my new friends who are here in Beijing, I take time away from keeping in touch with my overseas friends. Why does it seem to be necessary to chose one over the other??!!

I really want to sit down and skype with each of my friends weekly, but kids and timezones make that pretty much impossible. So, alternatively, I’d like to write lengthy emails every week. But what happens instead is that I don’t have to time to write anything in detail, so I don#t write at all.

I really want all of my friends to know that I miss you all and wish I were better at keeping in touch. We may live near to each other again, in which case hopefully we’ll just be able to pick up where we left off.

But what of those friends who far away and unlikely to live in the same place as me again? I really want to remain friends with these people, but how can you really be friends with someone that you maybe see once every 5 years??!!

These are the perils of modern life and particularly that of the ex-pats. We’ve chosen this life, for various reasons, but now I feel that even when we settle somewhere permanently we will wind up missing so many of the friends that we’ve made along the way.

Every day I have little ‘conversations’ in my head with various distant friends and I wish I could download them and sent them to each person.

I think about all my friends across the world all the time – even if you haven’t heard from me for weeks or months or longer!

This is a sad conundrum and I guess the flip-side is that I’m lucky to have so many good friends all around the world!

Scweinebrotchen

Schnitzel

Lukas just after waking up

Lots of snow

I am going to take the rest of the year off and then think about whether I want to continue posting here next year. The catalyst for this decision was when no one outside China or the U.S. supported my Movember efforts.

This is the last day to donate to my profile on movember.com. I am Steve Snell and the team name is ISB MoDragons. It’s not a complicated process and only takes a couple of minutes, so if the time factor is holding you back I urge you to give it a go.

Tomorrow our school has the last Movember function which is a fashion parade. I am going as a communist guerilla, which means I have a wig, a green shirt and a plastic gun. I don’t know if I will post the pictures. Maybe if I can wheedle some more donations…

It is still possible to donate to my Movember page.

It is not too late to donate to my Movember effort.