warm, warm, warm.....COLD!!!!

Holy geeze it's cold!

The temperature dropped from 28 degrees Celsius one day this week to 4 degrees Celsius and rainy the next day. For those of you who don't understand Celsius (and don't worry, I don't either and still convert it to Fahrenheit through google, I'm so American) that's about 80 degrees to 40 degrees in the span of 24 hours. There was a huge cold front that blew down from Mongolia and winter came right along with it. And to top it all off, as a result of this extreme weather change, there is a huge smog cloud that has settled over all of Shanghai. I haven't seen the sun in about a week and a half.

But it's not all bad, my contract with Okiki Elementary School was coming to an end December 1st, so I went job hunting again and oh man did I bag a big one if you'll pardon the hunting analogy. (I'm so Perry County-ian)
Starting January 1st, I am going to be the new branding co-manager for all of Asia for Concho Y Torro. Concha Y Torro is the number one wine company from Chile and the number seven wine company in the world. I'm not exactly positive what all the finer details of the jobs entail, but I know I will be doing a lot of traveling around Asia. This includes all over China, Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, most of the Stans, Mongolia, Russia, and maybe India. I was also told that one of my new big projects would be to try and set up some sort of connection to sell our wine to the troops in Afghanistan which so far no other wine company has been able to accomplish yet.

I have to take this with a grain of salt however. Even though the job was technically offered to me, I have to complete a presentation over Skype to a gentleman in the UK who approves all the funding to the Asian branch to make sure that I'm competent for this position. The presentation is on a hypothetical marketing problem that is to be given to me this weekend. I'm sure I'll do fine, but if you're reading this, visit this website and knock on the screen. Thanks.

I'm planning on coming home for Christmas on December 12th, so I'll see everybody soon.

Ezra has learned that...

1. Gas water heaters don't work very well. I hate room temperature showers. Especially when the room temperature in my apartment is 50 degrees.
2. Chinese people love to do this weird thing to their fruit that include drying it out and putting this weird type of sugar on it that makes it taste awful.
3. The school I'm working at doesn't want me to leave and the principal actually pleaded with me to stay. That made me feel good and bad all at the same time.
4. Haircuts range from $1.00 dollar to $100.00 dollars depending on where you go. And how nice the hair parlor looks from the outside doesn't determine the price. The $100.00 dollar one was hole-in-the-wall barber.
5. Space heaters stink.
6. Foot massage parlors are AMAZING!!!!! I'm investing in them when I get back to the U.S. I was a little weirded out at first, but trust me, WORTH IT!
   

Love,
Ezra