We have been living in Hangzhou for five years

My name is Aaron. My wife’s name is Sarah and my son is named Derek. We have been living in Hangzhou for five years now. My wife and I originally decided to come to China two months after we got married. We wanted to have better opportunities to work in an international environment and thought China would be a great place for that; We wanted to have children and thought that China would be a better place to have a family.
To be honest, we didn’t really know what to expect before we arrived in Hangzhou. Back then, it was a little more difficult for foreigners to adjust to life here. We were apprehensive at first, but as we discovered more and more about Hangzhou, we fell in love with the city. On my days off from work, I would walk the pathways along the canals near our apartment and find interesting little shops or boutiques. I remember being in awe seeing the Chinese writing on every shop. At that time, I could not read Chinese characters so every sign to me could have been a Confucian saying – though I know now that they were probably just advertisements as simple as “Buy one get one free”.
Over time, we came across places like Hefang street and many many museums in Hangzhou. It became a challenge for me to try to visit as many of the museums around the West Lake in one day that I could. I try to buy a book to practice Chinese and learn new vocabulary words so that one day I might be able to take my son to these places and teach him about them also. I watched the Romance show at Songcheng once. I was so impressed by what I saw there that I actually wept a little the first time. I have seen the show six times since then.
We changed jobs a few times and eventually I settled down at a school called Chongwen Century City Primary School in Xiaoshan district. It was then that we finally decided we were ready to have a baby. We live in apartment community just outside the school, so I constantly see my students. When we take our baby boy for a walk around the community, he has so many friends that want to come say hello and play with him. It is my hope that we will stay here and that my son will grow up alongside these children because seeing him beside them makes me happier than ever.