Congrats Linds & Baz!!

I would like to congratulate my friend Lindsey and her now-fiance Barrie ("Baz") on their recent engagement!  Linds and I have been friends since grade 8, and we all met Baz when our friends Tanessa and Denise met him randomly while traveling in England about 10 years ago.  After striking up a friendship, Baz came out to Canada at least once a year to visit them and to snowboard.  That's when we all met him and became friends with him.  A couple years ago, Lindsey and Tanessa were traveling in Europe, met up with Baz again, and that's when things started happening with the Lindsey-and-Baz saga.  Baz (who is an engineer), then decided to come to Canada for a year (this past year), mainly to snowboard and be with Linds.  

Dec. 24th was Lindsey's 27th birthday, and Baz completely surprised her with an early morning proposal on the snowy shores of Spanish Banks beach in Vancouver.  A treasure map and shovel were involved, I'm told.  

Linds and Baz are both super excited, and a June wedding is being planned.  Congrats guys!

It Arrived!

Hi Everybody,

You might remember (or look back to) a few posts ago when I said that my mom, sisters, and Oma had sent us a sweet Christmas parcel as a surprise.  Well, Andrew's mum did too!  It was on it's way over on a boat so it took a wee bit longer to arrive, but that it did today, just 3 days after Christmas, which was perfect timing as we were still on our 4-day "Christmas holidays"... we opened it right after church and found SO much stuff inside... again, I couldn't believe how one box could hold so much stuff.  All of it was individually wrapped in little pieces of Christmas wrapping paper, so we had lots of fun ripping it all open.

Here's me modeling the nice turquoise silk scarf and underwear... woot woot!

Andrew unwrapping a little Santa ornament.

Andrew holding his gift bag, which was full of wrapped pressies.

This is me, looking like I'm high on drugs (I wasn't!) cutting the box open.  Sorry these pics are a little backwards in order... it takes like a year to move them around on this program, so I'll just let you use your backwards imagination!  

Altogether, the package contained: socks & underwear, some chocolate bars, soap, hot chocolate powder, mittens, photos, a Christmas CD, little ornaments, Christmas napkins, etc.  Aunty Margaret and Uncle Charlie were also very kind to send Andrew a really nice collared shirt (which I'm sure will look ever so dashing on him) and a really nice set of PJs for me, which I can totally use here as it's SOOOOO freezing!  I've been sleeping in sweats for the past week b/c of the temp, but that just feels like I'm camping in our tent all over again, so real PJs will be a nice change tonight.

Thanks SOOOO much to the Nairns for this wonderful present of "Christmas in a Box"... we really appreciated it and felt the love.

This last pic is of ALL the cards peeps have sent us here.  If you sent us a card, look closely to see if you can spot yours... I promise they're all up there, but some might be hidden.  They are standing atop our oh-so-massive oven... that's what I baked the C-mas cookies in... I forgot to mention there's only room to bake 6 cookies at a time, so it's an enormous undertaking to do any baking b/c you have to sit there and wait and wait and wait... it's a 3-hour commitment!  

All right, thanks again Nairns, and Merry Christmas again everyone!

Round Yon Virgin

Well, needless to say, this has probably been our most "different" Christmas yet!  While we've both been away from our families several times over Christmas in past years, living in China definitely tops them all for being completely different to a Western Christmas.

Most Chinese don't celebrate Christmas; instead they're super big on Chinese New Years which will be starting in about 4 weeks from now.  However, they still decorate the malls with lights and pictures of Santa and play Christmas music, although I don't think they understand the background as to why Christmas is celebrated in the first place.  In any case, it's nice to be around a bit of "Christmasy stuff".  

At our school, our program being Canadian, us 4 teachers decided we'd totally celebrate Christmas, just like we went big with Halloween a couple months ago.  We encouraged our kids to decorate their classrooms, which they did with huge initiative... the classes looked GREAT!  Some of our kids even managed to get fake Christmas trees from somewhere... one for each classroom.  There were sparkly garlands, snowflakes, ornaments, lights, and artwork hanging from every wall, bulletin board, ceiling, and fan... so nice!  

On Dec 23rd we had a big C-mas party at school.  There were games like "Pin the nose on Rudolph" and the "Rudolph Dash", a big gift exchange, a visit from Santa Clause (our principal, Ron), skits and presentations, and lots of caroling that Andrew led on his guitar.  The kids were so enthusiastic... they're just fantastic to plan stuff for b/c they love whatever we do.  There are no bad-attitude-kids sulking in the back saying "this sucks"... which is so refreshing for us!

In the week leading up to the Christmas party, I took some time during my classes to teach the kids some C-mas carols so they'd be primed for the carols during the party.  I did this by looking up the carols online in the classroom, putting the lyrics on the overhead, and having them sing along with the computer.  Of course they'd heard of songs like Rudolph and Santa Claus is Coming to Town, and Frosty, but when we'd gone thru all those "kid-friendly" songs, one kid requested Silent Night.  So I looked it up online and put the words up for them.  Being the obedient little Chinese kids that they are, they sang along as best they could, but I noticed some very puzzled looks on their faces when we got to parts in the song like "Round yon virgin, mother and child".  I'm sure they were wondering "what the heck is a round yon virgin?".  Now remember that most of these kids have grown up with zero religion, China being a communist country.  In fact, we're not supposed to be saying anything about religion while teaching these kids, least of all Christianity I'm sure, but given the circumstances I couldn't really skip over it.

  Terry, the English teacher, had already told them the Christmas story during her ESL lesson earlier that week, so they knew about baby Jesus, but I guess she hadn't gone into detail about how Mary had gotten pregnant with Jesus.  Anyways, back to the song, the kids were very curious about this line, so we started talking about it.  I tried to explain it to them by saying "well, you all know what a virgin is right?  We talked about it during sex ed last month".  Yes, they all remembered.  "Well, Mary was a virgin when she was pregnant with Jesus".  "But Mrs. Nairn, you told us you have to have sex to get pregnant".  Shoot!  "Yes, but Mary got pregnant because God made her pregnant without having sex".  This was met with looks of disbelief from the kids, and was only exacerbated by me going on to tell about the angels in the sky singing to the shepherds below.  I'm sure they were thinking "ya right, teacher" in their heads, but again, being Chinese, they would never challenge a teacher out loud like that (they believe this shows disrespect).  So I said to them "Hmm, this might sound a little strange and far-fetched to you right now, eh?", to which one of our more mature kids responded, "Yes, but I'm sure you have a hard time believing all our old Chinese legends too."  Touche!   I really couldn't argue with him on this one.  

Jay the Santa Clause in "Twas' the Night Before Christmas" presentation

Siare & Monica in a Starbucks skit

Jay, Monica, and Siare in the Starbucks skit

More Decorations... this one took 2 boys about 2 hours to tape to the wall- dedication!

Special Feature: Shane & Bonnie Mowery

While living in Shanghai we've had the opportunity to meet loads of other expats, which has been great.  The couple in the picture above are Shane and Bonnie from Alabama.  Shane is a pilot and Bonnie's a flight attendant (that's how they met in the States).  After they got married, Shane's airline went under, and he was then hired by a Chinese airline and arrived in China around the same time as us (we met them at our cell group).  Here's the crazy thing: the Chinese airline hasn't had the time to train him on their planes yet, so they're paying him full-time wages and he's just hanging out here in Shanghai, waiting for their call!  This is super nice for him and Bonnie b/c they have LOADS of time to do whatever they want.  It's also really nice for us b/c they have become our "most available" friends.  There's always a 100% guarantee that if we call them to see if they want to hang out, they'll say yes and be there within 20 minutes!  We love it!  Shane and Bonnie are great for playing games with, and are quite similar to us in a lot of ways, so we get on great.  Bonnie and I are like two peas in a pod, and Shane is really intelligent and plays guitar, so Andrew loves being around him too... it's a good mix and is something we have been praying for (to meet a couple where both of us really like both of them, and live nearby enough to hang out with).  We're looking forward to their "after-Christmas Christmas-party" on Sat night... Italian theme!

Goodness from Home!

Let me begin this post by explaining that a couple months ago when our families asked what we wanted for Christmas this year we said "NOTHING!"  Reason being that a)we have everything we could ever want, b)shipping is super expensive, c)almost everything is made in China anyways, so why send it back to the motherland from Canada?, and d)it would be hard for us to reciprocate and send pressies back for everyone in our families as we'd be a bit embarrassed to do that b/c the quality of many things here is a bit on the junky side.  That being said, we all agreed that we'd just send each other cards this year and that would be it.  
But dear Carmen (my Mom) couldn't help herself!  She decided to surprise us and send us a box of Christmas goodies... mainly baking and the good old German treats I can't seem to live without at Christmas-time.  She actually told me about the parcel once it was in the mail and said it was "just small"... but it sure didn't look all that small when we received it.  
Moreover, it was PACKED full of amazing stuff... it must have been like putting a puzzle together b/c every square inch was stuffed full of stuff... nuts, chocolates, cookies, marzipan, German honeycake... even some Life cereal on the very top (for those of you who don't know, that's Andrew's favorite cereal in the world but it's super duper expensive here in China... for only a tiny box too, so we almost never buy it).  My mom told me that she was at the post office filling Life cereal into little Ziploc bags, trying to stay within a certain weight limit... I think she must have been getting some amused looks!  Also, there was a super nice card from my parents inside, plus cards from Emily, an Archie comic for Andrew from my sister Sylvia, and a box of baking and a card from my Oma Bohl... everyone was in on this!  Woo hoo!
This last picture is of me first attempting to break into the parcel.  My mom always wraps these Houdini-proof packages.  I'm pretty sure that the delivery plane could get shot out of the sky, sink to the bottom of the ocean, sit there for 30 years, and the contents of my mom's packages would be warm, dry, and in one piece upon discovery!  I'm not kidding... it took me about 10 minutes just to get into the box itself, using various cutting tools...
It's been so nice having all these wonderful Christmas treats in the house, and we are SO thankful to everyone who contributed... thanks guys!  It was really unexpected!

I wasn't planning on doing any C-mas baking myself this year, mainly b/c our kitchen counter space here in China is no bigger than 2ft x 2ft.  I'm not kidding... it's smaller than the top of an elementary school kid's desk, if that helps you visualize it.  It's so frustrating trying to make anything, including meals b/c there's no place to put anything... I end up standing things on the gas stove, inside the sink, and in the tiny little dish-drying basket.  Sometimes I even have to balance things on the top of the fridge.  I won't complain any further here b/c I know we still have a lot more than most people in the world do.  It's just a lot less space than I'm used to in a kitchen.  

Anyways, all that being said, our cell group is have an outreach-type Christmas party this Friday night, and I was asked to coordinate all the food.  It's just finger-food and desserts (not a big meal), so that's fine, but I figured I should bake something Christmasy instead of copping out and buying gross Chinese-y fried things in bags... that's like bringing chips and pop instead of nice stuff for C-mas.  So I got a recipe for sugar cookies online and have been working on them the past 2 nights.  They turned out okay, but taste a little funny b/c I had to use Chinese dumpling-flour to make them... that's the only kind of flour they have here... unless you want to pay around $10 for a little bag of the imported Rogers flour, which is crazy!  Anyways, the point is, our apartment is warm and cozy and smells like Christmas cookies.  While I was doing this, Andrew was practicing C-mas carols on the guitar as he's playing for the cell-group party's caroling part, and for our students' C-mas party next week.  The music sounds great!  

While I was writing this post, Andrew was just watching CNN and we caught the part about the Whistler gondola-post snapping in half... freaky!!  You gotta think that those kinds of things are always on peoples' minds as they ride up the lifts on ski mountains... at least I always think of that "what if" scenario whenever I'm riding up.  I always end up convincing myself that these things never happen in developed countries like Canada, and that they would only ever happen in new little ski-countries like Latvia or Slovenia or whatever... guess not!  The snow at Whistler looked nice on TV though... kind of wish I were there (just not on that gondola!).

K, gotta go... hope you're all having a great time getting ready for C-mas.  To those of you in our immediate family: watch for your C-mas cards in the mail... they should arrive soon!

The Latest...

Hi Guys,

Well, we're coming up to Christmas and are as busy as ever. Last week our school was inspected by some Ministry of Education inspectors from Victoria, BC... thankfully we passed the inspection, but it was a lot of work and stress.

Although Chinese people don't traditionally celebrate Christmas, they have definitely hopped on the bandwagon of decorating their main mall/shopping areas really nicely with lights, Santa Clauses, and Rudolphs. There's even some fake snow (white pebbles) for Santa to drive his sleigh over!

As we are teaching at a Chinese school (as opposed to an international school), we don't get the traditional 2-week Christmas holidays off (but we do get Dec 25-26 off). Instead of that 2-week C-mas holiday, we get 3 weeks off for Chinese New Year from Jan 17-Feb8. The great part about this is that we can go on a really nice holiday, which we booked flights for a few weeks ago and are now booking accomodations for. We were originally hoping to go to Thailand and Vietnam, but as it turns out, they are on the same "lunar calendar" as China, meaning that they also have holidays during Chinese New Year. This means that prices to fly and stay there are higher, and the areas will be crazier than usual... not our bag! Our travel agent here did manage to snag us some good prices to Bali (in Indonesia) though, so that's where we're headed! The cool thing is that on the way there we'll get to spend 4 days in Singapore, and on the way back we're gonna spend some time in Hong Kong. So really, we get to see 3 places.

Not only that, but once we're in Bali, we're gonna go island-hopping around the area. I've been doing a bunch of research and there are a few tiny tropical islands nearby (that you have to take a ferry to from Bali). These islands are so small that there are no cars, motorbikes, etc allowed on them... the only transportation is bikes or horses! Isn't that cool? We're gonna be staying in little huts right on the beach... cheap & cheerful! Because these little islands are very close together, we'll spend a few days on each, taking a little boat between them whenever we've had enough of one and need a change of scenery. These islands boast white sandy beaches, blue waters, and amazing diving and snorkling. When we're in Bali we hope to do some surfing, check out the monkey forest, and see some little villages which manufacture silver and wooden things. We are super excited for all of this!


The 3 tiny Tropical Islands (called the "Gili Islands")

Map of Bali (in Indonesia). We'll be staying in the south (town of Kuta).

Beach huts on one of the Gili Islands... I think this is the deluxe model though... we'll be roughing it!

On a sour note, our computer has gone belly-up... strange b/c it's a Mac and I thought they were supposed to be unbreakable... I guess not. What happened is that when I tried to turn it on this past weekend, the screen lit up with the Apple sign (like normal), but it didn't load beyond that to the normal user screen, even after many hours. Andrew got up early this morning to call the Mac store in Vancouver to see what the problem might be, and it seems that it's either a "corrupt operating system" or a failed hard drive. Anyways, they advised him to insert the "start-up disk" that came with the computer... guess where that is? It's in Gill & Tony's basement (Andrew's parents) somewhere in the depths of one of our many boxes that are all unmarked (b/c we didn't have time to organize all our junk while moving). There's no way I'm gonna ask Gill or Tony to go digging thru all our stuff, so we're just gonna have to figure this one out. If any of you computer experts have any bright ideas, please let us know! I'm pretty worried about it b/c ALL our stuff is on that computer, including all our photos from the past 3.5 years and a ton of coursework that I've prepared. We're gonna try to get it fixed this weekend here in Shanghai, but I'm concerned about losing all our files.

Anyways, that's all of our latest and greatest... hope you're all doing well!

PTIs and Adult Sports Day

Hi Everyone,

I feel like I haven't posted anything on the blog for a while as Andrew was up for "blog duty" last weekend... I think he did a great job by the way!

I wish I'd had my camera with me last week, but I didn't, so you'll have to settle for a little post without pics- sorry.

Last Thursday was had our first Parent-Teacher Interviews. Of our 48 students, 44 parents came out, which is a SUPER high percentage compared to what we're used to in Canada. Usually at home it's also the parents who don't really need to come, who are the ones that show up. Ie- it's the parents of the well-behaved A-students who show up, when the peeps you really need to see are the parents of the maniac ADHD F-students. So these Chinese parents came for the interviews last Thurs and all were super concerned about their kids... it was funny b/c since my course (Planning 10) isn't that hard, many kids are getting somewhere in the 90s. Many of the parents wanted to know how their child could improve on their mark. I was like "Ummmm, well, little Mei-Ling here is getting 96% already... I'd say that's pretty good for now!" Parents were also super interested in what kind of university their kid would be able to get into, (based on their Term 1 mark from grade 10). Again, we were like "well... it's great that you're concerned about that now, but you really don't need to worry about that quite yet." The other thing that they ALL asked was where their child ranked in the class. Middle of the pack (in the 80s) wasn't good enough, and many kids got dirty looks from their parents. I guess it's just really different here in China where each couple is only allowed to have one child... it's their one big investment and they don't want it to get messed up. Also, in China there aren't enough seats in the universities for everyone to get in, so it's extremely competitive... much moreso than at home. The kids are in school every day from 7:30am to 4:30pm, then have about an hour off for dinner, and then have a mandatory 3-hour study period in the evenings (those who live in the dorms). It's CRAZY!!

The other event that we had last Friday after school was Teacher's Sports Day. It was held out on the school field, and all the staff (0ver 100 of us) took part in a bunch of games... all these crazy things like sack-hopping, 3-legged jump-rope running, picking up ping pong balls with chopsticks, the tennis-ball shuffle relay, etc. My favorite one was where we had to tie a garbage can to our back (with big elastic bands, like a backpack), and catch badminton birdies that were served to us by our teammate from the other side of the net... it was really challenging. At the end of it all each teacher received a big cheesecake to take home. Yup, another random present from the Teacher's Union. I told the Chinese teachers that in Canada we have to pay dues to our union... here they give us cheesecake... works for me! For those of you who have been keeping up with our blog, you'll know that this isn't the first random present to be bestowed upon us this year... we've had boxes of pear-apples, big bottles of cooking oil, gift certificates to the hair salon, boxes of mandarin oranges, etc... they just keep the goods coming... each time more random than the next! We're very thankful though.

Alright, hope you're all well and enjoying getting ready for Christmas. Even here in Shanghai there are lights and trees going up all over the place, which is nice. The Chinese don't celebrate Christmas, but there are so many foreigners here, I guess it's caught on. The bigger reason is probably so they can rake in more cash... who knows.

Bye!

Weekend Trip

Hey, it's Andrew with more news.  Last weekend (Nov. 15/16) we went on a guided tour of a small city called Suzhou (Soo-jo) that is about 2 hours outside Shanghai.  We left on Saturday morning from our school at around 8 am.  There were about 10 of us who went, including the principle of our school, other school admin, and us four Canadians. We visited several great historic sites, such as a Buddhist temple that was built at the top of a mountain, and a tea house that was also on a mountain, both of which we had to hike up to.  They took us out for meals at nice restaurants, and the food was "interesting", but not by Canadian standards.  It is difficult to keep an appetite, when each meal has at least one plate with a bird or fish looking up you!  We stayed at a decent hotel on Sat. night (think Ramada Inn), and then did some shopping at a huge market on Sunday. Then it was back in our large passenger van, and we returned home by Sunday evening.  Good times!  Hope you like the pics.

Cheers, Andrew

Shanghai Master's Tennis Tournament

Hey everyone, it's Andrew.  On Nov. 13th, Corinna and I went to see the Master's Tennis tournament that was held in Shanghai.  It's a bit like Wimbledon, but on a smaller scale, and only men's tennis.  We went out the the stadium, which is about an hour and a half bus ride from where we are, and arrived at around 2 pm.  It is a very nice facility, which holds approx. 5,000 fans, and is probably less than 5 years old.  The roof even opens up for summer events.

As for the matches, we saw a two men's doubles matches, and two men's singles.  The most exciting one was between the number 3 ranked in the world Djokovic and the number 6 Tsonga.  It was a great tennis, with lot's of amazing net play, and in the end, the "underdog" Tsonga came out victorious.  However, at the end of the week, Djokovic was declared the overall winner of the tournament, after beating Roger Federrer a few days later.  Here are some pics of the event, and the winner Tsonga signing the camera lens after the game.

Fire Drill

This morning we had a fire drill at school. In Canada a fire drill is like a big free-for-all... an event that usually takes up most of a class, and therefore is pretty popular.

In China, of course you wouldn't want to take away any time away from the Math lesson, so the fire drill is held before school (instead of the daily morning exercise session). In Canada, everyone knows it's just a drill and therefore it can be a bit rowdy... here in China however, we had the firetruck come out for the event, smoke bombs detonated in hallways, and all students jogging in and out of the buildings in perfect single-file lines. Then the head fireman got up on stage and gave a speech to the students while they were standing out on the track... the whole event was videotaped, photographed, and had it's own special banner going across the outdoor stage. It took less than 15 minutes. Very impressive!

Teaching Sex Ed in China!

That's right, I was the lucky person who got to teach a bunch of Chinese grade 10's sex-ed!  

Here's the deal:  this semester I'm teaching a Canadian course called "Planning 10".  This is the same course as "Guidance" or "CAPP" or "Personal Planning"... it varies in name from place to place, country to country.  The course covers lots of useful life stuff, such as healthy living, education & careers, finances, etc.  In the healthy living unit, sex ed was one of the things I was supposed to teach, but I wasn't sure if I should actually do it as it's a bit of a taboo subject in China.  I decided to go ahead with it b/c I think kids need to know about it.  I totally thought the kids would be really shy and nervous to talk about it, but from the time I walked into the classroom and wrote "SEX" on the board in big letters, they were hooked!!  They got kind of giggly but settled down well.  We did a lot of brainstorming as a class, which is normally a risky thing to do as these kids are so shy and afraid of giving wrong answers that class discussions usually don't fly.  However, on this topic almost everyone had things to contribute!!  

The height of excitement was at the end of the week when I pulled out "Mr. Banana" and did the condom demo.  The guys sitting at the back of the classroom put up their hands and asked if they could move their chairs up closer for a better view!  Never have I seen students SO interested in learning anything before!  Of course I was a little nervous doing this too, and really hoped nobody would be walking by the classroom and looking thru the windows in the hallway! 

Of course I told the kids that it's best to wait until you're married to have sex, but I think it's very naive to assume that ALL the kids would actually adhere to this advice, and given all the nasty STD's out there (which the students studied in detail), I thought it would be best that they know how to better protect themselves.  

Overall, a very successful set of lessons... don't think they'll ever forget it, nor will I!

Halloween '08

Yesterday we had a big Halloween party for our kids here.  It was funny b/c Halloween isn't really that big here in China, so this was the kids' first time dressing up for it... they were as excited as 5-year-olds, which was great to see!  We'd been prepping them and teaching them a little about Halloween for the past week, so they were clued in.  We decided we would skip the afternoon classes on Friday and a have a bunch of games for them.  

The 48 students were divided into 8 teams of 6 and were competing against each other in all the games, of which we kept a grand tally so that one team won the grand prize (ice cream) at the end.  As always, our students were totally into it!  We had pumpkin bowling, apple bobbing, the mummy wrap (with a mummy dance!), a string weave, and a candy-guessing-jar.  
Andrew and I went to Toys R Us here in Shanghai to get our costumes.  Sadly, they didn't have a very good selection, and the only adult costume they had was Dracula, so that's what Andrew was.  I opted for the fairy costume, but had to settle for the 2-6 year-old version of it... tiny wings, hairband, wand, and a tutu that looked more like a little ruffle on me!  
The best reaction of the day was when Andrew walked into the classroom dressed as Dracula.  As you can see from the picture above, it was like the Chinese Paparazzi... they all rushed up to him and started taking his picture and saying "Ohhhhhh Mista Nay-rayn..."  Very funny!

Even the Principal and Vice Principal of the big Chinese school we work in came up to be part of the party... various kids donated parts of their costumes for a bit so they could feel included in the dressing up... at one point the principal was wearing a big black witch's hat with long neon-green hair attached... he was lovin' it!  

I am so happy with our students... they really took the initiative to make this party even better.  Without being asked, they somehow came up with tons of decorations for the rooms, painted artwork for the walls, etc.  What a great memory!

Congratulations!

We would like to publicly congratulate Andrew's cousin Ange and her husband Ian on the birth of their twins, Ella Campbell and Riley Rowan Van Schoor (in South Africa).  The twins were born last week and weighed just over 2kg each... tiny little things and SO cute!  This has been a very long awaited birth, and we are incredibly thrilled for this new little family of four.  Congratulations Ange and Ian!  

A Quick Update

Hi Everyone,

Hope you're all well.  Sorry I haven't posted anything for a couple weeks.  The reason is this: I'm on my computer SO much at work that by the time I get home in the evening I have absolutely NO interest in sitting down at the computer again.  And on the weekends... well, last weekend we spent about 4 hours talking to friends and family on the phone.  As nice as it was, after sitting for that long I again had no interest in sitting any longer in order to type type type.  So I hope you will understand the infrequency of these posts from time to time!  

That being said, we are doing really really well here in Shanghai.  We've been here for 2 months now and are definitely feeling a little more settled in than we were last month.  We're really enjoying our church and home group, as well as our jobs.  Our students continue to be excellent (most of them anyways!).  They are so hardworking, respectful, friendly, co-operative, etc.  I always look forward to teaching them, which is more than I can say for teaching in Canada!  Honestly, for the first time in years I am really enjoying my teaching job... I just hope this lasts!  I feel like we've hit the jackpot of jobs here: great job that pays well, nice apartment (which we don't have to pay for), lively city, the chance for Andrew and I to be together more than we were in Vancouver, cheap manicures and massages right across the street, good food, etc.  

October has been a really nice month in terms of weather here.  When we first arrived here at the end of August it was SO hot and humid... just standing outside would cause us to sweat in buckets, nevermind walking anywhere!  (We just got used changing our clothes all the time and doing TONS of laundry).  September was much the same as August.  Anyways, October has been mostly sunny (only 2 or 3 days of rain) with temperatures in the low-mid 20's (celcius).  Still warm enough to wear shorts and a t-shirt with maybe a light sweater in the evenings, but not sticky-sweaty-hot.  Today is November 1st and you can definitely notice that it's cooling off, but it's still no colder than 15 degrees ever so far.  Very comfortable.

We're also making friends here, slowly but surely.  It's funny b/c apparently there are thousands of ex-pats here in Shanghai, but they're all mixed in with the other 18 million Chinese people, so you have to hunt for the white people... kinda like doing a "where's Waldo?" picture.  We've met quite a few cool people thru our church and home group, and then last Sat we went to a volleyball night.  It's a group of expats that play v-ball every Sat night at a local high school gym.  We weren't quite sure what to expect but decided to give it a go.  It turned out to be a way higher level than we're used to with a lot of intense players, but everyone was really friendly and we had a great time.  Don't think we'll make it a regular thing, but def once in a while.

As for missing home, it's not too bad.  I know Andrew is wishing he could be in Whistler in a few weeks from now (when the mountains open), and I'm def missing playing soccer with my team in Vancouver.  I feel so sad for my poor little cleats, sitting there all alone in my cleat-bag in our shoe closet here.  I brought them along in hopes of finding a team to play with here, but so far I haven't been able to find anything suitable, despite having searched tons since we arrived.  O well, maybe something will still come up.  

Our church is great and we are continually challenged by the messages, and thus we are growing, which is great!  At our home group we are doing a multi-week study on serving others, which has spawned a lot of good discussions among the group.  Andrew and I usually continue these discussions afterwards as it's about a 30-min walk back home.  So we're learning and growing a lot together.  

Next weekend (Nov 7-9) Andrew and I are going to a marriage conference.  We heard it being advertised at our church so decided to sign up.  It's being held at the Ramada hotel across town and I'm SO excited to sleep in a big soft comfy hotel bed!!  I've heard that the conference part is also super  and will bring your marriage to a whole new level.  So we'll see how it goes... def looking forward to it.  

Alrighty, that's about it in terms of an update.  I really hope you're all doing well!

Congratulations!

We would like to publicly congratulate Andrew's cousin Ange and her husband Ian (in South Africa) on the birth of their twins, Ella Campbell and Riley Rowan Van Schoor. The twins were born last week and weighed just over 2 kg each... tiny! This has been a long-awaited birth and we are so incredibly thrilled for this new little family of four!

On Being Together 20/7

Some of you may be wondering if Andrew and I are driving each other crazy after being together SO much all the time.  It's true, we are together about 20 hours every day, more on the weekends.  Pretty much the only time we are ever apart is when we are teaching (but even then, our classrooms are right next to each other!).  Otherwise we eat, sleep, sing, pray, work out, shop, walk, clean, swim, and brush our teeth together, side by side.  I thought we might get on each others' nerves, but so far so good.  Of course I'd be lying if I said that we're always happy with each other 100% of the time... there are times when that's NOT the case.  But another benefit of being together so much is that we can't hide it or walk away from each other... nope, we've got to sort it out and work it thru on the spot.  We both agree that we've grown a bit in our marriage since arriving here, even though it's only been 7 weeks, which is great!  Thank you again to all of you who are praying for, keeping us in your thoughts, and encouraging us with phone calls, emails, etc.  You mean tons to us!!

Thanksgiving '08

Ammar with the 25 lb turkey!

The HUGE turkey!

The 28 guests packed into Ammar's living room

Many of you have been asking us if we celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving over here last weekend, and yes we did!  We recently met a couple at church called Pam and Ammar.  Pam is from Manitoba and her boyfriend Ammar is from Oregon & Kuwait.  Anyways, we started hanging out with them and really enjoy their company... they are both really into working out, being outside, travelling, etc... much the same as us.  They invited us to their feast and we were thrilled... we actually looked forward to it ALL week long b/c we're getting a bit tired of just eating rice and noodles over here and were stoked for some proper Western food.  Ammar hosted it at his house as it's huge, and it was pot-luck style, so everyone brought a dish.  Team AC did it's typical mondo-salad!!  Loads of people from their schools, work, and church were invited and it was a great opportunity to meet more expats our age.  Ammar's apartment was also incredible... he is on the 18th floor with windows all over it, looking out over a man-made lake in his complex (where you can rent kayaks), the city, and farmland WAY off in the distance.  He is actually paying more rent there than we are renting our place out for in Vancouver... o ya, China can be expensive if you want it to be.  This place was like the Hilton!  We will be happy to go visit him again!

The only lousy thing that happened that night was that my mobile phone was stolen out of my purse on the subway trip on the way over to Ammar's house.  I was SO careful to keep my purse in front of me the whole time b/c it was super duper crowded in the subway, but then moved it behind me for only about one minute while walking over to the doors right before we got off.  I guess that's when it must have been stolen.  To be fair, it was kinda my fault b/c it wasn't zipped deep into my purse like it should have been to make it more secure.  But still, someone lifted the flap-pocket of my purse, found the phone, and took it.  Arggh!  The funny thing is that everyone I've told over here in Shanghai has had absolutely no sympathy for me... they all say stuff like "well you really should have been more careful" or "ya, that's happened to me 3 times on the subway already, be careful!".... so I guess I learned my lesson the hard way.  The good news is that I bought a way cooler phone yesterday that I like even better than the stolen one... so it's all good!

Anyways, that's last week's update... sorry for the delay!  Hope you're all well.

Our Gym

I think in one of my earlier posts I explained how hard it is to exercise outside around here... the streets are super crowded, the drivers are crazy, and the weather is way too hot and humid.  I did bring along my Hip Hop Abs DVDs, which is like aerobics, but hopping around my living room was just getting old after a while, so we decided to look for a good gym.  

We ended up finding a great gym called Wills.  It's a chain, just like Fitness World is at home, with about 7 locations around Shanghai.  (You can see their website at: www.willsgym.com/index_en.html or google it if that link doesn't work).   Unfortunately there were no locations super close to our place; the closest one is about 10-15 minutes by taxi, depending on traffic.  Anyways, that's the location we ended up going with.  It's really modern looking with tons of cardio machines, weights, and the best part.... it has a POOL!!  Swimming is my favorite thing in the entire world to do, so this was important.  Here's a pic of it:  

Now the crazy thing is that, as you'll notice, this pool is shaped kind of like 2 kidney beans and has no lanes.  You can swim in a straight line all the way across, but the Chinese people seem to enjoy swimming in much the same fashion as they drive.  This means swimming/thrashing in circles thru the 2 kidney beans makes perfect sense in their minds, and doesn't mesh well with Andrew and I trying to power thru from one end to the other in straight lines.  Arghh!  We've definitely had our share of collisions!  In addition, the pool is manned by a very sleepy lifeguard who is often found nodding off in the corner, while his boss sits in the lifeguard room smoking (a VERY high percentage of Chinese people smoke by the way... and everywhere, like in restaurants, offices, etc).  Now it's fine with me if this guy wants to ruin his own lungs, but the problem is he leaves the door open into the pool room, so whenever you come up for air you inhale a bunch of smokey goodness from Mr. Boss.  They kind of give me a funny look when I get out of the pool and go close the door, but that's they way I roll!  

Now let me tell you about the cardio machines.  They are great, but I HATE them!!  I have always been an outside-exercise kind of girl.  That means I prefer soccer over basketball, and running outside over running inside on a treadmill.  I somehow just have a really tough time, mentally, running in one spot.  5 minutes is terrible, 10 minutes is deadly, and 15 minutes is where I go shooting off the back of the treadmill.  Seriously!  Which is really strange since I can run happily for over an hour without problems when I'm outside.  All this to say that I can't stand being on a treadmill, but I've come to the conclusion that if I don't want to return to Canada next summer as a sack of lard, I'd better be movin' my but throughout the year, and if that means being on a stupid treadmill, then so be it!  

Okay, enough about that.  Moving on... when we signed up for the one-year gym membership, the guy threw in a "bonus" for us.  This was comprised of a tacky Wills gym bag each, and a 500RMB gift certificate each to the spa below the gym.  (Remember, divide 500RMB by about 6 to get the Canadian dollar value).  We were pretty stoked about the gift certificates and were hoping to get really nice massages or something with it.  So we went downstairs to the counter to schedule our luxury pampering date.  Here is another example of Chinese scamming: the only thing that these GCs were actually good for were facials, which all cost around 300RMB.  The GCs were for 500RMB, so there wasn't enough on them to get 2 facials, and we also weren't allowed to combine our remaining 200RMB each for one of us to get a second facial.  Anyways, all complaining aside, the facials were really really nice.  They had Andrew and I lie down side-by-side on these gurney-things (that's what you lay on at a spa), wrapped us all up in towels on our heads and shoulders, and went to work for 1.5 hours.  During that time we had all kinds of goops, scrubs, and masks spread on our faces.  Our skin felt really tight and relaxed after all that.  (I know tight and relaxed are kind of opposites, but if you've ever had a facial you'll know how your skin can be both these things at the same time).  Here's a couple pics of Andrew waiting for the process to start, after being "towelled":

Now here's the kicker: just 2 days after purchasing this big one-year gym membership we were walking around the corner from our house when we saw a big sign on the outside of a building in construction: "Wills Gym Opening Soon".... arghhhh!  We couldn't believe it!!  The timing was incredible (and not in a good way).  Of course we've stopped by the new location a couple times (where they're already trying to sell memberships) to try to change our membership over to this new location.  So far they've said no, but there's a saying here in China that "Everything is negotiable", so we're not giving up!  

Indoor Snowboarding Anyone?

Hey guys, it's Andrew.  On Sept. 29th, Corinna and I went indoor snowboarding!  Now, don't get me wrong, it wasn't Whistler, but we had a great time.  

In the morning, we hopped in a cab, then took the subway out to an area west of the city. From there, we took another cab to this huge building that had a word like "Snowland" or something on the outside.  "Here we go", I'm thinking.

After paying, we were given very "interesting" colored snowpants and jackets, along with these wimpy gloves.  I'm pretty sure half of China had used my outfit over the last few years!  Fortunately,

Corinna and I had brought our own touques.  I didn't even want to go there.  We proceeded downstairs to choose our boots and boards.  The boots were okay, the board screamed rental.  Then, we went past a turn style, where someone swipes your timecard to show what time you entered at.  

You go through the doors, and enter this HUGE room that resembles an ice rink slanted upwards on one side.  The slope was a total of about 200 m in all, with the bottom half being a flatter run (crowded), and the top half being what we would call an intermediate, or "blue" run at home (empty).  So we headed up the slope, first by a moving sidewalk escalator that was on one side of the run, then by a Poma lift, which is similar to a t-bar.  

The slope was okay, and the snow was a bit granular, almost "corny", if that makes sense.  It was a little bit loud in there too because they had the snow blowers on the whole time.  After about 2 hours, we had our fill, and headed back.  "Let's see here; Indoor snowboarding in China in September..........check".

Talk soon,

Andrew

Army Training Week

About 3 weeks ago we were suddenly and mysteriously told (like so many things in China!) that all our students would not be attending school the following week as they had to attend army training.  "What for," you ask?  Are they being trained in case China goes to war?  Nope.  It's just for "military education" so they have an idea of what it's like to be in the army.  Fine with us!  We had a week of work with no teaching, which was a great time to do some planning.  Monday was actually a statutory holiday, we worked Tues and Wed, took Friday off to go sightseeing, and on Thurs we drove out on a big bus to visit our kids at the army!

Our kids (48 grade 10s) were taken about 2 hours west of Shanghai (inland) where they, along with another 2000 grade 10s from other schools, did drills, marching, obstacles courses, shooting practice (with fake guns apparently), and team-building stuff.  Their days went from 6am to 10pm for 5 days straight.  The whole week it was about 35 degree Celsius with no wind and the poor kids had to wear the full army fatigues: long camoflouge pants, shirts, jackets, and some chose to wear hats so they wouldn't get a tan (which is a bad thing for Asian girls b/c they all want to look pasty white, which I really don't understand).  Anyways, on with the story.  The army training was held at a place called "Oriental Land", which is a really hard place to describe.  Basically it's similar to a massive theme/amusement park that covers hundreds of acres and doesn't have rides, but instead is filled with parks, a giant lake, a hotel, and facilities to house and train national athletes for swimming, rowing, etc.  It wasn't the normal army grounds, but is often used for big groups such as this.  

Anyways, when we arrived there on Thurs morning we found our kids who were all lined up and ready to march off to their next activity.  We felt SO bad for them since it was so hot out, but it was also kind of funny to see them all dressed up like little soldiers.  

 It was actually almost lunch time by then, so we walked over to the giant hall where they ate all their meals, which was like a huge Chinese house/castle.  Quite nice actually.  Here's a picture from a distance:

The kids all had to line up outside in front of the hall and a real soldier yelled at them for a while (into the microphone no less), saying who-knows-what.  The kids just stood there at attention and didn't make a peep.  Then the principal of our school (who had also come along that day) made a little speech into the microphone.  The whole time us teachers were standing in the shade near the entrance to the building and all the kids in their full-on army-heat-suits were standing under the blazing sun.  Again, poor them.  Here's a picture:

Finally they got to go inside to eat, as did we.  Us teachers got the special dining room upstairs and apparently had better food than the kids did (although I thought the lunch was gross).  After lunch we walked around the grounds a bit and saw all sorts of interesting buildings, including one in the shape of a whale (again, for no apparent reason.... are you noticing a theme here in China??).  Here's a pic:

After a little while, an extended-cab golf cart drove up out of nowhere and we (teachers) were asked to board it.  This turned out to be a really cool tour of Oriental Land where we were shown the lake, the parks, etc.  The very very very best part of this whole ride was when we got to get out at "Fun Bridges".  Just as the name suggests, these were bridges that were fun!  As you can see from the following pictures, there were about 20 different kinds of bridges, all spanning a swampy man-made canal, about 15-20 feet in width.  The object was to cross these challenging bridges without falling in, which proved to be quite a feat with some of them.  

Like I said, this was by far my favorite part of the day.  I was SO sweaty after trying most of the bridges, but it was fully worth it.  I couldn't help but think of my brothers Steve and Austin the whole time and how much fun we'd all have on these together (and I'm SURE we'd ALL end up in the swampy canal after some tom-foolery!).

The last stop on our Oriental Land tour was a giant walk-way/open mall that had loads of statues of historically famous people to the left and right, along with little plaques of what they'd accomplished in life.  It would have been a very nice area to browse had it not been 35 degrees!  Here's a couple pictures of the best ones:

Andrew hanging out with Isaac Newton.

This one of Beethoven was taken soley for my dad... hope you enjoy it, Dad!

If you're wondering why I'm suddenly posting so many entries on this blog recently (after a few weeks of a dry spell), it's b/c we have the week off.  I'm not sure if I explained it in one of my previous posts, but it's National Holiday week here.  It's been really nice to have the time to go sight-seeing, get extra sleep, work out, etc.  And it's also been a good time to write some posts.  I'm sure you can expect a couple more in the next few days before we head back to work.