You gotta give him credit...

Anyone who's travelled with me knows that I am extremely weak of the stomach when it comes to any jostling-activities such as car, plane, boat, or train rides. Unfortunately, yesterday's flights from Shanghai to Singapore were no exception. But whereas some husbands would turn away in disgust, mine was a star. He had my sicky-bags all lined up for me before take-off, and when the time came for my lunch to make its second appearance, he held back my hair and gently stroked my back until the ordeal was over. What a guy!

We're now staying at a little youth hostel in the part of Singapore called "Little India"... and it's just like India but way cleaner. If anyone wants to buy a sari, some Bangara cd's, or some authentic curry powder, just let me know... they're all available on my street! I drank WAY too much chai tea last night (delicious), but forgot how much caffeine was in there... I was up with the jitters most of the night and I still feel all nervous. Weird. Lesson learned though: no chai before bed!

Today will be day #1 of sight-seeing... I'm just about to do a little research online here to see what there is to do in these parts. Hope you're all well...

On Mystery Meat & Being Frozen

If you've been following this blog for a while, you'll know that Andrew and I, along with the entire staff of this massive school we work in, have received very random gifts about once a month. We have NO idea why the school keeps dumping on us... for some reason we always think it's the last time and are surprised when there is another announcement to go down to the nurse's room and pick up our loot. This time it was a giant box of fresh vegetables each, and a mystery bag. I pulled two smaller, shrink-wrapped-ish bags out of my big bag and couldn't identify exactly what the contents were... the Chinese writing was of no assistance! I asked one of my students who was standing nearby what it was- she took it in her hands, turned it over, examined it, and finally handed it back to me saying, "It is the leg of a lamb". Oh. MMmmmmm... can hardly wait for that one! Looks like our security guards will be getting another gift (a re-gift, but they're none-the-wiser!).

In other news, Andrew and I are nearly dead from being frozen. Despite sleeping with 3 blankets, 2 hot water bottles, and 2 magic (hot) socks, we wake up chattering every morning (no central heating). Only 6 days now till we head to Singapore and Bali for our much-warmer holiday. We are SO excited for this and I've been busy online checking out which surf schools will be best for us in Bali. Can't wait to improve and ride the waves again! Woot woot!

Page 420

Some things about China continue to amaze me (and not always in a good way). One of these things is censorship. Yes, China has dirt and baggage in their past, but what country doesn't? I seem to remember a rather large "incident" in Canada having to do with the Komagata Maru, for example, but rather than covering it up, it is taught about in Canadian schools and we're supposed to learn from it. Not so here in China.

I just started teaching Socials 10 here last week. The textbooks have been here since September, but were awaiting censorship before students would be allowed to use them. When I asked my colleagues for the books last week they told me there was a problem and I wouldn't be allowed to use them for the course. "What's wrong, and why has this taken 4 months to tell me?" I asked. Well, the problem was that on ONE page there was mention and pictures of the Chinese "Tianamen Square" situation in 1989 (if you're not familiar with it, just do a Google search... quicker than me explaining it all here). "Why can't we use the book if only ONE page is bad?" I asked. "Because we'd get in trouble if school officials found out" was the reply. In the end I negotiated to just have that one page removed (actually they glued it to the next page in all 48 textbooks) and the kids are now using the books. One of my students told me last week "Something's wrong with my book- this page won't open." I told her not to worry about it- that it was supposed to be like that (much to my chagrin).

If any of you are teaching or taking SS10 at the moment and are interested, it's page 420 in the Horizons- Canada Moves West textbook. Have a look.

The next blow came when I wanted to roll out the class set of shiny new atlases I'd ordered for the kids to learn about Canada thru maps (which had also been here since Sept). I asked the guys in charge for those, and was met with GRAVE concern. This time there was no gluing pages together before handing them out- they were simply denied altogether. Why? Because of all the pictures of Taiwan (of course!). For those of you who don't know, Taiwan is a seperate country in some peoples' minds, but is a part of China in the mind of the Chinese people. I guess in the atlas it's shown as a seperate country, and that wasn't cool with the book-censorship peeps. Although I only wanted the Atlas for all the various Canadian maps, the fact that many of the world maps depicted Taiwan as explained above, prevented the use of all the atlases. I got to keep ONE on my desk which I can make photocopies from, and the rest we are trying to ship back. Sad.

By the way, my blog might get shut down by the Chinese government for writing all this, but I'm willing to take my chances... if there's no more posts after this, you'll know why!