Andrew's 33rd Birthday

Okay, while Blogger is in the mood, I figured I should post a few more recent pics, even though I REALLY need to get to bed now and will pay for it tomorrow... o well... just a few more minutes. Anyways, as some of you know, Andrew celebrated his 33rd birthday last week, so here are a few pics of the day (sorry they're a bit out of order):

Big dinner in the evening with the principals and all the foreign staff at a steak restaurant. It was a super-great coincidence that it was planned for the same day as Andrew's b-day as he LOVES steak!

Crazy dry-ice drinks after dinner... not that we were drinking the dry ice, but they were served with dry ice all around and came to the table steaming (or whatever it is that dry ice does)... fabulous presentation!

My drink, also presented with dry ice... it was "rose juice" which I chose off the menu just b/c I'd never tried it before (and had never even heard of it), so I figured "what the heck, why not?!" It was SO delicious! I think I'm hooked.

At the end we turned out all the lights and brought Andrew cakes and sang Happy Birthday to him... I hope he was surprised. Notice the Canadian and Chinese flags on the table? Nice touch.

A full picture of the 14 dinner guests... all the Chinese people on one side; us whiteys on the other. Seating is VERY important to the Chinese and there's usually a big (LOUD) discussion about who sits where, and then we're assigned our seats.

At the end of the evening, the restaurant gave us all a present: half of us got tea towels with the restaurant's name embroidered on it ("Wang Steak"), and the others got a pair of slippers, again with Wang Steak on them. Random!

Birthday table for Andrew before breakfast... I got him a few gifts (that I'd brought from Canada) and his parents had sent along a card too... he was very happy with it all!

New addy

A few peeps have been asking about our new home mailing address, so here it is:

Andrew & Corinna Nairn

Room 11B, No. 20

Lane 99 East Nandan Road

Shanghai, 200030

CHINA

Can't wait for the mail to start pouring in!

New School Pics

Hi Guys,

Alright, as promised, here are some pics of our school's new campus where we have the pleasure and privlege of working this year. The skies are sunny again in blogger-land, permitting me to post pics today; tomorrow I might not be so lucky... so better get 'er done now! Enjoy:

An overview of our office. There are 12 desks/teachers in here and it's lots of fun!

A close-up of our area. Andrew's desk is on the left (where he's sitting), and mine is on the right (the empty chair). We are desk-mates and it is so nice! We even share a stapler!

Our wing of the building... we are on the 4th floor.

The open-concept hallways. This is right outside our teachers' office. Looks nice, eh?!

In the school cafeteria. Ash couldn't manage to eat with chopsticks at first, so he used one of our carrot-sticks as a spoon... it was pretty funny!

The very front of the school (the administration building)... this is the very first thing you see when you come thru the school gates. I hope they're gonna put some sort of sign in that big empty space, b/c it looks a bit weird I think.

A few interesting facts about our school:

-teachers get free breakfasts and lunches in the caf every day... we haven't ventured to try the conchee (watery rice porridge) in the morning, but lunches are okay... beggars can't be choosers!

-b/c the principals are SO freaked out about the kids and staff getting swine flu, they've decided to issue ALL staff a daily vitamin C pill, plus all-you-can-drink milk all year long... very nice of them!

-the school is right across the street from a few different hospitals

-the guy who hands out the PE equipment (yes, that's a job here) is a chain-smoker. He gives the kids basketballs while a smouldering cigarette is dangling from his lips... gross!

-every morning as we come thru the school gates we get our temperature taken by a student moniter who holds this gun-type-thing up to our forehead. Not sure if they let you in if you have a temp, but so far we haven't had to find out! Again, it's a swine-flu thing.

That's it for now...

~Ciao

3 Steps to a Clean Body

As I'm writing this, Andrew is jamming on his guitar... which he's been doing for the past hour. I am SO lucky to have such a musical husband... in-house entertainment (literally!) all the time!

As I think I wrote before, I'm teaching Planning 10 and PE 11 this year. The Planning course is old news as I did that last year already, but the PE thing is all new; I haven't taught full-time PE in 4 years now, so I'm super pumped about it. My first lesson with the kids was this past Thursday, and I thought I'd start out with some basics.

You see, some of these kids' personal hygiene could more accurately be described as "low-giene"... especially the boys. For example, they'll go out and play basketball at lunch for an hour (in the 30-degree heat) and get so sweaty that their shirts are see-through and their hair is dripping wet. Then they'll come back in and sit in class like that for 4 more classes in the afternoon. GROSS! I told them no more of that and had a whole object lesson of what a PE strip looks like, which is news to them! Seriously! And these kids are in grade 11!

What I did was have a big collection of "supplies" in a bag and pulled them out one by one and explained what they were for and how to use them. The kids were captivated! Amongst these items were a washcloth, a towel, deodorant, and a fresh t-shirt. I demonstrated how one would wet a washcloth and wash the face, neck, body, and armpits (in that order!), then towel-dry them, apply deodorant (not to be shared with classmates!), and put on a clean shirt. (Obviously I didn't strip down in front of them to show all this, but they go the idea). In the end they all thought it was a good plan and agreed to bring the suggested items next week! Sorry I don't have any pictures of all this.

In other news... Andrew and I (along with our friend Garrett from San Diego) are playing a show tonight at a little lounge/bar here in Shanghai, which should be fun. Andrew and Garrett both play accoustic guitar, and I'm the back-up singer. Shame I don't have my keyboard here, but it was too heavy to pack and is nestled comfortably in Tony and Gill's basement in North Van. Anyways, the show will be good I think. The only thing that discourages us from doing more of them is that ALL the bars here are super-smokey so you come home absolutely REEKING.

Also, we got gym memberships at a new gym yesterday, which is a 10-minute walk from our house. We are so happy b/c the gym we went to last year is now too far away for us (after the move). Plus, we got our Chinese secretary at school to do the groundwork on gym research for us (she's a STAR!), and she somehow bargained them down from 2800 RMB to 1500 RMB for the year. What a deal! Moreover, 6 of us Canadians joined at once, so we'll all be able to hold each other accountable for working out. It also has a bigger swimming pool than last year, so we'll hopefully be able to swim proper laps without having to negotiate around Chinese "waders".

Alright, that's all for now... have a great weekend!

~Team AC

Pictures

Hip hip hurray... today seems to be our lucky day as blogger is in the mood to post pictures! Enjoy!Our good friend Alysa was a super-star and drove us to the airport EARLY in the morning in Vancouver. (Notice her sad face b/c we're leaving!). There is a bit of a story here as she came with me to buy the infamous pink suitcases way back in 2005 when I went to England for the year. She's a GREAT friend!


Andrew patiently waiting for our flight in the beautiful Vancouver airport. Seriously, in which other airport in the WORLD could you quietly wait beside a creek, amongst greenery and totem poles?

Here begins our house tour: this is the kitchen... literally TWICE the size of last year's. Please notice my 4.5 feet of counter space on the right side! Twice as much as last year! Yippee! Andrew and I can happily co-exist in the kitchen without having to do the Tango to get around each other.

This is the guest room/office where you can sleep when you come to visit. The bed is considered a "double" by Chinese standards, but everything is a bit smaller in this country (as per the size of most Chinese people I guess).


Our bathroom: about the same size as the kitchen... it's so big you'd think you were in a real house, not an apartment. For the first time in about 5 years we have a bathroom counter complete with DRAWERS! The laundry washing machine is also in the bathroom. Like our grandma-motif shower curtain? That'll soon be changed!


The master bedroom. If you look closely you can see my stuffed monkey on the left side. Andrew likes to put it into funny positions every day... here he's doing a handstand I think. It makes me laugh. Also attached to our bedroom, we have a big enclosed balcony where we can hang our clothes to dry. Much better than last year where we had so little space in our house that we had to stand the drying rack on TOP of the guest bed to conserve floor space!


Our living room: it has 10-foot ceilings and crown moulding... FANCY! The leather couches are an awkward-mustard color, but very comfy! We have tons of space in here and plan to have plenty of parties.

So as you can see, we are really really happy with our new joint. The only two complaints we have are that it still smells a bit smokey (from previous renters I think) and the fact that it backs out onto a busy main road, which makes it a bit noisy. We'll get used to it though.

Hopefully we'll be able to post pics of the new school soon... it's a beauty!

~Team AC