Packed Weekend

Hello hello, just a quick report on our weekend for your reading pleasure. On Sat we played tennis with our good friends Shane and Bonnie (they have a court at their building- lucky!), and then went out with them to their friends' place in the evening. Like I've mentioned before, the expat community here is SO friendly... these people welcomed us into their home even though they'd never met us before and didn't know we were coming along. Andrew was in heaven as there were loads of guitars there and a big jam session going on. I had a great time chatting with a bunch of new girls... it's SO interesting to hear what people are doing here in Shanghai. I met one girl who is starting a company that manufactures environmentally-friendly cleaning tools- like bamboo dish scrubbies, etc. Another girl is starting her own yoga-wear line from the ground-up, and another couple of girls were volunteering tons with an organization that provides surgeries to orphan babies. SO cool to hear everyone's stories.

On Sunday morning I took a group of Canadian exchange students to the massage/manicure place across the street from our house to get beautified. These kids were grade 10/11s from Vancouver and were so much fun. The funny part was this: I was just having a quicky manicure done, but they were all in there for numerous treatments, so I was done first. I didn't want to just sit there watching them, so I took off for half an hour to grab groceries. I came back afterwards to check on them and found a bunch of them sitting there, getting their toenails painted and sipping BEER that they bought in the manicure shop. Can you believe it?? I was supposed to be quasi-responsible for them, and here they are DRINKING on my watch? Ahhh! But what can you do? It's not like they were hammered or anything. Right away they were like "shhh, don't tell our teachers".... and I won't! What a bunch of monkeys!

Last night we had the celebration/kick-off dinner for the Alpha course we're gonna be helping out with from our church. For those of you who don't know, Alpha is a 10-week course that goes over the basics of Christianity. People are welcome to join if they have questions, doubts, or curiousities. It's once a week, 3 hour sessions (including a free meal), for 10 weeks and Andrew and I will be leaders for one of the Sat afternoon groups. It's a big committment, but we really believe in this and want to help people either come to faith or strengthen their faith. There is a huge hunger for this here in China, although local Chinese people are not allowed to join Alpha, so it's for foreign passport-holders only. The reason you see so many Chinese-look-alikes in the above pic is that they come from Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, etc.

Also, in 2 days from now it's Andrew's and my 2-year anniversary (on St. Patrick's Day). Crazy that it's been 2 years! In a way it seems like it's so much shorter, but on the other hand it's not hard to believe it's been two years as we've packed SO much stuff into that time. We are still SO happy together and thankful for each other, and are committed to working out the kinks that every marriage has, and are looking forward to having even MORE fun together this year. Yay!

Pam's Party

Yesterday my friend Pam, who I met at church back in Sept, turned 29 and had a big girls-only party at a really nice Thai restaurant in Shanghai called Coconut Paradise. There were about 14 girls there, mainly from the US and Canada, and it was SUCH a good night... so nice to be out with just a bunch of girls.

To be honest, I wasn't looking forward to going that much b/c by the time the evening rolled around, I had a wicked headache and just didn't feel like being very social and putting my best foot forward while meeting a lot of new people. But I got on with it and it was great- I love meeting new people with interesting life stories as to why they're in Shanghai.

Pam is a true inspiration to many b/c she has a ton of energy and direction. She came to Shanghai to work as a teacher 6 months ago and had a ton of issues (won't get into it all here obviously), but in the past couple months she's made a lot of big decisions and changes that have resulted in her having a lot more joy and freedom, which really shows when you hang out with her. She is now applying to do her Master's degree in international relations in Australia, coaching volleyball, volunteering at a bunch of places, and getting super involved in our church. She's also working on getting certified to become a personal trainer which is something she's really passionate about - a workout nut! I wish her all the best in all these things.

3 Canadians: Pam (the b-day girl) from Winnipeg, me, and Nadia from Montreal.

Paper Mache Goodness

Coming up with creative teaching ideas is always a trick. Social Studies can be dry and boring, or a little more fun, and of course I'm all for the fun side of life! Whenever I'm planning my lessons I try to work from a list of activity ideas that I can apply to various topics, but last week when I came across the topic of rock layers in the textbook, I was stumped; how was I gonna make igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks relevant to grade 10s without putting them to sleep? Then I realized that they'd probably NEVER experienced the glorious wonders of paper mache in their past traditional Chinese schooling and decided to see if it would work with them.

And work it did! The assignment was, in groups of 4, to build and paint a paper mache model of the topography of Western Canada (using the digram in the textbook) and to label all the rock layers down the side, plus the mountain regions, ocean, and lakes. For 3 days they worked away and had a total blast!


Here you can see Beryl (in the pink shirt... easy name to remember for us b/c her body is kinda shaped like a barrel), holding up a lumpy mess which are really Canadian mountains! It looked a lot better after it was painted! The kids got SO dirty... they didn't all listen when I recommended they bring aprons. O well.

And here we have Jack who won one of the student awards for February. At the end of each month all the teachers vote for one student from each class who has worked really hard, gotten good results, spoken English a lot, helped others, etc and present them with this award. Then we take a picture by the BC flag and post the picture in the hallway. It's a really big deal for the kids to win one of these and it's always tough to decide who to vote for. Jack totally deserved it more than anyone else this month though- he's a real joy to teach!

This weekend we're heading out with a bunch of friends, which will be great. Also, Andrew is trying to start up a band again and meeting with lots of other expat guys to play guitar, so he's happy doing that.

K, gotta get back to work... hope you all have a good weekend!

Shoe Dilemma!

Every girl will, at some point in her life, have issues with shoes, and I'm no exception. Here's the deal: I usually like to look nice when going to work, including wearing nice shoes. This has all changed since moving to Shanghai. As soon as sandle-season was over in early November, I busted out my cute little black ballet-flats, but realized within about 2 days that these were never gonna cut it here. You see, these shoes are quite open on top and there's NO central heating in the school, plus walking to work thru all kinds of weather (while dodging hork, dog crap, massive puddles, and crazy motorbikes on the sidewalk), my feet both freeze and just aren't protected.

Seeing as this was the only pair of nice shoes I'd brought along (due to trying to pack light when we moved here), the next pair of shoes in line for "work duty" were my black Gallaz skate shoes, which match and blend in with everything. I know they're a little less dressy, but o well, they did the job. The only problem was that I've worn these shoes for the past 4 years STRAIGHT and I've pretty much worn them into the ground. I thought they'd last until the summer when I could replace them at home, but last week the heels cracked- you know that part of the heel of the shoe where there's hard plastic under the inner lining? Well, the plastic on both shoes started cracking, cut thru the lining, and was cutting my heels... they were literally drawing blood! So it was high time for new shoes.

I looked everywhere in Shanghai last weekend for a new pair of black skate shoes (since we walk everywhere in this city, it's important to have comfy shoes), but they only had mens. Then I looked online and found a sweet pair, but they only ship to the States. I felt like all my options just weren't working out. When I thought about it though, there's only really about one more month till sandal-season again here, so I decided to go with my gut and just get the shoes I'd had my eye on for the past few months: bubble-gum pink high-top Converse All-Stars. Why not? These would be the perfect funky solution.

So I bought them and left the rotting, cracking, blood-drawing Gallaz in the shoe store, wearing my new pink Converse shoes out on the street. This was perfect for about half an hour, until I realized how narrow they are in the front... both my baby toes started to get mad blisters on the side. Arrrghhh! This only left me with one option: wearing my bright yellow running shoes to work. Terrible, I know, but I'm not about to go buy some geeky-looking Chinese shoes here just to wear to work. I really don't need Mickey Mouse on my shoes, now do I?

So... this summer back in Vancouver it'll be shoe-shopping all the way until I find something cool and comfy again.

My Mind: The Whiz-a-Whirl

I remember about a year and a half ago while Andrew and I were on a walk in Vancouver and I told him how I was feeling bored in life: all the excitement from our engagement, wedding, and honeymoon was over, we had no trips planned for the near future, work was boring, it was constantly raining... everything just seemed blah and my mind felt stagnant. Andrew reminded me that there are seasons for everything in life, and suggested that we plan a big party to liven things up. We did that, it was great, but then that too was over.

What a contrast to what's going on now! Life is NOT boring, things are changing all the time, and most of all my mind is spinning like CRAZY all the time. It's like it never stops learning and absorbing and processing new things, be that from the internet, books I've been reading, meeting new people, travelling, or teaching.

One of the coolest things about meeting other expats here in China has been to hear about their jobs. At home I'm used to meeting people with "normal" jobs... things I can fit into my schema, like nurses, teachers, pilots, etc. I have a basic understanding of what all those jobs entail. Here I have met all kinds of people with jobs like flying spy planes for the army, consulting engineering for major industrial accidents, world expo planners, stainless steel pipe-builders, toy designers, and the list goes on and on. The conversations with these people are never boring... I learn so much as I try to envision what they do on a typical day, and I think it's keeping my mind "fit" as well.

Below I've pasted part of a blog entry from a cool blog I've just started reading. Although the list of 5 things is not rocket-science, I wanted to share it with you b/c it's a good reminder for daily life. Check out the whole blog at http://www.freshmd.com/

A few months ago the UK government's science and technology think tank Foresight concluded its Project on Mental Capital and Wellbeing.

The report includes an evidence-based list of five simple daily habits for mental wellbeing. These activities, which are likened to five daily servings of fruits and vegetables, are recommended to every person in the UK:

1. Connect with other people, be they family, friends, colleagues or neighbours.

2. Be active. Go for a run, walk around the block after dinner, putter in the garden or take the kids sledding.

3. Take notice. Be aware of the details of daily life - the beautiful, the humorous, the surprising. Be conscious of the world around you and your reactions to it.

4. Keep learning. Take a photography course. Learn to knit. Tackle a work problem in a different way.

5. Give. Show kindness to others. Volunteer. Support a charity. Donate blood.

Our Holiday!

Hi Everyone,

Sorry this post is so overdue... we got home a week ago, but you know how it is when you get back from holiday and need to be at work a day later... all the unpacking, laundry, groceries, etc. Nevermind uploading the pics to the computer, and then getting them online... the internet is pretty slow around here so it takes literally AGES to get pics onto the blog and facebook, especially when we want to load a whole bunch at a time... sucks, but we live with it. So I've put the best pics on this post (with mega narratives), but if you want to see them ALL, check on facebook under my profile. I've put up 2 of the intended 4 albums so far (one album for each place we visited). If you're not a facebook user (ie- parents), get one of your kids to let you on their facebook and have a look from there.

So here's the overview of our holiday:

Jan 19-23 in Singapore: VERY HOT, great city that was green & clean and quite unlike China, took a double-decker bus tour, ate lots of Indian food as we were staying in Little India, had a job interview that went well but they told us they're not hiring b/c of the financial crisis, went to Sentosa Island which is a man-made beach area, met up with friends (see pics of all this below).

Jan 23-27 in Bali: went surfing right away and loved it- we had a great instructor who showed us the ropes again, walked around the town tons, ate good food, shopped, swam in the hotel pool, watched movies on TV, totally relaxed

Jan 27-Feb 1 on Gili Trawangan: very tiny tropical island with no cars, trucks, motorbikes, or dogs allowed (only horse-drawn buggies and cats!), we snorkelled, swam in the ocean, ate so much yummy food (great restaurant selection there), made new friends from Canada and Slovenia, slept a lot, read books, suntanned (but not too much b/c it was SO hot that we stayed in the shade a lot)

Feb 1-Feb 6 back in Bali: tried to go surfing some more but the weather had turned... it rained every day so hard that we couldn't see (bad for surfing!), shopped a bit more, swam in the pool whenever it wasn't raining, I got a bit sick for a few days so had to lay low, got suckered into going to a timeshare presentation which was WAY too long but o well

Feb 6-7 in Hong Kong: we totally had to Amazing Race it thru HK as we only had one day... we saw what we wanted to, but really, it just seemed like another big Asian City which we already experience daily in Shanghai, so not that big a deal for us... the good part was the weather which was in the low 20's... very nice

And now for the pics...

The "Singapore Flyer"... a ferris wheel kinda like the London Eye, except even bigger.

The Sinapore Museum... looked pretty interesting, but the beach was beckoning!

A big Hindu temple... it's supposed to look really old, but they actually just built it a couple years ago

The older Hindu temple... look closely to see all the neat carvings on top- very intricate and colorful

View of China-town from the top of the double-decker bus... I think this was the back end of it... the front looked much nicer... just like China, but with a bit more polish

Andrew manages to find a guitar to play no matter what country we're in. He was debating taking his own guitar along on the trip, but we figured it would be too much to lug around. This pic is in our tiny Singapore hostel where he entertained the owners with his tunes!

The aformentioned Singapore Hostel... this is our room which was teeny tiny, but did the trick. It was so hot that they only gave us towels as blankets, which we barely even needed

The hallway outside our room at the hostel... see how narrow it was? Plus the walls were made of this cardboard-type stuff... not too sturdy

Our friend Peter and his girlfriend Meggy took us out for dinner to a "hawker" which is like a huge local food court. We tried lots of interesting stuff, the tastiest of which was the BBQ'd stingray... it was really really good!

Sentosa Island- when we'd had enough of the city we escaped to this little jewel of a place

Top of the Luge run at Sentosa... this was super duper fun! It was like go carts without motors- they just ran on gravity. We took a chairlift up the mountain, and then luged down it. They even gave you a "driver's license" stamp on your hand once they thought you were a qualified luger!

Andrew on the luge at the end of the run

Okay, now we're in Bali. This is the Ground Zero monument where the bomb went off in 2002 at O'Riley's pub, killing hundreds of people, mainly Aussies... very sad

Me and Hulio the plastic surfer dude on the streets of Kuta (main tourist city in Bali where the "beginner surfing" is)

Our room at the Vilarisi Hotel in Bali... quite the step up from the Singapore Hostel (and for way cheaper!)

Andrew with Johnny, our surfing teacher. We think he was stoned most of the time (he even wanted to sell us pot on a few occasions!) The orange board was mine, and the American-colored one was Andrew's... I like this board way better than the real long-boards I'd used in Tofino and Morroco... this board is called a "Gun"

We went on a tour of some villas that were being built, mainly b/c our friend Peter (from the Sinapore pic) is having one built that'll look similar to this one. They were amazing! If any of you are interested in renting one ever, let us know- we have the contact details (good for 1-4 families at once- includes a kitchen with a cook, a gardener, a pool boy, etc!)

Andrew with Wendy, a beach seller. Beaches in Bali are NORTORIUS for pesky hawkers trying to sell you anything and everything, and they WON'T let up! Bracelets, necklaces, massages, sunglasses, watches, etc... you name it, they'll sell it to you. If you say no, they just keep following you and lowering the price. If you still say no, they start BEGGING you and asking you to buy it "for good luck" or "to support my business". They are SO annoying, but Andrew was very friendly to them and we ended up having a good chat with this lady. It's always interesting to find out about the lives of the locals.

Okay, now we're on Gili Trawangan island (Gili T for short). Everything on this island has to get shipped in. Here's a boat FULL of floor tiles that's just arrived and being unloaded. Even though you can't tell from this pic, it's mainly the women who do the heavy lifting and carrying, and the men who do the work after that

Want to take a taxi? Sorry, you can't. These cidomos (horse-drawn buggies) are the only way to get you and your heavy tourist suitcase around the island to your hotel/hut. You end up feeling really bad for the poor horse who has to cart several people and ALL their stuff around at once

Our hut didn't have a pool, so we found the nicest pool on the island and set up shop every day... the owner didn't mind as long as we bought lunch there

Some friends we made on the trip. From L-R: Primoz & Azra from Slovenia, and Ted & Brenda from Sarnia (Ontario, Canada). Here we are having a nice Italian dinner, run by a one-man-show called Nino. He was Italian (obviously!) who had married an Indonesian chick and was running a hotel/restaurant there now

This is the boat we took from Bali to Gili T. It travelled at 30 knots an hour and went over some REALLY rough waters. We sat on the very top, bouncing around like yo-yos (there were no real seats up there), wind in our hair, loving life!

We were told that it only takes 1 hour to bike around Gili T, so we rented bikes in the heat of the day for

This is the gazebo-hut where we ate our breakfast every morning... overlooking the clear blue water and the next island over (Gili Meno)

Where we stayed... very cute bungalows. Not sure what they mean by "luxary rooms" on the sign as they were pretty plain, but perfect for beachy accomodations

The garden in front of our place... very tropical

Our little hut- so cute and beachy!

The beach in Kuta, Bali.  It's so sad how trashy it is- the reason is that the locals throw their garbage in the river which then washes out to sea, and then washes back up on the beach for a few weeks a year (depending on the ocean currents).  It's really gross to swim in the ocean and get all these tiny bits of plastic wrapped around you

The Vilarisi Hotel from the outside.  The second time we stayed there our room was on the very left, 3 floors up

Okay, now we're in Hong Kong.  We stayed in the Kowloon area at a pretty cruddy little hostel... you just never know when you're booking them online ahead of time.  As you can see the room is tiny (and it was way more expensive than the nice Bali hotel we stayed at)

I couldn't get this pic to turn around, but it's the outside courtyard of our HK hostel... pretty icky!

Alright, same thing here with not being able to turn it around, but this is the entrance to the HK hostel, downstairs.  The hostel owner took us thru this area at break-neck speed the night we arrived... our neon pink suitcase was flailing behind us all the way

Victoria Harbour area of HK.  The skyline you can see in the distance is HK island.  We were gonna take a harbour tour in one of the green & white boats you can see in the water, but the tour wasn't gonna get back in time for us to catch our flight back to the Shang, so we just walked around the harbour instead

And here we are, relaxed, tanned, and happy at the end of a fabulous holiday!  We've gone a bit overboard lately with the Asian peace sign in pics... we'll have to tone that down a LOT before we come back to Canada this summer!

So there you have it!  Congrats if you've made it this far in the post... sorry it's so long, but I wanted to get it all out.  I think this is about my 3rd or 4th day working on this one post alone... blogger keeps messing things up and I have to go back, fix things, re-format them, etc... big hassle!  

After a brief Team AC conference, Andrew and I have come up with the best parts of the trip: being together, the sunshine, the relaxation, and the SURFING!!!!!  We def loved that part.  

Till next time, I'm finally signing off!

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!