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!
2 comments:
So cool that you are coming to Indonesia! Too bad that we live so far from Bali! Just a heads up, those "deluxe" villas that you pictured there, might not be as "deluxe" as they might look on the web. "Roughing it" in Indonesia isn't much of an option (unless you pay very high prices). Pictures never show the dust, roaches and humidity :-) Let me know if I can make any phonecalls 4 you. (Just want you to have a great time!)
Corinna, I think it's so cool how faithful you've been with this blog, adding all the pictures, maps - so creative! It will be an awesome memory for you in the years to come.
Bummer, about your Mac. Have you sorted it out yet? Better go back mine up now.
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