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!

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!