Scammed Again!

China just isn't too trust-worthy a place. I can't figure it out b/c in school they are taught really good morals, like honesty, kindness, respect, etc. This is all fine and dandy inside the school, but the minute you step out of the school gates, these morals just don't seem to be present in society. I guess in a country of 2 billion people everyone has to fight tooth and nail just to scrape by. There seems to be this mentality of "try to be #1... otherwise you'll end up being # 2,904,078"... this comes out in all kinds of facets: budging in lines at the supermarket checkout, bank, etc, pickpocketing, not stepping out of the way when you're clearly in someone's path, ripping people off, etc.

This came across yesterday again when I discovered I'd been duped by the grocery store. We are very fortunate to live close to an import grocery store where we can get lots of nice things... I try not to buy too much here b/c the prices of some of the things are WAY too crazy (eg- $12 Can for a box of cereal!). Once in a while it's a nice treat though... such it was recently with feta cheese (which costs about $10 Can for a small block). I LOVE feta cheese but never buy it here b/c of the absorbant price. However, last week I noticed there was a 2-for1 sale on feta cheese... I checked it out and noticed that the two packs of cheese were taped back-to-back with clear duct-tape... I tried to peel it off in the store so I could check the expiry dates on the back, but the tape was too strong. Seeing as this is an upscale kind of store, I decided in good faith that they wouldn't try to rip me off by selling me expired cheese (the package wasn't transparent, so I couldn't see the cheese).

So anyways, last night I was cooking and planning to use the feta cheese (very exciting... sad, I know!). I sliced thru the tape with a knife and opened the first pack... the cheese was beige, slimy, and stinky and the expiry date on the back read Feb 7th, 2009 (more than 2 months ago)!! I was so mad! Fortunately, the second pack I opened was fine. So I guess they decided to tape an old pack to cheese to a fresh pack of cheese and promote it using a 2-for-1 deal.

I know some of you will say "just take it back with your receipt", but the dumb thing is that I left the receipt at the store that day. You see, there was a draw for chocolates... all you had to do was write your name and phone # on your receipt and put it in the box and you could win a box of delicious-ness. I totally put my receipt in that box!

O well... it's only 10 bucks, but it's the trickery that makes me mad... you just don't know who you can trust around here.

Love

Look what my nice husband got for me:  roses and my favorite flowers (freesias)... just because!  

I love him!  He's the best!

Easter

Alright... a little late on this post here, but I wanted to put up pics from our Easter. We were invited for a potluck lunch at our friend Anna's place (she's from the US). It was so much fun. We had lunch, dyed eggs (see the finished products above), then played a series of games including "draw an Easter bunny that represents you", 3-in-a-hat, and tossing the sticky Easter-egg-jelly-cut-outs onto the window to see if we could match up a whole Easter egg... sorry if that makes no sense- better explained in person.

Before lunch... not sure of the boys' names, but the girls from L-R are Bonnie, Anna, and Rachel

Dying Easter eggs... again, not sure of the boys' in the middle names, but Andrew and Bonnie L-R

The last game was tossing eggs off the 13th floor balcony, trying to land them on the neighboring building's rooftop (across the street)... Andrew and Bonnie were both successful!

At the end, we all piled into a cab and went to the Easter service at church... as you can tell from the picture, it was PACKED!! There were so many people that we could only get standing room at the back... guess that's a good problem!

Soccer!

A few weeks ago Ron (our principal) found out that there was gonna be a soccer tournament for BC Offshore Schools this past weekend, and that we were invited. Problem: we didn't have a soccer team! No problem- we created one! The tourney was on a Sat (this past one), and I was asked to coach the team (yay!)... however, I couldn't attend the tourney b/c of Alpha being on Saturdays... so I coached them for the past few weeks, and then Ron did the honors of actually taking them to the tournament.

There are a few boys in our class who are really into soccer, but we don't have a soccer pitch (or any grass for that matter) on our school's campus to practice on... the whole thing is one big concrete mass. Therefore, finding a place to practice was a challenge, but we managed. For starters, we found a park nearby with a semi-flat area to practice (but no real pitch or nets)... this worked until one of our guys took out an old man in a wheelchair (by accident)... that's when I figured we should move on. Next on the hit-list was the university across the street from our high school. Although the soccer pitch there is for students only, we decided to take our chances. Lunch time practices were great; afterschool practices were shut down by the guard, but we got enough play-time in.

The results from the tourney were 1-1, 2-0, and 7-0. So they kinda got smoked, but apparently all the guys they played against were older and bigger... they'll have to try again next year.

As you can see from the pics, this was not too professional... no shinguards, no soccer socks, no cleats... just runners and whatever shorts they had. Good thing we had matching tops made for them! The boys are keen to try again next year when they're older and bigger.

The past 2 weeks

Hey Guys,

First of all, sorry for my 2-week hiatus from blogger-land. Things have been hectic... mainly I've been sick-ish... same old cold/cough kicking my but that I've been stuggling with off and on for at least the past 4 years (thought I had it beat this year, but it just came later in the year instead). So I've been trying to get extra rest. Then we've been super busy with cel group, leading Alpha, church, Easter, friends, work, and the usual busy-ness of laundy, groceries, cleaning, etc. On top of that, both Andrew and I were being evaluated at work for the past few weeks, so I had to eliminate some distractions and make sure my lessons were bang-on (not that I usually do a crappy job, it's just when you know you're being watched you want to be a shining star!).

Okay, so enough with the excuses. Today I wanted to blog about an experience I've had over the past month or so. As many of you know, this year was my first time teaching sex ed (last semester). I went with the approach of teaching abstinence (not having sex before marriage), but also doing a safe sex lesson in conjunction with it. The reason is that I thought it's naive to think all kids are going to wait to have sex before marriage, and if they don't wait, I want them to be safe, seeing as there are SO many scary and disgusting STIs out there these days. I would hate to think that any of my students contracted an STI just b/c I was negligent as a teacher and didn't teach them about how to lower the risk. That being said, I did the full condom-on-the-banana demo. I've never had such a captive audience of students in 4 years... it was pretty funny!

Anyways, my "philosophy" on all this was recently challenged when I met another expat lady who was organizing a facilitator training course to teach a course called "No Apologies" which teaches abstinence to teens. She encouraged me to sign up and I said I'd look into it. Thinking I could use this course to supplement my current teaching model (abstinence PLUS safe sex), I was in the middle of registering for the facilitator training, when I noticed that I had to sign a pledge that I would teach ONLY abstinence and NOT the "plus safe sex" part. According to my "philosophy" (see above paragraph) I had a genuine problem with this, so I emailed the lady, explained my issue, and told her I wouldn't be enrolling in the facilitator training for this reason.

Thinking that was the end of it, I was surprised when she emailed me back a few days later, telling me she had emailed the organization who puts on the course (Focus on the Family) and forwarded my issue. They had replied with a lot attachments they recommended I read. Here is the excerpt that "got me":

"Many educators and organizations have ignored or soft-pedaled the idea of remaining sexually absitent until marriage because they feel that is is unrealistic. They assume that sexual activity among teenagers is inevitable, and that the most reasonable approach is to help them minimize its consequences. But this approach downgrades adolescents to the status of animals who cannot control their primal urges. Furthermore, the same assumption is never made by programs striving to eliminate tobacco, alcohol and drug use among young people." (eg- you don't tell a kid not to drink & drive, unless they're wearing a helmet which will make much safer!).

After thinking about all this, I decided to sign up for the facilitator training after all. It was pretty intense... 19 hours over 2 days (plus 4 hours commuting), but it was totally worth it. (The reason I had to take the training was that you're not really allowed to use the program unless you've been trained and certified in it). I came away with a much better understanding of the course, plus LOADS of resources, including a full curriculum book and workbooks for the students, plus a great Powerpoint presentation, plus a huge props list (lots of object lessons are done).

So the next hoop to jump thru was to get it approved by our school so that I could actually teach it here (assuming that we're staying on for another year in China which we're not 100% sure about yet, but are leaning towards). The course had to be approved by our Canadian principal, as well as the head of the international department, plus the Chinese principal... thankfully I got the green light yesterday, so I'm pretty happy! I'm excited to impact the lives in a super important and meaningful way next year!

Okay, just looking back over this I see it's become a novel of a post. That's enough for now... I'll try to post again soon with a bunch of recent pics... lots of those on our camera.

Hope you're all well.

By the way...

April Fool's!! I was totally just kidding; I am NOT pregnant!

Hope I gotcha!

Best Kept Secret in Shanghai

Guess what everyone? I'm pregnant! That's right... about 5 months along we figure. We'll be going to the doctor soon to find out for sure and get an estimated due date. Hopefully we'll be able to have Baby Nairn in Canada this summer and then bring her/him back to the Shanger with us next year... childcare is super cheap here, and we think it'll be good for him/her to learn Chinese off the nanny for a few years until we can afford to come home for good.

Sorry to be so informal about it and only tell everyone via our blog... we just couldn't decide who to tell first- Andrew's parents or mine, so we decided to just make it a race... whoever checks their email first will know first.

ACE: Arts Charity Extravaganza

Last weekend Andrew and I had the pleasure of helping out with a huge event here in Shanghai called ACE (Arts Charity Extravaganza). It was an event put on entirely by youth (mainly from the many international schools in the area) to raise money for a charity of their choice. This year the chosen charity was Shanghai Healing Home, which is a new orphange that will be offering pre- and post-surgical care for orphaned Chinese infants with cleft lip. (If you want to find out more, you can check out the website: http://shanghaihealinghome.com/)

This picture if of James and Christina Weidner... they are the ones opening the SHH and were giving an info-speech at ACE about it. What's crazy is that they have 4 kids (7, 4,2, and 9 months) of their own, the youngest of which was born in China last summer. They are from New Orleans but have a real heart for China so plan to be here for the rest of their lives. We've been getting to know them; they're a great family!

Anyways, the ACE event was held in a huge loft and featured a fashion show, art gallery (with silent auction), food, live music, dancing, etc. I've been trying to teach my own students about serving, and thought this would be a great way for them to get involved. (Okay, they also need 30 volunteer hours to graduate from the BC program, so I think that might have been a pretty big motivator for a lot of them to sign up). I was expecting maybe 5-10 kids to sign up as volunteers, but was really surprised when nearly all of our 48 students volunteered- isn't that fantastic?! Some of them were even there 2 days before the event, setting up chairs, cleaning the floors, doing silly meaneal tasks that just needed to be done. On the day of, they had a great time though.

Here's Henry, Jay, and Kerry serving drinks.

Marvin and Linda serving food.

Justin, David, Jim, and Greg handing out programs at the door.

A dance performed by some international school students. The boy at the very front of the V was Korean and the CRAZIEST dancer I'd ever seen. He was so good I thought he was a girl (he looked pretty girly too!). He was like Gumby bustin' it out. I took a video and will show you guys when we're home this summer... this is something everyone has to see... all the girls in the audience were screaming like they were at a JT concert or something... you can hear that on the video too.

Tim, Terry, and Frank setting up a sign for the silent auction.

And this little sweetheart is Abby, the 4-year-old daughter of James and Christina. I had just french-braided her hair before ACE started and she wanted me to take a picture of her... one of many, but this is the cutest one to show you guys. She didn't want to wear her sweater (like her mom had asked her to), so I convinced her that it would look pretty cool if I tied it around her neck like a cape. She thought she was super-woman after that!

On the following Monday I asked my students what they had thought of ACE. One boy responded, "There were many beautiful girls there." When I asked them what the best part of the whole event was, they ALL replied, "The pizza and the nuts." Ha ha, not what I was expecting!

Music nights

Anyone who knows Andrew knows that he LOVES playing music. Luckily we packed lightly enough when coming to China last year that he was able to bring along one of his guitars, and recently he started trying to start up another band, which is always a bit tricky, but he stuck with it until he found 2 great guys to play with (Garrett from California and Tyler from Quebec).

Last weekend the 3 of them were practicing at a jam-space close to our house, but apparently the accoustics were pretty bad, so they came up with the idea of going to play in the metro (subway). Andrew called me at this point and invited me along, which was great.

The 4 of us took off for the metro and then set up right where all the people were coming out. It was already 10:30pm, so we didn't think there'd be much traffic, and we also didn't think we'd make any money, but we opened up the guitar case for cash, just to see.

Tyler (the drummer) had found a solid bucket out on the street, which he was pounding with his drumsticks. Andrew and Garrett were playing guitar and singing, and I was the back-up singer. No sooner had we started with Bob Marley's "One Love", then a security guard came along, motioning for us to leave. So we moved about 20 feet down the hall, set up again, and kept playing.

What was really funny was that a whole bunch of Chinese people put money into the case, and every time one of them would, everyone else around them would start clapping. SO many people whipped out their camera phones and were taking pictures and videos of us and seemed SO happy to hear some live Western music. We ended up making almost $10 (Can) in only 30 minutes, which we totally weren't expecting.

Hopefully we'll go to another metro station soon (at rush hour) and see what happens there.


Then this past Sat night we played again at a little expat bar called BeeDee's. Just one set of cover songs, but the crowd loved it. The owner wants Andrew to do regular Sat nights now (3 sets of 10!), but we're not sure b/c it was SO smokey in there, and we don't love that! We came home just REEKING of smoke, and it irritates my throat a lot too. China is SUCH a smokey place... one of the major downfalls of being here.




There were only 2 mics, so Garrett had to share one... a bit awkward seeing as he's way taller then me, but we made do. Next time they'll arrange for 3. You can't see Tyler in this pic, but he'd behind us all on the drums (not a bucket this time)!

2 Year Anniversary

Look what my wonderful husband got me for our 2-year anniversary!  My faves: yellow freesias, lilies, and gerbera daisies... they smell so nice and I'm so happy he thought of me in this special way.

Of course I wasn't the only one on the receiving end... I got him a cool little cactus garden (he loves house plants)... don't know what's wrong with Blogger- why I can't post vertical pics properly, but you get the idea.

Thanks also to our families for their nice cards in the mail, treats, and facebook wishes.  Meant a lot to us!

The past 2 years have been great- so great that we're shooting for 62!

Busted!

I normally try not to grumble too much, but lately it seems like our apartment is falling apart! For those of you who don't know, our apartment is rented for us by our boss, so it's not ours, but it's tricky to get things fixed when you don't speak the language.

First we somehow blew a circuit that shattered a lightbulb all around our house and left us sitting in the dark. We search all over for the circuit board with no luck so we had to call the maintainance guy up... he quickly located the board behind a picture and we were back in business.

Then our water cooler erupted, leaving us with a flooded kitchen (and no mop to clean it up with). That took the landlord almost a week to attend to, leaving us with finding rather creative ways to get clean drinking water.

Then we were without internet for 6 days... that also took the agent about 4 days to get on.

Then the DVD player busted. Long story there, but basically the audio won't work on it. The background noises play, but the main characters' voices don't. The DVDs play fine on our laptop, so we know it's not the DVDs themselves that are broken. This has taken the landlord the past 5 WEEKS to get on top of! He's had it "fixed" twice and each time it comes back even worse than before. The last time he still DROPPED it on the floor so now it looks like it's been thru a battle and makes this loud noise like and airplane taking off. Still, he swears up and down (in Chinese) that it's not broken and refuses to replace it. Cheapskate. We're pretty mad about this. Correction- I'm pretty mad. Andrew told me to just get over it already- we're not getting a new DVD player.

Finally, last night, just as we were about to go to bed Andrew noticed a strange noise coming from the washing machine. We had a closer look and discovered that the faucet connecting the water supply from the wall had sprung a leak and was spraying water all over. The wall was completely soaked and the drywall was peeling down the wall. So that was another call to our agent and the maintainance man who had to come have a look, leave to buy a part (good thing the shops are open late here), come back, hammer around and finally get it all fixed and turn the water back on so that we could brush our teeth in the morning.

Anyways... there's my little rant. I know all houses have things go wrong with them, but sometimes it seems like a LOT in a very short time. Thankfully we'll be out of our place in about 3 months, but I still kinda wonder what will be the next thing to go?

Talent Show & Science Museum

We've had quite the week already, despite the fact that it's only Wed morning for us here. As I mentioned before, we have about 14 exchange students here from Vancouver, and it's been great having them around. Of course, in an effort to be a good host, the Chinese school we work in arranged all kinds of trips and outings for these kids, and also put US in charge of entertaining them somehow for Monday afternoon. We came up with the idea of having a big talent show. It was so great to see how many of our students took part in performing something, and it was also interesting to note the correlation between fantastic musical talent and high academic achievement among some of our students. I tried posting a video I took of one boy playing piano, but it wouldn't load for some reason... I'll show you on my laptop when I get home this summer.

The Canadian kids also took part and did a really funny skit of their time in China so far. I don't think our Chinese students really got it, but it was SUPER funny for Andrew and I b/c we could totally identify with their scenes about the traffic, riding the metro, Chinese morning exercises & eye massages (see above pic!).

Then on Tues we all went to the Shanghai Science & Technology Museum which is kinda like Science World in Vancouver but a lot more grand. The building is really new and the architecture is amazing. A couple funny things happened, one being that one of the most "interesting" (read weird) kids we teach called Jet, randomly bought a wooden hand (of all things!) from the gift shop. Of course it was nabbed from him right away by his classmates, and put in all kinds of interesting positions (see above pic). We never stop laughing at Frank and David's antics!

Then we busted 4 of our boys playing cards while they were supposed to be looking at the science exhibits. We spotted them from a balcony 3 floors up playing cards below, and decided to freak them out a little. Andrew started making paper balls out of the museum map/brochure (see above) and chucking them down at the guys, landing them all around them, and finally right on their laps...
I had the camera zoomed in and ready to catch their surprised looks (see above)... too funny!

Finally, here we are on our 2nd anniversary in the museum. We held the camera down below us so we could get the cool glass globe building in above/behind us.

Thanks so much everyone for all your good wishes and congrats on our anniversary- it was a great day!

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!