When our IT Manager Mike sent out a mass email inviting everyone from work to his wedding, a number of us thought we should decline, surely he didn't mean us newcomers...he didn't know us well enough! We were soon informed that just the opposite, he would love nothing more than to have the school fully represented at the wedding. Chinese Weddings are large affairs. When we told Mike we would come he was absolutely thrilled and has since let us know several times that we are his very good friends. Once we agreed to go, the next part was to find [View Full Entry]

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My Biggest Workout Since Landing in China Well Friday rolls around, I'm tired from a week's work, tense from sporting my backpack daily, and well, I think still full of kinks from the 16 hours on an airplane a month or so ago. It was time for my first massage. Yvonne (another teacher at the school) brought Shelby and I to her favourite masseuse. This is not like any massage I have ever had. It was fantastic but not relaxing. She was working out my knots with her elbow. Karate Chopping my back. At one point she had me on [View Full Entry]

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Its been another exciting week just living my life in China. Every day offers so many funny stories, that by the time Sunday rolls around I know I have forgotten a few gems. I knew as of Monday night I would have a lot of fun writing the blog this week. Good Morning! So Monday night Craig and I decided to go for dinner at "UBC Coffee", a restaurant attached to Hymall (the shopping mall). It serves coffee but is first and foremost a restaurant. We walked in and as usual there were 10-15 staff members lined up inside to greet [View Full Entry]

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This time I will chronicle a few of the adventures of the past week. We will have a blog about school life soon. I am trying to keep everyone happy by balancing adventure blogs with daily life blogs. It should however be noted, that since moving here, our daily life and mundane tasks have all become mini-adventures. Our trip into Tianjin On Saturday August 18th, "the group" decided to take the light rail into Tianjin proper (Teda being more of a suburb). Luckily Xin, the new math teacher, joined us. Xin grew up in Tanggu (next door to Teda), moved to [View Full Entry]

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We are all slowly getting settled into our routines. You have to relearn/revisit/rethink your old routines and discover what you can handle here. As requested, in this blog I will try to focus less on the adventures, and more on the basics of living here. The Apartment I think we really lucked out. We chose our apartment on our first jet lagged day in China. We had no concept of the layout of the town, a small concept of price range, and no real idea what we should be looking for. We live in an area called "Cui Hen Cun" pronounced [View Full Entry]

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Its incredible how quickly one can adapt. Had you asked me a month ago if I would feel comfortable in a taxi cab whose driver spoke no english, which was driving on the wrong side of the road while I was not wearing a seatbelt- I would have said absolutely not, it would never happen. Not even a week later, I forget to check if a seatbelt is even an option. Driving in China has little relation to the driving we know in Canada. There is little regard for lanes, lights or usual rules of the road. In fact, the intersection [View Full Entry]

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Hello and big hugs to everyone. We have arrived safe and sound in China. It has been quite the adventure already. We boarded the airplane full of excitement. We were seated beside a very sweet older chinese lady, whose English was barely better than our Mandarin. She immediately wanted to make conversation and try to help us learn her language. The plane was huge, and had all the bells and whistles. Our seats had been changed to those by the emergency exits so we had extra leg room. Everything was great. We pulled off to the runway and turned back. There [View Full Entry]

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Hello all, Craig and I have decided the easiest way to keep people up to date next year is to post a travel blog and this one seems like a pretty good idea. We will save email for actual conversation, and this will take the place of the "form letter". So if you see an email from us, chances are it will be more conversational than narrative. This is also an easy way for Nackawic Students to keep up on our "goings on", so please keep that in mind if you post a comment. We'll be able to post pictures and [View Full Entry]

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