Welcome to our last blog (on this website anyways) from China. We have had issues the last little while connecting to this website, so we haven't been able to post a lot. However, we now have our own website and we've also signed up for flickr so we can share our photos and stories with you just as easily. I have sent an email out to everyone on our mailing list - if we missed you by accident, we're so sorry. Please email us directly for the links - I'd rather not post them on this public site where anyone can [View Full Entry]

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I thought I'd written in our blog just a few weeks ago - but when I checked today, it's been 6 weeks! I am so sorry, apparently I'm slacking, and didn't even know it. It sounds kind of funny, but after awhile - even in a foreign country - life starts to feel routine, and there's nothing exciting to write home about. We did one little trip that I'll tell you about, and there is more... read on... First of all, thanks to all of you who write and tell us you're thinking of us! You have no idea what an [View Full Entry]

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First, I must apologize to all of you at home who are NOT on Facebook, and who have not been updated about our lives for a few months now. The last two months have been rather insane, both in our professional lives (the school in which we teach) and our personal lives. Due to the rather sensitive nature of the issues, I won't get into what has happened in our personal lives, but if you feel you can offer up any prayers, we'd sure appreciate it. I will do my best to update you on the last two and a half [View Full Entry]

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I'm SO sorry that I've neglected by blog, we've just been so insanely busy. I'll let you in on our last month... LOL. As you all know we spent 4 days in Beijing over Christmas. It was a great holiday, we totally fell in love with Beijing. In fact, we decided to spend another week there - and we're leaving tonight! I will upload pictures when we get back, as we're visiting some of the same places to get better pictures. Then you can compare:) We stayed at a hostel just a couple minutes walk away from Tiananmen Square and the [View Full Entry]

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Living on the 20th floor has both advantages and disadvantages - and since we're moving in a few weeks, we've been thinking about them both. Here's what we've figured out so far. Since we have two large hotels below us, we are provided with constant entertainment. We were going to upload a video here to show you exactly what we mean, but I think the file is corrupted... anyways you see, in China it is customary for every department in every business to do calisthenics every day. For example, in the hotels below us, the cooks, waiters, waitresses, parking aids, and [View Full Entry]

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***If I have some spelling mistakes in this message that I don't catch, please be understanding - my "n" key has been giving me troubles lately*** Many of you will remember that we have been looking for a new apartment, and it's been an on-going thing since November. Well, we've finally found the place (barring any unforeseen and uncontrollable circumstances). Or I should say Kevin found it for us. It's about a 5 minute walk to school (as opposed to the 25 minutes we walk now) which we are super excited about! Don't worry though, we still get our daily exercise [View Full Entry]

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I want to share some stories of people who have touched me in some way since coming to China. There are many stories, it's hard to just pick a few - but these are the ones on my mind today. I have been teaching part time at Dos, the school where I taught before. While teaching, I met this amazingly cheerful girl (I will call her V in this post). She is always in my classes, and I've been enjoying getting to know her. One night I was scheduled for an English corner, but only V was there. We started talking [View Full Entry]

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So... Yesterday Jean had that meeting with Mr. Zhang. It went well, everyone left feeling listened to and respected. After Jean outlined his feelings, Mr. Zhang explained the school's side - that being that for the rest of this term they need a good teacher (Doreen), so they have time to find the perfect teacher for the second term. He promised Jean that Doreen would be back with him at the start of the second term (after the winter holiday) - and gave him a very expensive pack of smokes to seal the deal. Now... we know the way of Chinese [View Full Entry]

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I am writing this not to criticize our school (which we dearly love), but so that you can keep us in your thoughts and prayers during the coming days. We have run into yet another management snag. The players in our story are as follows: - Jean - Doreen (Jean's co-teacher) - Kevin (his job is to assist all foreign teachers in daily life) - Mr. Zhang (the school head-master) - Spring (an English teach in our department) And it begins... Spring has gone on maternity leave suddenly (she has had some troubles, and was ordered to bed rest). This leaves [View Full Entry]

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This weekend has been very low key, something that is rare in our lives lately. We didn't have any plans! No friends called, we didn't have marking or classes to plan, it was just us. So we decided to explore the city a bit. After we finished talking to Mom and Dad on MSN, that is... lol. That's a weekend ritual we refuse to break! Yesterday we hopped on the 519 bus which took us across two rivers (the Han River, and the enormous Yangtze River) to Wuchang. We got off at the first stop, and started walking. I remembered a [View Full Entry]

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