Remember the pictures of those beautiful flower designs just last week? Well, today when we walked home from school, only rubble was left. People were arguing over who got to take home flower pots, and people were collecting potting soil that had been left behind. I thought I'd post some of the pictures I took - this is typical overnight change in China. Honestly, though I don't know the first thing about flowers, the whole thing is kind of sad - it was so beautiful, and for such a short time, and now it's gone. You know, this is the second [View Full Entry]

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The countdown to Christmas is on! Today we found out our schedule up until our New Years vacation, and it's amazingly easy. We've been told to slow down our teaching (the first term is short compared to the second one, so we must have units in the book remaining to teach), and then the week before Christmas we're only supposed to review and play games - no new material. Then we were surprised to learn that we get TWO days off for Christmas, not just one... so we're stoked about a 4 day weekend. We come back and work a couple [View Full Entry]

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Today was Jean's 30th birthday, and he says that he is surprised at how much fun it was! It started off with... me forgetting that it was his birthday. LOL really, those of you who know me know that I am not a morning person... well, it was about 30 minutes after we'd left the house that I realized it was his birthday, and I felt SO bad... but he forgave me, so all is good. Ha thank goodness! Everyone at the school knew (because of course they have all of our personal information for visas and such), and at lunchtime [View Full Entry]

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Today was a normal day until about 35 minutes ago... Jean and I decided to get groceries from our local supermarket (something we don't often do). First of all, we discovered some areas we didn't know existed (like the butcher, where we scored some chicken legs really cheap, and the produce area, where we got at least 4 different veggies and 3 kinds of fruit for less then $3!). Then we thought maybe we'd get some snack - a bad idea usually, but we're watching a movie tonight so we figured why not. That's when magic happened. THEY HAD DORITOS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! [View Full Entry]

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Tonight I had one of those experience we label as "Only in China". Vivian invited Summery and I to go with her to a concert - given by Jolin, a superstar in China! She is the Chinese equivalent of Brittany Spears (back in her prime anyways). Vivian's uncle has some pretty good connections, and scored her three tickets free of charge! Just so you have an idea of what an amazing experience this was - the cheapest tickets to this concert were going for 1288Y (more then $200CAD!!!), and we had tickets for the VIP section! So not only did we [View Full Entry]

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Two weeks ago while I was on MSN chatting to my mom, an old student of mine logged in. Her name is Grace, and she worked at Citroen - a car company that I did some contract teaching at 4 years ago. We've been chatting quite often now. Grace no longer works at Citroen - she spent 2 years living in Shanghai, and is now living in Wuhan again, managing her own little shop on Wan Song Yuan Lu (for those of you that know where that is). Last week Jean and I were walking down Wan Song Yuan Lu (it's [View Full Entry]

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The last four days have been enlightening to say the least. Somebody on our block has passed away. Do you know what happens in China when someone dies? We didn't know every ritual either, but now we do! First of all, firecrackers are set off at all hours of the day and night to scare away ghosts and evil spirits. Imagine Canada Day fireworks, but 10X louder and nonstop! Yeah, it's not a fun way to wake up - and this has been the last four mornings!!! Then the elderly people that know the deceased get together, and along with a [View Full Entry]

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One of the teachers in the English department told me this story today - it's about her family. Please, don't read this if you don't want to cry, it's very sad!!! She just got a call this evening saying that her uncle (her mom's brother) had passed away. He was only 40, but this teacher thinks it was a blessing, and here is why. When her uncle was young (maybe 2 or 3 years old) he got a very bad fever which damaged his health. He was always sickly, always getting severe migraines that would begin in an instant. When he [View Full Entry]

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I tried uploading videos yesterday, but they were taking too long and I head to head home. So I'm trying again. Keep your fingers crossed, there should be two videos here when I am done. The first is of our kids (mostly Jean's grade 5 students, a few of my grade 4 students) - they are putting on a performance for the Swedish delegation we had here last week. Honestly, the best part of having those ladies here was seeing what our kids can do! They're amazing, they put their all into everything they do (well, most of the time:). The [View Full Entry]

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Phew! What a week!!! The weather turned cold, we had a delegations of teachers here from Sweden (as you already know), another large group of important people were at our school, the Bank of China lost our money, and then it poured for two days!!! LOL thank goodness every week isn't like this or I'd be back in Canada by now. I'm incredibly thankful that both Jean and I have good senses of humour, and that we can laugh our way through most tough days. And here we are, on the other side, thankful we're still in China:) We went to [View Full Entry]

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