Goodbye Mom & Dad, Hello Christmas in China

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As I write this, my parents are enroute to Seattle on Asiana Airlines! We said goodbye this morning in the Hong Kong Metro Station, whereupon they headed to the HK Airport and we headed back to school here in Shenzhen. There were tears, but I quickly reminded my Mom of the excitement that lies ahead when their plane lands in Seattle- my brother will be there to pick them up, after 2 days of his own traveling from the East Coast and being delayed by snowstorms. They left us but will have a WONDERFUL Christmas with the rest of our family in Portland😊

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity and it's hard to believe that their time here has already come to an end. While I won't recap everything, I'll leave you with some highlights and tell you once again to check out my dad's blog at tworoadschina.blogspot.com-- he gave a very detailed description of Shenzhen, something Martin and I failed to do when we first arrived.

They spent most of their time here just living our day-to-day lives with us at school- eating in the cafeteria with Harry & Shaka, coming to classes with me, trying their newly acquired Chinese phrases, riding the 327 bus almost daily, walking around our rural village & eating some delicious meals out. My students LOVED them-- my favorite moment was in one class when my dad was shaking the hands of a few students in the front row, and a girl in the back yelled "DON'T WASH YOUR HANDS!" 😊 My students were incredibly sweet to them the whole time- making sure my mom was covered by an umbrella one day walking in the rain, hugging them, teaching them some Chinese words- it constantly made me smile to see them interact. My dad soaked up the time talking to Harry and Shaka at lunch, as they had some great conversations every day...and my dad even claimed to like the food! Don't know what he's thinking. 😊

We took a weekend trip to Guangzhou, but other than that pretty much just stayed in Shenzhen. My sister-in-laws brother did the program for 2 years and just recently came back to travel around China and eventually find a job somewhere- so we were able to have two nights/1 day of eating good food and exploring with him. His Chinese is fantastic and he knows his way around the area, so that was nice!

It was especially nice having some visitors, as our lives here are completely impossible to really explain. My parents were surprised every day by little things here, and leave knowing a lot more than they did when they came.

Now I guess it's back to the real world- sort of. Today I taught 2 classes and then we posed for a picture with our entire faculty for their annual yearbook. I think we'll stand out a little-- not only are we the only foreigners, but everyone else had matching uniforms! Awesome. My last class was cancelled for the photo taking. Wednesday and Thursday will be our school's Sports Day, if it's not too cold- this is similar to field day in the states, but a LOT more serious. Our students have been practicing jump-roping like nobody's business. It was supposed to be last weekend but got cancelled due to the severe drop in temperature we had.

Thursday, Christmas Eve, we'll watch Sports Day (no teaching!) and then get driven to Silver Lake Resort, where we started our journey in Shenzhen, for a big celebration put on by the Education Bureau. We're not too excited about the actual event but it'll be VERY nice to have a free hotel room for a night- hot indoor shower and a big comfy, bed? Sounds AMAZING. On Friday we'll head to Yantian to spend another holiday with our friends here, and then probably back to Bao'an for the remainder of the weekend. Next week we'll teach 4 days and head to Hong Kong for New Years!

Happy Holidays to everyone...we miss and love you all!

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Comments

[mama clare]

goodbyes
Sounds like you all had a very very good time sharing your day to day life:) I'll be interested to hear all about it from them and will definitely check out you dad's blog soon. Have a wonderful time soaking up the luxury at the hotel and then celebratin with your new friends on Christmas and New Year's. You will both be missed so much this year here but there is a warmth and comfort knowing you are happy and with people who love you over there. Merry Christmas our special dew drops:):)