Colds, classes and couples

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Another two weeks in China have flown by. Sort of unbelievable how quickly our lives seem to be moving here.

These past two weeks have mostly seen us teaching, coughing and sleeping. Thrilling, right? About one day into the new semester, the cold weather moved out and a weird humidity and heat moved in. We quickly switched from heaters and gloves to air-conditioning and flip flops. None of our clothes would dry out on the balcony and floors around campus stayed wet for days after they'd been cleaned. Then suddenly, two days ago, we flipped back to cold weather! It's not nearly as cold as before, but we're finding ourselves in jackets again and needing a comforter at night. According to our contact teacher it's supposed to get warm again in the next few days and stay like that...we'll see!

Getting back into the teaching groove has proved to be somewhat of a challenge. Our students were still in 'vacation' mode for the first two weeks and seem to have sort of forgotten a lot of classroom rules. "Should you be talking in Chinese? Should you be talking while I am talking? No? Good." We've been showing pictures of our holiday and asking them to tell us what they did, which seems to have consisted of a whole lot of nothing other than sleeping, getting lucky money and playing computer games. I mean, I know not everyone traveled to four countries, but you had to have done something a little more exciting, c'mon! 😊

Right after the hot weather moved in, I came down with a bad cold that pretty much made me bed-ridden for an entire weekend. We had been invited to a banquet to celebrate the New Year two Saturday nights ago with all the Senior 2 teachers, but Martin ended up going alone while I slept and read. He brought me home some fried rice and reported that everything at the banquet was DELICIOUS but also very, very meat and seafood based, so it was probably best that I hadn't gone. Last week, Martin came down with my cold, although it didn't hit him as hard...or he just is stronger than I am. 😊

Thursday night, we both sighed with relief that we were done teaching for the week and began preparing dinner. Halfway through, a knock on our dorm door startled us- it was one of the other teachers with a cell in his hand and as he doesn't speak English, he just said "Martin. Shaka. Phone." and handed it to Martin. We'd both left our cellphones in the other dorm room and apparently Shaka had been trying to reach us. Linda, the head of the English department for Bao'an (whom we have done voice recordings and such for) was trying to get in touch with someone to help her daughter with something in English. All very vague, of course. We agreed that we could do it in an hour, as we needed to eat first. Shaka told us Linda would come pick us up at 8 and to be ready in our office.

At about 7:40pm, Linda and her daughter breezed into our office causing us to quickly clear spaces for them to sit. It turned out that her daughter is in the last year at university and about to take the dreaded IELTS exam in order to hopefully get into a graduate program in an English-speaking country. She was very friendly and really great at English. We talked to her for about an hour and a half and then they abruptly left, leaving us 200 kuai (~30USD) for our time. Oh, China. 😊

Friday morning we got up and headed out to Guangzhou, the capital city of our province. This was the 3rd trip for both of us and probably took the longest time as we had to wait quite awhile for our bus to the airport and then our connecting bus from the airport to the downtown train station in Shenzhen. Once there, it's a quick 50 minute bullet train ride into Guangzhou! We'd previously made Martin an appointment at the US Consulate to get more pages added to his passport (I got more in mine prior to our big trip) so that was our first stop, a quick walk away from the train station. Around 3pm, we met up with Pete & Elyse, Kris & Kelly and Jimmy & Cali, a fun reunion as we hadn't seen anyone besides P&E since Jan 1st! The 8 of us spent probably about an hour trying to find a place to stay, as all the hotels/hostels we first checked were full. I randomly saw a small sign that said 'hotel' and pointed down an alley, so off we went to check it out...and it worked out! They had one double room and two triples, so we gave Pete & Elyse (newly engaged!) the double and split the other two in a 'boys' and 'girls' room. 😊

Unbeknownst to Pete and Elyse, we'd previously all schemed and decided we'd take them out to dinner to celebrate their engagement, as well as have matching decorated tacky hats, just like every other Chinese tour group here. While their hats boasted their names, ours each said "Pete & Elyse 8-9-10" (yes, they're getting married on our 2 year anniversary, isn't that cute?) with the symbols for 8 kuai drawn on the back as sort of a group joke. We had them come down to the 'Girls' room where we had beer and the hats as a surprise and let them know of our dinner plans. The rest of the evening was spent laughing, talking, eating and drinking lots of beer. We went to "The Italian Restaurant", where we'd been our first trip to Guangzhou, and feasted on an all-you-can-eat Italian food & dessert buffet with all-you-can-drink juice, soda and beer. It was well worth it, and I'm pretty sure we all got our money's worth! We were at the restaurant until 11pm at which point we ended up back at the hotel with more beer after a failed attempt to take the metro to a bar (the metro was closed). Pete and Elyse retired early (maybe just because they had their own room!) and the rest of us stayed up until past three am.

The next day, we all took our time getting up and finally ventured out at 11am to get Subway and find Yuexiu Park. Around 3pm, Martin and I decided to head home so that he could rest, as he still wasn't feeling the greatest from his cold. The rest of the group headed off to a nearby museum while we took the metro back to the Guangzhou East Rail Station and first did a little grocery shopping at Jusco. Since Chinese class hasn't started up again yet, it takes more of an effort for us to get into the city and get groceries, so this was a nice time to buy things like pasta, peanut butter and some veggies, including organic bell peppers and broccoli...mm. Martin ate at a Japanese restaurant inside the mall area while I got noodles from the deli section of Jusco and we were on our train to Shenzhen at 5:10, arriving home at our school by about 8pm.

It was a great weekend spent with friends, something we'll hopefully be doing a lot of again this semester. We're very thankful for our little 'couples group'!

Some other quick news is that my Dad is COMING BACK TO CHINA!!! Woohoo! He originally bought tickets to come by himself from April 8-26, flying into Beijing and out of Hong Kong...but after buying them, my sister started churning those thinking wheels and after many discussions and working out the whole leave-from-work and leaving her 2 young kids behind, she bought tickets to join him! They both arrive in Beijing on April 8th, at which point I will HOPEFULLY fly up and join them. We'll spend the weekend of the 16-18 in Hong Kong before my sis flys out, the day before my birthday 😊 Seriously cannot wait.

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Comments

[mama clare]

sneezies
Sounds like you are both finally on the mend again and had a fun filled weekend with your good buddies. Life long friends you've made over there!!! So happy that your dad and sis are coming over in April Stace:) Woowoo!!!

[Elyse & Pete]

Thanks!!!!
We had a great time and loved reading your blog. We our very grateful for our "Couples Group" also.