Vacation Soon

China is about to celebrate one of its National holidays. "The National Day of the People's Republic of China is celebrated every year on October 1. It is a public holiday in the People's Republic of China to celebrate its national day. The National Day is celebrated throughout mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau with a variety of government-organized festivities, including fireworks and concerts. Public places, such as Tiananmen Square in Beijing, are decorated in a festive theme." This year is the 60th anniversary, so I presume it will be big. At school we have a whole week off start Thursday. We only come back for a PD day on Friday so the students have a week and a half off school.

Greg and I have decided to join in on a staff trip to Guilin and Yangshu China. We take an hour flight there on Thursday morning and will be gone for 6 days. There are 11 of us travelling together so far and the trip looks to be very exciting. We have already booked a 6 hours book cruse down one of China's prettiest rivers so pretty that the mountains we are passing have been printed on their 20 dollar bill. We will also have the opportunity to go hiking, cave exploring, biking and of course shopping. It should be quite adventurous. I will try and bring my laptop so I can keep everyone updated on our excursion.

To see some pictures of Guilin check out this website…
http://www.chinatravel.com/photos/tags/guilin/related-links/index-2.htm

and here are some for Yangshuo…
http://www.chinatravel.com/album/showsearch.asp

Fairyland Botanical Gardens

This Sunday a group of staff members had decided to spend the morning at this place called The Fairyland Botanical Garden and we decided to tag along. After taking an hour long bus ride outside of our district we arrive not far from the park site. The entrance to the park had huge temple-like arch way where we were able to take a bus for 2 yuons up to the main Buddhist temple that was at the top of the park. Once we got to this temple we were each given 3 long sticks of incense. We eventually found out that in the temple square people go around and kneel to pray at each different Buddha statue. It’s almost like little stations that you go to. You light your incense at one large candle lighting shed. Then you are suppose to go to the first Buddha, wait for your turn to kneel at the foot of the statues and hold the 3 incense to your forehead as you pray. After going to all the statues you walk even futher up the temple to visit a Buddhist Monk. Here we had to wait in line to see him, but it was well worth it. This monk is the most respected of all Shenzhen and was 103 years old. When we entered his temple (a place that does not allow cameras) we gave him an offering in a small red envelope, most people knelt at his feet and we left. He looked like a sweet old man, and definitely did not look that old. On our way out the temple Jessica jokingly said “I would do anything for an ice cream right now” and the Buddhist Gods must have heard her because after it was said our group walked around a corner and found an ice cream stand. Here we sat for a short break and snack. After the temple we decided to explore the rest of the park. We took walking paths through a bamboo forest that had little waterfalls and streams running through it. We walked through an open field with statues and grand trees passed a small lake that you could boat across. By this time we were quite tired and getting hungry so we decided to find our way out of the park (which took long enough) and took the first bus home. There were many other gardens in the park that we could have visited, but we’ll safe that for another day. We took lots of nice pictures and were back at the school with still a half of a day left to spare. We’ll definitely go back.

Chicken

So, Monday at lunch I had duty out behind the side of school. I had just finished shoving a sandwich into my face and had to run out my res. door because I was late. As I approached the back field on campus I saw several student congregated around a small bush. One yelled out “Teacher, teacher!! There is a chicken”. I laughed and kept on walking saying ‘yes kids…” they’re usually playing some sort of game, so I thought nothing of it. Another students yelled “No teacher really really. Chicken is real!” At this moment I began to have a little panic. A Chinese chicken, which gods no what kind of diseases is running around campus and the students are hoping to pet it!! As I got closer to this small bush I realized they were not lying. In the bush sat a small hen. He was light brown and looked very calm. His feet were tied together with a small string, making me assume that he may have escaped from the cooks in the cafeteria. I immediately cleared the scene, notified the principal and waited for help to arrive. By now the excited students had rallied others to come and check out the chicken. After much ‘shooing’ of children and a couple of visit from staff members, the two female cleaning ladies from the school were sent to save the day. Neither of these ladies spoke a word of English…not even Hello. I directed them to the chicken bush and went back to handling the crowd, that had now gather (it wasn’t big, but rather very excited). Here’s where it gets interesting….the cleaning ladies then proceed to stick their hands into the bush in an attempt to grab the fowl. The chicken began to squawk. Feathers were spurting in ever direction! It was ridiculous. The cleaning ladies burst in hysterics as they followed the now running chicken to the next bush. One lady made a dive for it, but missed. The next tried to corner it into a certain direction to be caught, but was unsuccessful. Rather amusingly the chicken found its way into the school and proceeded to run down the hallways. Yes you read right, it was in the hallways of the school. As you can now image the crowd I was trying to control had gone wild and loved the free entertainment. Thankfully, one cleaning lady made a grab for the chicken when it was next to a locker and was able to catch it. We were all having a pretty good laugh at this point. The chicken, which was now in the arms of the Chinese cleaning lady, was calm once again, but began squawking as it was carried down the hallway…..o China how you amuse me.

So far this weekend

Just a little late night update. Today (Saturday) we got up and went to a place close by called 'Bookcity' which is basically a Chapters times 4 or 5. It's a five story book store that is also a music store, art supply store, and electronic store ....but mainly books. Every larger store in china has basically everything in it, no matter what it's specialty is. Every other store is what we like to call ' a hole in the wall' about the size of a small one car garage that sells only one or two main things. These tiny stores are EVERYWHERE...no seriously and they are sidebyside in every corner of the city. And they all pretty much sell the same things (bags or girls clothing or shoes or sunglasses). you know the basics in shopping. Anywho, Greg was on the lookout for a cheap guitar he could play while he was here and I was on the lookout for art supplies. I found LOADS of things to buy, Greg however was disapointed. He has found a store nearby that he thinks he can get a pretty good guitar at, so we'll probably look there again in the next few days. Myself, I was pretty overwhlemed with Bookcity. It had so many things I wanted to buy! I controlled myself though and only bought things for my classroom. It was a great morning and ended it off with a late lunch at a Thai restaurant (Which is probably now one of my favorite places to eat in the whole world). I will take anyone there if they come visit. Yum! Tomorrow our plans are to go visit a really neat park and temple that is an hour bus ride. We'll take lots of pictures.

H1N1

First off, I am so sorry that it had taken us so long to write again. For those of you who don't know China controls what websites you are allowed to go on. Facebook is obviously blocked as well as the site our blog is on. We have been given a 'patch' to get through to these sites, but they don't always work. The past few days it hasn't been working, however this morning it is a go!!

This post is all about China's obsession with H1N1. Most teachers are finding their precautionary measures to be a bit overwhleming, while others are glad they are going to extremes to make sure very few people catch the virus. Apparently their many rules and regulations on keeping H1N1 to a minimum have been created because of China's lack of action when SARS was around. Many people died in China from SARS and the world condemmed them for not doing enough, so now they have gone to another extreme.

Below is what our school is doing to keep us safe (and drive us insane :) )
The term "spray" is used, but it is more of a fogging mechanism that disperses the disinfectant:

All classrooms are to be sprayed 1 time after school everyday. All student dormitories are to be sprayed 1 time in the morning everyday. All public areas are to be sprayed daily and wiped down dailyAll teacher's residences and offices are to be sprayed 2 times a week (Teacher Residences on Tuesday and Friday mornings at 8:30AM, Offices on Tuesdays and Friday at 5:30PM) UV Disinfecting Lights have been installed in all classrooms and will be on from 2AM-4AM everyday. Face masks are available at the clinic
If you are feeling sick, please notify your respective principals and do not attend classes.

Please take note to do the following: Cover or put away anything edibleCover or put away all eating utensils, cups, toothbrushes, etcPut away clothingPlease put away valuables Upon entering the classroom/office/residence (30 mins after spraying), please open windows and doors for airing out.

Teacher residences and staff/teacher offices are required to be disinfected on a regular basis due to the possibility of carrying the virus from surface to surface. There is possibility of carrying it from your hands, clothes, shoes, etc from one point to another as the virus can be active for a few hours in open space. So please wash/disinfect your hands regularly.

The disinfectant spray is Chlorine Dioxide (CIO2) and I have attached information regarding it with this email. This is a very safe type of disinfectant. These procedures are the requirement from the Health Authorities in Shenzhen for the time being.

Crazy eh? And if we have 3 or more students or staff on site who have the virus our school may be shut down. It doesn't say how long for. Right now we're fighting to get some things relaxed and just going along with the rest of it.

We hope to write soon again!!

Typhoon Day

We had a lot of rain and wind last night. It woke me up really early. We were told last night before we went to bed that school would be cancelled!! :) So we had a Typhoon Day! It's not as amazing as a Snow Day because we still had to go to work, however there were no kids to teach so most of the staff was able to work on our year plans. The amount of rain that fell last night and today would have definitely flooded many downshore basements.

1st full week of school done!

We have completed our first full week of school!! YAY! It flew by so fast. There are approx. 180 students at the school this year and the class sizes range from 7 students to 23. Most of them are angels and the marjority of them love art, which is much different compared to NB. Dicipline is definitely low but the skill levels in each grade have a wide range. Some students are keener and love to excel in class, others are only try hard because their parents make them. And then there is the last group of students who have very low English speaking skills. So I could blab on all I want, but they have no freakin' clue what I'm saying. Often I get another student to translate the important parts, but sometime the students won't even admit that they don't understand. It's those students I worry about because I can't tell if they know what I'm saying or not. My students are at higher levels than in NB, so I'm up for the challenge of coming up with great lessons for them!! I have been teaching kindergarten to grade 10 right now, so I have to plan for 10 different lessons. It seems like a lot, but right now I'm also getting anywheres from 2-4 preps A DAY! I have a lot of time to prepare. My art room, as you may have already seen, is loaded with art supplies of all different sorts.

Greg so far has been doing all sorts of different jobs at the school. He eventually will be helping out certain students in certain classes with their work (like a TA), but right now they need time to identify those students, so Greg has two main tasks: 1. He makes a lot of photocopies and 2. He's been helping out a boy in grade 3 who has ADHD. He helps in class to stay on task and control is temper (I think). He is also coaching the girls volleyball team twice a week and doing basketball.

We start school at 8am every day and end at 4pm. I have a key to my room so I can walk over and work there whenever I like. All in all we are really liking work so far.

Taxis and IKEA

Sitting in the back of a taxi cab in china is like playing a really scary video game that you have little control of. Seatbelts are hard to come by. The communication barrier is at an all time high. Pronouncing one syllable wrong can take you on a adventure pretty quick. Some will understand where you want to go, but take you the long way around to get there because you're white. The are however dirt cheap. 3-4$ can take you most places you want to go near by. Their driving is what make them scary. Two lanes of traffic can turn into four cars wide. Our taxi driver passed two cars by driving in between them on the line. No matter what lane you're in you can turn, and pass. No blinker is needed most times, a warning honk will do. They are very comfortable driving on 8 lanes weaving in and out of traffic passing others with only 3 or 4 inches between them. There is a lot of holding your breath when you're in one, but we have rarely seen any accidents and most of the time they are only driving 60 km/h. We are beginning to trust them.

Today we took our adventure to IKEA which is really close by the school and was yet another overwhelming experience. IKEA to China is more entertaining than it is a place to shop. People will come to sleep on the beds and chairs. They come to take pictures of the show rooms. Parents bring their children there for the day to play on the game table or run around the store. The place was packed!! We purchased several organizational things for ourselves, as well as some thing to pretty up our place. We will be taking pictures of our room soon and posting them for all to see.

Food/Our first Shopping Spree

We have so much to tell you! First off, our food has so far been amazing. We've eaten a lot of rice, noodles and sushi...but those have mostly been our side dishes. We adjusted to using chop-sticks very quickly and have purchased some to eat at our residence. We've slowly been purchasing our own food and even plan to go to an international grocery store tomorrow morning to fill our fridge with things we recognize. The local grocery store are quite interesting....quite!! I can not begin to discribe how wierd it is. One weird thing is in the seafood department you can buy live fish, ok so thats not that interesting, but you have to catch it with your BARE HANDS! The first time we walked in there was a fish flopping on the floor because a customer had dropped it. Instead of having a huge one storey grocery store it is spilt into 3 levels. We can't read any of the packaging or price tags, but luckily there is some, very few, but some english. We have seen vaccuum sealed chicken feet in the aisles. Alot of the juice, meat and even milk is sold at room temperature....sketchy. Beer and liquor is sold everywhere, Walmart, IKEA, every street vendor and you can drink it anywheres. There is apparently no enforced age limit either. Greg is currently buying his beer for 66 cents Canadain, and that's for a quart(600ml). We've been eating Skippy peanut butter, toast, bananas and Jessica even found decent ICECREAM!!! As for restaurants, we went to this really cool place nicknamed 'The Sushi Train'. Here you sit at a counter and there is a conveyer belt that takes small sushi plates around a tiny kitchen where they make all the sushi. If you see a plate that you like you just take it off the track and they charge you later. Greg has been brave enough to eat raw fish eggs wrapped in seaweed. One that we both liked was rice wrapped in raw salmon. Yum! But there were others that were too daring for us, such as raw octopus tenticles in seaweed...mmmm tempting. Most of the food we have eaten is really good and filling. We've never finished a meal and we've never come close to paying over 10$ Canadian for a meal. Greg went to a Korean BBQ pub, ate lamb, mutton, chicken, deep fried potatoes, oysters, green beans, and 4 beer for 42 yuan, which about 7$ Canadian!!
Friday night we had a mustache party and went out for a night on the town, but we'll skip that part and go right to all the fun we had today. We got up early and went to a market, but really it was a HUUUUUUGE mall (5 floors) with a gazillion tiny stores in it. Here we had our first shopping spree. It hurts me to tell you how little we are paying for things, but lets just say we got 3 dresses, 2 sunglasses, a wallet, a purse, 2 oil paintings (real ones) and one necklace for... 1000 yuan, it sounds like a lot, but if you do the conversion it's about 160$. We posted a picture of our first round of purchases on photobucket. Our bargaining skills are beginning to develop already. For example, when buying a dress they offer 500 yuan initially and we eventually paid 120 with a belt. (They chased us down the hall when we declined their "best" offer). We also ate at Jessica's new favorite restaurant 'The lucky town' which had great steamed veggies, an amazing view and was dirt cheap. We are already looking forward to our next visit.

We have arrived!

We have both made it safe and s0und! No need to panic. Our flight was unbelievably long and Jessica was able to sleep for most of the flight. Greg however had no room to enjoy a snooze. After getting off the plane in Hong Kong we made our way to the ferry and was greeted in Shenzhen by some of our staff. Our first day in Shenzhen was spent having a small tour of the campus, checking out our much bigger than expected room. Jessica was able to see her art room, which is quite big and is currently full of packed boxes of art supplies. A few of our NB staff took us out to eat at this great korean pub...that looks nothing like a nb pub. It looked more like a chic restaurant. It was fully furnished by IKEA. The food was great and dirt cheap. Afterwards our friends asked us if we wanted to have our hair washed....this was an odd request, however we decided to follow. Apparently for 2.50$ Canadian you can have your hair massaged/washed for over 10 minutes followed by a full body message. Greg even trusted them enough to get a hair cut...well actually he couldn't figure out how to tell them not to cut his hair, so they did. We slept soundly last night on our hard as rock bed and were both us early this morning to have our Chinese physical done at the hospital. That was quite thorough. An hour in a Chinese hospital is equivalent to 2 months of appointments in Bathurst. We had an x-ray, bloodwork, dental, EKG, urine sample, blood pressure, eye exam, ear exam and an ultrasound...even Greg. If any of you are curious neither of us are pregnant! Woot. Greg thinks they are after our kidneys, lol. We have figured out how to get on facebook and hook up our computer. The rest of the day will be full of cleaning the artroom and a trip to the Chinese Bank. It is nap time again for Jessica.

Flying Over

Hello everyone, I’m writing as we sit on our incredibly long flight from Toronto to Hong Kong. I’ve already watched a movie, played several games, listened to a full cd and watch 3 random tv episodes. Greg and I have each had a huge nap, ate a not to shabby meal and we’ve still got half of our flight left!!! We made out fine in the Toronto airport, had some money exchanged and ate an overwhelmingly overpriced meal. We have luckily been able to sit beside each other on both of our flights. This time we have 3 seats to share between the two of us, so there is plenty of room. For this flight each seat has a built in tv on the back of the chairs where you can watch varies movies, tv shows, listen to music and even play video games. There is also a video camera on the bottom of our plane that we can watch on our screen. Meaning we watched ourselves take off and we’ll be able to see the plan land. An hour ago we flew over the North Pole where I checked to see if I could spot Santa’s factory, but found nothing but boring ice. I wished for my Christmas gifts just the same. I think it’s time for another nap.