Jinshitan roundabout

Kaifaqu

Five color city- Kaifaqu (Dalian Free Trade Zone)

Maple Leaf Educational System...

The Girls Campus

Our apartment is about a five minute walk to the girls campus (where Kristen works). Some mornings, getting up at 6:00 and trudging through the fog, snow or bitter cold wind, the walk seems a lot further! The campus is huge, and the buildings feel monumental. The girls campus is particularly spectacular in a dirty sort of way! The main office building is on one side of a huge coliseum type archway four or five stories high. The main school building has a five story circular atrium with a skylight at the top, granite and marble floors and a brick facade. Even the sidewalk paving is made out of ceramic tiles. It is impressive, despite the signs of shoddy workmanship that you tend to see here and there: unlevel basketball courts, chipped tiles, uncaulked bathrooms etc. Hey, the entire campus was built in under six months (from ground breaking to final touches) so really, what can you expect!

The Boys Campus:

The boys campus is much older, with two main teaching buildings of five stories each. The older building is pseudo-modern on the inside, with crazy staircases, wrought iron banisters painted pink and white and the wierdest layout one can imagine. The newer building is institutional, but big, in the Chinese style, with twelve foot ceilings in the classroom and wooden paneling.

Both campuses have large squares, where every Monday all the students and teachers gather to sing the Chinese national anthem, the Canadian national anthem and the Maple Leaf School song while flags are raised and the best and brightest kids in the school give speeches. Its like standing outside waiting for a hockey game that never materializes. Most of the teachers (and the kids) end up just talking quietly and trying not to freeze their sensitive parts off. Paul sings along.

The students have some choice of uniforms- blazers and collared shirts are available- but the majority wear green and gold track suits with "Maple Leaf School" on the back. Its wierd seeing thousands of students all standing around in rows, wearing shiny green and gold tracksuits and trying to keep warm while listening to the tinny whine of a loudspeaker blaring the school song with its Chinese words and folkish tune. Its disturbing, and slightly amazing to see that some of my stereotypes of China do, in fact, have some basis.

Day Two: Unexplained medical testing and Ikea

Day two started extremely early as Kristen was wide awake by 4:30. Stupid jet lag! By 7:00 the entire crew of new teachers was piling into a tiny bus/van and weaving its way towards Dalian for “Medical Testing.”

Driving in China is like juggling knives while blindfolded and slightly tipsy from drinking corn whiskey while chewing tobacco. In other words it’s enough to make you dizzy and scare the hell out of you. Drivers cross lanes with no regard for whether there is another car currently in the lane next to them. Cars drive four abreast on a three lane road, the wrong way on one way streets and honk constantly- probably to assist the drivers through echolocation. It’s bedlam.

We made it to Dalian after an hour of harrowing rush hour traffic, and jumped out in front of a hotel that also happened to be a medical testing facility. Weird.

As part of our visa clearance, we have to be inspected for communicable diseases. This included an ecg, a chest x-ray, blood sampling, urine sampling, blood pressure checks, 7 seconds of abdominal ultrasounds, stethescoping and sight testing. It was like a medical scavenger hunt, and you went around from one station to the next collecting stamps of approval from poorly trained and uninformative staff members.  Also, can I just ask the question- Why on earth do you need to know if someone is able to read an eye chart in order to clear them of communicable diseases? What diseases are you looking for???

After this... experience.... we drove to Metro (giant Chinese Walmart- owned by Walmart and a Chinese company) and Ikea. Of course, we didn’t have enough space on the van to buy enough stuff to properly furnish our apartments and get everyone back onto a seat. So we were limited as to what we could buy, and some people ended up having to take the train home anyways.  In the end, we managed to get enough stuff to make it through the next couple of days fairly comfortably.

WTC.....Welcome to China, did you bring TOILET PAPER?

This morning we landed in China, after another very pleasant JAL flight full of very awesome JAL flight attendants. We had a very interesting lunch!

Upon arrival we went through immigration were waiting for our luggage, when a man from the airport started walking around saying “doo” or “loo”. After we had collected our luggage I was walking towards customs when the man came over to me asked my name. When I said Kristen he showed me a piece of paper with Rieu written on it. He then pointed to Bienvenu so I showed him where Paul was. It turns out we forgot our camera op t he seat, but he could not tell us what we forgot. We had to guess what we had forgotten on the plane and then tell him the brand name of that item, but since he only spoke Mandarin we needed a translator!!!! Luckily one of the students from our school happened to be walking by and she kindly helped us out! Almost “epic fail” number one.

We meet up with Les the principal of the school and we all rode back to the school while he played tour guide and filled us in on the details of our next few days. When we arrived the very first thing that we did was get our apartments which are on the newish “girls campus”. As it turns out the whole same last name thing when you’re married actually might have some merit.  We were assigned separate studio and one bedroom apartments, neither of which was large enough for us to live in. After we talked to Les, who talked to Candy, the secretary, who talked to  Bryan our awesome building manager, he helped us move into our now awesome apartment with 1 and a half bedrooms and a 4’ X 6’ closet/room without windows but a 10 foot ceiling. Welcome to China.

We met up with the rest of the group, and some of the teachers who had been here before in one of the classrooms on the girls campus.  One of the Chinese teachers (who by the way is possible one of the cutest fellows in the world) talked to us about the backgrounds of the students we will be teaching and then Les gave an intro to the school philosophy. Oh and he warned us about the fireworks.

Apparently Jinshitan is a very affluent community, and a holiday resort to boot. So when celebrations happen here, there are a lot of people who have money to burn on these celebrations. We happened to arrive in China on the last day of the spring festival (after Chinese New Year) which was a day for Chinese families to get together and “PARTY!” with their families.

Our next move was a trip into the little community center to buy some snacks, cleaning supplies and yes lots of toilet paper (you have to bring it with you everywhere). On the way down, the fireworks started up in earnest- it was still light out, but people were lighting off fireworks on every street corner. By the time we had returned to our apartments, and were heading back out for  dinner- well things got nuts!!!!

Walking into the town was like being in a crazy festive warzone. Huge fireworks would go off on one corner and their echoes would bounce around all over. You could feel the loudest ones in your body, and their brightness was actually painful on your eyes. Add in the smaller firecrackers going off for minutes on the other corner, the little kids with huge bottle rocket type crackers, the paper lantern hot air balloon, paper money fires in honour of ancestors, and general craziness of thousands of fireworks going off at once and you can understand our first night in China! (-The fireworks are still going on at 6:45 on the next morning!!!!-).

Anyways, Les, took all the new teachers out for an incredibly tasty Chinese dinner. Lots of small dishes- spicy green beans, squid, soups, hot and sour chicken, shredded pork and rice wrappers, pork and chestnuts, etc.  Oh and lots and lots of Tsingtao beer (we drank a ton, so it was probably a good thing that it was only 2.5% alcohol).

All in all, a good introduction to China.

It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, No it’s Narita

So flying on JAL was the best plane ride we have ever had! The flight attendants were amazing, they came at the drop of a hat and where so smiling and kind.  AND they wore these aprons, like full on 1950’s aprons with a cute frenchy- type design of hat air balloons and old timey airplanes. The 10 hours felt more like 4! We spent our time watching on demand movies, battling each other on old school video games like Tetris and battleship. We also got meet the other new teachers and on the plane we had lots of time to get to know them. There are a seriously diverse group and some really cool people.

So when we landed in Narita, Japan, we went through customs and immigration and then straight onto a bus and to the hotel. We checked in, had a shower, and got on another bus heading into the city. So as if there were not enough reasons for me to be scared about driving here are a few more. 1) In Japan they drive on the left side of the road, 2) traffic lights are sideways and 3) left hand turns seem to be some sort of death sport.

Upon arrival in town we scrambled around and ended up at some sort of fast food soup and noodle shop. There were luckily pictures on the menu but the staff didn’t seem very happy to see a group of ten of us walking in near closing on a Wednesday night.  We did ok but there were problems with the bill, and we think we over paid, such is life on the other side of the pacific.

After dinner we found the real town and wandered around in the dark until we found a really awesome temple. At first we were a bit nervous to walk around if it might be closed, but soon we found other people where there and we got brave and walked all the way into the temple grounds. It was really amazing!

See Ya Van-City

We were lucky enough to get to hang out in PoCompton with the family and friends there. We had a lot of lunches and drinks with friends and a party on Saturday night with a lot of NOW initiated Jar virgins, and nothing was even broken.  It was difficult to say goodbye so many times, but it was awesome that everyone made the effort to see us before we left. Thanks for taking the time to see us friends!!

Our last night in Vancouver was spent at the beautiful Pan Pacific Hotel downtown. Tracy (Kristen’s mom) was working at the Catholic Educators Conference and scored us a wonderful deal. So we spent the last evening in Canada in an incredibly comfortable bed with a wicked view over to Stanley Park and North Van. Awesome!

Because it was Valentine’s Day we went out with Cam and Chelsea on a double date. We wandered around Gastown, had some pasta at the Old Spaghetti Factory (“Spag Fac” for short) and walked along the water near the Olympic Torch.

We stayed up with Dale and Tracy sipping some rum and cokes/champagne and chatting to the wee hours. It was a great send off and we went back to our room and tried to sleep. Only hours until a ten hour plane ride and touchdown in Asia!

Goodbye Victoria...... :(

So Paul and I were talking in the car this week as we ran around trying to say goodbye to everyone and get all the items we need that apparently aren't available in China.(...can I just say that I am a little disappointed that we have bring anything at all? Isn't China where EVERYTHING is made?)

Anyways Paul and I got to talking about all the things we are going to miss in/about Victoria, in no particular order:
- the rain and fresh air
-our family and friends
-arbutus trees and Gary oaks
-playing hockey
-silk road tea
-scotch with brad
-micro-breweries and gastropub fare
-cute downtown Victoria
-the uvic bunnies (although everyone seems to be missing them)
-driving everywhere in 15 minutes
-lounging in the hot tub at Brad and Linda's

The other thing that came sharply to our attention this week was the fact that we are going to miss our two "nephews" becoming toddlers. We are going to be gone for so long that when we return they will likely be unrecognizable to us and us to them. We are going to have to start all the way back at square one with gaining their trust and being noteworthy playmates. This is somewhat heartbreaking as we have been following them both since, well since the day they were born. Luckily we got to spend some time with both of them this week to console our hurt feelings.

 Unfortunately we did not get any pictures of our time with Pumpkin and the family. But we did get to shake his hand, teach him the zoom zoom song, and watching him laugh hysterically at Paul's eat-then-sneeze-out-the-napkin trick!

On Thursday we took Deckster out to Macauley Point and walked him up a huge hill in the wind and rain! It was cold and muddy, and there was gaga (read water) and many many oggies (read dogs) to entertain us.  A great time was had by all, especially all the old people who stopped to oogle at Deckster's cuteness.

Through the tunnel!

Looking cute in his froggie coat!

Such a ham, actually BOTH of them are such hams!

 We only stopped twice to refuel on the way up!

Going to China???

On December 23rd, 2010, an unexpected call came our way. Maple Leaf Schools (a company that runs a number of schools in China based on the B.C. curriculum) was desperate for some teachers. They offered Paul a contract teaching science, and Kristen a job as an ESL teacher. The pay looked good, the flights were free, and both Kris and Paul had just been talking about how itchy their feet were getting. The company needed an answer as soon as possible, so before Christmas, we had decided that we were heading to China!


It was a quick decision, and there has been a lot to do since we made it! Packing, address changes, grad school applications, College of Teachers paperwork, visa applications, banking appointments, tax filing, passport renewal, work, etc. To top it off we decided that we needed to start an exercise program that we could do in our apartment in China (P90X- the x stands for "X-treme"). It has been a busy month and a bit~!This week, we finally moved out of our basement suite and became vagabonds. Basically we will be living out of our suitcases and backpacks for the next two weeks or so, and bouncing between our parents houses.


We are now at the point where we have very little left to do except wait and count down the days....