Bring on the Mongolians

This past weekend, Paul had a chance to travel to the capital of Liaoning province in order to play some hockey. Shenyang is a city of 10 million, and it is a five hour bus ride from Dalian. To get there you have to travel on a pretty monster highway through rural agricultural land and industrial wastelands. He had an opportunity to go last year and it was a highlight of his time here so when this chance came up again he jumped at it.

The rink in Shenyang... just waiting for coach Bombay and the Ducks.

Paul’s  hockey gear had not come yet- it is currently being transported across an ocean in a shipping container- so he only had his skates and a couple of sticks. He spent the last few weeks scrambling to borrow gear and finally amassed enough to make a complete set. Unfortunately, one week prior to the trip, he was told by his work that he would have to come in and work on the Saturday of the trip.

Every year Maple Leaf has a week long holiday (instead of a number of long weekends) at the beginning of October.  However, Chinese nationals only get four days off (scattered across a number of weekends) instead of the five days that we get during our week vacation. To make up for it, we are supposed to work an extra Saturday. For some reason the Junior High decided that they would work a different Saturday then the Senior High. This of course left Paul scrambling to find a way to get out of work so that he could legitimately go to the tournament in Shenyang.

Well it took some negotiating, and some pressure from the Vice principal of the high school (who is on the hockey team and related to the other teacher from the junior high that wanted to go on the trip- sometimes it is good to have connections!) but eventually a solution was found. In exchange for working extra classes during the next week and coming in on a Saturday later in the month, they were free to go on the trip.

The hockey this time around was much higher calibre than the previous trip Paul went on. Partly this was because the quality of our team had increased with a number of new rookie teachers arriving in town, but also because the quality of the competition was far better this time around. Ex-pat teams from Shanghai and Beijing flew in for the weekend, and a Chinese team from Shenyang hosted the tournament. To cap it off, a group of Mongolian players who play with the Mongolian national team took busses and trains for 58 hours to come and get ready for their season. Apparently there are no indoor rinks in Mongolia, and they wanted to get a jump on the other players trying out for the national team. The outdoor rinks don’t freeze up for a month or so, so this was a chance to get in game shape before the season.

Awesome.

The Kaptain of the Mongolian squad

Mongolian sweater and a felted camel hair blanket they raffled off to help defray the cost of their trip.

Mongolian national team jerseys... auctioned off to the highest bidder. They went for almost 350 CDN each!

Mongolian Canadian Summit Series photo

Someone on our team thought we would have enough player for two teams so we were scheduled for double the games of everyone else. We also had a number of players go down with alcohol related disinterest  (some of the older veterans on our team like the hockey trips for the chance to get away from work, family and the same old routine… they can really cut loose, but it costs their ability to play hockey).  So we were able to consistently field between 10 and 14 players of varying quality for the 9 games we played over two days. Seven of the games were on Saturday, and we were each playing every other shift for three of the games in a row. It was gruelling, but a hell of a lot of fun.

Our record included 6 losses, 2 wins (one against the Mongolians) and a game that ended with a bench clearing brawl (not kidding- don’t worry Mom, I’m fine).

In between all the hockey, the banqueting and consuming of fine Chinese beverages, we found some time to shuffle around the Imperial palace of Shenyang (shuffle because our muscles were seizing from so much hockey!). The palace was built for the Qing dynasty rulers before they moved their capital from Shenyang to Beijing. It is pretty impressive, and a wonderful place to be invited into the pictures of random strangers. For some reason, Chinese people really like to ask white foreigners to take a picture with them. Weird.

The Imperial Palace's throne room.

It was a great hockey filled weekend, and Paul can’t wait to do it again in a couple of months.

Two weeks....

Gansu.

 Yaks and dunes. Camels, caves, the Buddhist “louvre,” monks, paragliding. 9 days of vacation. Three trains, buses, subways,  at least three plane rides. Dorm beds, motion sickness (definitely), altitude sickness (maybe), cheap beer.

We head out in two weeks on possibly the most adventurous trip of our traveling existence. Gansu province is tucked between Inner Mongolia, Sichuan (or Szechuan), Qinghai and Xinjiang provinces. It was formerly part of Tibet and has a population that is 50% Tibetan, 40% Han (“chinese” Chinese) and 10% Hui (Chinese Muslim). Regional cuisine varies between yak milk, boiled donkey with noodles and high altitude white teas (in the mountains) to spiced donkey kebabs with flat breads and chickpeas in the desert.

We are going for two reasons: One, nobody just happens through Gansu. You either GO THERE or you never do. It’s not a place we will ever just walk through on our way to somewhere else so we thought we better do it now or not at all. Two, it has some incredible places to visit.

Exhibit A: The Mogao Caves. The most impressive collection of Buddhist statuary, relics, paintings and ancient writings are contained in these desert caves. Caves is a barbaric way to describe them apparently as they are well carved caverns hewed out of the rock by master carvers. They were paid for with silk road money and have been around for a long, long time.

Exhibit B: The desert. We are talking about some of the tallest stationary dunes in the world. Gansu has a piece of the Gobi, the Taklamakan and Jadian Beran deserts. There are crazy sand sculpted rocks, buried cities and fabulous oases to feast our eyes on. Not to mention the possibility of overnight camel rides, dune buggying, sandboarding, paragliding off the dunes or ultralighting (for 100yuan a half hour… crazy cheap).

Exibit C:  Little Tibet. Xiahe is the home of one of the six most holy monasteries in the Tibetan world. It is positioned high in the mountains and receives few Western tourists because of its remoteness. The chances of altitude sickness are minimal but definitely there. The chance of seeing monks clad in robes spinning prayer wheels and chanting sutras while we sip yak tea on a heated kang overlooking a high mountain plateau in the foothills of the Himalayas…. Likely.

Today Paul eats..................

OK so we know why you are still following our blog. because like Kristen you find it endlessly entertaining to watch Paul scarf down some horrible chinese food. Well Happy Mid-Autum Fesitval, the chinese version of Thanksgiving! For Mid-Autum fest we got you all this video! Enjoy!

Teaching assignments

Kristen has been given an assignment teaching two classes of communication skills, which means she gets to focus on speaking and listening. This is right up her alley and much easier for her than the writing classes she was also teaching last year. Apparently her spelling skills are only…. Well lets say that they are not great (she blames switching from French Immersion to full English streaming).

Because she has already taught this course, she has to spend less time prepping. Because she is only teaching two courses –rather than four- she has more time to mark during school time, and less assignments to mark. She has to spend the other blocks as a teacher on call but so far has not been called on to sub. All in all she is much happier this semester with her teaching assignment then she was last year.

Paul is only teaching nine hours a week. The rest of the time he is working as the head teacher, helping the other teachers prep, plan, organize themselves and solve problems. Two teachers are also teaching at different schools (in Tianjin and Wuhan) so he has to coordinate with them as well. The program has apparently caught the eye of the chairman as he has asked us to prepare to expand to all the schools by next year. In order to do this, Paul has been tasked with creating a "student resource book" (a textbook basically!) and a teacher resource book. Vicky, the Science program’s Chinese assistant is now working almost exclusively with Paul on this. It is really exciting work, but also a little daunting. Apparently they want to have the textbook polished enough to publish by the end of 2012-2013

school year!

So far, things have been pretty smooth and we have managed to get through almost two whole weeks of school without having to bring ANY homework with use after school is over (a real feat!). Hopefully (but doubtfully) we can continue this trend.

Back in China.

Descending from cruising altitude, high above the brown and grey city, it is hard not to think that we are heading into a different world. After only a few days (well two weeks but it felt like just short days) at home, we were returning to this weird land of strange happenstance and unpredictability. We were coming back to China.

The weather hit us as soon as we landed. Sweltering heat, oppressive humidity smacked us in the face as we boarded the bus on the runway. Unlike most modern airports, China’s runways tend to have no permanent gangways that lead into a building. Instead you push and prod your way through the aisle of the airplane, rush down the stairs with hand luggage in tow and cram your way onto a bus that takes you the thirty feet to the door where you get off. Then you fight your way through to immigration (stamp, stamp, stamp) find your bags at the luggage carousel (or don’t, as the case may be) and head through customs.

On this return trip we were traveling with a number of new and returning teachers so we hired a van for the ride back to Jinshitan and piled in with all our gear. An hour later we were “home”.

In many ways it is as if we never left. Our house was in the same state we left it (although possibly it was slightly cleaner as our “auntie” stopped by several times in the summer to give it a wipe down and scrub the floors). However, the campus had changed in one spectacular way.

It was green.

There was grass where no grass had been (they only roll out the sod for a few months of the year then pack it away so it isn’t damaged by winter). There were trees, actual trees, with leaves! Our view from our bedroom window was a field of grass, wild hemp and weeds, and even the occasional bird flying by.

Of course the trade off for all this lush verdancy has been the weather. This summer has seen some of the most rain on record for the region. In fact there was more rain in July and August then in the last four years combined. So, the air is full of moisture. It is hot, so hot and humid that it feels like someone is smothering you with a wet diaper. I chose diaper as a metaphor because in China smells are often, shall we say, unpleasant.

We have started to settle in to a routine: work, workout (which in the heat is a trial and a half), cook, clean up, sleep, repeat. We are spicing it up now and again with the occasional night out, a game of baseball or ball hockey or trip to the beach, but in so many ways being back in China is…. normal.

Which is in itself, very weird.

This was the view when we arrived in February, not very awesome.

This is the view from our apartment NOW!!! Much better! If things keep getting better, we might even stay ANOTHER year, hahahahhahaahahaha!

A Photo's Worth a Thousand Words....

So we are fully able to say and accept that we were less then awesome bloggers while we were traveling, but tough beans we had a GREAT time. We aren't going to try to remember all the details instead we want to share some pics............enjoy!

Clearly the Jungle Book movie NEEDS to be filmed here

The Temple of Women, the carving was so fine it could only be done by the hand of a woman

One of the many band members who have been affected by landmines at the temples

a replica of Angkor temple

Paul`s favorite spot

Cambodians village on a river

elephant terrace

Some of the many landmines de-activated at the museum

Some local Cambodian food

The Buddhist temple in Bangkok

Changing of the Guard at the Palace in Bangkok

Sharing a bucket in Bangkok