Changes

Spring is budding in warp-speed at school,
due to high temps in the last week.

I received a few flowers on Friday,
in honor of International Women's Day.

Sorry for the silence on this end. It has been a while. Things have been hectic, to say the least. In the last couple of weeks, Kari and I have had a lot on our plates, with classes to plan for and teach, and ASAs (after-school activities) in full swing as of the week we returned from Chinese New Year break vacay in Cambodia and Thailand (Feb. 18/19). My new ASA (after having finished with my Eco-Team ASA during Quarter 2) is teaching an SAT-Prep Course. Yay for the unpredictable, unreliable services that the mediocrity of the entity known as the College Board provides (...or fails to...). Excuse my tangental rants. I might be in over my head with work and a bit stressed with all the activity of late. My hair is actually falling out.

"Grrrr," just about says it all.

We dog-moms all dressed up as
"Who teachers" for Dr. Seuss' birthday.
It was a big deal at our school last week.

This is the obligatory Chinese-laowai "foreign friends foto"
that was snapped when we went to Yangsha Mountain beach yesterday.
(We're always asked by Chinese to take photos with them, wherever we go. 
We were the only foreigners on the beach that day.)
And no, that is not a condom in the foreground;
it's a plastic cup from a jello-yogurt snack that's very popular around here.
It is representative of just 1/1,000,000th of a fraction 
of the trash that litters, well, EVERYWHERE around these parts. 
Shame to not be able to walk barefoot in the sand. TIC.

We're also in the midst of Teacher Observations, prepping and catching up on lesson planning and grading, and during this first week of March, spring seemed to send us a hopeful tease of tantalizing 70-85ºF weather... so out came the skirts, biking shorts, and spring fever (working inside is hard to do when the out of doors calls, Vitamin D levels need a boost (thus optimistically boosting the energy and moods), and white skin longs for the sun's kisses!). Tennis, hiking, biking, even a day at a nearby beach have all been good, temporary stress relievers and an opportunity to get some fresh(er) air out of the city's filth, construction soot, and according pollution.

So to fill ya'll in...

For more reasons than I want to fully go into at this point in time, we had to move apartments because the leases were up mid-school year on the apartments that the school had for us. So, with less than four months left in the school year (and our contracts), in addition to our daily school duties, we also proactively and diligently prepped for our impending change of apartments during the upcoming weekend of March 2-3 (being proactive is very, very uncharacteristic around here). There were many details to be secured before that point in time, which entailed much (attempted and only occasionally successful) communication, struggle, and rationalizing with ungracious powers that be.

Packing and moving out of the Li Ren apartment,
to the newer ShiMao apartment complex.

Kari packs in her room

I'm trying to jam bedding into a
dust-protector case for the move.

At least needing to pack up everything and move
meant that we finally packed up our Christmas decor!

To make a long story short, with much time and energy sacrificed (and still being sacrificed), Kari and I moved, with our dear pupperz Jett, to a 20-25 minute walk (10 minute bike ride) down the road from the Li Ren Garden apartment complex and where AIAN school is located. Thanks to help from gracious friends, the move was made easier. Though not all is resolved (fires still burn on the school front regarding many, many other issues), and we continue being "squeaky wheels" and incendiaries,  not letting injustice pass us by without a struggle, at least we are more or less settled in the new apartment, and adjusting to the new location and lifestyle that this move brings us.

Driving in China!
A Chinese friend lent us the use of her car on moving day,
to do the little errands driving back and forth
between apartment complexes and such.
I miss driving!

This is the view from the playground in our new apartment complex.
Our building is a total of 31 stories high.
Our apartment is on the 28th floor.
You can see our windows towards the upper-right side.

28 floors down, and looking to the apartment below us.
We hear construction sounds every day.
Those windows in their laundry room were just installed yesterday
and some workmen knocked on my door just as I was writing this,
delivering window screens that I assumed to be for the apt below
(of which we have none, so I should've just accepted them!)

Looking down, all 28 stories,
to the center of the ShiMao apartment complex.
There's the tennis court (only half the lights worked
when we asked to turn them on for an evening match)
and the playground is the other little green patch.
Off further to the right there are ponds with fountains and an indoor gym,
as well as some weird little statues and a peace pond with stepping stones.
A river borders the far edge of the complex.

See that blue inset lighting above the dining room?

Yeah, that's just a taste of the mood lighting

perks we have all around the apartment.

Super flashy and all for show.

Too bad they went all out on the lights

and not the practical things,

such as, say, hot water and 

a functional washing machine, showers, flooring,

or just doing anything in a QUALITY manner...

Enjoy the pictorial tour of some parts of the apartment, and I'll try to upload a video tour of it soonish, once we finish completely decorating (which means sticky-tacking and Command-Stripping pictures and art to the walls, since you can't put nails in the walls on rentals here, or the "damages" are paid out of pocket). In all reality, we have more space than is necessary (the third bedroom is our "suitcase room," and has a hole in the wall where another aircon unit should have been installed). Good thing our Ayi (housecleaning, dog walking "auntie") will return this week (we hope!) to help us clean all the dirty messes that were left from construction and not cleaned by the landlords before tenants moved in. We are going to have to have a disco, electro-techno, Margaritaville, granny-doily and fake-flower arrangement housewarming party. We (facetiously) loved what our landlords did with the decor in the spacious place... I mean, there are LED lights that sparkle above our bathroom mirrors, just for funsies, and iridescent neon blue and green mood lighting insets in the dining and family rooms. 

Take a look at Kari's post about the new apartment for more details as to the status... to her credit and applauding her optimism, Kari's list of grievances concerning our new apartment isn't even the full list of complaints we have regarding the whole situation.

Our kitchen...

...where the best part are the Margaritaville-esque tropical shades,
which were the landlords' idea of "quick fix" for the fact that the wind
blows through the ill-fitted sliding windows. The room is quite breezy,
the cheap shades flapping in the "breeze."

The view of Beilun from the kitchen window.
Construction and development and industry galore.
A metropolis on the horizon...
:(    resulting in pollution (air and water quality sacrificed)
and a host of other negative repercussions. Growth is not always the best solution!

Can someone please tell me what we're supposed
to do with this built-in sliding drawer-rack?
We're confused by the strange spaces and bars...
(We made due by haphazardly cramming our
dishes and tupperware into the racks)

Kari's bathroom,
where the shower leaks
into the other sections of the bathroom

Laundry room

This is the washing machine side of the laundry room.
Glad that, after a week living here,
some issues were finally resolved with basic physics,
and the machine is now functional!
(Check Kari's blog for some insight on that story)

My bathroom shower, before the shades were installed.
Hello, world! Here's my naked body!
It still leaks, and the door's runner comes off,
but hey, TIC.

Only about a gazillion unnecessary light switches,
when the hot water tank won't even last for a full 5-minute shower!
Let's get our priorities straight in the bathroom now!
(First-world problems/TIC)

A view of my bedroom (Kari and I switched, and I get the Master now!),
from the doorway. The bathroom and a walk-through closet way
are accessible, via sliding doors, to the right.

That's all for now. As I said, more photos and videos are forthcoming (check the Facebook album for updated photos within the week). I'm trying to catch up on day-to-day life here (my to do list is from here to Timbuktu!), and I'm gradually able to start fitting in catch up Skype date convos here and there. Spring break (Chinese Tomb-Sweeping Festival) is coming up too (March 28-April 7), so hopefully that will be a chance for relaxation and catching up... say, filing my taxes and exploring the new area in which I live?

Thoughts and prayers are appreciated during these days! Much love to you, friends and family!